E A300 AE A300 A Children’s Children’s

LiteratureLiterature WEEK 6

BLOCK TWO BOOKS FOR GIRLS & BOOKS FOR BOYS

BLOCK 2. BOOKS FOR GIRLS & BOOKS FOR BOYS

Block 2 focuses more specifically on two books that are foundational in the field:Little Women (1868) by Louisa May Walcott: one of the first novels written specifically for girls; and was groundbreaking in its realistic depictions of girls growing up in a domestic setting.It has contributed to American national identity as well as providing inspiration for subsequent family stories & fictional representations of femininity.

Treasure Island (1883) by British author Robert Louis Stevenson, was highly influential in early development of boy’s adventure stories.

It reflected values of British imperial identity at the height of colonial expansion, & was also innovative.

By employing a flawed narrator & an attractive villain, & adopting a tone not of moral clarity but of moral ambiguity, Treasure Island broke the mould.

Both books introduced more complexity of characterization than those seen in many of previous, strongly didactic 19th c stories aimed at young people.

Both books deal with the business of growing up.

Little Women focuses on emotions & relationships of women & girls at home.

Treasure Island depicts masculine trials of physical & moral strength on high seas.

Using these 2 books as main reference points, Block 2 considers construction of gender in & around 19th c Children’s Literature.

If childhood is a social construct, so too is gender.

Biological differences between two sexes are given social meanings in context of cultural beliefs & practices.

These meanings are reproduced, & sometimes questioned or challenged, within Children’s Literature.

This literature then contributes to children’s knowledge & experience of social world around them, and to their own emerging sense of gendered identity.

Preface to Little Women : adapted from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

In invoking Bunyan’s allegory of Christain’s journey through life, Alcott signals an intention to claim a special sort of religious seriousness, placing her book in a long tradition of ‘improving’ literature for children. Alcott adds following lines to Bunyan’s preface:

For little tripping maids may follow God

Along the ways where saintly feet have trod.

This innovation adds in young women as readers & as protagonists, even though they stay at home.

Like Christian & his various companions who face obstacles & temptations in the course of their allegorical journeys through life in Bunyan’s story, the 4 March sisters follow a parallel journey over a year as they try to master their weaknesses & deal with difficulties that life presents for girls in a poor, devout (pious) family.

References to Pilgrim’s Progress, & ways in which the 2 stories proceed almost exactly in parallel, have strengthened the Christian ideology of novel for 19th c child readers, most of whom would have been familiar with Bunyan’s book.

REFER Table 2.1 in p: 76 : Parallel’s b/w Little Women & Pilgrim’s Progress.

Using structure & themes of Bunyan’s book, Alcott makes claims for: the importance for experiences tests of character that girls encounter as they grow up agency of girls as active protagonists in their own lives.

Little Women: Meg : eldest, loves wealth & personal finery. Jo : bookworm, slangy, with masculine mannerisms, tall & tomboyish. Beth : second youngest, quiet, self-suppressing, a peacemaker, musician & pet of the family. Amy : youngest, is socially ambitious, affected in manner, touchy about her status in school, & flaunts (shows) an elaborate & inaccurate vocabulary.

The winding up of Bunyanesque moral plot is pointed out by Mr. March himself (p. 12 “Give them all…”

Meg conquered her vanity in favour of ‘womanly skill which keeps home happy.’Jo became ‘young lady’ both in appearance & in her motherliness to Beth.Beth is ‘not so shy as she used to be.’Amy conquered her selfishness.

The passage to becoming little women has not been easy and has been full of threats to the family unit.

What are the difficulties and hardships that the 4 young girls went through?

6. GIRLS MAKING NEW HOMESFocalisation: the perspective from which events in the story are seen.

Activity 2.7 (p: 81)Alcott describes one character from the point of view of another, giving the reader insights into both & into the relationship b/w them.

Activity 2.8 (p: 82)Part 2 of Little Women depicts Meg’s early struggles with marriage & parenthood, & Jo’s & Amy’s adventures in the outside world: their falling in love & the creation of their own homes & families.

Part 2 repeats many structures & episodes of Part 1, but on a larger geographical canvas & more emphatically.

For eg: power struggle b/w Meg & John in the first year of their marriage & consequences of Meg’s choice of ‘love in a cottage’ are explored with considerable psychological sensitivity, & are eventually resolved with Marmee’s help.

Jo’s writing career expands into print & away to New York.

Amy’s artistic ambitions take her to Europe.Final chapter :“Harvest time” reconstructs family with

extensions & measures the ambitions expressed by girls in early adolescence against womanhood they have achieved.

In all cases, the girls’ personal ambitions are set aside or modified in recognition that ‘ a woman’s happiest kingdom is home’ – a point reiterated (restated) in Mrs. March’s blessing, which closes the book.

How is the child constructed in Little Woman?

Give examples

In relation to images of childhood & growing up, Alcott often refers to innocence & naturalness of March girls, in contrast to worldly Moffats or snobbish & lifeless English girls.

The Marches are depicted at ease in natural, outdoor settings. Eg: in ‘Delectable Mountain’ (Chap: 13).

In Little Women, childhood is seen as a time of freedom & play that must be given up for the responsibilities of adulthood, as Jo points out to Laurie.

7. GROWING UP, GENDER AND READING

Troubled identities

Judith Fetterley argues that, overtly, Little Women teaches compliance (agreement) with conventional model of womanhood. She suggests that this lesson is covertly subverted through Alcott’s undermining of the image of ‘good man’ as head of household.Mr. March is broken & retiring; John has a dangerous temper.According to Fetterley, Alcott shows that women have to learn to deny their own spirit & selfhood, thus developing a negative self-image, in order to be compliant (obedient).

Fetterley suggests that girls take on this model of womanhood not from choice or out of virtue, but from necessity.

She points out that the character who most strongly resists this model of little womanhood is also the most attractive (Jo); while the one who accepts it most fully dies (Beth).

Fetterley overlooks Marmee’s advice ‘better be happy old maids than unhappy wives’ & Marmee’s own powerful role as, effectively, a single parent.

Ken Parille argues that effects of 19th c North American patriarchal structures on boys mean that Laurie, like the girls, has to learn an ‘ethic of submission.’

In Parille’s view, when Laurie marries Amy he gives up his dreams of becoming a great musician in the same way that Jo gives up her ambition to earn her living as an author when she marries Fritz Bhaer.

Activity 2.10: The beginning of fiction for girls Sarah A. Wadsworth argues that Little Women was innovative both because it was specifically written for girls & because it introduced a new genre that not only accommodated their desire for conventional female plots but also created realistic female characters with very human feelings, desires & dilemmas, to which readers could directly relate.Alcott & her publisher created a girls’ juvenile fiction market &, at the same time, shaped & fostered a community of female readers.The novel set a pattern for the genre of girls’ fiction in its focus on a domestic setting & on girls’ feelings, relationships & desires.