Her one diabolical rule was “to give children everything they didn’t like and nothing they did like.” This rule is the logical limit of the doctrine of child depravity.
She was generally spoken of as a “great manager,” simply because she compelled children to do her bidding by fear of punishment in the “dungeon,” or of being sent to bed, or robbed of their meals, or by some other mean form of contemptible coercion. These processes were praised as excellent till Dickens destroyed their respectability. His title “child-queller” is admirable, and full of philosophy. Many a man has been able to form a truer conception regarding child freedom through the influence of the word “child-queller.” Every teacher should ask himself every day, “Am I a child-queller?” It will be a blessed thing for the children when there shall be no more Pipchinny teachers.
The environment of the ogress was not attractive. The gardens grew only marigolds, snails were on the doors, and bad odours in the house. “In the winter time the air couldn’t be got out of the castle, and in the summer time it couldn’t be got in.” Dickens knew that the environment of children has a direct influence on their characters, and that ventilation is essential to good health. These lessons were needed fifty years ago.
Mrs. Pipchin made children dishonest by putting on collars for parade.
“The farinaceous and vegetable” diet, the “regaled with rice” criticisms show that Dickens anticipated by half a century the present interest in the study of nutrition as one of the most important educational subjects.
The combination of coercion and religion is ridiculed in the theological constraint of Mrs. Pipchin, when she told little Miss Pankey “that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever went to heaven.”
The outrageous selfishness of adulthood was exposed by the description of Mrs. Pipchin’s anger at the play of the children in the back room when it was raining and they could not go out.
The injustice of the “child-queller” was shown because she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for nodding in the evening, whenever she woke up from her own nodding.
The sacrilege of having prayers between two processes of cruelty is worthy of note. Religion should never be associated in the mind of a child with injustice, cruelty, or any meanness.
The dreadful practice of driving timid children to sleep in the dark was another of Mrs. Pipchin’s accomplishments. The retiring hour of childhood should be made the happiest and most nerve soothing of the day. Wise and sympathetic adulthood, especially motherhood, can then reach the central nature of the child most successfully.