Child abandonment in literature

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Child abandonment in literature

Pietro da Cortona. Romulus and Remus given shelter by Faustulus.

Foundlings, who may be orphans, can combine many advantages to a plot: mysterious antecedents, leading to plots to discover them; high birth and lowly upbringing. They have appeared in literature from the oldest known tales. The commonest motives for abandoning children in literature are oracles that the child will cause harm; the mother's desire to conceal her illegimate child, often after rape by a god; or spite on the part of people other than the parents, such as sisters and mothers-in-law in such fairy tales as The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird. Poverty usually features as a cause only with the case of older children, who can survive on their own.

In many tales, such as Snow White, the child is actually abandoned by a servant who had been given orders to do the child to death.

From Oedipus onward, Greek and Roman tales are filled with exposed children who escaped death to be reunited with their families -- usually, as in Longus's Daphnis and Chloe, more happily than in Oedipus's case. Grown children, having been taken up by strangers, were usually recognized by tokens that had been left with the exposed baby: in Euripides's Ion, Creüsa is about to kill Ion, believing him to be her husband's illegitimate child, when a priestess reveals the birth-tokens that show that Ion is her own, abandoned infant.

This may reflect the widespread practice of child abandonment in their cultures. On the other hand, the motif is continued through literature where the practice is not widespread. William Shakespeare used the abandonment and discovery of Perdita in The Winter's Tale, and Edmund Spenser reveals in the last Canto of Book 6 of The Faerie Queen that the character Pastorella, raised by shepherds, is in fact of noble birth. Henry Fielding, in one of the first novels, recounted The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Ruth Benedict, in studying the Zuni, found that the practice of child abandonment was unknown, but featured heavily in their folktales.

The strangers who take up the child are often shepherds or other herdsmen. This befell not only Oedipus, but, legendarily, Cyrus the Great, [Amphion and Zethus]] in the legend of Antiope, and several of the characters listed above. Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf in the wilderness, but afterward, again found by a shepherd. This ties this motif in with the genre of the pastoral. This can imply or outright state that the child benefits by this pure upbringing by unspoiled people, as opposed to the corruption that surrounded his birth family.

The finding of Moses, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Often, the child is aided by animals before being found; Artemis sent a bear to nurse the abandoned Atalanta, and Paris was also nursed by a bear before being found. In some cases, the child is depicted as being raised by animals; these stories are purely mythical, as feral children are incapable of speech.

The children of Queen Blondine and of her sister, Princess Brunette, picked up by a Corsair after seven days at sea; illustration by Walter Crane to the fairy tale Princess Belle-Etoile

Moses is unusual in that he is taken up by a princess, who is of superior birth to his mother, but like the other foundlings listed above, he reaches adulthood and returns to his birth family. This is the usual pattern in such stories.

The opposite pattern, of a child remaining with its adoptive parents, is less common but occurs. In the Indian epic Mahabharata, Karna is never reconciled with his mother, and dies in battle with her legitimate son. In the Grimm fairy tale Foundling-Bird, Foundling Bird never learns of, let alone reunites with, his parents. George Eliot depicted the abandonment of the character Eppie in Silas Marner; despite learning her true father at the end of the book, she refuses to leave Silas Marner who raised her.

Babes in the Wood, illustrated by Randolph Caldecott: the children die in each other's arms, and the robins take up leaves to bury them

When older children are abandoned in fairy tales, while poverty may be cited as a cause, as in Hop o' My Thumb, the most common effect is when poverty is combined with a stepmother's malice, as in Hansel and Gretel (or sometimes, a mother's malice). The stepmother's wishes may be the sole cause, as in Father Frost. In these stories, the children seldom find adoptive parents, but malicious monsters, such as ogres and witches; outwitting them, they find treasure enough to solve their poverty. The stepmother may die coincidentally, or be driven out by the father when he hears, so that the reunited family can live happily in her absence.

In a grimmer variation, the tale Babes in the Wood features a wicked uncle in the role of the wicked stepmother, who gives order for the children to be killed. However, although the servants scruple to obey him, and the children are abandoned in the woods, the tale ends tragically: the children die, and their bodies are covered with leaves by robins.

When the cause of the abandonment is a prophecy, the abandonment is usually instrumental in causing the prophecy to be fulfilled. Besides Oedipus, Greek legends also included Telephus, who was prophesied to kill his uncle; his ignorance of his parentage, stemming from his abandonment, caused his uncle to jeer at him and him to kill the uncle in anger.

Foundlings still appear in modern fiction. Superman may be seen as a continuation of the foundling tradition, the lone survivor of an advanced civilization who is found and raised by Kansas farmers in a pastoral setting, and later discovers his alien origins and uses his powers for good. Elora Danan, in the film Willow, and Lir, in the novel The Last Unicorn, both continue the tradition of foundlings abandoned because of prophecies, and who fulfill the prophecies because of their abandonment. In the last book of The Chronicles of Prydain, Dallben reveals to the hero Taran that he is a foundling; in a story set in the same world, "The Foundling", Dallben himself proves to be also a foundling.