@article{article_879700, title={Thackeray’s Children: Laughter, Childhood, and Disenchanting The Fairy Tale}, journal={Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences}, volume={15}, pages={135–150}, year={2021}, DOI={10.47777/cankujhss.879700}, author={Özbaş, Selena}, keywords={The Rose and The Ring, Victorian laughter, 19th century childhood, realism, fairy-tale, Dickensian laughter}, abstract={This paper aims at excavating the use(s) of mid-nineteenth century English laughter in relation to the conception of Victorian childhood in William Makepeace Thackeray’s rarely studied fairy-tale, The Rose and The Ring (1854). Defining the cultural coordinates of Thackeray’s Victorian sensibility towards children and locating the root of this sensibility in its contemporary novelistic discourse, this paper assumes a connection between the Victorian child as a narrative chess-piece and her/his involvement in the development of novelistic strategies. This connection, it is contended, naturally results in the ‘employment’ of the child as a narrative explorer of narrational possibilities in TRTR, which builds up an argument against the fairy- tailisation of fairy-tales. It is argued that the child herself/himself and ideas pertaining to childhood in TRTR function as sources and manufacturers of laughter/ humour which tarnishes the conventional magicality of a fairy-tale. In this context, not only does the child’s laughter relocate her/him as a narrative auxiliary in accordance with Thackeray’s realist mission, but also it centralises the child’s laughter and the child herself/himself as a narrative wanderer. In this context, it will be argued that Thackeray’s child’s encounter with laughter and her/his involvement in laughter-evoking instances further both the mission of novelistic realism contra fairy-tale magicality and emerge as directors of the narrative tone and course. In conclusion, it will be maintained that although Thackeray’s children are formally at service of the author’s inner strategies, the narrational attitude empowers them.}, number={1}, publisher={Cankaya University}