YMMV / The History of the Fairchild Family

• Nightmare Fuel: The consequences of different characters' vices and disobedience are described in graphic detail. One of the most poignant examples is that of Sir Charles Noble's daughter Augusta burning herself to death after playing with fire. The most serious punishments doled out to the children definitely qualify as a frightful way to imagine a parent treating a child. When the three siblings fight over the doll, Mr. Fairchild whips their hands, makes them stand against the wall, and later takes them to see the hanged corpse of a fratricide in a gibbet. A further highly disturbing punishment is the one that Henry gets for defying his father by resisting to learn his Latin grammar lesson. For this misdemeanor, Mr. Fairchild flogs Henry with a small horsewhip and then, when Henry persists in his resistance, his father coldly lectures him about how he stands in the place of God to Henry, and how he must always obey him, and then makes the entire household shun Henry until the latter penitentially humbles himself before his father.
• Values Dissonance: The book is not only predicated on pious Christianity; it is rooted in a particularly strict brand of Anglican thought, the Calvinistic "Evangelical" stream, whose morality was going out of fashion even during Mrs. Sherwood's lifetime. The kind of religion preached by this book causes the Fairchilds – loving and caring parents though they are – to bring their children up with values that would seem dour and fanatical today. Central to their thought is the notion that the human race is fallen and that everyone has it in their nature to hate God and do evil, and that only thanks to the grace of God can one wish to do good and work toward salvation. Mrs. Fairchild makes comments to/about her children that can seem shocking in our age when parents are encouraged to praise their children and use positive reinforcement. When Lucy once tells her mother that she thinks that she and her siblings are much better children than they used to be, for they have not been punished in a very long time, her mother cautions her against boasting or thinking well of herself for "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble." (James 4:6). She adds: "If you have not done any very naughty thing lately, it is not because there is any goodness or wisdom in you, but because your papa and I have been always with you, carefully watching and guiding you from morning till night." During the visit to Sir Charles Noble's family, when Lady Noble (in all honesty baselessly) praises her daughter Augusta, Mrs. Fairchild retorts within earshot of her own children: "I am afraid none of us can say much of our children: there is no child that can be said to have a good heart." (Lady Noble is surprised, but makes no answer.) This would seem callous today, but is in line with the book's message that all are born depraved. As well, the uncompromising insistence on a child's absolute obedience to his or her parents and the whipping, flogging and withdrawal of affection and communication that Mr. Fairchild as the head of the family sometimes imposes as punishment are likewise very harsh and rigid forms of child-rearing by today's standards. It is worth noting that George Orwell heavily criticized the book on more than one occasion; in his essay on Charles Dickens, he wrote of it: "This evil book is now issued in pretty-pretty expurgated editions, but it is well worth reading in the original version. It gives one some idea of the lengths to which child-discipline was sometimes carried. Mr. Fairchild, for instance, when he catches his children quarrelling, first thrashes them, reciting Dr. Watts's 'Let dogs delight to bark and bite' between blows of the cane, and then takes them to spend the afternoon beneath a gibbet where the rotting corpse of a murderer is hanging."