SILENCING AND VOICE IN PHILIP PULLMAN’S NORTHERN LIGHTS

Abstract

Children’s literature can be argued to expose its child readers and characters to certainnorms because of its conventionally didactic quality, reverberation of adults’ nostalgicfeelings, and tendency to create an image of the ideal child. This, however, creates ahierarchy between childhood and adulthood, rendering the child silent and passiveboth outside and inside the text. Published in 1995, Philip Pullman’s Northern Lightsdestabilizes the hierarchy between adulthood and childhood, restructures archetypalrenditions, and gives voice to the child that has been supressed in various ways indidactic children’s books. In this respect, this paper aims to analyse how such issuesas silencing, voice, ideal child are employed in Pullman’s novel. It explores modernchildren’s fantasy as a fruitful ground not only for problematizing the hierarchiesbetween binaries such as adult/child, adulthood/childhood, and maturity/immaturitybut also for providing children with the voice and individuality they were deprived ofin earlier examples of children’s literature.