ABSTRACT
Thoroughly covered, the Victorian body would have left much to the imagination alongside the fairies and fairy world Victorian fancy romanticized. Women and children were “othered” in this society so that they were often idealized through these romanticized conventions of the physical and mental characteristics attributed to them. These straightforward Victorian ideologies are important in the construction of the imperfect child who not only possesses a small physical form, which might often struggle with an illness, but also is thought of, and labeled, as being little. The physical constructions of the imperfect child, though small, are antithetical to their actual presence both culturally and socially. While authors such as Dickens, MacDonald, Kingsley, Stretton, Rossetti, and Nesbit might suggest the physical form is culturally and socially deemed inconsequential, the very naming of their characters, like Little Nell, Tiny Tim, and Elfrida, often indicates they are people of momentous importance in the construction and progression of the text. Often belittled by those around them and possessing minute forms, the imperfect child
develops through employing linguistic, cultural, and social conventions of language and idealized characteristics. As Haig A. Bosmajian states in The Language of Oppression (1983),1 “The power which comes from names and naming is related directly to the power to defi ne them. . . . The names, labels, and phrases employed to ‘identify’ people may in the end determine their survival” (5). Dickens, MacDonald, Kingsley, Stretton, Rossetti, and Nesbit interchange the Victorian notions of “othering” and thus illustrate the importance of the tiniest Victorian citizens and how they are often overlooked.
