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Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

Reluctant Little Ladies and Scouting for Tolerance in the American Adolescent Novel: Performative Gender and Race in Little Women, Huckleberry Finn, the Little House books and To Kill A Mockingbird

Sarah Baetens Master Dissertation 2012-2013 supervisor: Prof. Dr. Gert Buelens Paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels-Nederlands” by Sarah Baetens

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I hate to think I’ve got to grow up and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China-aster. It’s bad enough to be a girl, any way, when I like boys’ games, and work, and manners. I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy, and it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to go and fight with papa, and I can only stay at home and knit like a poky old woman Jo March

It was a close place. I took . . . up [the letter I’d written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right then, I’ll go to hell’—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said Huckleberry Finn

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank those who have taken this journey with me, and those who supported it. Firstly, my supervisor, Professor Gert Buelens, for months of support and advice, next, Sara Van den bossche for listening and steering me in the right direction. I also thank my parents for pushing me to be the best that I can be, as they have done all my life, my other family members for their unwavering faith in me and finally my second family, Dave, Rhonda, Corey and Katie, for inspiring me with their love for their country, a country that I have come to love as well.

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Abbreviations For the novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder, as they are numerous, I have used the following abbreviations: Little House in the Big Woods: Woods Little House on the Prairie: Prairie Little House on the Banks of Plum Creek: Plum Creek Little House by the Shores of Silver Lake: Silver Lake The Long Winter: Winter Little Town on the Prairie: Little Town These Happy Golden Years: Golden Years The First Four Years: Four Years

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Contents

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 3 Abbreviations .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Contents .................................................................................................................................................. 5 Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 6 American Children’s literature .............................................................................................................. 13 Gender in Children’s literature .............................................................................................................. 17 Gender and Performativity................................................................................................................ 17 Boys’ literature vs. Girls’ literature ................................................................................................... 21 Gender patterns in Children’s literature ........................................................................................... 25 Race in Children’s literature .................................................................................................................. 34 Analysis of the Novels ........................................................................................................................... 41 Gender ............................................................................................................................................... 41 Little Women ................................................................................................................................. 41 Little House .................................................................................................................................... 50 To Kill A Mockingbird ..................................................................................................................... 60 The Tomboy as a literary type ....................................................................................................... 68 Race ................................................................................................................................................... 76 Huckleberry Finn ............................................................................................................................ 76 To Kill A Mockingbird ..................................................................................................................... 85 Little House .................................................................................................................................... 94 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 107 Works cited.......................................................................................................................................... 111

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Introduction America, land of hopes and dreams, that is the way many people – a considerable amount of them American – feel about the United States of America. But what are these hopes and dreams? What is possible in America and which behaviors are not deemed fit the association with it? One way to try to get to know this country, any country, is through its literature. American writers, consciously or unconsciously, reveal to us what it is that constitutes their country. What distinguishes American literature from other literatures; what are its values and themes, its characters and messages? What is accepted and what is not accepted in this country? In order to reveal this, this dissertation will focus on children’s literature, for there seems to be an inherent connection between American literature and children’s literature. Not without reason has Leslie Fiedler stated that “[t]he great works of American fiction are notoriously at home in the children’s section of the library” (xviii). American literature, he argues, is characterized by an avoidance of “the passionate encounter of a man and a woman, which we expect at the center of the novel” (xix). Indeed, although all four of the novels I will be discussing throughout this dissertation are also largely read by adult audiences, and although two of them feature one or more marriage storylines, “passionate encounters” are nowhere to be found. No, American literature, especially in its novels directed not at young children but at those on the brink of growing up, seems remarkably innocent. Furthermore, children’s literature often abounds in moralizing messages, more so than literature aimed at adults, thereby revealing what lies at its core. In providing our children with carefully selected reading materials, we attempt to shape them into the adults we want to see them become. What is conveyed in children’s literature impacts – or is at least thought to impact – its young readers, and shows us what

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Americans wish to impart on a future generation, and therefore what America thinks of itself. As it teaches us about America’s norms it will also reveal to what degree deviation or transgression is possible. How tight is America’s value system, and does it change over time? Two main issues, throughout this dissertation, will represent this system of values, namely race and gender. The first one may be a universal issue, but is nonetheless foregrounded more in Anglo-American literature than in others. The second one is obviously not an issue unique to the United States, yet it is particularly relevant for a people that not only very nearly extinguished its original population, but also imported millions of Africans only to enslave them, a system that persisted for centuries and of which the effects linger still today. Originally it seemed as though class would be an obvious third element to consider, but in the novels I decided to analyze it turned out to be an issue of far less importance than gender and race. Indeed, American society has never really been one of class. Where it exists, it often makes itself visible through gender norms. Furhtermore, racial minorities – unfortunately – often coincide with what in other nations are the lower classes. We only need think of Great Britain and its (past) extensive use of butlers, maids and other house personnel. In the United States, especially in the southern states, these same functions existed, but, even after slavery perished, one’s personal staff could easily entirely consist of African Americans. However, when class does come into play in the novels I am considering, we will show how it is secondary to either race or gender. As mentioned, I chose four specific novels, treated as case studies for the treatment of race or gender, or, in two cases, both. In order to keep the analyses comparable, I selected four works of the same genre. Children’s literature comes in all shapes and sizes: fairy tales, fantasy, school stories,… I, however, opted to focus on realist stories, because, as

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the word suggests, they are closely related to reality. We can assume that they convey the values and norms of the era they were set and/or written in. Without necessarily being entirely autobiographical, the works I have selected are set in the days of the author’s youth (or relay some of the author’s childhood experiences while set in the present day, as is the case with Little Women), and in the area they grew up in. I hope this will make for representation of gender roles and racial issues as they truly existed in a certain place and time, filtered by thirty years or so of life experience that sets apart the publication date and the respective authors’ childhoods. In chronological order of publication, the novels I have selected are Little Women (1868-69), by Louisa May Alcott, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), by Mark Twain, the Little House Series (1932-43), by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee. Not only do these books all belong to America’s canon – if not necessarily the literary canon in the case of Wilder’s books, then certainly the cultural one – they also cover almost a century of American history. Quite aptly, the first one is set in an era when slavery was still common practice, while the last one deals with protest against segregation and widespread discrimination, which followed slavery. They cover a century during which America rose to greatness, from closing the frontier to the Civil War, from an isolationist policy to extensive involvement in the two World Wars. Lastly, they also cover a large geographical area. From the North East (Little Women), to the (deep) South (Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird) and the West – or what was then the West (the Little House books, alternately set in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota and South Dakota). Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn probably needs very little by way of an introduction. The sequel of sorts to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer famously accounts how Huck, who is

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motherless, yet adopted against his will by the Widow Douglas, flees his Missouri town on a raft, to escape both civilization and his father, who kept him locked up in a cabin in the woods. Before he takes off, he runs into Jim, an escaped slave belonging to Miss Watson. Initially planning to take their raft up to Illinois, where Jim would be free, Huck and Jim end up drifting farther south. Along the way they encounter all different kinds of characters, including the Grangerfords, a feuding southern family, and the Duke and Dauphin, two frauds who demand residence on the raft, and who are willing to do anything to make money, including selling Jim. Finally ending up at Tom Sawyer’s aunt’s farm, Jim is a slave once more, and Huck, who is believed to be Tom Sawyer, resolves to free him. The real Tom shows up, and he joins forces with Huck, insisting, however, on a ridiculously elaborate plan to free Jim. When they finally succeed, it becomes clear that Jim was a free man all along, and the novel ends on a dubious note, with Huck’s decision to light out to the Territory, seemingly on his own. Little Women then, often called the quintessential American girls’ book, could not – despite the fact that Huck Finn’s status as quintessential boys’ book seems to suggest symmetry – be any more different. The stakes are seemingly much lower, as the novel follows the four March sisters simply through their growing up and early years of marriage. John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is an important intertext, its protagonist’s evolution a model for the sisters’ moral development. Featuring what is perhaps literature’s best known tomboy, Jo March, the novel has captured a place in many hearts because of its genuine emotion. We watch Jo struggle with her ambitions as a writer, and we witness the entire family’s anguish first when Beth falls ill, and again when she dies. The novel, however, ends with the three remaining sisters happily married. Jo opens a school for boys, which provided Alcott with enough material to write two sequels, Jo’s Boys and Little Men.

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Next, we have the Little House series. These books do not only cover a lot of ground, geographically, and describe a fascinating era of American history, the pioneering era, but they also cover almost an entire childhood. We follow Laura from before her fifth birthday until her marriage at age eighteen. Describing family life on the frontier, traveling in a covered wagon, settling on land where there are barely any other white settlers, confrontations with Native Americans, witnessing America being covered by railroad tracks, and becoming part of a community right as it is being established are all parts of Laura’s daily experiences. The novel’s drama consists mainly of the family’s struggles to set up and maintain a successful farm; Mary, Laura’s older sister, being blinded and the ensuing struggle by both Laura’s parents, Charles and Caroline, and Laura herself to save up enough money to send Mary to school are important storylines as well. Lastly, I looked at To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s only novel relays how Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill grow up in Maycomb, Alabama. While they are originally fascinated by the reclusion of their neighbor ‘Boo’ Radley, the stakes get bigger when their father, Atticus, takes on the defense of Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, daughter of dirt-poor Bob Ewell. It turns out that Mayella herself instigated physical contact between them, but accused Tom out of guilt for having committed miscegenation. When Tom Robinson gets convicted regardless of the bogus trial, Scout and Jem learn a hard lesson about their community, but overcome their own prejudices, finally realizing that Boo has been helping them. The story comes together when, in the final scenes, Boo saves the children from Bob Ewell who attacked them, seeking revenge on Atticus. Before I started my analysis of the selected works, I needed to provide myself with a theoretical framework in order to be able to correctly answer my research questions,

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namely whether or not protagonists have the ability to defy the norms – and, first of all, what these norms entail – of their society, whether they be related to gender or race. Is such defiance punished or otherwise reacted against? In what ways are the protagonists made to conform to the norms if defiance is not accepted? Therefore I started by establishing what American children’s literature entails; how is it different from other traditions? I also aimed to include a general overview of how gender and race are treated in (American) children’s literature, particularly in the eras we are occupying ourselves with. Where gender is concerned, I have borrowed from Judith Butler’s theories of performativity; this means that, for the analyses, we rely on the premise that gender is a social and cultural construct. More than that even: we accept that “gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original” (qtd. in abstract to “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 307). Once we have made this premise our own, gender patterns – which abound in children’s literature, a medium that socializes young people – we will be able to see that they are quite obviously rendered, but also that they reveal themselves as artificial. I aim to argue that gender, for it is not natural, needs to be taught, and I intend to reveal that literature for children both demonstrates and reinforces this. We will look at how girls are taught to become women, to behave themselves in what are considered ladylike ways. As the novels we are studying are quite far apart in time, we will also consider how this process of socialization evolves, whether or not gender patterns become less constrictive over time. We will do this by looking at the three female protagonists of the novels I have chosen, and compare and contrast their respective developments. Doing this, we will apply the method of close reading, and rely on what the texts give us.

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A similar technique will be used for the analysis of the treatment of race in the novels in which this is a relevant issue. As I have mentioned before, children’s literature is largely a means through which norms and values can be transferred onto young people; explicit or implicit racism or discrimination, or, alternatively, open-mindedness and tolerance, will influence children’s thought systems as they become adults. Therefore we will see that subtle messages, or uses of certain words, may complicate the overarching message of a novel, which may have been written with good intentions. We will also see that confusing and contradicting messages concerning race may represent genuine and complex feelings on the author’s part. Overall, the aim of this dissertation will be to demonstrate that values and norms, such as gender expectations and the treatment of racial minorities, are both reflected and reinforced in children’s literature. Gender is a social construct, but, in a way, so is race; there is a striking similarity in stereotyped thinking about what is male or female behavior and what is “black” or “white” behavior. Literature can mirror these constructs, or reveal their artificiality and attempt to move past them. Similarly, as we will see, literature reflects the inferior position of both women and racial minorities in certain times and places, and is, at least partly, constrained – or, in certain cases, liberated – by the mores of an author’s own society.

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American Children’s literature When we are trying to define American children’s literature, we should start by asking ourselves what American literature is. Why do we use this term and what distinguishes it from, for example, English literature? Is there a point in making a distinction, or is it just an arbitrary term, used as a geographical marker rather than a literary one? Leslie Fiedler points out that when we are talking about literature which is quintessentially American, we should be looking at the novel (xvii) – which is conveniently the form most of children’s literature takes – because the origins of the novel, “a new literary form”, and the origins of America, “a new society,” “coincide with the beginnings of the modern era and, indeed, help to define it” (Fiedler, xvii). What is more, “the notions of greatness once associated with the heroic poem have been transferred to the novel; and the shift is part of [the] ‘Americanization of culture’” (xvii-iii). As America reached its glory, so did the novel. But what exactly distinguishes the American novel from its European counterpart? According to Fiedler, many critics connect this notion to the naiveté of a country with an anti-culture, a place that is an “eternally maintained preserve of primitivism,” rather than a culture (xviii). This seems like too simple an explanation, and indeed, Fiedler’s own claim is much more interesting. He states that American novels seem “innocent, unfallen in a disturbing way, almost juvenile” (my italics, xviii). If the American novel (aimed at adults) itself is juvenile, what then is the American children’s novel? Fiedler pinpoints this issue: “[t]he great works of American fiction are notoriously at home in the children’s section of the library, their level of sentimentality precisely that of a pre-adolescent” (xviii-xix).

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Although it might be a bit harsh to call children’s fiction “sentimental” by definition, we can still gather from Fiedler that there seems to be a lack of distinction (or a fluidity), between American literature for children, and for adults – a fluidity that other literary traditions perhaps do not share. Fiedler theorizes that the reason for this is the lack of a previous tradition, the fact that the novelist “is forever beginning” (xix). That could be an explanation for the fact that many novels, even those that are not specifically aimed at children, feature children as their protagonists. Children are, after all, just beginning too – they need to find their place in the world, in much the same way the American novelist needs to do this. Julia Mickenberg too, relates the child to the development of the United States, pointing out that in some American novels the child can be seen as a symbol for the developing nation (863). Fiedler adds that the American novelist is seemingly incapable of further development: “in a compulsive way he returns to a limited world of experience, usually associated with his childhood” (xix). Seth Lerer agrees. He states

that “American literary culture had developed a

controlling metaphor of breaking with a British and paternalistic past, and childhood and children’s development became controlling themes for many novels” (10). Fiedler adds about the “American project” that America is “a nation sustained by a sentimental and Romantic dream, the dream of an escape from culture and a renewal of youth” (xxxiii). America and childhood, thus, truly seem to be irrevocably intertwined. What then, in America, is children’s literature? Mickenberg states that it “holds an odd and uncomfortable place within the canon of American literature” (861), arguably precisely because the novel for adults shares characteristics with what we traditionally treat as children’s literature; such as the child protagonist.

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Therefore I think it would be useful to conclude that American children’s literature is not necessarily written for children, but rather read by children, for if novels attract a large readership consisting of children, how can we claim that it is not children’s literature? Mickenberg even argues that works that are part of the American canon, such as Huckleberry Finn, become children’s literature by “inadvertently attracting a large child readership” (862). Even if American children’s literature is apparently a somewhat ambiguous category, it is still useful to ask ourselves what distinguishes books that are written with a specific audience of young readers in mind, from books aimed at adults. Mickenberg points out that the particularity of children’s literature changed over time. Whereas it originally served to protect children’s innocence through books with a “religious, didactic, and moralizing impulse” (865) it gradually came to include themes that could prepare “them for a reality once thought incompatible with childhood” (864). She describes this process as moving “away from molding the child’s mind and instilling virtuous habits and beliefs to stimulating the child’s imagination” (865). Mickenberg also offers us the insight that protagonists in children’s books “are nearly always ‘good,’ even when they are being ‘bad’” (864). She furthermore states that “children’s righteous convictions supercede any false notions of propriety” (864). We will look at more specificities of children’s literature further on, once we have split the category into two; girls’ literature and boys’ literature. We have previously established that what makes the American novel American is its sentimentality. We can now further define American’s children’s literature by comparing it to, for example, British children’s literature. Gillian Avery, in her book Behold the Child, states that whereas British writing for children is characterized by an “intense awareness of

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class distinctions and [a] fondness for creating realms of imaginative freedom and escape,” American children’s literature focuses on “energy, optimism, self-fulfillment and thisworldliness” (in Ronda, 275). The distinctions remain intact when we look at books aimed at the different genders. Avery points out that American books for girls feature “a home-and-family-centered world, abundant in food, a world of girlish play, a world […] where mothers […] reign supreme” (Ronda, 277). English girls’ books, by contrast, show children who “are raised quite apart from their parents, in an atmosphere of self-denial and discipline” (Ronda, 277). American girls, then, will, through their reading, learn that family is important and that if you have faith, things will be okay. American boys, by contrast, learn – from their books – that being a man is all about self-involvement and self-advancement; English boys, on the other hand, “are taught self-abnegation, deference to the good of the larger unit” (Ronda, 277). The different messages books from the two nations display are interesting, but the seemingly self-evident split – at least as far as Anglo-American, nineteenth century children’s literature is concerned – between girls’ and boys’ books is only an intimation of the extent of differences between books for the two genders.

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Gender in Children’s literature Gender and Performativity The World Health Organization defines sex as “the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women,” while gender is explained as “the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.” Richard Udry defines gender as “the relationship between biological sex and behavior” (561). From this wording it is immediately clear that gender is not a self-evident concept, like sex. It is stated that roles are constructions and that they differ from one society to another, proving that these roles are not natural, but learned, imposed. However, as Udry points out, ever since the term gender came into swing, people have started to confuse the two categories. Because gender is a newer concept, it seems that people no longer want to use the term sex, thereby forgetting that they are not synonyms. In fact, by using gender where sex is appropriate, we “indicate endorsement of a theory of gender as a human social invention” (Udry, 561). However, establishing that sex and gender are two different categories, does not suffice. Where does one end and the other one begin? What aspects of behavior that we associate with women are due to their sex, and which are the result of gender? Can behavior be explained by sex at all, or is gender all-encompassing? Dixon, borrowing from Maccoby and Jacklin, states that there are two sole findings concerning biology, meaning sex (34). Apparently it is biologically determined that males “have a better sense of space, direction and location” (34). The other finding leads to the conclusion that men are more naturally

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inclined to aggression than women (34). Dixon, however, is quick to nuance both of these claims, leaving us with nothing very determinate to build upon. He even concludes that the only meaningful biological difference between men and women is “giving birth and suckling” (35). Udry too, devotes some attention to a biological theory, and his work is more recent. First explaining that biologists do not use the term gender, but sex-dimorphism, he goes on to summarize a well-developed theory valid for all mammals, including humans (562). Apparently, “sex dimorphism in behavior is controlled by hormones” (Udry, 562). The same hormones “which cause between-sex differences in a behavior cause within-sex variance in the same behavior,” therefore this theory explains “both sex dimorphism and within-sex variance on the same behaviors that are sex-dimorphic” (Udry, 562). Social scientists, however, have been reluctant to accept this theory where humans are concerned; they feel that humans require a separate theory (Udry, 562). There are several reasons for this reluctance: Udry claims that it has no place in social science’s disciplinary paradigm, that it is furthermore politically incorrect – “accepting a biological foundation for gender logically implies the support of current gender arrangements in society” – and, finally, that they already have a different theory (563). Udry goes on to explain this sociological theory of gender. Sociological gender theory uses the concept of gender roles (Udry, 563). A gender role “is a range of acceptable behavior that differs by sex,” violation results in punishment “and is made difficult by structured opportunities” (Udry, 563). Judith Butler, then, takes this idea of gender roles as a social construction much further. The idea that one’s gender is not fixed at birth, but rather imposed on a person as

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he or she grows up, is not new. Simone de Beauvoir famously stated that one is not born a woman, but becomes one later on (in Gender Trouble, 3). Butler states that, if we accept that sex and gender are not the same, one’s sex does not have to concur with one’s gender, and that there is no real reason to maintain a binary gender system (Gender Trouble, 10). She even goes on to wonder if sex, then, is not culturally constructed as well – if it was not “always already gender” ( 11). Related to the debate whether one’s gender is something natural or not, Butler realizes, is the question whether your gender is something you are, or rather something you have (Gender Trouble, 12). The idea of having a gender seems to suggest that one is free to do with it what they want, that it is, as it were, malleable. When de Beauvoir writes that one becomes a woman, does someone of the female sex also have the possibility to become a man? In most societies, as Udry already told us, failure to merge one’s sex with the gender commonly associated with that sex, results in punishment. We cannot digress too far from what society expects from us – think of, for example, gay bashing. If you are a man, you are expected to behave like a ‘real’ man, and women are supposed to be feminine. But Butler states that these categories are artificial, and that the gendered self is “produced by the regulation of attributes along culturally established lines of coherence” (Gender Trouble, 3233). She goes on to formulate her theory of gender as a performance, for, according to her, “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; […] identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (33). Gender, then, shapes our identity, or, in other words, “it is the very act of performing gender that constitutes who we are” (Felluga).

