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鈥檚 writings in the 19th century, on children鈥檚 Bibles and religious children鈥檚 literature. Then, I started looking at children鈥檚 Bible stories. I have been lucky to look at 19th century children鈥檚 literature and Bible story collections at Special Collections at Queen鈥檚, the Toronto Public Library, and at Wycliffe College in Toronto. I think I鈥檝e 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鈥檚 Bibles and children鈥檚 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鈥檚 Bible Stories entirely excludes the role of the serpent, calling him the 鈥渆vil spirit鈥 and having him become Eve鈥檚 master after the fall. IT鈥檚 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鈥檛 quite figured out why she was writing it like that, but its certainly an anomaly.