Agency in Children’s Gothic

A Matter of Life and Death

Abstract

The twenty-first century has seen an increase in Gothic fiction for children. The child in contemporary Gothic is portrayed as a capable agent, successful in their attempt to defeat the threats emanating from the Gothic netherworld. This portrayal is in keeping with the general tendency to date to emphasise child agency and competence as positive traits in the representation of childhood subjectivity. However, recent Nordic Gothic fiction – particularly from Sweden, Denmark and Norway – challenges this discourse on child agency and competence. The aim of this article is to show how images of child agency and competence are problematised in contemporary Gothic fiction for children published in the Scandinavian countries. Gothic fiction for children utilises a generic ambivalence of the Gothic in its portrayal of child subjectivity, which resonates with tensions in the contemporary understanding of childhood. In this genre, agency is not foremost a positive trait but rather a compulsory feature. To act in accordance with continuously changing circumstances is shown to demand specific kinds of competencies: adaptability and flexibility. But depictions of the competent child are frequently haunted by its counterpart – the incompetent child – which problematises the very notion of child competence as understood within a contemporary context. Gothic ambivalence therefore throws a light on darker discourses of child agency and competence in the Nordic countries today.