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What is more, Butler explains, “acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause” (Gender Trouble, 173). Our gendered performances, then, are seemingly based on something that was not there to begin with. Or, in Butler’s words: “That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality” (173). Therefore we can conclude that, gender is an imitation of something that only exists within our minds. Or, more poetically, “gender is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it, but which requires individual actors in order to be actualized and reproduced as reality once again” (Butler qtd. in Felluga). Gender, then, is nothing but a possibility until it is assumed by someone. However, according to Butler, gender is sufficiently associated with naturalness (we have tricked ourselves into believing that gender is something natural) for it to “create the illusion of an interior and organizing gender core, an illusion discursively maintained for the purposes of the regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive heterosexuality” (Gender Trouble, 173). The use of the word ‘obligatory’ points to the fact that heterosexuality – bringing with it ‘masculine’ behavior for men, and ‘feminine’ behavior for women – is not truly optional, for there exists, according to Butler, something called the ‘heterosexual matrix.’ As I have mentioned before, society only allows limited deviation from expectations aligned with the gender associated with one’s biological sex. This heterosexual matrix sustains gendered behavior, while, at the same time, “idealized and compulsory heterosexuality” is achieved through “the production of gender”

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(Gender Trouble, 172).This constructed coherence, in its turn, “conceals the gender discontinuities that run rampant” in all sort of contexts (172-173). Therefore, if we choose to agree with Butler that gender is socially constructed – brought about through our interactions with society – , we can turn to literature as one of the factors that contributes to shaping gender. Children’s literature is especially important because gender is ‘taught’ in one’s youth, and encountering ‘proper’ gender patterns through reading will reinforce the roles children have to accept as ‘natural.’

Boys’ literature vs. Girls’ literature Originally, children’s fiction was not explicitly aimed at one gender; it simply existed as a “more or less homogeneous body of literature” (Wadsworth, 17). However, as Gillian Avery suggests, the gradual division into two separate categories of boys’ literature and girls’ literature was a logical consequence of the era’s increasing specification of publishing for children (in Wadsworth, 18). Wadsworth states that this separation started to set in as early as the 1830S, but gender-specific books started to proliferate in the 1860s-1880s, the era in which Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain – two of the authors we will be focusing on – published their work (18). In the decades that followed, the split became even more rigid, as publishers booked commercial successes with their separate categories (Wadsworth, 18). An important remark is that in the era that preceded this separation, there were books that attracted a larger audience of boys (such as Robinson Crusoe), while other books were more popular with girls; but these books had not specifically been written with either gender in mind (Wadsworth, 18).

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Interestingly, Seth Lerer tells us that the category of girlhood (a category which was separate from “childhood” and “womanhood”) was still very new in the nineteenth century (232). He claims that it originated as late as the 1850s (233), and while this would mean that girls’ books were being written before the very idea of “girls” had originated, we can still assume that the developments followed each other closely. Perhaps this is what Wadsworth means when she says that “[Louisa May] Alcott, as the most important contemporary American author to write books specifically for girls, was instrumental in defining, shaping, reinforcing, and revising the qualities, interests, and aspirations of the girls who comprised that market” (19). As girls (and, we can assume, boys) had more and more reading materials on their hands which were aimed at them and them alone, what it meant to be a girl (or a boy) became ever more defined. Not only, however, was Alcott’s writing paramount in the development of American or Anglo-American gendered writing, it has also set off a tradition of girls’ literature in the Netherlands (after it was translated), and perhaps other parts of Europe (Desmet, 192). Books were thus being written for either boys or girls. But what made, or makes, a boys’ book a boys’ book? What do girls read that boys do not? An obvious, but important – perhaps the most important – difference is the fact that boys’ books feature boy heroes, while girls’ books present us with female protagonists. Usually boys are more or less absent from girls’ books and vice versa. The books are however rife with other differences – in themes, setting, message, etc. A basic point of difference is the actual subject matter. Lynne Vallone summarizes that boys’ books are often about “adventure, school days, and practical jokes,” while girls' books are concerned with “the home, family, and romance” (127).

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Connected to this notion, then, is what O’Keefe points out concerning setting. Girls’ books “are stories of children in a real world. [They] may be set in in a time or place that is different but nonetheless realistic. […] [S]tories of family and community life appealed to girls” (26). Boys, on the other hand, read books that could take place anywhere, and that often featured multiple settings, for their stories “involve journeys, quests, battles, struggles to survive and win” (O’Keefe, 26). Girls cannot go as far from the house – or their parents – as boys can, reaffirms Dixon, who points out that girls are more often resigned to observatory roles, while fictional boys’ activities are more varied and interesting (1). Girls do not get to go out and explore the world in the same way that boys do. Huckleberry Finn, for example, quite literally travels around the country by himself (the adults that are with him can hardly be considered parental figures), while Laura Ingalls – another traveler – never goes anywhere by herself. O’Keefe connects this to something larger. While boys’ books seem to revolve around the individual, namely the hero and his personal goals, girls’ books concern the social, and functioning in a community (26). It seems contradictory, then, that boys’ books were hierarchically higher than girls’ books, and they could be read by girls, while boys did not read girls’ books; yet that is the case (O’Keefe, 26). O’Keefe even states that while girls’ books were a sub-category of children’s literature, boys’ books were the norm (30). Girls could safely read boys’ books because “what they learned about the male world and its hierarchies did not challenge their traditional female world” (O’Keefe, 60). When we look at themes, we do see a few that boys’ and girls’ books share, but O’Keefe points out that, where they concur, they are handled differently (40). Two examples include loyalty and insight into people’s character (40). O’Keefe explains that while boys and

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girls both learn loyalty from a secondary position, this position is temporary and freely chosen as far as the boys are concerned. For the girls, however, this secondary position is permanent. Even when they grow up they will always be followers to their husbands (41). Similarly, insight into people’s character is gained in a different manner. While girls’ books “stress empathy and sympathy and include few characters who are really bad”, boys’ books “delight in grossly wicked […] and morally ambiguous characters” (O’Keefe, 43). She concludes that boys need characters to beat, while girls need somebody they can help (43). Lerer remarks something very interesting about girls’ literature – something that apparently furthers the gap between boys’ and girls’ literature. According to him “girls are always on the stage” and there is, “as the girl grows up, a tension between staging one’s behavior for the delectation of others and finding inner virtue in devotion to the family or to learning” (228-29). There is then, seemingly, a duty for girls to adapt their behavior to others’ expectations; a duty which boys do not share with them. Lerer states that “[h]ow [girls] look and sound is, in a way, far more important than how boys do” (229). He relates this to Louisa May Alcott’s youth, drawing our attention to the fact that her father was a well-known preacher and social reformer, who was – in a way – a performer (241). Furthermore, Alcott herself had theatrical aspirations. we see this idea of performance explicitly presented to the reader in Little Women. The March sisters perform John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress, pretending to be pilgrims themselves. They think of their own lives as a performance, striving to become better people, seemingly for the sake of an imaginary (or not, if their audience consists of the reader) audience. This seems to reinforce Lerer’s claim that girls are always watched. Girls have to consider what others think of them, much more so than boys. Girls have to be well-mannered, and their clothes have to be neat. Whoever

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they want to be, it is more important that they keep in mind what others want them to be like. This is an idea we see return, for example, in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s work. This may be the reason that, as O’Keefe points out, male characters in children’s books have more freedom and independence than their female counterparts (37). Adults play a larger part in girls’ books than in boys’ books too (O’Keefe, 83) – once again, they are present to make sure that the girls behave themselves, and that they present the correct image to outsiders. Furthermore, the adults that are present in boys’ books are not taken as seriously as they would be in books for girls; boys treat the adults with more “irony, distance and rebellion” than the girls (O’Keefe, 83). Mothers especially, are assigned very different roles in books for the two genders. While fictional boys did appreciate a certain motherly care, especially when they were sick, they also declared a certain independence; girls, on the other hand, accepted their dependence (O’Keefe, 86). O’Keefe relates this to the fact that boys start out in a women’s world, but are preparing themselves to enter the world of men (86). These are only a handful of innumerable differences between girls’ and boys’ fiction, but they give us a first idea of the differences found in books that are aimed specifically at boys or at girls in the nineteenth, and a large part of the twentieth, century. The differences focused on so far, though, mainly concern content and themes. We now turn our attention to actual behavior patterns that we find in gendered children’s fiction.

Gender patterns in Children’s literature We have previously outlined what exactly children’s literature is, but we are yet to consider its role in society. What children read, defines – at least partly – who they become,

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their beliefs and their morals. It is easy to underestimate the importance of which materials are read by children, for “children's texts not only reflect, but also play a big role in constructing the kinds of childhood that teachers, parents, and writers wish to impose on children” (Flynn, 304). Children’s literature, thus, both looks forwards and backwards, showing society as it is, and as it should be according to its authors. Furthermore, children's literature serves as a way to ‘shape morals, control information, model proper behavior, delineate gender roles, and reinforce class, race, and ethnic separation’” (Murray qtd. in Flynn, 304-305). This is an important sentence. It expresses just how far the power of literature can stretch. Children who read fiction in which certain gender patterns are repeated over and over, will come to believe that these patterns are natural ones. Murray does however argue that “[w]hile late-nineteenth-century children's texts unquestionably sought to enforce conventional gender distinctions,” the more important message was that child protagonists “were viewed as essentially good: girls were ‘kind, cheerful, innocent, and charitable,’ while underneath surface misbehavior, boys were ‘caring, loyal, and . . . good citizen[s] in the making’” (Murray in Flynn, 305-306). However, the fact that ‘goodness’ is described with different adjectives depending on the characters’ gender, once again shows just how deep the roots of gender patterns are. This proves just how complex the issue is; whereas stating that boys can be caring seemingly breaks the gender pattern we usually envision, we cannot ever forget that the binary opposition is there. Elizabeth Freeman too, devotes some attention to the influence of literature on society. She states that the novel – specifically where Anglo-American literature is concerned – is both “radical in the way it reconceived power relations with feminine subjectivity at the

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core” and “conservative in its championing of consensual heterosexual relations as the supreme achievement of social being” (941). Whether the traditional novel can be seen as challenging traditional gender roles is – as far as I am concerned – questionable, and goes against Murray’s claim, which seems more likely. However, the second part of Freeman’s claim is very interesting. It does seem like many novels, even some that are aimed at children, have a (heterosexual) romantic plotline, and in many of those marriage or engagement seems to be the climax of the story. In Little Women and the Little House books romance is not an important part of the plot when the story begins, yet, as the novels progress, they too are driven by the heroines falling in love and ultimately getting married. More importantly still, Jo and Laura – the novels’ respective protagonists – both start off as tomboys (a concept that will be elaborated on), but as they mature towards adulthood, they shed that skin and happily focus on their male beaus. Karin Quimby explains this as follows: “narratives of childhood often have extreme or didactic endings contrived to impose order on any ungovernable fantasies that animate into the middle of the plot. […] In girlhood plots, such endings almost invariably take the form of marriage or death” (10). Children can dream of deviation but by the time the book ends, they need to be brought back to earth, and fantasies are revealed as just that; they cannot truly last. We can now turn our attention to the actual ways in which gender is represented in children’s literature. Dixon’s research boils down to the following conclusion: whereas girls just are, boys do (2). Girls have less freedom, are not allowed to go far from the house, and often merely look on instead of participating; furthermore, girls are portrayed as less imaginative and active than boys (Dixon, 2), while boys are “in charge of all the significant action” (O’Keefe, 24). Gurian too, mentions this concept of space: the boy "forms for himself his own world; for the feeling of his own power implies and soon demands also the

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possession of his own space and his own material belonging exclusively to him,” furthermore, boys “tend to use up far more space than girls” (qtd. in Kidd, 54-55). Researchers often focus on the negative results this way of thinking has on girls. O’Keefe, for example, does not feel sorry for boys even though “[b]oys may have faced expectations that were impossibly high and heroic”, for at least they knew “that life was an adventure and all roads were open to them” (30). Girls on the other hand, were taught or are portrayed as not to desire any such dangerous ventures, “the best girls were passive, still. It was understood that not every girl came naturally to this exalted state but the rebellious ones were urged to emulate the saintly ones, and they usually gave in by the end of the book” (O’Keefe, 12). Similarly, while boys are brave, manage to overcome any difficulties by themselves and use manliness to deal with evil adults, girls “[manage] to disarm [those adults] through the strength of [their] own passive, girlish virtue” (O’Keefe, 13). Whereas boys escape or defeat hostile adults, girls reform adults, “revealing them as basically good after all. Girls deny aggression” (O’Keefe, 83). There is no perfect consensus on issues such as these, however, for Lynn Vallone, for example, claims that while evil, or badness is something external in boys’ books, it is internal in girls’ fiction (127). O’Keefe also draws our attention to the numerous fictional ‘heroines’ that are largely immobile, for “if you are confined or paralyzed, in a bed or a box, the chances are that your behavior will be blameless, your decisions simple, your emotions placid” (15). These are all qualities that are, or at the very least, were, deemed admirable in girls, yet weak in boys. In fact, it seems as though dying is the ultimate heroic thing to do for female characters, yet the same can definitely not be said for boys. Girls’ very action “consists of decreasing action,

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increasing stillness” (O’Keefe, 19). Boys on the other hand are associated with movement (Gordon in O’Keefe, 25). In Little Women too, one of the protagonists’ (Beth) most important ‘accomplishment’ is dying, for this is “more purely, radiantly female than” what Jo does, “merely living and growing and writing” (O’Keefe, 24). As hinted towards earlier, boys seem to have more independence than girls (O’Keefe, 37). Adults are seemingly a less important presence in the world of boys. As Rotundo states, boy culture “was surprisingly free of adult intervention – it gave a youngster his first exhilarating taste of independence and made a lasting imprint on his character” (qtd. in Kidd, 61). Apparently boys benefit from learning to stand on their own two feet early on. Girls, however, “learned that they did not need to solve problems, just live through them uncomplainingly, after which they would eventually be saved by a man” (O’Keefe, 90). While girls have to learn to obey their elders – or are already ‘naturally’ inclined to do so – boys struggle for freedom, and are not punished or frowned upon for doing so. In fact, Huckleberry Finn largely revolves around Huck’s attempts and desires to escape ‘sivilisation’ (O’Keefe, 40), while Laura Ingalls, for example, spends her childhood learning to accept the fact that and the ways in which she must fit into that civilization. She has to learn to suppress her yearning for freedom. Huck, on the other hand, gets to embrace it. Man running away from civilization, Fiedler states, is quintessentially American, for “[t]he typical male protagonist of [American] fiction has been a man on the run, […] anywhere to avoid ‘civilization;’” (xx) it is “this strategy of evasion, this retreat to nature and childhood which makes [American] literature (and life!) so charmingly and infuriatingly “boyish” (Fiedler, xxi). Interestingly, however, Fiedler connects civilization to “the confrontation of a man and woman,” for he claims that American literature suffers from a

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lack of passion (xx); “[w]here is our Madame Bovary, our Anna Karenina, our Pride and Prejudice or Vanity Fair?” Fiedler wonders (xx). He answers his own question: “Perhaps the whole odd shape of American fiction arises […]because there is no real sexuality in American life and therefore there cannot very well be any in American art” (Fiedler, xxv). Finally he adds that “[t]he flight from sexuality led to a literature about children written for the consumption of adults; but the reading of that literature has turned those adults in their own inmost images of themselves into children” (Fiedler, 272). We can – once again – not help but notice the intimate relationship between American literature and childhood. As I have mentioned, the marriage plot is present in some books aimed at girls, but even then, passion is a long ways away. O’Keefe mentions “courtship without pain,” emphasizing the passiveness with which heroines approach marriage (144). An “easy, effortless drift into accepting marriage” was an ideal situation for a young American girl (O’Keefe, 144). There are numerous other gender patterns to be found in children’s literature. Ruth Berman, for example, rightfully points out the fact that while there are a good number of novels aimed at girls which feature a protagonist who loves to read, such protagonists are scarcely found in boys’ literature (238). She states that the “macho activities” featured in books for boys “implicitly [suggest] that their readers should give up reading to explore the jungle or Mars, to win a crown or a treasure, activities all too active to allow much time for reading” (Berman, 238). Not only do fictional heroines read more than their male counterparts, reading is not thought of as equally important for boys and for girls.

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Another purely American feature of literature is the fact that there are, as Fiedler calls them “Good Good Girls,” but no “Good Good Boys” (Fiedler, 254). He claims that “[o]nly the girl-child seems, […] a sufficiently spotless savior to the imagination of America, which boggles at the notion of a pure boy. In Dickens, the pale dwarfish monsters of piety include not only Little Nells but boys, too […]. In the United States, however, such figures seem alien” (Fiedler, 267). American literature only knows the “Good Bad Boy,” which Fiedler calls “America’s vision of itself, crude and unruly in his beginnings, but endowed by his creator with an instinctive sense of what is right” (Fiedler, 268). Gender patterns are not restricted to the children featured in fiction. The adults too, conform to society’s expectations. O’Keefe states that “mothers always acted like mothers and fathers like fathers and when they did not, they were representing some deviant role that was also familiar, like the stepmother or the unjust father” (84). Apparently, when adult characters deviate from society’s gender norms this is because they are not to be trusted. Difference is evil. Despite all this, however, much fiction for girls features so-called ‘tomboys,’ a figure which seemingly defies traditional gender patterns. Quimby (1-2) has come up with quite an elaborate definition of the tomboy figure. She calls it a figure defined by incoherent oppositions: at once cute and dangerous, understandably boyish and abnormally male-identified […]. [B]y eschewing the feminine and expressing masculine identifications and desires, the tomboy, by definition, points up that such categories as male and female, or masculine and feminine, are indeterminate and unstable. The tomboy, in other words, exemplifies

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that the notion of gender identity is not anchored to any secure, incontestable foundations. This is entirely reminiscent of Butler’s performativity theories. If girls can be happy acting in ways that are considered ‘boyish,’ what then is the difference between boys and girls? Quimby drives her point home by pointing out that “some tomboys do dramatically change their gender expressions and enact femininity convincingly,” (2) for these conversions point out that people can – as it were – change their gender in the course of their lives. The tomboy conversion furthermore affirms Butler’s heterosexual matrix, for this conversion is seen as a return to “normality,” as a taking up of a position in society which is deemed normal (Quimby, 3). Quimby points our attention to the important role dress plays in the tomboy’s conversion. She states that the tomboy, in her acceptance of wearing dresses “signals her availability for heterosexual romance” which is a “clear attempt to ‘order’ her ‘precarious’ gender development into an acceptable heterosexual narrative framework” (Quimby, 2). An important question remains. Where did this tomboy figure appear from? Why did girls’ fiction suddenly allow a character that – at least throughout most of the novel – did not conform to the gender norms? Michelle Ann Abate points our attention to the fact that the Civil War was one of the main reasons the tomboy could become a popular literary type – in America at least (26). As men left their homes, women were left to fend for themselves, and had no choice but to engage in ‘gender-bending’ activities (Tomboys, 24). “Americans witnessed the benefits of creating physically strong, intellectually capable and emotionally resilient young women” (Abate, Tomboys, 25). As society, whether this was welcome or not, had no choice but to deviate from its own norms, room was created for a type of girl who, at

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least for a little while, enjoyed more freedom. Presumably, wars in other parts of the world have had similar emancipatory effects for women. In the United States, we see that the first World War brought about a new level of independence with women being granted the right to vote (on a federal level) in 1920. As mentioned, the tomboy character usually displays more ‘proper’ and ‘ladylike’ behavior by the end of the novel. Like Dixon points out, she is, “in the course of the story, made to conform” (7). The use of the verb ‘make’ clearly shows that the transformation is not a natural or spontaneous one, but rather one brought about through the pressures of society, or through lessons learned from other characters, typically the tomboy’s mother. Contradictorily, however, the former tomboys are – according to the writers – “reconciled to their roles and even brought to prefer and love them” (Dixon, 7). O’Keefe calls the – often very sudden – conversion of the tomboy a “cop-out pattern” (76), ultimately disappointing the reader, even though the characters happily accept their conventional fate. We can ask ourselves, however, if this “cop-out pattern” is still there. Has American children’s fiction evolved, or are gender roles still as firmly present as ever? This is one of the questions we will try to answer when we turn to the analysis of some specific novels.

