'Legends of Power and Weakness': The Construction of Relationships Between Adults and Children in Jacob Have I Loved and Dear Nobody

‘It seems to me that children's literature...is about people who are small and not given all the facts, trying to cope in a world where the power belongs to the big people who have more knowledge. In a way, almost all children's books are legends of power and weakness'. (Anne Schlee, in Harrison and Maguire, Innocence to Experience, p.215). From the moment we begin to consider the two texts Jacob Have I Loved and Dear Nobody the titles plunge us headlong into the treatise about parental power. The title of the first text foreshadows its content, drawing heavily upon the Biblical legend of Jacob, in which Isaac's patriarchal fiat despatches Esau to his subservient destiny. In Dear Nobody, Helen becomes caught up in her own tale of adult power over adolescent weakness. Ironically, she then moves into the adult role and creates her own parental truth which she hands on to her own unborn, unnamed daughter. This becomes a written legend, her unique individual story, her own ideology. As Peter Hollindale states: ‘What we call 'ideology' is a living thing, and something we need to know as we need to know ourselves. Very much like that, because it is a part of us.’