"Children's Selfishness"
The infantilization of the white man extends to the American public as well, but not on the grounds of ignorance, but of selfishness instead.
This instalment of the magazine was notably published on August 8th, 1868 which is precisely thirty days, after the day the Fourteenth Amendment was constitutionalized, controversially declaring citizenship and the equal protection of the law to all persons born in America, including slaves and people of colour. Thus, this thought piece, “Children’s Selfishness” in calling for “equal distribution” (503) belies that the piece is in fact a conceit for the treatment of race in America.
The "cake" ("Children's Selfishness" 503) is representative of that valuable which is given or taken away, human rights in the American context or the Moonstone itself in the novel. Since it has the cake, the child is representative of the dominant, white populace. "The mother, the nurse, or perhaps even the elder sister" ("Children's Selfishness" 503) is representative of the racial other that “conscientiously” ("Children's Selfishness" 503) receives its crumb of cake. Thus, the infant, the hegemonic white public is considered “generous” ("Children's Selfishness" 503), and sarcastically called a “little hero” ("Children's Selfishness" 503), who gives away what in fact was “lent or given to it” ("Children's Selfishness" 503) in the first place. This article reminds the reader that though the Indians murdered to steal back the Moonstone, the artifact was not even “lent or given” ("Children's Selfishness" 503) to the colonizing white man, but forcibly taken in the first place.
Thus, the "great white illusion of the imperial necessity and generosity" (Free 340) is revealed; and in the American context, the basis of racial hierarchy is removed.
Works Cited:
“Children's Selfishness.” Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization 8 August 1868. pp. 503. Print.
Free, Melissa. “‘Dirty Linen’: Legacies of Empire in Wilkie Collins's the Moonstone.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 48, no. 4, 2006, pp. 340–371.