Nursery as dreams and desire through domesticity in children’s literature

Abstract

The spaces reserved for children, designed and built by adults, change through the presence of children and their imagination. The objects contained in these places are transformed, becoming fantastic creations, which enable children to escape. The home walls within which children belong, the “pedagogical theater” known as nursery (Lasdun, 1986; Becchi, 2014; Cantatore, 2015), are antinomically perceived both as protection, and the warm family embrace that communicates love and care, and as a limit to the freedom, essential for growth. We can see how childhood, during the XX century, reclaims these spaces, free from all signs of adulthood, filling them with their imagination and their desires.