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Race in Children’s literature Racism is a universal problem, surfacing in all parts of the world. Quintessentially American however, is the past mass exportation of Africans who were enslaved and from then on considered property, as were future generations. Moving past this situation of slavery to a society where black and white people are valued equally has proved one of the United States’ toughest challenges. Even when the system was discarded, hatred and suspicion remained. Prejudice hinders African American people even today. Unfortunately, this is not the only racial issue America struggles with. Their centuries-long violence against native people further blemishes their history. As ‘colored’ people do not get, or certainly did not used to get, the same opportunities white people do – much like women compared to men –, their treatment in children’s literature deserves some attention. Much like gender patterns, the treatment of race in children’s literature is undeniably a means – be it conscious or unconscious – of transferring norms and values onto children. Bob Dixon calls racism – thus, by extension, the treatment of race – “[a] particularly strong aspect of the indoctrination carried on in children’s literature” (94). There are “different degrees of racism to be found, some more vicious and destructive than others” ; less racism, however, does not mean less negative influence on children. As Dixon puts it: “[l]ess obvious racism is not a redeeming factor,” for “it is at least arguable that the less apparent racism is […] the more psychologically damaging it can be” (Dixon, 95). Children who are to some extent armed against racist images – perhaps because their parents talk to them about it – might be able to recognize and judge blatant racism in the books they read, but when it is more subtle, even they might subconsciously be influenced.

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Racism in children’s literature goes beyond the mere portrayal of African or Native Americans. As Dixon points out, it starts at the connotations of mere words, such as ‘black’ and ‘white.’ The word ‘black,’ he states, “has overwhelmingly pejorative associations,” and its meanings are often connected with evil (94). The word ‘white,’ on the other hand, is associated with concepts such as “goodness, beauty and purity” (Dixon, 94). Nancy Larrick too, describes this issue. She points out that whiteness “derives power from its status as an unmarked category” (84). If racism starts there, at a level which is for most people subconscious, how far, then, does it stretch? It is not as easy to check what exactly the image is of African Americans in children’s literature as we did where gender patterns were concerned, simply because African American characters are largely missing from books for children, at least for the period we are concerning ourselves with. Editors defended themselves by explaining that books with “negro” characters sold less, especially in southern states, where parents complained and even boycotted stores that sold such books (Larrick, 63). A 1964 inquiry with publishers revealed that only 6.7 percent of that year’s children’s books had one or more “negro” characters (Larrick, 64). We can only assume that that number was even lower in the years of publication of the novels we are looking at. Similarly, Barbara Lowe, who has researched the books which have won a Newbery medal, has ascertained that up to 2003 “only nine books directly dealing with the issue of race relations have won the prize,” and this “[d]espite the fact that the New Medal is the single most important award for American Children’s literature – and the award with the biggest impact on children’s literature”(Lowe, 6).

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If gross underrepresentation is the first issue we can gather from children’s literature, we can only assume that representation – when it is there – will be flawed as well. Indeed, there are multiple issues at hand when we take a closer look at African Americans in children’s fiction throughout time. Schwartz (in Dixon, 114) points out that one of the main problems is the lack of individuality attributed to “the Black person.” One way of doing this is through avoidance of “calling Black people by their names; usually they substituted such terms as uncle, auntie, boy, Sambo; or they called every Black person by the same name” (Schwartz qtd. in Dixon, 114). Even more than gender, the issue of race in American literature ties into the history of its country. Fictional representation fluctuated trough time, reacting to the political situation at hand. The Civil War, and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation especially, proved a turning point. The Cambridge History of the American Novel has two chapters on novels dealing with race, one entitled “Stowe, race and the antebellum American novel” and one entitled “the postbellum race novel.” This evidently means that there are significant differences between pre- and post-war novels. When we look at that first period, the author of the chapter – John Ernest – points out that the African American character did not come into play at all until slavery had become an important political issue (255); “[a]s political tensions between the North and the South developed, the representation of race, both black and white, became an increasingly pronounced presence in novels that addressed ideals of society, economy, and governance” (Ernest, 256). Literature, once again, proves a device to deal with reality and to share with others one’s own values and ideas. Of this first period we can furthermore say that African Americans were still used in fiction not as characters of their own accord but as an instrument to cope with “the interests of white fears, desires, or

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investments in racial identity; ” whether representation was accurate or not was less of a concern (Ernest, 262). After the Civil War, the air had changed. Reid-Pharr puts it as follows: “The awkwardness of the postbellum race novel was both an uneasy acknowledgement of the fact that the nation’s founding ideologies were turned in upon themselves as well as an attempt to deny, or perhaps resolve, this difficult recognition” (471). Although a new era – an era in which slavery was destined to become a thing of the past – had dawned, most people, especially in the South, sought to hold on to the situation of the past while struggling to embrace the idea of change. Writers published books that aimed “to reestablish ideological order by both memorializing the presumed passing of stable narratives of race, nation, class and gender while also helping to bring into focus new ways of imagining subjectivity and community in the context of a quickly modernizing American culture” (ReidPharr, 472). What we have said so far holds true for literature for adults as well as for children. We shall now focus on the latter. As hinted at earlier, a lack of (well-developed) African American characters seems to be the biggest issue. Lowe explains that the situation stretches beyond short-sightedness of conservative authors, for “[e]ven authors of so-called ‘good’ books for children, [fail] to create for their child audiences complex characters and situations that would help their readers gain even a modicum of sympathy and understanding for people of different races” (Lowe, 6). Bishop adds that if African American characters are not “non-existent,” they are “pathetic or laughable,” and, he states, “[t]hese characterizations have been systematic – the result of institutional arrangements in the

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media and the schools” (qtd. in MacCann, 342). At the very end of the twentieth century – when Bishop wrote this – literature reflected a situation of consistent discrimination. Robin Bernstein, for her part, draws our attention to the importance of performance when it comes to the formation of race. As with the construction of gender, we can turn to the theory of performativity where race is concerned. This is however a different kind of performativity; we are now talking about ‘performances’ conducted by children when they play. Furthermore, Bernstein considers childhood itself a performance, for, according to her, children and childhood are constituted simultaneously (in Flynn, 209). Similarly to Butler reasoning that gender is an imitation of a non-existing original, Bernstein argues that childhood is “a process of surrogation, an endless attempt to find, fashion, and impel substitutes to fill a void caused by the loss of a half-forgotten original” (qtd. in Flynn, 210). She points out that children do “not passively receive works of literature,” instead they used toys, often dolls “to reconfigure the stories [they] read” (Bernstein, 163). She furthermore states that “[r]epresentational play is performative in that it produces culture” (Bernstein, 163). She goes on to say that children’s play is “a major mode of performance in everyday life and a crucial component in the construction of race [and] gender” (Bernstein, 163). Children’s play is said not to “represent some preexisting racial or gendered essence but instead [to construct] whiteness” (Bernstein, 163). Just like gender then, the characteristics of a race are not natural but constructed, and the characteristics of one race can be portrayed by another. Bernstein then moves on to commenting on the treatment of dolls in children’s fiction. This treatment is a symbol for the treatment of actual people. She states that white dolls in children’s literature were treated with a lot more tenderness, while black dolls

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“underwent whipping, flogging, beating, drowning, shooting, burning, decapitation or destruction from overwork” (Bernstein, 165). This is quite a list, and while it represents the actual treatment of African Americans at the time, it also perpetuates the idea that there was nothing wrong with treating them this way, especially because children liked to recreate the violence they read about on their own black dolls (Bernstein, 165). This could not but eventually create a racist ideology in the children’s minds. This leads to the conclusion that children were not merely “racist culture’s reflectors but its coproducers,” for “children not only receive literature, they receive the coscripts of narratives and material culture and then collectively forge a third prompt: play itself” (Bernstein, 167). Another issue concerning the treatment of race in children’s literature is the exclusion of African American child characters from the notion of childhood innocence, a notion that came about in the nineteenth century, when children were no longer thought of as small adults, but “as fragile and innocent beings” (Christensen, 99-100). African American children, on the other hand, were portrayed as unable to feel pain and were therefore “exiled from innocence and with it from childhood – and humanity” (Bernstein qtd. in Flynn, 210). The term used for these invulnerable children was “pickaninnies,” they were described as “wild, gluttonous and immoral creatures who were unable to feel pain or respond emotionally to actions or events” (Christensen, 100). Precisely because of their alleged inability to feel pain they were excluded from the notion of childhood innocence (Christensen,100).

Lastly, it is worth remarking that African American characters that were featured in children’s novels were shown “as a servant or slave, a sharecropper, a migrant worker or a menial” (Larrick, 63) until at least the 1960s. Once again we see that literature both reflects

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and reinforces what is happening in society. African Americans of course mainly did function in jobs such as those mentioned, but by breaking through this stereotype in literature, adults of the following generation would possibly have been helped more in embracing equal opportunities.

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Analysis of the Novels Gender Little Women Our initial research led us to the conclusion that gender is socially constructed and that children’s books can reinforce this constructivism, by ‘teaching’ children about a given society’s gender roles. Little Women, featuring famous tomboy Jo March, is a good example of this. Considering its 1868-1869 publication, Little Women is quite progressive – Jo explicitly complains about women’s limited freedom and possibilities – yet not even the author herself could escape the conventions of gender. In fact, gender is one of the reasons the book originated – a publisher commissioned Alcott to write a girls’ story because he believed that there was a market for it (Sicherman, 17). And he was correct; “the segmentation of juvenile fiction by gender” began to take off in the 1860s, after the appearance of the first ‘boys’ stories’ a decade earlier (Sicherman, 18). Sicherman notes the different nature of these stories, compared to earlier children’s books, which were “overtly religious and didactic [and] enjoined young people of both sexes to be good and domesticated” (18). However, the girls’ story was still ‘domestic’ by definition (Sicherman, 18). Alcott was not enthusiastic about the project; she thought such stories were dull, but kept at it regardless (Sicherman, 18). This would soon prove a fortunate decision, for the book immediately started selling well, and Alcott started work on a sequel almost straight away. This is where society’s pressure becomes apparent. Little Women was largely autobiographical, and Alcott was reluctant to part from this (Sicherman, 21). Never having gotten married herself, Alcott wished for Jo to remain unmarried too, but her readers demanded a husband for each sister. She deplored the fact that “[g]irls write to

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ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only end aim of a woman’s life” (qtd. in Sicherman, 21). Not being able to change the fact that society expected women to become wives and mothers, she ended up compromising. Despite readers rooting for Jo and Laurie to get married, she stated “I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone” (qtd. in Sicherman, 21). Instead she had Jo marry a literature professor, who would not make Jo give up her writing. Despite her own doubts about it, the sequel, Good Wives, was even more successful than the first part, and from there on out both books were published together as Little Women (Sicherman, 22). One of the reasons for the success of Little Women, Sicherman argues, is the “substitution of dialogue for the long passages of moralizing narrative that characterized most girls’ books” which “gave her story a compelling sense of immediacy” (20). This is one of the ways in which Alcott “managed to write [a girls’ story] that transcended the genre even while defining it” (Sicherman, 18), and one that was to remain popular for well over a century. Thus, a first concession towards society’s understanding of gender was that Jo ‘had to’ get married. Although many critics feel that Alcott murdered Jo “by allowing her to be tamed and married” (Sicherman, 18), I agree with, among others, Sicherman, that Alcott managed to get Jo through the process more or less unscathed. Although she had to go through certain changes, Jo “emerges happily, if not perhaps ideally” (Sicherman, 21). She chose her own husband, never being urged or obliged by her parents to marry; she has the freedom to pursue a career – she opens a school for “ragamuffin” boys – and in the novel’s sequels becomes a successful author. Quite a feat for a book that ended up – unfortunately – founding a genre that habitually “featured a plot in which the heroine learns to accept many of the culture’s prescriptions for appropriate womanly behavior” (Sicherman, 18).

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Sicherman even argues that “[f]or readers on the threshold of adulthood, the text’s authorizing of female ambition has been a significant counterweight to more habitual gender prescriptions” (35). Furthermore, the very fact that the book has remained so popular for well over a century indicates that few other “attractive female models in literature” enriched American culture for too long a period, and that its subject matter remained relevant (Sicherman, 35). What we also need to keep in mind is that – despite the fact that Jo gets married at the end of the novel, therefore effectively going from a tomboy to a wife – she gets to be a tomboy as a girl, and even as a young woman, which, as we will see, was not as self-evident as it may sound today. Even though the novel’s first scene features Jo being scolded for being “boyish” by not one but two of her sisters (Alcott, 13), she does not change her ways for a long time yet. Meg, the eldest, explicitly states that Jo is “old enough to leave off boyish tricks, and behave better” and that she should remember that she is “a young lady” (Alcott, 13). Jo, however, reacts: “I hate to think I’ve got to grow up and be Miss March […] It’s bad enough to be a girl, any way, when I like boys’ games, and work, and manners. I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy” (Alcott, 13). Interestingly, they both agree that it is okay for younger children to defy gender norms, but that growing up includes accepting one’s gender, which automatically comes with a certain role in society. This role cannot be escaped, no matter how reluctant one may be. Beth, Jo’s favorite sister, summarizes: “Poor Jo; it’s too bad! But it can’t be helped” (Alcott, 13). The sisters are well aware of this, too, as is evident from the following scene: “’You have been running, Jo; how could you? When will you stop such romping ways?’ […] ‘Don’t try to make me grow up before my time, Meg, […] let me be a little girl as long as I

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can’”(Alcott, 171).This idea, of not having to ‘accept’ one’s gender until adulthood also immediately makes clear the artificiality of the very concept of gender. Jo is biologically a girl, but claims to want to be a boy, not because she genuinely feels like a boy – we can assume – but because she would be able to do things like “go and fight with papa” instead of “[staying] at home and [knitting] like a poky old woman” (Alcott, 13). As Michelle Ann Abate points out “Jo's embrace of masculinity largely emerges from her critique of femininity” (“Topsy-Turvy,” 67). Realizing that, because she is a woman, she is resigned to “confinement, submission, and restraint” (“Topsy-Turvy,” 68), she merely wishes she were a boy because “masculinity is linked with independence, adventure, and excitement” (68). Therefore “Jo seeks to distance herself from the disempowered status of feminine women” (68). Nevertheless, Jo’s sisters and her parents seem largely happy to let her “play brother” (Alcott, 13), especially in the family sphere. When they are out in public, however, Amy and Meg do worry about what other people will think of Jo’s behavior and appearance. A first incident occurs when Jo and Meg are invited to a party. Jo, who has stained her gloves, claims that she will go without, but Meg, more in tune with etiquette, states: “You must have gloves, Or I won’t go” (Alcott, 34). She adds “[g]loves are more important than anything else; you can’t dance without them, and if you don’t I should be so mortified” (Alcott, 34). This clearly shows that society demands a lot from ‘young ladies,’ although Jo cannot bring herself to care yet. A second, much later incident – Jo is now no longer a child – involves Amy. The sisters have to go visit some people, and Amy, who is three years younger than Jo, has to explicitly instruct Jo how to dress and behave. Over the course of the chapter Jo quite literally performs different types of women, exaggerating so much each time that she upsets her sister. Upon her sister’s demand that she be “calm, cool and quiet,” Jo answers: Let me see; ‘calm, cool and quiet’! Yes, I think I can promise that. I’ve played the

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part of a prim young lady on the stage, and I’ll try it off” (Alcott, 317, my italics). Jo explicitly states that she’ll play the part of a lady, something that, then, is evidently not natural for her. When she is too calm and quiet for Amy’s liking, Jo says, before their next call, “I’ll be agreeable; I’ll gossip and giggle, and have horrors and raptures over any trifle you like. I rather enjoy this and now I’ll imitate what is called a ‘charming girl’; I can do it for I have May Chester as model, and I’ll improve upon her” (Alcott, 317, my italics). This is a perfect example of what Butler means when she states that we perform gender. Jo is perfectly aware of what is expected of her in society, but she chooses to parody the artificiality of the very concept of ‘lady like’ behavior by exaggerating it greatly. Although instances such as these make clear that Jo will eventually have to adapt to society’s demands in order not to be excluded, the novel nevertheless abounds in scenes featuring Jo’s tomboyish ways, without much judgment. Abate points out that Jo not only has a strong dislike of “feminine domestic chores,” but also of “feminine forms of selfcontrol and personal decorum” (“Topsy-Turvy,” 68). Furthermore, she is described as very clumsy; “disorder and even chaos, albeit often accidental or unintentional, seem to follow her” (68). Abate concludes that it is “[h]er physical clumsiness and social awkwardness” which “[contradict] prevailing beliefs about women’s natural grace and innate poise” (“Topsy-Turvy,” 69). Even more explicit gender deviation occurs frequently. Jo likes to refer to herself as ‘manly,’ or ‘gentlemanly’; she will not allow herself to cry because “tears were an unmanly weakness” (Alcott, 88). When around Laurie’s friends “Jo [feels] quite in her element, and found it very difficult to refrain from imitating the gentlemanly attitudes, phrases, and feats which seemed more natural to her than the decorums prescribed for young ladies” (Alcott, 264).

