Impressions // The Children Who Lived in A Barn by Eleanor Graham
As far as literary tropes go, sudden and extended parental absenteeism would appear to be the go-to plot device for writers of children’s fiction. There are few bolder ways to precipitate the drama of your story than, at the outset, offing the grown-ups for the duration of the narrative. After all, in what other context would the Dunnet children possibly be forced to live in the eponymous barn; in what context would they need to scrabble around trying to render said barn presentable to the dreaded “DV” (that’s District Visitor to you and me); in what other context would the children even consider entertaining the brazen, proverb-spewing tramp, Solomon in their home; when else would we ever get to accompany Sue in her efforts to fathom the intricacies of that infamous hay box?
In kinder examples such as this, the parents are merely pushed to the novel’s periphery, and perhaps we are occasionally reminded of their existence via written correspondence, but in other harsher tales, parents are killed off altogether. As it is, the protagonists in these stories suddenly find themselves with little to no moral guidance, minimal financial support, and, more often than not, the additional obstacle of the fact that their remaining relatives or substitute parents just so happen to be utterly contemptible. The world into which these newly bereaved or abandoned children are suddenly thrust is not merely the unforgiving place most of us now know it to be, but one compounded by the expectation of their instant adaption to the very adult world of labour, homemaking and money managing which, in less tragic circumstances, they would never be forced to navigate independently.
There’s such a multitude of these stories that you’d be forgiven for thinking this particular opener was a prerequisite for any children’s or bildungsroman text: Great Expectations opens with the young and illiterate Pip standing in the village churchyard trying to make sense of his parents’ headstones, before a brief meditation on just how abominably his elder sister Mrs. Joe, as their inadequate replacement, has been to him in the intervening years. Jane Eyre opens with young Jane, whose parents died of typhus years earlier, in the company of her three spoiled cousins and under the care of her abusive Aunt Reed. The opening of The Story of a Modern Woman deals with the death of young Mary Earle’s father and its repercussions on the household she is now compelled to maintain. Harry Potter opens with an orphaned baby being set at the doorstep of his aunt and uncle, ahead of eleven long years of cruelty at the hands of his reluctant guardians. In The Secret Garden, the orphaned Mary Lennox moves from India, where her parents died from cholera, to Yorkshire, to live in the house of her reclusive uncle, whom she has never met. What all of these stories share, besides that obvious plot point, is the fact that in every one, these adverse circumstances are exacerbated; magnified by the fact that there is no friendly, familial voice to offer comfort or instruction.
What sets Eleanor Graham’s The Children Who Lived in a Barn apart from the other examples I’ve listed is just how clumsily this device is implemented. The story opens with a perfect picture of nuclear family cohesion, but in a turn of events worthy of a Neighbours story line, the children find themselves abandoned and left to fend for themselves. About three pages in, a letter arrives detailing the mysterious, undisclosed illness of a relative in Europe, and at once, the mother and father are away, having made no arrangements for the care of their five children (whose ages, by the way, range between five and thirteen). Such is the father’s agitation that he can’t even bring himself to finish his sentence before sprinting off to catch his bus.
What follows, Graham surely hoped, is a lesson in household efficiency, self-sufficiency, and the value (and limitations) of community. Unfortunately, these lessons are learned primarily by Sue, who by virtue of being both a girl, and the oldest of the children (though we are often reminded that Bob is very close behind), becomes the person from whom the most is demanded by her siblings.
At once, the children become a replica of the family structure we see presented at the very opening of the story. Sue, who now seems to be responsible for literally everything, takes on the role of harassed home maker or domestic slave (delete as applicable), while the twins gad about stupidly, making everything twice as difficult as it needs to be. Alice mopes about being generally pathetic and unmemorable, and then there’s Bob, who, despite his boundless sense of entitlement and authority, somehow manages to escape the charge of bossiness that I’m sure has been frequently laid upon Sue over the years.
As a “grown up” reader, I had a problem with virtually every aspect of this story’s execution, from the sheer ridiculousness and implausibility of their parents’ exit to the dullness of the ensuing action which seems so focused on such prosaic activities as book keeping, cleaning, cooking etc., that it’s difficult to circumvent the clearly instructive overtones of the story. Such didacticism now seems more or less obsolete, or at least far less urgent: children in the 21st century are hardly likely to share the same concerns as the Dunnets, barn or no barn. Graham wrote her story in 1938, a year before it was decided that the compulsory school leaving age ought to be raised to 15 (and several years before it was finally implemented), which means that Sue, at the ripe old age of 13, had virtually reached the end of her childhood anyway, and with this in mind, it seems less ridiculous that she should occupy herself with what modern readers would consider the sole concern of adults.
I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that within a year of the book’s publication, Neville Chamberlain would announce the country’s formal declaration of war on Germany. With this in mind, the frugality necessarily exercised by a group of children without a reliable means of income and no idea when their parents would finally return becomes analogous to the self-sufficiency and resilience considered necessary to a nation’s survival and morale in a state of war. Sue’s efforts to maintain the household and the decency of her siblings are echoed in the plethora of propaganda posters targeted at those British subjects who remained on the home front, in which that same frugality is expounded as a matter of national emergency. Given Britain’s intensifying relationship with Germany during the 1930s, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that Graham at least took this looming threat into consideration while writing her story.
Interesting though these parallels may be, none of it goes any way toward explaining my own attachment to the story as a child. Really, it’s not all that complicated. As adults, we can return to classics like Home Alone and laugh at the absurdities of Kevin’s abandonment, but as children, it’s pure fun; a glimpse into a world temporarily free from the seemingly arbitrary rules and restrictions imposed by one’s parents in which a child can eat whatever and whenever he likes, watch whatever he likes, and do what he wants, however dangerous, with no risk of being disciplined. It’s the ultimate childhood fantasy, and a theme that I imagine will forever endure in children’s literature, but in most instances, the lessons learned tend to be the same: it’s fun until the novelty wears off, and then it becomes a little dull, a little lonely, and a lot like work.
