The Railway Children

“They were not railway children to begin with.”

The novel’s opening line immediately alludes to one of the key themes of the novel: the contrast between the children’s originally privileged lives in London and the poverty and adversity that awaits them in the countryside after their father’s imprisonment. Yet the opening line—as well as the novel’s title—also signals to the reader that the railway will play an important role in the children’s lives and become a central part of their identity. The line foreshadows both the dramatic change of circumstances that will set the novel’s action in motion, while also alluding to the fluid nature of identity and the importance of adaptability in the face of hardship, which will be one of the key themes throughout the novel.

“They were just ordinary suburban children, and they lived with their father and mother in an ordinary redbrick-fronted villa, with coloured glass in the front door, a tiled passage that was called a hall, a bathroom with hot and cold water, electric bells, French windows, and a good deal of white paint, and ‘every modern convenience’, as the house-agents say.”

In these lines, the reader gets a vivid picture of how privileged the children’s lives in London are. The repetition of the word “ordinary” emphasizes the fact that the children take their privileged circumstances for granted: they have never known hardship and their lives are marked by a high level of comfort and convenience by default. The description of what were still luxuries at the time of the novel’s publication—running hot and cold water, “electric bells,” the fact the house is a large “villa” instead of cramped and small, and the acknowledgement of “every modern convenience”—depicts a place that belongs to an upper-class family.