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Interestingly, Alcott in no way portrays Jo as ‘the bad daughter,’ something that, as we will see later on, could arguably be said to be true of Wilder’s treatment of Laura. It is instead, Amy, the blonde, blue-eyed sister, who is – in the first half of the novel – the naughty one. Anne Hollander points out that whereas the other three merely have flaws, Amy is initially portrayed as truly bad (32). Furthermore, while the other three are all considered generous, Amy is decidedly selfish (Hollander, 32). This contrasts interestingly with Wilder’s treatment of the differences between Laura and Mary. Nevertheless, Alcott shows that society rewards Amy and punishes Jo. A visit to their aunts is concluded when “[Jo] shook hands in a gentlemanly manner, but Amy kissed both the aunts, and the girls departed, leaving behind them the impression of shadow and sunshine” (Alcott, 326). This summarizes the differences between the girls, and the aunts decide to send Amy on a trip to Europe, something Jo has long yearned for. Their mother explains to Jo: “’I’m afraid it is partly your own fault, dear. When aunt spoke to me the other day, she regretted your blunt manners and too independent spirit’” (Alcott, 336). Regardless of Alcott’s own attitudes, she shows that, realistically, society rewards conformity, not deviation. Jo, like Amy, has flaws, but they have little to do with her gender. Hollander describes them as “quickness of temper and impatience, lack of consideration and rage” (31). Alcott puts far more emphasis on Jo’s efforts to overcome these vices than her, or her family’s, efforts to make her more ladylike. That process is much more implicit in the novel. We can only assume she is slowly changing through sentences as: “’When, where, how?’ asked Jo, in a fever of feminine interest and curiosity” (Alcott, 476) and “Jo valued goodness highly, but she also possessed a most feminine respect for intellect” (Alcott, 380). It seems as though these statements confirm that Jo will eventually happily conform to society’s demands, that

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‘femininity’ is in her after all. It is striking though, that these sorts of sentences can only be found in the second half of the novel, once Jo is slowly getting closer to marriage. Nevertheless, Jo, as Hollander points out, has some characteristics that are surprisingly ‘feminine’; that is, characteristics commonly associated with women. These characteristics, present from the beginning on out, however, are not pointed out to the reader, as Alcott does later on. Most striking, perhaps, is her willingness to “accept male instruction and domination,” especially from her father. She is furthermore not unacquainted with ‘womanly’ vanity, namely about her hair. She very bravely has her hair cut off, in order to earn some money to help the family, but at night she laments the loss of her “one beauty” (Alcott, 183). Considering that Jo previously wished that she could be a boy, we would expect that Jo “would revel in the masculine haircut, [but] the opposite is true” (Abate, “Topsy-Turvy,” 74). Furthermore, the haircut ends up “[bringing] her closer to womanly codes of conduct” (74). Instead of making her more boyish, the short hair causes Jo to become more feminine; “the shearing sobered our black sheep,” Jo’s father says upon his return from the war, adding “I don’t see the ‘son Jo’ whom I left a year ago, […] I see a young lady who pins her collar straight, laces her boots neatly, and neither whistles, talks slang, nor lies on the rug” (Alcott, 244). Another important influence on Jo’s progress towards ladylike behavior, is her sister Beth. Unlike Amy and Meg, Beth never reproaches Jo for being boyish, but it is Beth’s “undisputed goodness” which “inspires Jo to conduct herself in more ladylike ways,” for Jo thinks of Beth as her conscience (Abate, “Topsy-Turvy,” 76). As Abate points out, Beth keeps influencing Jo even after her death, as she “self-consciously tries to emulate her saintly sister” (76), by taking over the housework Beth used to do: “Brooms and dishcloths never

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could be as distasteful as they once had been, for Beth had presided over both” (Alcott, 466). Evolution is also noticeable in Jo’s knowledge and awareness of etiquette and what is expected of her. In the beginning of the novel, when Meg and Jo go to a party, Jo is – rightly – worried that she will not know how to behave herself and she asks her sister to help her out: ’If you see me doing anything wrong, you’ll just remind me by a wink, will you?’ returned Jo, giving her collar a twitch and her head a hasty brush. ‘No, winking isn’t lady-like; I’ll lift my eyebrows if anything is wrong, and nod if you are all right. Now hold your shoulders straight, and take short steps, and don’t shake hands if you are introduced to any one, it isn’t the thing’ (Alcott, 36). Even her method of asking is disapproved of by Meg, and she has to explicitly tell Jo how to behave. Later on, however, Jo is more aware of what is accepted and what not, but she does not stop those activities straight away. This we see in the following passage, where Jo has just run a race against Laurie: “’I wish I was a horse; then I could run for miles in this splendid air, and not lose my breath. It was capital; but see what a guy it’s made me.’ […] Jo bundled up her braids, hoping no one would pass by till she was tidy again” (Alcott, 171). Although she allows herself to run wild, she has gained a sense of understanding in that she knows people would frown upon her behavior if they saw her. This sort of behavior succeeds her previous total disregard of what other people think of as proper such as in this scene. “’Oh, oh, Jo! You ain’t going to wear that awful hat? It’s too absurd! You shall not make a guy of yourself,’[…] ‘I just will, though! It’s capital, so shady, light, and big. It will make fun; and I don’t mind being a guy, if I’m comfortable’” (Alcott, 138).

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No matter how we look at it though, by the end of the novel, – despite Alcott’s reluctance about this plotline – Jo is a seemingly happy married woman, and a mother. She has done what society asked of her. Her literary career is not mentioned again, and Jo will spend the rest of her days doing her own “reforming,” albeit reforming boys not girls. This shows that Jo not only had to accept her gender, but that this concept is tied into class. The family used to be well off, but has lost most of its money by the opening of the novel. Despite this, they still belong to the middle class, a fact which, in its turn, causes certain gender expectations; the glove incident I described earlier demonstrates this. By the end of the novel, though, Jo does not deviate in either aspect, and her work is even closely related to concepts of class. While that may be what we conclude from Little Women, the sequels offer some insight that may reassure us of Alcott’s progressiveness, even if she is strongly limited in expressing it. Plumfield, Jo’s school, has some female pupils, including a girl named Nan, who is a tomboy, like Jo used to be. She “clamored fiercely to be allowed to do everything that the boys did” (from Alcott, Little Men, qtd. in Clark, 328). What is more, this time Alcott does succeed: Nan never marries, and after Jo discovers the girl’s “intense love and pity for the weak and suffering,” she helps her to become a doctor, not a nurse (from Alcott, Little Men, qtd. in Clark, 328). Keeping in mind that, in this manner, Jo does end up looking beyond traditional gender patterns – even after she has been “tamed” – Alcott should, according to me, not be condemned for “murdering” Jo, as some have done (Sicherman, 18), but should be applauded for trying to juggle society’s demands with her own, more progressive beliefs.

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Little House Undoubtedly most explicit in its acknowledgement that gender is indeed a social construct is the Little House series. Despite the fact that the books were not published until well into the twentieth century (the earliest volume was published in 1932), they allow no deviations from gender norms. Whereas Jo March’s tomboyishness is largely accepted as long as she is still young, Laura’s mother starts the process of turning her daughter into a lady when she is only five years old – much younger than Jo is in the beginning of Little Women. Furthermore, even though Laura is a lot younger than Jo in the first couple of books, it seems as though she matures much faster. Whereas Laura takes on a lot of responsibility from the age of about thirteen, Jo remains somewhat childlike until she is in her early twenties. Finally, Laura’s conversion into a ‘lady,’ is much more explicit than Jo’s, and she puts up a good fight, but when she finally has become a ‘lady,’ – upon marrying Almanzo – her conversion seems much more extreme than Jo’s. One struggles to recognize the once fiery child in the somewhat meek girl of These Happy Golden Years or the disillusioned woman in The First Four Years. Louise Mowder directs our attention to the difficult position of women in the West (15). Whereas the frontier is traditionally seen as a man’s world, the process of “creating civilization out of […] wilderness,” is entirely a woman’s task (18). Yet, somehow, Mowder states, a “[w]oman [in the west] is characterized by her silence, even in the face of suffering, and her ability to perform her female duties regardless of that silence” (15). Throughout the series Laura endures precisely this process of silencing, for “the female child is trained and restrained so that [she] may become a proper lady” (Mowder, 15). “Proper femininity,” then, according to Mowder, “is recognized both by its domesticity and its self-suppression,”

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both of which Laura learns to embody by the time she is an adult. Romines cites Laura’s silence upon seeing the horses her father buys one Christmas as an example (129). Despite Laura and Mary’s initial disappointment about the fact that this year the family will get horses instead of presents, they learn that “being mature females means suppressing their own desires to grant a beloved man’s wish” (Romines, 129). Laura’s mother’s explicit teachings about appropriate gender behavior include a frequent return to simple symbols, such as the sun-bonnet. According to Elizabeth Segel, this, along with the corset, is an object designed to preserve feminine beauty (in Blackford, 154). Growing up, Laura usually neglects wearing hers, because “[w]hen her sun-bonnet was on, she could only see what was in front of her” (Prairie, 78). It is, thus, a symbol, for women’s and girls’ constrained freedom. Interestingly, Huckleberry Finn – who dresses up as a girl during a certain episode in the novel – quickly gets rid of the sun-bonnet, for he feels that it limits his vision too strongly (Twain, 72). Ma insists that her girls wear their sunbonnets so that they maintain their fair complexion; she fears that they should “look like Indians” (Prairie, 77). As Sharon Smulders states, wearing the sun-bonnet not only contributes to girls becoming women, but also helps to maintain “the premises of white superiority” (195). She even goes on to say that it “not only serves to marginalize the other by eliminating it from sight, but also prevents the wearer from becoming ‘other’” (194). This leads to an interesting point, brought up by Louise Mowder. She explains that two of the series’ most important symbols are the china shepherdess and the Indian (16). The first stands for female domestication and silence, the latter for the wilderness, freedom and noise (Mowder, 16). The shepherdess, to the Ingalls family, symbolizes civilization. It is not displayed until a new house is finished, until it is up to Ma’s standard, thereby signifying

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that the family has once again conquered the wilderness (Romines, 4). Laura, as a child, is evidently associated with the Indian, and the wilderness that needs to be tamed. Mowder points to her tan skin (a result of not wearing the restraining sun-bonnet), her love of the outdoors, and even the colors that she is usually dressed in, which are hues of red and brown (16). Interestingly, Ma too sees the relationship between Laura and the Indian. When Laura’s behavior is ‘improper’ considering her gender, it is usually not compared to that of a boy, but to that of an Indian. Not only must she not get tan like one, she can also not yell like one (Prairie, 77). In both Laura’s and Ma’s mind gender and race deviation are intertwined. When Laura – who is fascinated with the idea of Indians – asks her parents when she will see a papoose, her mother’s answer is to put on her sun-bonnet (Prairie, 78). Gender deviation is linked to race; race deviation (to put it sharply) is solved by referring back to gender. Mowder directs our attention to the fact that Laura, when she expresses her wish to be an Indian, explicitly states that she “had a naughty wish to be a little Indian girl” (Prairie, 192, my italics). Previously Laura had expressed some desire to be a boy (for example, Woods, 102), but now it would suffice to be an Indian girl, for she “wanted to be bare and naked in the wind and the sunshine, and riding one of those gay little ponies” (192). Even when she is a little older (for she is only about six years old in the aforementioned passage), her desire remains: “I wish I was an Indian and didn’t have to wear clothes” (Plum Creek, 144). If she cannot escape her gender, escaping her race might be an alternative solution to obtain freedom, Laura reasons. However, to Ma and the other adult women in the novels, Indians threaten “the project of womanly domestication of the frontier” (Mowder, 16). Laura’s domestication is endangered by her being on the frontier, and being around Indians, for “as [she] enters the wilderness, the wilderness enters her” (Mowder, 17). Ultimately, however, Laura’s “indoctrination […] into the ways of womanhood” and “the colonization

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and domestication of the wilderness landscape through which the Ingalls family travels and settles” go hand in hand (Mowder, 17), and Laura has to abandon helping her father in favor of becoming her mother’s right hand. To a young Laura, the distinction between race and gender might not be clear cut, but she implicitly understands the difference between darkness and fairness. If Laura is a symbol for the Indian, her older sister Mary embodies the china shepherdess. Whereas Laura has dark hair, Mary is blonde, and has a fair complexion. As Mowder points out, Mary’s very appearance “marks her as superior, and her golden curls speak to Laura of a realm of restrained behavior that she both admires and disdains” (16). Mary never rebels against the behavior that is considered appropriate for her gender. This is made explicit to the young reader: “Mary preferred to stay in the house and sew on her patchwork quilt. But Laura liked the fierce light and the sun and the wind” (Prairie, 97). Mary enjoys chores such as sewing, while Laura likes to observe or help her father: “that day Mary minded the baby. Laura helped Pa make the door” (Prairie, 62). Laura, on the other hand, hates sewing, “it made her feel like flying to pieces. She wanted to scream. The back of her neck ached and the thread twisted and knotted” (Winter, 33). Mary, Mowder points out, is also like the china shepherdess because in her “the lesson of quietism has already been successfully internalized” (16). Unlike Laura, who likes to run and shout, she engages in “quiet, ladylike play” (Woods, 117). Similarly, Mary “always kept her dress clean and neat,” and stayed “unrumpled [sic] and clean” (Woods, 99). Mary, who, like Ma, is silent from the beginning helps reinforce the female ideals of domesticity and self-restraint Laura must learn to adhere to.

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Young Laura struggles between disapproval and envy when it comes to her sister. Although she does feel like Mary is rather boring and annoyingly good all the time, she feels jealous of her sister, especially when it comes to their hair. To her, it feels like people always “noticed and admired Mary’s” blonde curls, while she is overlooked (Woods, 103). It goes further than that. Laura seems to think that Mary’s blondeness and her obedience are related to each other: “Mary was a good little girl […] and minded her manners. Mary had lovely golden curls” (Woods, 99). Once again, we see that whiteness and purity are linked to each other, while darkness is connected to evil. However, when Pa points out to Laura that his own hair is brown, Laura is reassured (Woods, 105). This emphasizes that Laura, as a child, is closer to her father than to her mother. Elizabeth Segel points out that “[a] dark complexion often set apart the tomboy protagonist in a culture whose female standard of beauty was fair” (68). Laura’s envy of her sister’s blonde hair, however, complicates her status as a tomboy. Her way of dealing with this jealousy, then, is once again not ‘ladylike.’ When Mary taunts her, claiming that “[g]olden hair is lots prettier than brown,” – admittedly not very ladylike either – Laura, realizing that her darkness-fearing community sides with Mary, can only react by slapping Mary’s face (Woods, 104). Mowder claims that there is “physical evidence” which labels Laura “as inadequate within [the] construct of feminine hierarchy” (16). Silenced by this evidence, she slaps Mary, for language does not suffice to help her (Mowder, 16). The struggle between Mary and Laura, interestingly, comes to an end when Mary’s likeness to the shepherdess becomes complete. Once she is blinded, her unseeing blue eyes reiterate the image of the ‘china woman’ which the family has adored. It is for this blinded and beautiful feminine paragon that Laura will have to

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sacrifice her own goals and desires. She submits to both an education and a profession which she finds imprisoning so that Mary may attend a school for young blind women. (Mowder, 16) Ironically, by making these sacrifices, Laura gradually internalizes the domesticity and selfsacrifice which are thought of as proper for her gender. In this respect, it is interesting to consider that when Laura first starts to become a lady, Mary’s blonde hair is temporarily gone. Her blindness is caused by a disease, and Pa shaves Mary’s hair because of the fever (Silver Lake, 2). Even though this loss of the blonde hair is only temporary, it does feel as though a space is created for Laura to become ‘domesticated.’ Now virtually the eldest – for Mary can no longer do much – her mother relies on her for domestic chores, and it seems as though years of ‘feminine’ behavior erase the ‘improper’ ways she had as a child. Forced to grow up before her time – Wilder wrote in an autobiographical account that she was wearing long dresses and pinning up her braids before her thirteenth birthday (Smith Hill, 41) – there was simply no more time for gender deviation. Thus, while Mary is like the shepherdess, as a child, and even more so once she is blind, it does feel as if Laura becomes Mary, the original ‘good’ sister. She sews to earn money, she becomes a school teacher – which was a career originally envisioned for Mary – , and Mary even tells her that she “is planning to write a book some day” (Golden Years, 114). When Mary suggests that that too might be something that Laura will make a reality instead of her, Laura turns down this notion. However, this is of course exactly what will happen. As established, Laura and Mary are each other’s opposites. Another pair of opposites consists of Ma, Caroline, and Pa, Charles. Pa continuously longs to go West; he dislikes living in “a country so old and worn out that the hunting was poor” (Silver Lake, 3). Ma longs for

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settling down, and she wants her daughters to be able to go to school, something which was only possible when living in a more or less settled community. Blackford calls her a “steady machine of civilization” (152-153). This tension, this difference between the parents is concretized in a number of ways. For instance, there is an important discrepancy between ‘Ma’s’ objects, and those that are associated with Pa. While “Ma’s objects take on a vivid, concrete quality” Pa’s do not (Blackford, 153). Ma’s objects include her dresses and the china shepherdess – not only a symbol of civilization, but also an ideal of feminine beauty throughout the series –, while Pa’s include his fiddle. Blackford furthermore points out that while Ma’s activities in the house are repetitive and observed by the girls, Pa leaves the house to have ever different adventures his daughters do not observe but are told about afterwards in a dramatized version (153). In the first novel, Little House in the Big Woods, Laura is usually physically close to her mother. However, throughout the rest of the series, she seems to identify more with her father, while Mary forms a pair with Ma. This change seems to come about after Laura realizes that she and her father both have brown hair (see higher). Furthermore, it quickly becomes clear that Laura does not share her mother’s ideas about civilization. One Sunday, when they are reading from the Bible, Laura asks her mother: “Did Adam have good clothes to wear on Sundays?” To which Ma answers “No, […] Poor Adam, all he had to wear was skins.” Laura however, does not agree: “Laura did not pity Adam. She wished she had nothing to wear but skins” (Woods, 48). This is reminiscent of Laura’s desire to be an Indian. Instances such as these make it clear that “Laura increasingly rebels against her mother and identifies with her father” (Blackford, 154). Laura prefers her father because “he brings to her the exciting outdoors, primarily through story, yet protects her from the woods and wolves” (Blackford, 154). Pa’s, however, is a male voice, and since this is a girl’s story, he

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needs to get out of the spotlight. Laura’s very identification with her father, Blackford argues, is an “option in child development that would define Laura as more of a son, who wanted the mother’s special blessing but who was rejected and wounded” (163). Ma, however, will reclaim her territory, and transform Laura into a proper lady. This is most obvious from the novels’ structure. Little House in the Big Woods is the only novel to contain inset stories, told by Pa, featuring no other characters from the novel, and no female characters at all. Ironically, this is the way the novel originated. Wilder wrote down her father’s stories and added the rest of it to string the stories together (Romines, 21). Although “much of the narrative is plotted to assure that the Ingalls daughters will follow their mother’s example, never infringing on the prerogatives of patriarchy, […] its centerpiece is men’s tales told in Pa’s voice” (Romines, 23). However, in order to continue, Wilder needed “to preempt the patriarchal voice that is such a strong presence in the first [book]” (Romines, 53). In the next books, even though Laura initially spends more time with her father, Ma’s efforts at molding Laura become more obvious. One may wonder why these efforts are insisted upon with such force. Anita Fellman states that “[h]omesteading offered to numerous women opportunities to break free of many constricting female roles” (22). This mostly consisted of taking up jobs previously considered appropriate only for males; “Laura, however, foreclosed such an option by marrying young” (Fellman, 23). However, Fellman also states that Laura’s mother (real, not fictional) probably felt like “she had no choice but to socialize her along conventional female lines despite Laura’s inclinations towards tomboyishness” if she wanted her daughter to become a successful member of society (22). She furthermore states that Laura’s behavior perhaps would have been less constricted had they been more affluent, for “[t]heir poverty

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probably made violations of convention less forgivable” (Fellman, 23). Presumably Caroline Ingalls was born too early to realize that the world was changing and did what she thought was best for her daughter. Gradually, Laura begins to change. As mentioned, once Mary was blinded, she essentially became the eldest daughter and had to take on a considerable part of the housework. It does seem, however, as though Laura’s transformation speeds up once the family starts living in a town. As she begins to socialize with other girls her age, and, a little later, lets Almanzo court her, Laura seems to voluntarily give up some of her tomboyish ways. She still occasionally plays outside with the boys during recess, but her friends know “that Laura was not really a tomboy” (Little Town, 146). She develops an interest in fashion, and even displays some behavior that can perhaps be considered vain, but is reassuringly girlish: “Laura carefully brushed and braided her hair, and put it up and took it down again. She could not arrange it to suit her. ‘Oh Ma, I do wish you would let me cut bangs,’ she almost begged. ‘Mary Power wears them, and they are so stylish’” (Little Town, 203). Long gone seems the little girl who refused to keep on her sun-bonnet. Her parents, too, finalize the process of conversion after they move. While Laura previously helped her father with certain tasks such as haying, they both agree that “[t]own’s no place for a girl to be doing a boy’s work” (Winter, 64). The whole process culminates in her marriage to Almanzo. It thus seems as though Ma’s work has been aided by the rest of the community, which demanded strict adherence to proper gender roles. It is suggested that in order for Laura to become a happy adult, she has to give up her tomboyish behavior and adapt to what society expects of her. This corroborates Judith Butler’s ideas about the heterosexual matrix.

