Ideology And Power Relations Paper

I will discuss the statement Children’s literature is concerned with ideology and power relations with reference to Block 1 of Children’s Literature. Ideology is the attitude that makes up a culture and its social norms. Power relationships are relationships that are based on the ideology of society according to time, place, religion and culture. Hunt argues that children’s literature has ideology within it regardless of it being intentional or not. (Hunt, 2009)

Within the Harry Potter extract there are clear stereotypical power relations, between the children and the adults in this case the teachers and pupils at Hogwarts. (Hunt, 2009) Harry’s fear of losing house points for his team, alongside the description of Harry looking at the floor to avoid Snape’s stare reinforces the ideology that …show more content…
(Grenby, 2009) Therefore, in some places in this extract, implying the power within schools lies with the teachers and children have no control over how, when, where or what they do at school, leaving them as passive subjects at a time that is highly important in their lives. Hunt suggests power is present within the field of child literature, giving adults ultimate power over children within many areas of their lives. (Hunt, 2009) However, within this position of power there is the ability to enable children to look at situations from different perspectives, for example, lots of children may experience difficulties with some power relations, including the fear of an adult, by reading about the situations in different contexts it could be used to help some children deal with real life events. (Carpenter, 2009) Tolkien suggests fantasy may allow children and adults to review their world. Anne Fine believes that a book can remove you from the world or help you living it through the messages that are taken from it and Jacqueline Wilson likes to be able to help children through her writing; giving children the knowledge that they