Victorian Obsession with Science
The Victorians were obsessed with science, and had a tendency to believe that it a scientist did not validate the theory of something then it couldn't possibly have any validity to it in the first place. Thus, Victorian society and academia became like one long game of Ask The Scientist. The Literati, on the other hand, were desperate to debunk this myth and used Darwinism as the tool to show that imagination was not explainable by science, nor was it something that could be quantified, and that this was the key to the evolution of children. Because of the Victorian obsession with science, authors were forced to use some kind of popular theory or scientific concept as the foundation of their own work or argument and Darwinism became extremely popular in this regard, because every story could begin with an almost feral, animal-like child whose own evolution into a genteel and respectable young person was the entire crux of the story.
The Theory of Evolution
Darwin's theory is one of the main themes of the book, because it is the reference point for the science that is referred to constantly within it. In each work that Staley looks at she is able to observe the child protagonist mirroring the evolution of mankind, from an almost animal-like Neanderthal existence to something appropriating civility by the end. This mirrors Darwin's own theory and the way in which he believed that modern man came to exist.
The Importance of Imagination
A childhood devoid of imagination would be a very lonely childhood indeed. Imagination is also the key to the success of the authors, such as Carroll and Kipling, that Staley references in her book. Imagination is an entirely unscientific entity; we cannot see it, measure it or compare it to anything. There is no test for imagination nor is there a scale that imagination is measured against in order to judge what is sufficient and what is insufficient. Staley argues that Victorian authors of children's books used the most unscientific tool - imagination - to demonstrate one of the most scientific of theories - evolution.