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Laura’s conversion to the lady her mother wants her to be seems finally complete when she is visited by a small group of Indians in the claim shanty she lives in with Almanzo. As a child, Indians filled her with a sense of wonderment, and, as said, she even envied them in certain ways. Now that Laura is an adult, she refuses to let them enter the house, and only goes outside for fear of them stealing her pony. She even slaps one of the men in the face. According to Smulders, her treatment of these Indians demonstrates that she finally “recants her childish wish to be Indian but also declares a chaste fidelity to the domestic ideal against which she once struggled” (199). Her behavior and attitude now finally resemble her mother’s, who has always strongly disliked Indians. One question remains. Why did Laura Ingalls Wilder have the fictional Laura go through the same process she went through as a child? The real Laura, who was called a wildcat by her cousins because of her tendency to fight, was explicitly forbidden by her mother to throw snowballs at school (Fellman, 18, 23). One would think that, roughly fifty years later, Laura would seek her revenge, and allow her fictional self a bit more freedom. Instead the series almost seems to focus on Laura’s domestication and culminates in a supposedly happy marriage in which the gender roles her mother so highly valued were perpetuated. A presumable answer can be found when we consider the era in which the novels were published, and, more specifically, Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane’s views on the political situation of this era. As has recently become widely known, Lane heavily influenced her mother’s work; she functioned as an editor, but according to some she can almost be considered a co-author of the series (Fellman, Romines et al.). Since she influenced Wilder in all areas of her work, we can only assume that she also had her say when it came to the political ideas behind the books. As they were working on the series, the country was suffering through the so-called Great Depression from which recovery was

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attempted through the implementation of the New Deal. We can assume that Lane and Wilder experienced this as “a massive crisis in American values” (Lefebvre, 273). In an era that, according to Wilder and Lane, had “lost its core pioneer values […] and a sense of individual responsibility” (Campbell, 180), they seemingly wanted to stage “an idealized depiction of the American past” (Lefebvre, 273). Romines cites this very idealization as a reason of the success of the series, for the books “reinforced and promoted the consumption patterns that families [during the Depression] were compelled to practice” (113). It is true, however, that the series – while ultimately about girls – seems to contain a lot of glorification of the utterly male profession of farming. It remains ironic that, as Romines points out, an account that seems to “celebrate girls’ and women’s voices” ultimately renews the power of “some of the most strongly patriarchal messages of nineteenth-century U.S. culture” (6). Even though pa’s voice has been de-emphasized after the first novel, the fictional Laura still remains stuck in a world that is firmly patriarchal, an unfortunate result of Wilder and Lane’s glorification of America’s past. To Kill A Mockingbird

Finally, we turn our attention to the most recent novel we are concerning ourselves with, To Kill A Mockingbird. Published in 1960, Harper Lee’s only novel reveals a very different outlook on gender roles. Although the book is obviously written against the backdrop of the emerging Civil Rights Movement – race and racism are at the core of the plot – it seems as though this has an effect on Lee’s treatment of gender as well. Even though the novel is set in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Scout seems to enjoy quite a bit of freedom. Just like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s nineteenth-century setting was

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influenced by her Great Depression mindset, Lee’s work is infused with ideas of liberty and equality, not only for African Americans, but for girls too. Although, at first glance, it may seem as though Scout’s community adheres to the same gender roles Wilder honors, upon closer consideration we realize that a lot more deviation is possible in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama than we might have originally expected. Scout, for example, wears boys’ overalls, because she “could do nothing in a dress” (Lee, 87). This was obviously unthinkable in the nineteenth century, but it still seems remarkable for a girl in a Depression-era conservative southern town, especially when we consider that the thirties showed a “crisis in masculinity” (Blackford, 32). As men lost “their status as breadwinners […] the central tenets undergirding their gender status were threatened. […] job insecurity had upset gender relations and diminished the status of men in the family” (Chauncey qtd. in Blackford, 31-32). Furthermore, Lee had to fight against “the conservative trend to feminize tomboys” that was brought about by the Cold War (Hakala, 22). Although Hakala’s source, Abate, suggests that Lee follows this trend, citing that Scout wants a baton with sequins and tinsel, I, like Hakala tend to disagree. Scout has far more wishes that can be considered ‘masculine,’ and as Hakala points out, the baton disappears quickly from the story, suggesting that the desire was never a very strong one. Neither does Scout seem good at handling this baton; she is better at more masculine activities (23). Keeping that in mind, combined with the boys’ clothes, I would argue that Lee’s tomboy is far more “boyish” than even Alcott’s Jo, who surfaced when tomboys first became popular (Abate, Tomboys 25-26). Scout swears, fights and is disobedient and insolent towards almost every adult in her life, all things Laura Ingalls would never even dream of doing. Furthermore, unlike Laura and Jo, Scout has a brother, whom she spends a lot of time with and who frequently tells her not to act like a girl. However, Scout and Jo do have something

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in common. Just like Jo lamented being a girl because it constricted her opportunities in life, Scout feels that “power and authority are masculine attributes; to be a girl is to be marginalized and excluded” (Ware, 286). Hakala also points out the centrality of “Scout’s struggle between tomboyism and ideals of femininity,” for ultimately it is “her story and not Atticus’s” (10). The conflict is made central through Lee’s depiction of “gender as an unstable standard that alters according to each individual, as opposed to the paradigms of stereotypical masculinity and femininity” (Hakala, 13). This is far more than Wilder, or even Alcott ever did, and Lee’s very awareness of the artificiality of the concept of gender is what makes To Kill A Mockingbird stand out as more progressive than the other novels, although Alcott’s novel was probably more conservative than she wanted it to be. Richards adds that “the absence and parody of heterosexual relations” contributes to Lee’s “destabilization of heterosexuality and normative gender” which he calls radical in its “cultural pervasiveness” (120). Lee accomplishes this by letting Scout interact with different “parental characters,” who are “primarily unconventional in terms of gender,” and “fill middle positions between the stereotypes” (Hakala, 1). The parental characters she discusses are Aunt Alexandra, Calpurnia, Miss Maudie, Atticus and Boo Radley, all of whom, according to her, transgress gender. Although I do not feel as though all those characters’ ‘transgressions’ are equally significant, some of them are worth a closer look. Aunt Alexandra, for example, is far more complex than we are initially led to believe. She is introduced as someone Scout thinks of as “Mount Everest […], cold and there” (Lee, 83). Scout does not get along with her because she was “fanatical on the subject of [Scout’s] attire”; furthermore, Scout complains: “Aunt Alexandra’s vision of my deportment involved

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playing with small stoves, tea-sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me” (Lee, 87). Needless to say, Scout prefers other activities. Nevertheless, Alexandra reveals some more progressive ideas through her grandson Francis, who lives with her. Gary Richards calls Francis “hardly masculine,” a result of the way Alexandra is raising him (132). Indeed, consider his words: “’Grandma’s a wonderful cook’ […] ‘She’s gonna teach me how.’ […] ‘Grandma says all men should learn to cook, that men oughta be careful with their wives and wait on ‘em when they don’t feel good’” (Lee, 88). These words do not seem as though they could be attributed to the woman who continually complains to Atticus about Scout wearing overalls. Richards explains that “Alexandra thus reveals her investment in white southern femininity to be so strong that she is willing to sacrifice corresponding southern masculinity so that the former’s delicacy not be impinged upon” (132). Whether or not this is true, it is safe to say that there is more to Alexandra than we are initially led to believe. Later on, Scout too adjusts her opinion on her aunt. In the heat of the Tom Robinson trial, she admires the way Alexandra deals with the situation which even leads her to say: “if Aunty could be lady at a time like this, so could I” (Lee, 244). In this instance, Scout connects being a lady more to strength than to displaying femininity, but it is nevertheless a significant admission, for she willingly aligns herself with Alexandra for the first time. Another very interesting character is one of the Finch’s neighbors, Miss Maudie. Hakala points out that Scout “shares a closer relationship with [her] than she does with the other neighborhood women” (53). When Jem and Dill exclude Scout from their play – because she is a girl – Scout likes to visit Maudie. I am not sure we can call Maudie a maternal figure for Scout, as Hakala does (54), but she is definitely someone Scout looks up to and goes to for advice. Hakala furthermore notes that Maudie respects Scout and “treats her in a mature manner” (54). More importantly, however, Miss Maudie, “proudly displays

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gender-bending behaviors” (Hakala, 54), meaning that she “worked in her flower-beds in an old straw hat and men’s coveralls” (Lee, 48), and wears formal dresses when she has to attend a social function. Interestingly though, unlike with Scout, nobody seems to mind much that she occasionally dons ‘men’s wear.’ She is also not afraid to speak her mind, “even when her comments seem too scandalous for a genteel lady to voice” (Hakala, 54). Richards explains why Maudie can display this deviating behavior: by occasionally participating in “ostensibly gender-reifying rituals […] even while she understands such participation to be simple performances, her neighbors are content to allow her otherwise inexcusable transgressions of gender” (134). Hakala claims that “Miss Maudie crosses gender boundaries, appealing to Maycomb’s society when necessary but also indulging her genderbending desires in other instances” (55). Notably, Maudie is also more open-minded than the average woman in town when it comes to racial issues. During Tom Robinson’s process, she actually hopes he will get acquitted, even when most others disapprove even of Atticus defending him. Since Lee’s novel is arguably mainly about raising sympathy for black people, the fact that Maudie is one of Tom’s few supporters seems to underscore that Lee embraces gender deviation. A final character worth a closer look is Boo Radley. I would not, as Hakala has done, argue that he influences Scout’s tomboyism by his own gender deviation (61), but I do agree that Boo is another character helping Scout realize just how unstable the boundaries of gender really are, and that people can cross them. Tracy Lemaster argues that Boo is “[inserted] into the family structure through feminization” (796). Indeed, in one of the novel’s final scenes, Scout is standing on the Radley porch, trying to look at things from Boo’s point of view, and her imagination lends a distinctive maternal air to her

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interpretation of Boo’s feelings: she imagines him observing Jem and her, ending with “[s]ummer, and he watched his children’s heart break. Autumn again, and Boo’s children needed him” (Lee, 285). One could argue that this is merely Scout dreaming up a mother figure, since her own mother is dead, but as Hakala makes abundantly clear, Scout has a number of other maternal figures in her life. Furthermore, as Lemaster points out, Boo is “feminized” in other ways. She includes his “domestic seclusion, physical and emotional fragility, and tactile skills” as examples (797). Hakala goes one step further, arguing that Boo attacking his father with a pair of scissors – “a female instrument” – connects him to the trope of the mad woman in the attic (66). Departing from Kathryn Lee Seidel, she both claims that Boo is Scout’s double – a projection of her fears of being an outsider for transgressing boundaries – and that he is locked inside to void his threat to patriarchal power (Hakala, 67). By reversing gender in a play on a well-known literary character type, Lee clears the road for gender deviation that does not need to be turned around, like the earlier fate of the tomboy was wont to be. Furthermore, one crucial scene shows Lee’s understanding of what Butler calls performativity. The scene features Scout assisting Aunt Alexandra, who is hosting a missionary circle. Scout is wearing a dress for the occasion. When asked where her “britches” are, Scout answers that she is wearing them under her dress (Lee, 236). Although she does give herself away, Scout realizes that she can perform femininity, but that it is easier to do so with the comfort of her “britches” still on. Even more revealing are Scout’s musings about the ladies’ appearance. She notices that they “were heavily powdered, but unrouged; the only lipstick in the room was Tangee Natural. Cutex Natural sparkled on their finger-nails, but some of the younger ladies wore Rose” (Lee, 235). Apparently, the lack of rouge and the colorless nail polish and lipstick are meant to convey the naturalness of

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female beauty and to hide “the artificiality of femininity,” because more ostentatious makeup would reveal it (Richards, 125). Richards points out, however, that this neutral make-up assists “women in their efforts to perpetuate the illusion of an inherent femininity” (125). As they try to “disguise the feminization of their bodies, Lee exposes their attempts to conceal the genesis of gender” (Richards, 125). As Butler has explained, gender is always performed, and is therefore artificial. However, Butler adds that in order to prevent the artificiality of gender being exposed, it needs to maintain the illusion of naturalness (in Richards, 125). By choosing only natural shades of make-up, the ladies of Maycomb seem to make clear that they realize that their femininity is a performance. This, however, causes the implied logical basis of Alexandra’s and others’ demands for Scout’s femininity – that she expresses the natural gender with which she is born – [to crumble], since readers now see the full complicity of these women in their tacit agreements to mystify the immediate cultural origins of femininity (Richards, 125). Furthermore, the few women who did choose to wear “Rose” nail polish “draw attention to the false naturalness of the other women’s bodies, whose nails sparkle as brilliantly as those painted Rose” (Richards, 127). Not only does Lee, thus, put greater emphasis on the artificiality of gender than Alcott, she also bypasses the idea that gender deviation eventually needed to end in order for a person to fit into society, a notion Alcott shares with Wilder. Miss Maudie, who “undercuts the constancy with which the rest of the missionary circle express their femininity” (Richards, 134) proudly displays gender bending behavior, but is nevertheless a well-functioning adult, accepted by her community – although we do need to keep in mind that she is not married. Maudie “has constructed a public identity contingent upon adroit

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manipulations” of normative gender performances (Richards, 132). She is, thus, seemingly positioned as a model for Scout to imitate. While Scout does, at one point, tell the ladies present during the Missionary Circle that she wants to be “just a lady” when she grows up (Lee, 236), Hakala rightfully points out that an earlier dialogue probably identified Scout’s true feelings (53). When her uncle asks her if she wants “to grow up to be a lady,” she answers “not particularly” (Lee, 85). This is more in tune with Scout’s characterization until the very end of the novel. Instead, when she told those women she wanted to be a lady, she was implementing Miss Maudie’s lesson that you can get away with deviating behavior if you agree to keep up appearances at opportune moments. Therefore I wholeheartedly agree with Hakala when she states that “Scout does not accept femininity; she merely learns to tolerate it” (53). She learns to juggle transgressions she can get away with while still adhering to some of her community’s expectations. All of this shows Lee’s awareness of the performative nature of gender. What we have not considered yet, is how society relates to all of this. As we have seen, Alcott could not be as progressive as she wanted in Little Women because of the community surrounding her. Lee, however, did not suffer the same fate. As we have seen, tomboy novels typically end with a “cop-out,” a sudden change that causes the tomboy to give up her tomboyish ways and become a proper lady. In Little Women, this “cop-out” is Jo’s marriage, in the Little House books we have marriage, in addition to Mary’s blindness, pushing Laura towards responsibility. Abate adds that when the heroine is not old enough to get married, she typically has to endure a “life-threatening illness or injury,” literally restricting her former freedom (in Hakala, 21). Scout however “refuses to be tamed” (Hakala, 21). Even though the reader has no possible way of knowing how Scout will evolve after the novel’s ending, there are no suggestions that she does change. As Hakala points out, adult Scout, who narrates the

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story, “never reveals if she dates, marries, has children, obtains a career, or becomes a 1950s housewife” (22). Despite the fact that some people assume she “becomes a conventional woman,” she “remains the same tomboy,” and does this “from the first page of the novel to the last page” (Hakala, 22). Furthermore, Hakala argues that “[a]fter encountering feminine conventions, [Scout] remains unsatisfied, and she makes a conscious decision to retain her gender-bending traits” (22). So, despite the fact that Scout has not gone through adolescence by the end of the novel, which makes it impossible to predict who she will be as an adult, this in itself is significant. It leaves the reader free to assume that she will remain a tomboy forever, something that was apparently not possible in earlier fiction. Supporting the theory that progress towards acceptance of norm defying behavior has been made in the year since the publication of the Little House books is Aunt Alexandra’s behavior at the end of the novel. Originally the fiercest advocate of Scout’s conversion into a lady, she hands Scout her overalls, “the garments she most despised,” after Scout and Jem have been attacked (Lee, 270). To me, this signifies her acceptance of Scout’s gender transgression, underscoring that attitudes can change and are changing. The Tomboy as a literary type Considering that we have now looked at three novels in which the tomboy trope is of considerable importance, we should revisit the origins of this character type both in literature and in society. The etymology of the word itself deserves some attention. Where did it come from? When did it emerge? We find answers in Michelle Ann Abate’s book on the subject. She tells us that the term emerged in the sixteenth century; with a different meaning however (Tomboys, xiii). It used to refer to boys rather than girls, “rowdy gentlemen courtiers,” to be specific (Tomboys, xiii). Towards the end of the century the

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meaning of the word shifted to the opposite gender, now used for “boisterous girls”; shortly thereafter, however, the word acquired a more negative connotation of boldness and immodesty (Tomboys, xiii). As the sixteenth century gave way to the seventeenth, the word took on its contemporary meaning of a wild, boyish girl (Abate, Tomboys, xiii). This was all in England, however. In the United States, although tomboys “certainly existed,” the phenomenon did not become “prevalent” until almost three centuries later (Tomboys, xiv). As Abate explains, “[t]he term, along with its underlying premise that physically active women constituted their own category, is simply absent in writings from early America” (xiv). When the term eventually did emerge in the mid-nineteenth century, it was as “a product of growing concerns over the deplorable state of health among middle-and upperclass white women” (Tomboys, xv). It was believed that girls with an active lifestyle would become stronger and healthier women (O’Brien in Hakala, 14). As the tomboy became a better-known literary type, the meaning of the word became more complex. As becomes quite obvious when studying three very different novels, “different historical eras, […] different geographical regions, […] different racial or ethnic groups, […] different socio-economic classes” all make for different types of tomboys (Abate, Tomboys, xvi). We need to keep in mind what exactly made up the environment of a girl before we can classify her as a tomboy. As Abate points out, “wearing bloomers may have been the epitome of tomboyish daring during the nineteenth century, but that is no longer the case today” (xvi). Other examples she cites include working outside the home, or helping out on the farm (xvi). For some girls, this would be deviant behavior, and hence tomboyish, for others it was part of a daily reality. Hakala, for instance, points out that Scout’s dirtiness is only seen as tomboyish because of her middle-class background; “she can choose to be unclean,” and therefore uncleanliness is indicative of deviation (19). Mayella

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Ewell, for example, the girl Tom Robinson is accused of raping, may be dirty as well, but because she is of much lower class, this is not interpreted as deviant; it is merely a consequence of her economic circumstances (Hakala, 19). However, Abate does provide a list of characteristics most tomboys share: “a proclivity for outdoor play (especially athletics), a feisty independent spirit, and a tendency to don masculine clothing and adopt a boyish nickname” (xvi). Our three tomboys, Jo, Laura and Scout fit these criteria quite well. All three of them love outdoor play, which gives them the opportunity to engage in behavior they would never exhibit indoors. Laura for example “ran back and forth, waving her sun-bonnet and yelling, ‘Hi! Yi-yi-yi!’” until she is interrupted by her mother: “[i]t was not ladylike to yell like that. Laura wished she could be a cowboy” (Prairie, 105). Similarly, Jo, who wishes she were a horse, for then she “could run for miles,” engages in a race with Laurie, but attempts to fix her appearance when her sister Meg catches her (Alcott, 171). The outdoors allows our tomboys a reprieve from society’s demands, but their fun ends when ‘feminizing forces’ appear. Although none of the girls engage in organized athletics we can assume that there were no opportunities for them to do so – Jo and Laura being born too early, and Scout being too young. Laura never wore boys’ clothes, and neither did she have a boyish nickname, but that was presumably unconceivable for someone in her circumstances; furthermore she does at some point express a desire to be a boy, precisely because of the clothes boys get to wear: When Mr and Mrs Huleatt came, they brought Eva and Clarence with them. Eva was a pretty little girl […]. She played carefully and kept her dress clean and smooth. Mary liked that, but Laura liked better to play with Clarence. […] He wore a blue suit buttoned all the way up the front with bright gilt buttons, and trimmed with braid,

