Writer Carol Fenlon _220
“I think people are fascinated by feral children because of the question of what we are as human beings.
“There’s an argument that we think in language and that’s what makes us different from animals, what makes us human, but then there are people who do not have a grasp of language but they are still human.”
Carol also researched true accounts of deserted children who had managed to survive, including Kaspar Hauser, a boy who, in the early 19th century, had been kept in a cellar until the age of 15 when he was found living on the streets of Nuremberg.
In 1920, a missionary discovered two girls living in a wolf den in Northern India. They were not related and appeared to have been taken by a female wolf on separate occasions. He named the 18-month-old Amala and the eight-year-old Kamala.
As intriguing as these stories are, the most startling revelation is the large number of recent cases, particularly in areas of socio-economic deprivation.
In 1972, a 13-year-old girl, Genie, was found in Los Angeles. Until her discovery, she had been strapped to a potty-chair, had not been taught to speak and was denied all human interaction.
Even more recently, in 1998, a six-year-old boy made headlines when it was found he was living on the streets of Reutova with a pack of wild dogs for protection.
He had lived with his mother until the age of four and, because he had already developed language skills, was able to start school after a period in a children’s home.
In modern times, we judge such accounts as examples of horrific child abuse, but, in the 18th century, feral children were seen as creatures to be experimented on or paraded in a freak show.
During the Age of Enlightenment, when scientists were trying to determine what separates humans from animals, a boy was discovered living in the woods near a French village. Known as Victor, the Wild Boy of Averyon, he became a case study for medical student Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, who was keen to see if he could be civilised.
Victor learned only a few words and eventually died in Paris, at the age of 40.
There are hints of this theory in Consider the Lilies. Without language, Vicky seems to have other abilities, including a sort of sixth sense. “I was interested what could be said without language, how there could be other skills that language has taken away from us. Vicky seems to know things about other people that she couldn’t possibly know,” explains Carol, who became a full-time writer after a serious motorbike accident ended her career as a psychiatric nurse.
Winning the Impress Prize meant her novel would be published and she is now working on another, this time a ghost story set in Burscough.
* CONSIDER the Lilies, by Carol Fenlon, is published by Impress Books, and is available from Amazon, priced £7.99.
