Research: How 19th century women were writing the story of Adam and Eve from Genesis for children in religious literature
Overview: My research started by looking at a variety of secondary source material on women’s writings in the 19th century, on children’s Bibles and religious children’s literature. Then, I started looking at children’s Bible stories. I have been lucky to look at 19th century children’s literature and Bible story collections at Special Collections at Queen’s, the Toronto Public Library, and at Wycliffe College in Toronto. I think I’ve looked at over 60 different publications now, 25 of which actually fit the parameters of my study being that they were produced by British women in the 19th century. My essay is exploratory than it is proving anything. Very little has been written on children’s Bibles and children’s Bible stories, and nothing on this specific topic, so I am trying to explore and then explain just what it was these women were writing about. I also am going to focus on some of the more interesting versions of the story that I have read. For example, Aunt Charlotte’s Bible Stories entirely excludes the role of the serpent, calling him the “evil spirit” and having him become Eve’s master after the fall. IT’s just such an odd version of the story because typically, this type of language is used to describe sin or Adam after the fall. I haven’t quite figured out why she was writing it like that, but its certainly an anomaly.