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and he had copper-toed shoes. The strips of copper were so glittering bright that Laura wished she were a boy. Little girls didn’t wear copper-toes (Woods, 102). As we have seen, gender can be connected to other things, such as race in the Little House books and social class in Little Women. In To Kill A Mockingbird this happens too. The concept of gender is connected to that of class. As Hakala points out, Mrs. Dubose, one of the Finch’s neighbors, tells Scout that she will end up as a waitress if she does not change her tomboyish ways (16). Not only does this express Mrs. Dubose’s – and, by extension, most of Maycomb’s – disdain of gender deviation, it also connects that deviation to consequences that have nothing to with gender, but with socio-economic class. Just like in the Little House books, we see that people resort to more familiar categories they consider as foreign – whether it be Indians or lower class people – because they cannot comprehend, or refuse to deal with gender deviation. We can now once again turn to our tomboys, Jo, Laura and Scout. Using Abate’s criteria (see higher), we can account for most of the differences between them. First of all, we are dealing with a time gap of almost a century. However, Little Women turned out to allow more gender deviation than the Little House books, despite being written a lot earlier. Thus, other factors are evidently in play. One of them is the geographical setting of the novels. Although all three novels obviously take place in the United States, the protagonists live in very different areas of the country. We looked at one novel set in the North East, one on the Frontier, and one in the deep South. Claudia Mills, for instance, points out that disobedience – a feature we might associate with tomboyism – was not really an option for Laura Ingalls, who lived on the frontier, “because of the terrible and life-threatening consequences that could result from [it]” (130). Hakala too, emphasizes the importance of

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one’s environment – both geographical and socio-economic – deciding, that in To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout is not only determined by her upbringing in the South, but also by her middle-class status (18). As we have discussed, this is important for Little Women’s Jo as well. Where she is concerned we also need to consider her progressive – most abolitionists were northerners – environment. These factors are especially elucidating when comparing Jo March and Laura Ingalls, whose childhoods coincide quite closely time-wise, and who share a lot of other characteristics. They are both the second oldest daughter in a family of four girls. They are both the “dark” sister of the family. Furthermore, they both especially care about the third daughter in the family, Beth and Carrie respectively, who are physically frail. Another interesting parallel between Laura and Jo is that they both have a blonde sister whom they have a complex relationship with, namely Mary and Amy. Although Mary is Laura’s older sister, and Amy is Jo’s youngest sister, their relationships are strikingly similar, especially in the second half of Little Women, when Amy and Jo are both adults, and the age difference becomes mostly irrelevant. While contrasting the blonde and brunette sisters of a family is apparently a well-known device – as we have established when discussing Wilder’s work, the tomboy was usually the darker(-haired) sister, for whiteness is associated with “civility, decorum, and self-control, and blackness with rudeness [and] wildness” (Abate, “TopsyTurvy,” 62) – , Wilder and Alcott treat their blondes differently. Both blondes are, as follows from the above, obviously much more “feminine” than brown-haired Laura and Jo. Whereas Mary mostly shows this through her love for domestic activities such as sewing, Amy shows it through her vanity and interest in appearances and clothes. This is an important difference between Amy and Mary and the way their respective authors treat them. While Mary’s domesticity is applauded by her parents, Amy’s mother frequently reprimands her. Mary’s

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saintliness becomes even more exaggerated once she is blinded, while Amy’s behavior – in the first half of the novel – gets ever worse, culminating in her destruction of a collection of fairy tales Jo wrote. Although Amy redeems herself throughout the second half of the novel, it is interesting to note that, while Mary could do no wrong in Wilder’s work, Amy’s characterization is entirely more problematic. It is furthermore interesting to keep in mind that both Jo and Laura have a relationship with their blonde sister that is not easily defined, for they seem to perpetually linger between disapproval and envy. Jo and Laura share a disdain of “affected niminy piminy chits” (Alcott, 13). However, when they get in trouble because of their less than perfectly clean appearance, they seem repentant or jealous. In fact, Little House in the Big Woods and Little Women share a scene that is strikingly, albeit somewhat ironically, similar (as Jo is a grown woman when the incident occurs, while Laura is a mere five years old). First consider this sequence from Little Women: After a visit with acquaintances , Jo, who has “sat on the grass with […] a dirty-footed dog reposing on the skirt of her state and festival dress,” remarks to Amy, “’[w]hat a good girl you are, Amy,’ […] with a repentant glance from her own damaged costume to that of her sister, which was fresh and spotless still” (Alcott, 321, 323). Then consider this scene from Big Woods: Pa laughed at her for being such a greedy little girl […]. Nothing like that ever happened to Mary. Mary was a good little girl who always kept her dress clean and neat and minded her manners.[…] Mary looked very good and sweet, unrumpled [sic] and clean, sitting on the board beside Laura. Laura did not think it was fair (99). Although Jo and Laura, no matter the age difference, both enjoy playing ‘wildly,’ without having to worry about their appearance, they do feel regret when they are confronted with

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the image of their clean, proper sister. The similar desire to fit in, and to conform to society’s expectations which unfortunately does not concur with the girls’ own dispositions, is striking, and heartwarming. To Kill A Mockingbird’s Scout, on the other hand, does not seem to share the same struggle. She does not altogether seem to care what others think of her, adhering to her boys’ overalls throughout the novel, only putting on a dress when an adult outright demands it. This difference, also evident in other aspects, such as the ultimate ‘reform’ of both Jo and Laura might suggest that Little Women and the Little House books share a closer connection, than either of those with To Kill A Mockingbird, but I would like to argue that it is instead the Little House series that is the outsider. As explained during the discussion of Little Women, Alcott’s hands were mostly tied. She could not be as progressive in her works as she wanted to be, causing Jo’s behavior to be a lot less deviant than Scout’s, but we can assume that Alcott would have made her more tomboyish if she would have had the chance. Furthermore, and most importantly, Alcott and Lee share an insight into the performative nature of gender, as explained later by Judith Butler, that is entirely missing from Wilder’s work. As we have made clear, both Little Women and To Kill A Mockingbird feature scenes in which the author’s understanding of gender is made evident from the way the characters explicitly perform their gender, whether it is Jo imitating ‘girly girls’ she knew, or the women of Maycomb wearing neutral shades of make-up to maintain the illusion of inherent femininity, both authors quite obviously understand that gender cannot unilaterally be connected to sex, or vice versa. Wilder, on the other hand, in her efforts to exalt a former America, ended up painting a more conservative portrait of girls and women than she had perhaps originally intended. In her efforts to glorify self-reliant male farmers, women’s

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independence fell by the wayside, and her fictional self had to undergo the same process of feminization she had to endure several decades earlier. Regardless of this issue, by having chosen three different novels, set across the United States in three very different areas, we have also uncovered three very different tomboys, leading to the conclusion that ‘tomboy’ is not a “monolithic phenomenon,” as is commonly assumed (Abate, Tomboy, xii). Notwithstanding an author’s personal understanding of gender and gender norms, ‘tomboy’ is an “unstable and dynamic [term], changing with the political, social, and economic events of its historical era” (Abate, Tomboy, xii). We should therefore always consider said circumstances before drawing any conclusions from a given author’s understanding of tomboyism.

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Race Huckleberry Finn Although Huckleberry Finn is largely regarded as one of America’s earliest and most important racially progressive works, the issue of race in the novel is actually quite complex when we consider it more closely. Huck reveals himself to be very ambiguous in his attitudes not only towards African Americans but also towards slavery as an institution. Although he does not particularly question the system whereby human beings are treated and considered as no more than other human beings’ property, he does not want to betray or abandon Jim, a slave. Rationally he may not object to slavery, but emotionally he gets attached to one slave in particular, Jim, leading him to feel sympathetic enough towards him not to sell him.

Laura Ingalls wanted to be an Indian in order to escape the restrictions that came with being a white girl in nineteenth-century America. Huckleberry Finn too experiences society as a too constrictive force he would like to escape from. Jeff Abernathy argues that Huck “uses Jim as a springboard for his own escape” (22). Although Huck does not explicitly, or even consciously desire to be black, it is white society he hates, as illustrated most clearly in his disgust after the Grangerford episode. Abernathy goes as far as claiming that “[t]hroughout much of the novel, Jim continues to serve as a silent mediator of the deep conflicts Huck feels in the presence of white society” (20). It is on the raft that Huck feels most at home. When he is “cut off from society,” he is also “linked closely to Jim” (Abernathy, 23-24). Abernathy claims that Huck “accepts a marginalized identity on the river, for

there

as

nowhere

else

it

will

remain

unchallenged”

(24).

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Arguably two of the most crucial scenes in the novel are the moments Huck debates with himself whether, in the first case, helping Jim escape and, the second time, trying to free him once the Duke and King have sold him is right or wrong. Huck is struggling with his conscience. He feels guilty towards Miss Watson, for not returning “her nigger” to her: ‘What did that poor old woman do to you, that you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be so good to you every way she knowed how. That’s what she done.’ I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead (Twain, 100). He feels even worse, when according to him, Jim acts very inappropriately: “Here was this nigger […] coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children – children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm. I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him” (101). At this point it seems as though Huck’s respect for slavery is still stronger than his love for Jim. Twain, however, presumably meant for this passage to unsettle the reader; its explicitness is probably meant more to draw attention than anything else. In any case, this first time Huck’s internal debate becomes a non-issue when it turns out they missed Cairo, and are now heading farther south. The second time, Huck considers warning Miss Watson, because he feels Jim would be better off being a slave “at home where his family was” than with strangers, but he decides against it. He thinks Miss Watson will be “mad and disgusted at [Jim’s] rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again” (Twain, 226). Huck is not entirely selfless here though, because he also considers what people would think of him: “[i]t would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d be ready to get down and lick his

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boots for shame” (Twain, 226). He feels so troubled that he does write the letter to Miss Watson, and afterwards he feels “good and all washed clean of sin for the first time” (Twain, 227). Soon after, however, he changes his mind, for when he reflects on what he and Jim have gone through together and how good Jim has been to him, he cannot go through with it, and this is when he decides: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (Twain, 228). Jonathan Arac points out why this scene is considered so crucial, and how this contributes to Huck Finn’s heroic status. He argues that Twain could have had Huck draw on two “languages” to help him come to the insight that he wants to save Jim (in Bérubé, 696). Firstly, he could have used Christian love, which is eliminated from the book early on, when Huck escapes Miss Watson (Arac in Bérubé, 696). Secondly, he could have used the language of the Fourth of July, Arac asserts; for reflecting on the founding values of the Republic as described in the Declaration of Independence – traditionally recited on this day – would have been quite awkward for slaveholders (Arac in Bérubé, 696). This leads Arac to conclude “that Twain deliberately refrained from allowing Huck access to the alternative discourses that might have helped him to conceive of Jim as a human fully entitled to human rights” (Bérubé, 696). Whether or not this was a conscious decision on Twain’s part is perhaps not terribly relevant, but the effect on the - “liberal white” American – reader is nevertheless important. Huck comes to the morally good decision to help Jim seemingly unaided, and this is what makes him so appealing (Bérubé, 697). White Americans would love to believe that [their] innate goodness, or [their] obvious capacity for enlightenment, would have led [them] to do the right thing had [they] been born in 1830; and the less help Huck gets, the better his decision looks to [them], because it looks more plausibly as if it could have been [theirs] as well (Bérubé, 697).

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That is why it stings when African Americans “challenge this view”; it challenges white Americans where they feel themselves “most intimately virtuous” (Arac qtd. in Bérubé, 695). This seems to suggest that an important reason Huckleberry Finn is so loved is the pleasant feeling it gives white Americans, even though it is often praised for its racial progressiveness. Even if it is not the novel’s sole merit, this does shine a different light on it. This is made worse when we consider the novel’s ending. Huck may decide he is willing to go to hell for Jim, but he ultimately “fails to take up residence there” (Abernathy, 105), because it is eventually revealed that Jim was a free man all along. According to Abernathy, Huck does journey to hell, and on his way there, he gains insight into himself and into his racial other, but, ultimately, Huck sacrifices these insights for a return to white community once Tom Sawyer reappears, seemingly out of nowhere (in Entzminger, 202). Although Abernathy claims that the Territory Huck wants to go to at the end of the novel represents the hell he has resigned himself to (in Entzminger, 202), I tend to agree with other critics that Huck’s treatment of Jim in the novel’s final chapters contradicts his earlier behavior. In fact, the lack of evolution Huck goes through is somewhat problematic. Although Huck seems to be maturing as the story progresses, the novel, “having moved from makebelieve into a serious world where Huck wrestles agonizingly with important social and moral issues, is betrayed by the return to buffoonery and grotesque farce” (Marx in Simpson, 5). Marx argues that with Tom’s re-entrance into the storyline, “the integrity of Huck’s character is violated, and all of his growth during the novel is ignored as he lapses back into an older role” (in Simpson, 5). When Huck goes along with Tom’s unnecessarily elaborate plan to free Jim – which is essentially an acting out of a childish fantasy – Huck puts Jim into danger, thereby going against his own evolution towards protectiveness over

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Jim. Kay Puttock argues that although this section is supposed to be satirical, it “seems to trivialize the seriousness of Jim’s quest for freedom,” so important earlier in the book (81). She adds that it “also trivializes the relationship between Jim and Huck developed throughout the novel” (81). As said, it severely undermines Huck’s sacrifice of going to hell. Lastly, Puttock argues that “the complex character of Jim as he has gradually emerged throughout the narrative seems here to disappear again behind the stereotyped mask of the perennially good-natured, all-suffering Negro, the constant butt of stupid jokes” (81). It is true that Jim hardly puts up any resistance to any of Tom’s idiotic plans, making him seem as though he had no mind of his own, contradicting his earlier more fully developed humanity. Christopher Windolph states that “Jim’s human identity, so tenderly introduced in opening passages, disappears […]. He moves from being a father seeking freedom to being a compliant and docile slave” (91). This compromises Huckleberry Finn’s status as “a talisman of racially progressive thought and action” (Arac qtd. in Bérubé, 695). It also compromises Huck’s moral growth. This is not what happens in the girls’ books. Scout, who, like Huck, is still a child when the novel ends, has learned many moral lessons, the most important of which is to understand things from other people’s point of view – something we will elaborate on. It seems as though Huck has failed to learn precisely that lesson. Although he did initially show progress in his ability for empathy, he is easily lured back into carelessness by Tom. This could even lead to the conclusion – one drawn by Forrest G. Robinson – that Huck is in fact racist, and this from beginning to end (in Puttock, 81). He claims that Huck makes a sole exception in the case of Jim (in Puttock, 81). Huck persists in his belief of white superiority. His acceptation of Jim stems from his notion that Jim “was white inside” (Twain, 290). It seems as though, through getting to know Jim, Huck has embraced the idea that Jim is an exception, not that all African Americans are as human

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as white people. Windolph agrees, arguing that Huck’s “identity and sense of racial superiority remain intact and impede any assertion of Jim’s equality” (91). Robinson refers, for example, to the scene in which Jim calls Huck “trash” and gets Huck to apologize for his behavior. Although this is an act which seemingly puts Jim on the level of Huck, order is “restored” a few pages later, when Jim calls Huck a “white genlman” (in Puttock, 81). This way, the status quo is always maintained. Rampersad argues that Jim is exalted “– just beyond the level of a white boy – but finally cannot […] remain exalted. Jim then becomes little more than a plaything, like a great stuffed bear, for the white boys over whom he once stood morally” (qtd. in Abernathy, 22). This is entirely problematic. Not only does Huck forget about his willingness to go to hell for Jim, Jim loses his identity and free will towards the end of the book. Furthermore, “[t]he quintessential black journey of the period – the escape from slavery – loses its narrative power as Huck’s story trumps Jim’s and he begins his journey back to a white world” (Abernathy, 36). Stephanie Le Menager adds that Tom paying Jim for having put up with his antics “is one of the many dull notes in the novel's anticlimactic, unsatisfactory conclusion. Jim's worth, in every sense of that word, was greater to the novel while he was a slave” (421). Critics regard Tom Sawyer as Jim’s direct opposite. Abernathy argues that “Jim literally and figuratively separates Huck from his companion Tom,” and by separating Huck from Tom he “forces him outside […] society” (26). He claims that “Huck will ever be moving between a white world best represented by the duplicitous Tom and a black one represented by Jim” (Abernathy, 26). Indeed, both Huck and Jim flee white society. Although Abernathy optimistically argues that Huck “finds in his relationship with Jim more solace and

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relief than he has found elsewhere in the world,” and that “[i]n the course of their experiences together, Huck casts off his essentialized view of his companion and […] comes to see Jim’s emotional capacity,” he relents that Huck eventually “once again views Jim through the essentializing racial stereotypes of the southern society that neither of them can finally escape. By the end, that is, Huck has returned Jim to the stereotyped position from which he so lately rescued him” (21). This is, according to me, the central conflict of the novel. Although Huck has his redeeming qualities, and although we can probably attribute his acceptance of racism and slavery to the society in which he grows up, it remains unclear why he recesses, or why he allows Tom to cause him to recess to a more backward behavior system.

Abernathy explains that, while “Huck’s emergent sense of Jim’s humanity is linked to his determined struggle with his own identity,” his identity always changes when he is away from Jim and this foreshadows that Huck “will ultimately cast off whatever development he experiences through his relationship with Jim once they return to society, as of course they must” (Abernathy, 23-24). Even though “Huck moves toward an awareness of the place of otherness within his identity,” he “ultimately comes to reject” this awareness and Abernathy attributes this rejection to “failures of moral will” and to “his specific inability to maintain the courage of his intuitions in the presence of Tom Sawyer” (20). Huck is not strong enough to overcome what society tells him, and what he intuitively knows to be wrong; therefore he ends the novel where he began it: he runs away from society. Only this time, he does not take Jim with him as he did before; “if Huck cannot bear society, neither can he bear Jim” (Abernathy, 21).

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What we need to keep in mind, however, is precisely the society Huck grew up in. He has been taught that slavery is normal and that slaves are property. Therefore, we must acknowledge, no matter how twisted this is, Huck’s bravery in not betraying Jim. As Bernard Prusak points out, Huck “considers himself guilty of wrongdoing and sin, an outlaw destined for damnation” (14). It takes courage for a boy as young as him to make a conscious decision to defy what you have been taught is right, and to give up on Heaven, a concept he probably believes in, as he believes in Hell. So despite the fact that we cringe when Huck says things like “[i]t was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger,” we should still recognize that he does do it, despite it going against what he has always thought was natural, and we have to cheer when he follows up with: “but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way” (Twain, 98). His bravery, however, is complicated once more when we consider what enables him to go through with it. Huck feels as though he is able to defend Jim because he is inherently bad: “I knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn’t no use for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don’t get started right when he’s little, ain’t got no show” (Twain, 103). That is also why he does not comprehend why Tom Sawyer would go along with his plan to free Jim, for [h]ere was a boy that was respectable, and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and leather-headed; and knowing, and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody (Twain, 247-248).

