A Study Guide for Christina Stead's "The Man Who Loved Children"
()
About this ebook
Read more from Gale
A study guide for Frank Herbert's "Dune" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Louis Sachar's "Holes" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for James Clavell's "Shogun" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for George Orwell's Animal Farm Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Lois Lowry's The Giver Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for William Shakespeare's Macbeth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horsemen" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: JEAN PIAGET Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for James Joyce's "James Joyce's Ulysses" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Business Plans Handbook: Bakery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students: ALBERT BANDURA Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Plans Handbook: Furniture Businesses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for George Orwell's 1984 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Shirley Jackson's The Lottery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide (New Edition) for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide (New Edition) for William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Plans Handbook: Auto Detailing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to A Study Guide for Christina Stead's "The Man Who Loved Children"
Related ebooks
A Study Guide for Bernard Malamud's "The Assistant" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Olive Ann Burns's "Cold Sassy Tree" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Red and the Black by Stendhal (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA study guide for Tim O'Brien's "Going After Cacciato" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpeak: by Laurie Halse Anderson | Conversation Starters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of We Were Eight Years in Power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Richard Wright's "Bright and Morning Star" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMiddlemarch (MAXNotes Literature Guides) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems From A Man's Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to Franny and Zooey and Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Walt Whitman's "Miracles" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Nelly Sachs's "But Perhaps God Needs the Longing" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Milton's "On His Having Arrived at the Age of 23" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Imtiaz Dharker's "Minority" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for William Faulkner's "Race at Morning" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Where the Crawdads Sing By Delia Owens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Longest Journey Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Hemingway and Women: Female Critics and the Female Voice Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Literature Companion: War and Peace Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hamlet Companion (Includes Study Guide, Complete Unabridged Book, Historical Context, Biography, and Character Index) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Julia Glass's "Three Junes" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSuite Francaise - Behind the Story (A Book Companion) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Steinbeck's "Chrysanthemums" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Teaching Methods & Materials For You
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dumbing Us Down - 25th Anniversary Edition: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 5 Love Languages of Children: The Secret to Loving Children Effectively Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Inside American Education Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jack Reacher Reading Order: The Complete Lee Child’s Reading List Of Jack Reacher Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speed Reading: Learn to Read a 200+ Page Book in 1 Hour: Mind Hack, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Personal Finance for Beginners - A Simple Guide to Take Control of Your Financial Situation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Principles: Life and Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Closing of the American Mind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Making Friends: Helping Socially Challenged Teens and Young Adults Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Take Smart Notes. One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speed Reading: How to Read a Book a Day - Simple Tricks to Explode Your Reading Speed and Comprehension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Tools of Learning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers: The Secret to Loving Teens Effectively Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Three Bears Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everything You Need to Know About Personal Finance in 1000 Words Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for A Study Guide for Christina Stead's "The Man Who Loved Children"
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A Study Guide for Christina Stead's "The Man Who Loved Children" - Gale
08
The Man Who Loved Children
Christina Stead
1940
Introduction
Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children received little critical consideration when it was first published in 1940, and would probably have been forgotten by the literary world if not for the attention brought to it by the poet Randall Jarrell, who wrote a highly laudatory introduction for the twenty-five-year anniversary edition. Since then, the book has been considered a modern masterpiece.
The novel offers a harrowing look at a dysfunctional family, and is patterned on the household in which Stead grew up. Like the oldest daughter, Louisa, Stead was raised by her stepmother after her birth mother died when she was two; her parents went on to have six more children, even though they fought constantly. Stead's eye for detail makes these characters easily relatable to readers, and their hatred and self-destructive tendencies make them characters that are difficult to forget. Perhaps this is why the book has remained in print for so long, with a new edition published by Picador in 2001.
Author Biography
Christina Stead was born in Australia, in the town of Rockdale in New South Wales, on July 17, 1902. Her father was a marine biologist and an active socialist. When she was two years old, her mother died. Three years later, her father remarried Ada Gibbons, with whom Stead did not get along. Her parents went on to have six more children, mirroring the family structure in The Man Who Loved Children.
Stead was educated in nearby Sydney, earning her degree from New South Wales Teachers' College in 1922. She found that teaching was not the right job for her, and in 1925 started working as a secretary. She moved to London in 1928, to follow a man with whom she had fallen in love, and when he rejected her, she took a job as an office clerk. At that job, she met Wilhelm Blech, who was to become her lifelong companion. With his influence, she became a Marxist. The two lived in Paris, then in Spain until the Civil War began in 1936. Then they moved to the United States.
Stead's first novel, Seven Poor Men of Sydney, was published in 1934, followed by The Beauties and Furies in 1936, and House of All Nations in 1938. The novels did not sell well, and were not even published in her native Australia. To support herself, Stead worked on a variety of writing jobs, including some scriptwriting for MGM. The publication of The Man Who Loved Children in 1940 did little to raise her from literary obscurity; and the novel only started to gain widespread critical praise when it was reissued in 1965.
Stead and Blech, who had changed his name to William Blake, returned to Europe after World War II, finding it difficult to obtain writing