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The bitter irony, of course, is that Huck is right. Tom would probably not go along with his plan if it were not for the fact that he knows Jim is a free man. However, he never tells Huck, and we are left to wonder how he feels about his friend’s “low-down” plan (Twain, 240). Once again it all comes down to the ending of the novel. Huck is so easily convinced to go along with Tom’s plan because it was “worth fifteen of [his], for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as [his] would, and maybe get [them] all killed besides. So [he] was satisfied, and said [they] would waltz in on it” (Twain, 247). Huck assumes Tom is more intelligent than him, and that he should therefore go along with whatever he wants to do. This denies his moral growth. As we alluded to earlier, Jim experiences a similar regression: “Jim he couldn’t see no sense in the most of [the escape plan], but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as Tom said” (Twain, 262). Not only does this statement reveal that Jim, who dared stand up to Huck earlier on, has become docile once more, but it also reveals that Huck still thinks of himself as superior. So what do we ultimately take away from Huckleberry Finn? Is Huck an example of moral goodness or is his racism despicable? What prevails for me, is the fact that he does learn to care for Jim, love him even, and if he reverts back to a more conservative thought system once he is confronted with white society again, that reveals more about that society than about Huck Finn. We should not forget the widespread acceptance of slavery that characterizes the era of the novel. Publishing this novel some years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation provided Twain the advantage of hindsight. In Huckleberry Finn he demonstrates that one boy’s love is no match for an institution so widely condoned.

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To Kill A Mockingbird Much like Huckleberry Finn Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird has been praised for its progressive treatment of racial issues. The timeframe, however, is entirely different. By 1960, the year of publication, the Civil Rights Movement was well under way. Soon enough Congress would start passing laws that would end legal discrimination. In fact, an important first step was taken with Brown v. the Board of Education in 1954, around the time Lee first started writing what eventually would become To Kill A Mockingbird, which took several years to finish, as Lee originally intended to publish a series of short stories on her childhood (Murray, 76). So, To Kill A Mockingbird managed to rise to fame in an era where race and racism were paramount issues, an era where legal equality was finally within reach. However, the protagonists of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird show remarkable similarities – “Huck’s racism mirrors Scout’s,” for they “both carry the languages of their environmental contexts and thus have limited means for understanding” (Blackford qtd. in Dillon, 301) what exactly “the consequences of the racial divide in their communities” are (Dillon, 301). While Scout “emulates Huck’s sense of disproportion, the older narrator’s commentary [is used] to make explicit what the implied author behind Huck leaves unstated”(Blackford qtd. in Dillon, 301). This makes it slightly easier for us to digest the brasher comments. As we have established, Huck was not exactly an enlightened abolitionist. Scout, who is – we need to keep in mind – a lot younger still than Huck, is equally defined by the society she grows up in. Although she ultimately learns compassion, this learning process is largely what defines the novel.

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Two important storylines are intertwined, namely that of Boo Radley and that of Tom Robinson. As Scout (and Jem’s) prejudice towards Boo gives way to comprehension and compassion, they gain an understanding of issues of prejudice on a much larger scale, segregation and racism. Initially, Scout and Jem are fascinated with their neighbor Boo Radley, who is a recluse. Because they never see him, their imagination runs wild and they invent all sort of characteristics for him. Although their intent is never truly malicious, they are definitely judgmental towards someone who is different. Furthermore, they accept their neighbors’ gossip about Boo. They do not question the negativity surrounding Boo. Consider Jem’s “reasonable” description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that’s why his hands were blood-stained […] There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time (Lee, 19). Despite the ludicrousness of this description, and despite the fact that they are intelligent enough to know better, the children accept it. What is more, they spend their days trying to lure Boo out of his house, effectively harassing him. They are just as eager to judge difference or the unknown as the rest of their small-minded Southern town. Then the Tom Robinson trial happens. Scout finds out when a boy in school makes fun of her because her “daddy defended niggers” (Lee, 80). Scout asks her father: “’Do you defend niggers, Atticus?’ […] ‘Of course I do. Don’t say nigger, Scout. That’s common.’ ‘‘s what everybody at school says.’ ‘From now on it’ll be everybody less one – ‘” (Lee, 81). Scout, having grown up in a community where the word nigger is freely used does not see why she should not say it. She is only seven years old at this time, but although we can

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hardly blame her for being influenced by those around her, she clearly does not question racism. When her father tells her to stop saying it, she is reluctant, because it will make it harder for her to fit in. It is furthermore interesting that Atticus tells her not to say “nigger,” because it is common, not because it is degrading. There are other instances in which Scout reveals herself less than aware of her inherent racism. Her description of certain black people smacks of animal imagery, as does the description of Tom Robinson: ‘Tom was a black-velvet Negro, not shiny, but soft black velvet. The whites of his eyes shone in his face, and when he spoke we saw flashes of his teeth. If he had been whole, he would have been a fine specimen of a man.’ Regardless of the health and implicit quality of the ‘specimens’ under study, the description focuses on difference in such a way that the physical is implicitly seen through the lens of evaluation of the workhorse, judging its worth through its skin and teeth (Murray, 86). As things progress, however, Scout develops. For example, she becomes more interested in Calpurnia’s – the family’s black help – background, asking her father if she can visit her. Once Tom Robinson’s trial draws closer, and he is in the town jail, she, albeit unwittingly, stops a crowd of locals from lynching him. Nevertheless, during the process, when Scout has to go outside with Dill, who is overcome with emotion, she struggles to see why he is so upset, “Well Dill, after all, he’s just a negro,” she tells him (Lee, 205). Her community’s way of thinking is still embedded in her, although she has apparently learned not to call Tom a nigger. Despite these lingering racist thoughts, Scout does eventually realize he is innocent, and once he is convicted, she is truly upset:

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What happened after that had a dreamlike quality: in a dream I saw the jury return, moving like underwater swimmers, […] I saw something only a lawyer’s child could be expected to see […]. A jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when this jury came in, not one of them looked at Tom Robinson. […] I shut my eyes (Lee, 217). She is still not as upset as Jem though, but he is older, and he truly believed Tom would be acquitted, while Scout never intimates this. Furthermore, Scout gets over her shock quite quickly; the very next day she claims that “things [are] always better in the morning” (Lee, 219). Although she has now gained the insight that people do unfair things, such as convicting an innocent man, out of racism, and although she learned to reject this, she is still not too deeply affected by the affair. Her understanding of just how gigantic the problem is, starts growing when Tom Robinson is shot by prison guards. When she hears the news, she “found [herself] shaking and couldn’t stop” (Lee, 243). As she listens to people like her father and Miss Maudie she begins to realize just how deeply racism affects black people, something she had not truly understood earlier. Things begin to sink in when she realizes her school teacher’s hypocrisy. The teacher denounces Hitler and his policies, yet she is “ugly about folks right at home” (Lee, 253), which confuses Scout greatly. Despite her young age she realizes something millions of Americans failed to do, namely that one cannot decry prejudice against one people, and allow segregationist policies in one’s own country at the same time. Scout’s most important lesson, “you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them” (Lee, 285), is finally driven home when Scout finally sees Boo. Darren Felty explains that while “Tom Robinson's trial teaches her about intolerance on a social level” it is “Scout's encounter with Boo Radley [that] makes Atticus's lessons about

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tolerance tangible and personal” (299). She has come to understand her error in trying to make him come out, and in assuming all sorts of things about him without knowing him. Furthermore, she realizes that he is innocent in the same way Tom Robinson was, like a mockingbird, harmless creatures who “don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird” Miss Maudie tells Scout (Lee, 96). Unlike Huckleberry Finn then, Scout does not revert back into her old ways. Although she is helped by her father, brother and a couple other inhabitants of Maycomb, this is still an important difference with Huckleberry Finn. Although Twain does a good job of portraying one’s boy’s gradual understanding that an African American – and a slave – is just as human as he is, he deconstructs this – be it consciously or unconsciously – when Huck is easily lured back into his previous way of thinking when Tom Sawyer appears out of nowhere, like a reverse deus-ex-machina. This does not happen in To Kill A Mockingbird.

This does not mean that Lee’s novel is flawless. There is in fact much to say of her portrayal of both the white and black characters in the book. Despite the fact that the book was published at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, a movement supported by many whites, there is little actual contact between the white characters and the black community. Scout, for example, has no close connections with any actual African Americans – like Huck did – except for Calpurnia, whose status is somewhat unclear. Jennifer Murray points out that although Atticus states that she is part of the family and although she has been with the children long enough for her to function as a substitute mother, she does not live with the Finch family and has children of her own; this leads her to question if Calpurnia is functions

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as “a hired worker” or as “one of the family” (84). And even if she truly is “family,” Murray argues, “slaves were considered to be part of the ‘family’ of their white masters,” and, more importantly, Scout, Jem, or even Atticus “are not part of ‘her family,’ they do not share in her world” (85). Also somewhat problematic is that we do not know “when her work day begins or ends or how much she is paid for her services” (Murray, 85). Elements such as these lead Murray to the conclusion that while

the text offers a progressive view on race relations through Scout's desire to be allowed into Calpurnia's life, opening up the possibility of fraternal socializing […], the novel remains unconsciously condescending in its liberal formulations of ‘family’ and bows to the racist ideology of the 1930s which persisted in the 1950s present of the remembering narrator (Murray, 86).

Jeff Abernathy agrees, calling Calpurnia a “black mammie” who is a “moral guide for Scout, but her guidance largely reaffirms the white social order within which she is employed”. Furthermore, he argues, “Calpurnia’s sense of propriety falls safely within the parameters of patriarchal white culture” (98).

Also flawed, critics have argued, is Lee’s mockingbird symbolism. While Boo Radley can in fact be seen as one who is “unjustly marginalized, excluded and imprisoned” (Murray, 87), and while this certainly holds true for Tom Robinson as well, Saney argues that it is suggested that “black people are useful and harmless creatures—akin to decorous pets— that should not be treated brutally” (qtd. in Murray, 87). While it is well-meant, this is quite unfortunate. Boo Radley may be too vulnerable to face his community, but by extending the imagery to Tom Robinson, and therefore, to the entire black community, the message may get skewed. Joseph Crespino argues that Calpurnia’s role is similar in the mad dog incident

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that occurs about halfway through the novel. Beginning his argument by stating that the mad dog stands for racism (17), he argues that “in Calpurnia, Lee recognizes the role African Americans played in exposing white racism” but while “Lee does not entirely deny African Americans a place in the destruction of Southern racism, in this scene their role is limited to that of warning the liberal white hero […]. As Finch bravely stops the mad dog in his tracks, Calpurnia watches on the porch with the children” (Crespino, 18). He adds that Heck Tate, the town’s sheriff, asking Atticus to shoot in his place represents “elected officials of the South […] who through fear, incompetence, or narrow-mindedness were unable to face down the mad dog of southern racism” (Crespino, 18). While this reasoning requires a willingness to go along with the mad dog as a metaphor for white racism, it does seem as though black people are once again – perhaps inadvertently – portrayed as vulnerable, or even incompetent. Atticus, on the other hand, is firmly presented as the – white – hero.

A closer look at Atticus, however, may problematize this heroic picture. Although the character, overall, deserves praise – Tim Dare calls Atticus’s voice one of “decency, wisdom, and reason, courageously speaking out against bigotry, ignorance, and prejudice” (129) –, he is not without flaw. Andrew Haggerty points out that Atticus “takes on Tom Robinson’s defense because he is told to by the court, not out of altruism,” adding that “[d]espite his best efforts he fails to free Tom Robinson. He had always known he would fail and hoped merely to win on appeal” (56). Even though he disapproves of racism, Atticus merely does his professional duty. He even admits that he had “hoped to get through life without a case of this kind” (Lee, 94). Although the Civil Rights Movement obviously had not yet begun in the 1930s, this attitude emanates a sort of unpleasant passivity. Although he personally is not racist, and although he deplores his peers’ racist ways, he is willing to accept them. He

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even calls Mrs. Dubose, who is staunchly racist, “the bravest person [he] ever knew” (Lee, 118). At another time he tells Scout to “remember [that] no matter how bitter things get, they’re [the racist people of Maycomb] still our friends and this is still our home” (Lee, 82). Atticus does not feel as though the fact that his friends and fellow Maycombers are racists should stand in the way of a good relationship with them. Although Atticus’s willingness and ability to consider other people’s points of views is certainly admirable – it is this strength that enables Scout’s development – he seems almost too willing to accept the racism prevalent in his community.

When they lose the trial, Atticus looks “as though nothing had happened: […] he was his impassive self again” (Lee, 218). Even though he does go and sit in front of the jail when he is warned Tom might get lynched, it is Scout who stops things from escalating. This causes Haggerty to conclude that it is not Atticus’s naïve moral argument “– even if he is not naïve enough to believe it will work – that an appeal to strictly legal values could end the injustices inherent to a society based upon racist principles” that is the novel’s moral argument (58). That is, he argues, a call “for reform that will replace the selfishness that undergirds racist assumptions with a sympathy that challenges them” (Haggerty, 58). Even though Scout is the protagonist, she lacks any power; therefore it is Atticus who serves as the novel’s hero. The fact that he fails to embody or carry out the book’s – paramount – moral message is slightly unsettling.

Michael Kreyling adds that Atticus’s feat, consisting of nothing more than managing to keep the jury out for a while

is grounds for an overwhelming number of readers of the novel to champion Atticus and bask in the good feeling that someday—but not now, and not at our expense—

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‘this’ will all be better. Mostly white readers indulge in this diversion, for what Atticus saves is a semblance of moral probity for the predominantly white community (72).

This is reminiscent of the way Huck Finn convinces white Americans of their own inherent goodness, of the belief that they would have come to the same conclusion. Although Miss Maudie believes that the community of Maycomb is “making a step – it’s just a baby-step, but it’s a step” (Lee, 222), nothing tangible has actually changed by the end of the novel.

Another element that has been perceived as problematic is the fact that, despite the novel’s progressivism, we are limited to “the narrow confines of white perception” (Abernathy, 99) – with the notable exception of the children sitting in the colored balcony during the trial, as Darren Felty has noted (300). Tom Robinson, in spite of his important role plot-wise, is not a real character. In fact, the only significant black character is Calpurnia, who is not only the family’s help – a stereotypical (albeit realistic) role, but also does not challenge white patriarchy. In fact, Maycomb’s entire black community is portrayed as docile, and reverent of the white citizens (Abernathy, 104). Not a single character questions the injustice done to them, and even though Atticus fails to get Tom acquitted, the entire black community is thankful and even rewards his work with gifts of food. Abernathy has even gone as far as saying that “blackness emerges as the catalyst for the moral growth of a white protagonist” (99). I however tend to think that this statement does not do enough justice to the Finch family’s – perhaps mostly Jem’s – sincere indignation and judgment of racism.

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So perhaps my earlier statement needs to be revised. Something has changed. It may not be tangible, but it has changed. Scout – and Jem too – has learned tolerance. They have learned to walk in somebody else’s shoes. It may not be much, but if every child could learn this, eventually racism would simply disappear. Felty asserts that “Atticus’s words and behavior” have made the older Scout, who narrates the story, “a compassionate yet not uncritical member of her community, both local and national” (300). This makes for a satisfactory straightforward ending. Such an ending is absent from Huckleberry Finn, which is perhaps more complex, but provides us with less hope. Furthermore, not too terribly long after Lee published her novel – which won a Pulitzer Prize – several laws were accepted to end legal discrimination, and eventually an era did come to a long overdue end.

Little House Unlike in Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird, the racial minority featured most prominently in the Little House series is that of Native Americans, or Indians, as Wilder consistently calls them. We should begin by pointing out that ‘prominently’ is a relative term. While both other novels’ plots are partly driven by the issue of race, this is not the case for the Little House books, except for Little House on the Prairie, so, one out of eight novels. In the seven other novels, either no Native Americans are featured, or they are mentioned only in passing.

Secondly, it is not easy to classify Wilder’s treatment of Native Americans. She paints a many-sided picture, complicated by the unclear difference between childish fears and genuine judgment. This becomes evident when we turn to scholarly work on the novel. While some critics appreciate her treatment of Indians, “pointing out that while she had

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imbibed a certain amount of the racism prevalent during both the period she described and the period when she wrote, she struck a balance between ‘good’ Indians and ‘bad’ Indians, showed both Indian haters and more tolerant settlers” (Kaye, 124). Others, however, such as Kaye herself, believe that even though “her thought was unremarkable, perhaps even progressive, for the time in which she lived and wrote [,this] should not exempt her books from sending up red flags for contemporary critics who believe in diversity, multiculturalism, and human rights” (Kaye, 123). She adds that “mixed-blood writers who identify with the Osages” have also been “less kind to Wilder’s portrayal of the Osages” (125).

When we start reading Little House on the Prairie, Laura is fascinated by the idea of going to live in “Indian country” (29) – the family travels from Wisconsin to Kansas Territory in a covered wagon – and she is particularly eager to see a papoose. Hamida Bosmajian alerts us to the importance of the image of the papoose. She argues that it is to Laura what the china shepherdess is to Ma, namely “a personal image that condenses [her] values” (53). According to her, Laura “hover[s] between the value of the open prairie and the values of the house,” and this is made apparent through her insistent fascination with the word papoose (Bosmajian, 53). Bosmajian insists that the term is to Laura “a magical and reverieprovoking word freed from what it defines,” and the word matters more than anything (57). Before any actual Native Americans are featured, the reader gets the impression that Indians are something exciting, something to look forward to, but this notion is immediately complicated. Laura wants Pa to show her a papoose, “just as he had shown her fawns, and little bears, and wolves” (Prairie, 35). In Laura’s mind animals and natives can be compared to each other (Smulders, 194): “Pa knew all about wild animals, so he must know about wild men, too” (Prairie, 35). So although our protagonist initially feels positive about the prospect

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of seeing Native Americans, she does not really think of them as people like her and her family. Other elements render this first observation even more problematic. Firstly, there is the attitude of Laura’s parents. Although Pa’s is more mixed, Ma clearly does not think highly of Native Americans, and is reluctant even to merely see them: “‘Whatever makes you want to see Indians? We will see enough of them. More than we want to, I wouldn’t wonder’” (Prairie, 28). This is somewhat strange, considering that Ma is “usually imperturbable” (Whitaker, 31). Ann Romines points out that Ma’s “intense, vocal rejection of Indians and Indian cultures” is her “one outlet for anger, resistance, and defense of the values of feminine domestic culture on the unsettled prairie” (69). This makes sense when we consider the fact that she left all of her family in Wisconsin and is now living an isolated life, all because of her husband, whom she cannot go against. We can, however, not expect of the young readers whom this book is aimed at to have that insight, and therefore Wilder’s description of her mother’s thinking is hard to condone. Furthermore, it is clear that Ma is afraid of boundary crossing. She insists her daughters wear their sun-bonnets – with their double purpose of “marginaliz[ing] the other by eliminating it from sight” and “prevent[ing] the wearer from becoming ‘other’” – because “looking like an Indian threatens to erase racial distinctions and so to erode, as superficial, the premises of white superiority” (Smulders, 194-95). Although Pa’s attitude towards Indians at first seems rather positive, he will eventually reveal himself as clinging to the belief in white superiority, just like his wife. Romines points out the importance of the scene in which he takes Laura and Mary to see an abandoned Indian camp. She argues that, even though “[u]ntil now the Ingalls family may

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have seemed endogamic and self-absorbed,” and even though Pa “may be imposing his models of Euro-American gender roles on the culture he observes,” the way he takes time to explain to his daughters how to read the traces the Native Americans left behind, shows that Pa deems “Native American life as worthy of respect and attentive reading, and he includes women and their traditional domestic work […] in his instructive text”(61- 62). However, as Romines explains, “[t]he problem of the Indian camp episode, of course, is that there are no Indian people in it. Instead, Pa and Mary and Laura become voyeurs, if not trespassers and looters, in a secluded, occluded cultural domain” (64). Furthermore, although Pa does not believe that “the only good Indian was a dead Indian” (Prairie, 188), he has no qualms about taking their land away from them. He explains to Laura: When white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on. The government is going to move these Indians farther west, any time now. That’s why we’re here, Laura. White people are going to settle all this country, and we get the best pick because we get here first and take our pick (Prairie, 147). This is hardly an enlightened attitude. In fact, Pa seems to be echoing the Manifest Destiny ideology still prevalent in the States around 1870. His attitudes towards Indians, then, can probably be best described as a basic level of respect, but mainly a desire to keep his family out of trouble by not provoking anyone. Smulders validates this idea by pointing out the importance of Pa’s following statement: "The main thing is to be on good terms with the Indians. We don't want to wake up some night with a band of the screeching dev—“ (Prairie, 92), leading her to the conclusion that a “basic intolerance tempers his attitude toward indigenous peoples in Little House on the Prairie” (196). But because his true way of thinking

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is obscured by some seemingly positive statements, “Pa’s racism [is] far more pernicious (because it is far less transparent) than that of Ma” (Smulders, 196). Secondly, Laura’s reaction once she is confronted with two Indians for the first time, is one of fear: “Laura was shivery; there was a queer feeling in her middle and the bones in her legs felt weak” (Prairie, 86). When the Indians enter the house, where Ma and baby Carrie are, Laura contemplates setting the dog, Jack, loose, for he would “kill them” (Prairie, 88). Although a reaction of fear to the unknown might be nothing but normal for a young child like Laura, it does very much contradict her earlier enthusiasm, and it might confuse young readers as to what they ought to think about the strangers entering Laura’s house. The desire to see the Indians killed, furthermore, seems to go beyond fear. However, although Charles Frey agrees that “[t]he attitudes of the Ingalls’ family toward the Indians might today be labeled racist in the extreme,” particularly when we consider some of the words Laura herself uses to describe the Indians she encounters, he points out that “to Laura, these are not ‘attitudes’; they are sensory perceptions” (127). This corroborates the complexity of what Wilder conveys here. The fact that Laura, and therefore the reader, does not know that the Natives see themselves as landlords of sorts is another complicating factor (Kaye, 133). As Natives own the land the Ingallses have settled on, it is their right to demand a form of rent, even though “the narrative leads the reader to feel that the Ingallses are in the right” (Kaye, 133). In this scene, Pa’s absence seems significant. Romines argues that “[b]y bringing actual Indian men into the world [of] women, […] powerful fears of violated boundaries” are evoked (65). It seems plausible that Laura, who is accustomed to her father as the head of the family, as the one who interprets and explains events for her, is so scared because he is

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not there. Indeed, the second time a Native comes to their house, Pa is there, and although “Laura and Mary were close together and quiet on their bed in the corner” (Prairie, 141), it is not stated that they are afraid. Nevertheless, Laura’s negative reactions to almost all of her interactions with Native Americans seriously strain Whitaker’s claim that in “American novels it is the children who provide the rational, compassionate attitudes and conciliatory acts” towards Native Americans (31). In fact, the visits that follow that first scary ‘intrusion,’ reinforce stereotypical thinking about Indians. As Smulders states, “Wilder nearly exhausts the catalogue of virtues and vices […] of the stereotyped Indian,” both the good one, who is “friendly, courteous, and hospitable to the […] invaders of his lands” and the bad one, who is “immodest in both dress and attitude, is promiscuous and improvident, treacherous and rapacious” (196). So, even though it is true that Laura, unlike her parents, “sees the injustice of moving Indians off their lands to make room for white farmers” (Whitaker, 31), the general attitude prevalent in the novel is hardly positive, and Kaye rightfully argues that “there seems to be no alternative to Pa’s edict that the Indians will have to leave” (133). Laura’s questions and more forward attitudes, thus, do not lead to anything. Susan Maher argues that “Laura tries to reconcile her parents' differing opinions. At times, she reacts like her mother, for the Indians can be […] frightening” (136). At other times, she shares her father’s interest in this other culture they are confronted with. However, Laura questions his opinions too: “’But, Pa, I thought this was Indian Territory. Won’t it make the Indians mad to have to – ‘ ‘No more questions, Laura,’ Pa said, firmly” (Prairie, 147). Laura’s “complex, uncomfortable questions probe both her parents' views; her parents, in turn, silence her” (Maher, 136).Throughout the series, Laura always looks up to her father; therefore his inability to give Laura a decent explanation is deeply troubling.

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There are however instances during which Laura identifies with the Native Americans. When a panther is on the loose in the area around their house, it is an Indian man who manages to kill it. Laura, in a way that reminds us of Scout Finch, asks her father “if a panther would carry off a little papoose and kill and eat her, too, and Pa said yes” (Prairie, 162). Understanding that Indian fathers want to protect their children, like Pa protects Laura and her sisters, she thinks to herself, “[p]robably that was why the Indian had killed that panther” (Prairie, 162). Furthermore, as Maher points out, when the family is kept awake at night because of a jamboree nearby, Laura “attempts to interpret the strange, choppy song […] [t]he wild ‘fierce yells of jubilation’ grip her, thrill her, as much as they menace her” (136). Identification melts into envy toward the end of the novel. As we have previously mentioned, Laura desires to be an Indian girl, because she sees racial otherness as a way of escaping gender limitations. Laura, however, knows better than to voice her desire out loud, for she is, despite her young age, already “sufficiently socialized to know that acculturation, adopting some of the behaviors of an Osage child, is very ‘naughty,’ something she must not ‘really mean’” (Romines, 77). Despite her fascination with border crossing, she knows better than to actually attempt it. Instead, when she finally sees a papoose, she is overcome by a desire to keep this little baby. In fact, “Laura never makes a larger claim than her demand for the Indian child” (Romines, 78). As Bosmajian points out, Laura is so overcome with her desire that she does not realize that the word she has been so fascinated with has finally “realized itself” (57). Even though “Laura’s demand for the baby may express an imperious, hegemonic sense of cultural entitlement by which the Indian child becomes an object of desire, a possession,” we could also argue that “the intense look that Laura exchanges with the baby […] suggests possibilities of a shared lifestyle” (Romines, 78). We may emphasize

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Laura’s possessiveness, but I would argue that it is indeed Laura’s desire to adopt part of another culture that is most prevalent here. Bosmajian, too, argues that the eye contact she shares with the baby “momentarily joins for Laura two horizons of experience: civilization will forever prevent her from riding naked on a pony […] because she cannot have the freedom, she wants to possess that which is destined to be free” (57). Towards the end of the novel, the Ingalls family seems genuinely afraid of the Indians, for they believe that they are planning to attack them. Suddenly, Ma’s attitude of “extreme suspicion and distaste” towards the Native Americans “seems justified” (Whitaker, 31). Night after night they are being kept awake by what they believe are Indian war cries. Originally Pa believes that the Natives “are getting ready for their big spring buffalo hunt […] [s]o it’s not likely they’ll start on the warpath against us” (Prairie, 177). However, the “Indian yells” become louder and more frequent, and “one night [the darkness] began to throb with Indian drums” (179). Pa stays up at night to make bullets, and the neighbors consult with each other, talking about building a stockade (Prairie, 180). Even though Laura’s parents try to keep her in the dark about their fears, she is terribly affected by the sounds of the Indians, “[s]he was shaking all over and she felt sick in her middle” (181). Finally her parents tell her: “It’s the Indian war cry, Laura” (182). However, “Mary and Laura must not be afraid, because Pa was there, and Jack [the dog] was there, and soldiers were at Fort Gibson and Fort Dodge” (182). Eventually though, all the Indians, except the Osage, leave. Pa talks to an Osage who explains that “all the tribes except the Osages had made up their minds to kill the white people who had come into the Indian country,” however, one single Osage, Soldat du Chêne, stopped them; he “told the other tribes that if they started to massacre us, the Osages would fight them” (Prairie, 187). Shortly after that, even the Osages leave. It seems as though the Ingalls family is now free to keep living in “Indian country.”

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However, all of a sudden, Pa decides to leave. He has heard that soldiers will evict white settlers, but he will “not stay here to be taken away by the soldiers like an outlaw! If some blasted politicians in Washington hadn’t sent out word it would be all right to settle here, [he’d] never have been three miles over the line into Indian Territory” (Prairie, 198). The very next day they leave, abandoning their house, seemingly without a destination in mind. Although this course of events obviously causes us to feel sympathetic towards the Ingalls family, and although Wilder describes the Osages, if not the other tribes, as “good” Indians – even Ma feels nostalgic when they leave – several things do not match up. First of all, there was no large meeting of non-Osages anywhere near the Ingallses' cabin in 1870. The diminished reserve stretched well to the west of Wichita, and when the Osages returned from their summer hunt, they came alone. The threat of a war had been real, but the conclave that Wilder describes and the heroic action of Soldat du Chene never happened (Kaye, 135). Kaye assumes that it may not be Wilder herself who created this version of events, but that it might have been Charles Ingalls, thinking that “the stereotype of Indians war-whooping around fires would have made a better story […] than a meeting of the Indian agent and a committee of the President's Board of Indian Commissioners with the Osage bands” (Kaye, 135). Next, we have the scene of the Indians’ departure. Frey states that “[j]ust what attitudes toward the Indian predicament we are supposed to take away is difficult to judge. Plainly, the Ingalls family is glad the Indians are going, but the telling gives the Osage tribe great dignity and more than a hint of sad defeat” (Frey, 128). Kaye, on the other hand, states

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that “Wilder and her readers see the story of the Ingalls family in Kansas in a light that valorizes the settlers and makes the removal of the Osages emotionally quite bearable” (125). She adds that “[t]he sadness readers feel is ennobling, not wrenching” (125). By making the Osage tribe the “perpetual victim” the reader’s agency is undermined “more subtly and thus more effectively than [through] overt racist rhetoric” (Kaye, 126). She furthermore argues that critics have not really questioned Wilder’s approach “because it sounds so good and fits so nicely with the clash-of-cultures stereotype where stupid government policy pits nice Indians against nice settlers and then pulls out, having ruined the lives of both heroic parties” (Kaye, 138). On the whole, I tend to agree with Kaye, but I do think she words things a little too strongly. To me, the scene represents conflicted feelings on the matter, but I am not sure about the intentionality of this. Lastly, there is Pa’s sudden decision to leave. Frey points out that it “seems thin and hurried over” (128). Importantly, Kaye adds that, here too, the fictional version diverts significantly from reality. She claims that “there was no danger soldiers were going to evict the Ingallses or any of their neighbors” (137). Furthermore, she states that Charles Ingalls “can scarcely have believed in good faith that any land near him had been officially open to settlement. He was eleven miles into the Osage Diminished Reserve and more than sixty miles east of the boundary of the ceded but still unavailable chunk of the reservation” (Kaye, 137). This invalidates him blaming the government. Either way, Frey argues, “since the Indians have already left, the threat of eviction seems tenuous” (128). It is believed, instead, that the real reason the family left Kansas was because the buyer of their Wisconsin house could not pay up, and therefore Charles Ingalls did not have the money he needed to purchase the quarter section of land he had chosen in Kansas (Kaye, 137). The real Ingalls family did indeed move back to Wisconsin after their stay in Kansas (Smith Hill, 14).

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Ultimately, the novel leaves us with very mixed feelings. According to me, however, Laura’s perception is the most important. Despite the fact that she is occasionally scared of the Indians – as any six-year-old would be when confronted with people so utterly different – her fascination with the Natives does not disappear by the end of the novel. On the contrary, it is not until we are almost at the end of the novel that Laura starts to envy the Indians for what she perceives of – no matter how mistaken she may be – as their ultimate freedom. This positive outlook, however, is put into question when we look at the only other novel in which there is a substantial encounter with Native people, namely The First Four years. This novel is not officially part of the series; it was not published until after both Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane had died, and it was published as it was found in her belongings, as a draft (Smulders, 199). Here, Laura reacts violently and negatively against the Indians who enter her house, she gets rid of them as quickly as possible, and even strikes one. According to Smulders, “the mature Laura's commitment to domesticity and its duties involves an utter rejection of those immature desires reified as Indian” (199). According to Smulders this is expressed through a reversal of two earlier scenes (199). First, we have Mr. Boast offering his best horse in exchange for Rose because he and his wife cannot have children. After the offer “Laura clutches Rose to herself in a fiercely protective embrace. This […] gesture of instinctive devotion […] reorients the child Laura's desire as a violation of the adult Laura's own family and so reaffirms, as offensive and unnatural, the illegitimacy of that desire” (Smulders, 199).

The second reversal involves a small group of Indians who enter the house Laura now shares with Almanzo, who is – like Pa in Little House on the Prairie – absent. Smulders notes that, interestingly, “Laura is far less accommodating than Ma […]. Refusing the men entry,

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she locks the doors and thereby prevents the wilderness from crossing the threshold of domesticity” (199). Laura does leave the house in order to make sure the horses do not get stolen. When one of the men touches her arm, she strikes him. The other men find this funny, and one of them, pointing west, and to his pony, asks her to be his squaw (Four Years, 33). Going West and Indian ponies are two desires that defined Laura in her youth, but now she sends them off without a second thought. Smulders argues that, in sending the Indians away, Laura “not only recants her childish wish to be Indian but also declares a chaste fidelity to the domestic ideal against which she once struggled. Accordingly, the Indians' subsequent departure, while it recapitulates and abbreviates the Osage exodus, elicits relief rather than regret,” as it did in Little House on the Prairie (199).

Therefore, this scene seemingly nullifies the sympathy Laura seemed to have for the Indians in Little House on the Prairie. Although we cannot deny that Wilder’s picture of Native Americans in The First Four Years is quite negative, I would like to argue that this scene is not crucially important in terms of race, but rather, once again, in terms of gender. Laura’s fascination with Indians has always been connected to a longing for freedom her gender prohibited. Now a grown woman, Laura is finally thus socialized that she renounces her own childish desires and that she no longer desires anything but the role her society has given her, something that the Indians – still representing freedom - threatened. This theory is supported by a statement in the diary Wilder kept on her final trip, as an adult, from South Dakota to Missouri (ironically her last trip is eastwards, not west as she so desired earlier in her life): “If I would have been the Indians, I would have scalped more white people before I would ever have left [the place where they were camping, because she found it so beautiful]” (Onderweg, My translation, 42). Laura is not incapable of sympathizing with

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Indian people, but has rather given up her own desire for freedom, therefore creating a distance that was more complex in her childhood days of Little House on the Prairie.

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Conclusion Through the analysis of four different novels we have learned about American perceptions of gender and race. Where gender was concerned, we have not only revealed the artificiality of gender but the socialization process girls undergo, or underwent. Parents, especially mothers, tell their daughters not only that they ought to behave in a ladylike manner, but also what this ladylike behavior constitutes, for girls are not naturally inclined towards it. Girls who initially do not enjoy typical feminine activities, learn to acquiesce and accept their role in society. Jo March, Little Women’s protagonist, is a prime example of this. Despite explicitly wishing she were a boy at the beginning of the novel, she has completely abandoned such notions by the end of the novel, which shows her happily married and a mother of two. We have, however, managed to uncover that Alcott may have bestowed a different fate upon Jo, had she not, like the girls in our novels, been restricted by society. Traces of progressiveness can still be uncovered in her sequels to Little Women, Little Men and Jo’s Boys, which feature Jo as a successful author and a new little tomboy, Nan, who, with the help of Jo, becomes a doctor, not a nurse. Therefore, we should assume that Alcott kept Jo’s transgressiveness at the highest possible level, and not that she completely gave up on her heroine, as some critics have done. Offering no such message, Wilder’s Little House books were severely impacted by the Great Depression, during which they were written. Viewing the Depression as a crisis of American values, Wilder sought to revitalize the former glory of America – land of pioneers and farmers, not of capitalists – with her books. In doing so, however, she ended up putting

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a lot of emphasis on patriarchal values, and her heroine, Laura Ingalls, suffers as a result. A former tomboy, Laura eventually gets married at eighteen, and sets up a household of her own, implementing and accepting all of Ma’s lessons she rebelled against when she was younger. The fact that Laura’s older sister Mary was blinded at a young age further curtailed Laura’s freedom, as she not only takes on a large number of household chores by the age of thirteen, but also relents to become a teacher – an appropriately womanly job – by the time she is fifteen. Laura, however, never complains or laments the fact that she has to give up any desires to transgress gender boundaries. When she marries, her childish longings for freedom are all but forgotten. As we move closer to the present, an alternative to girls giving up their earlier rebellion is offered. To Kill A Mockingbird’s Scout does not change her tomboyish ways – including wearing boys’ overalls – at the end of the novel. Although she is still young at the end of the book, we are free to assume that Scout never had to become a “lady,” as, towards the end, Scout’s Aunt Alexandra – earlier a staunch advocate of proper feminine behavior – accepts Scout’s choice of attire. Furthermore, the novel also offers an adult female character who occasionally wears men’s clothes and engages in other behaviors that can be seen as transgressive, but who is nevertheless an accepted part of her society. This shows that there is more room for boundary crossing by 1960, not coincidentally an era during which the Civil Rights Movement was raising its head. Next we turned to the treatment of race and racial issues. What our analyses revealed was mainly that the portrayal of such issues is rarely straightforward, and that no matter what the authors’ intention may have been, the texts often abound in stereotypes or contradictory messages. This complexity is most obvious in Huckleberry Finn. Although the

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novel, at first sight, reads as Huck’s gradual denouncement of slavery and of racial prejudice – as his bond with Jim deepens, and as his willingness to go to Hell for Jim’s sake show – the book’s denouement complicates this. As Huck gives in to Tom’s ridiculous and demeaning scheme to free an – as Tom but not Huck knows – already free Jim, he seems to renounce his earlier moral growth. Furthermore, Huck never truly doubts white people’s superiority; he merely comes to regard Jim as somewhat of an exception. Nevertheless, as I have argued, the prevalent notion we should take away from Huckleberry Finn is one boy’s willingness to overcome the beliefs his society has inculcated in him, even if he is ultimately no match for that society. In To Kill A Mockingbird, the ending is more hopeful. Once again, children are among the first to overcome their community’s prejudice, even though they originally did not question this community’s beliefs, even engaging in judgmental behavior themselves. By the end of the novel, however, Scout, Jem and Dill have learned empathy for those who are different from themselves – a lesson they have learned on a small scale, once they gain an insight into Boo Radley’s behavior, and which is then reinforced on a larger scale through the trial of Tom Robinson – and they renounce discrimination against African Americans. Unlike in Huckleberry Finn, their moral progress is not complicated. We can attribute this difference to the fact that Lee wrote her novel at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. Nevertheless, critics have pointed out the limited voice attributed to actual African American characters, lamenting that Lee does not overcome her rootedness in white society. Perhaps most complex in its portrayal of a racial minority – Native Americans this time – is Wilder’s work. Even though Laura, then a young child, is excited about the prospect of seeing Indians, especially papooses, this excitement quickly morphs into fear when she is

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confronted with them. Furthermore, Ma’s attitudes are downright racist, and Pa’s may seem more accepting, but, he still knowingly settled in country that belonged to Indians. To make matters worse, Wilder’s portrayals of Indians never move beyond stereotypical images, despite her efforts to include “good Indians.” Complicating things even more, the adult Laura seemingly renounces any or all sympathy she may have felt towards Native Americans. Ultimately, however, these novels, perhaps more than any of the others we have studied, reveal that race and gender are connected to each other. As Laura feels restricted by her gender, she becomes fascinated with the racially other, because she links them to a freedom that is unattainable for her. Ma’s insistence that Laura does not associate with anything Indian shows that racial boundaries, like gendered ones, can be crossed, but this taboo is even bigger than gender transgression. All of the novels we have looked at have revealed that children’s literature not only makes explicit a culture’s values and traditions, but also to what extent transgression – be it racial or gendered – was possible in the era and the area where the author was active. We have learned that novels reflect more what was accepted in a given community than what an author may have thought acceptable. We have, however, ascertained that more recent work, notably To Kill A Mockingbird, reflects a society in which there is more room for acceptance for both gender-transgressive behavior and the premise of racial equality.

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