Critical Approaches to Teaching the High School Novel: Reinterpreting Canonical Literature [1 ed.] 0815379889, 9780815379881

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction: The Center of the Canon: The High School Classroom
2 Why Did the “Star-Crossed Lovers” Never Have a Chance? (Mis)Guided Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet
3 Dances, Dresses, and Speaking Her Mind: The Cultural Work of Pride and Prejudice
4 Teaching Huckleberry Finn in an Era of Tenuous Race Relations
5 It’s Really All About Tom: Performances of the Masculine Self in The Great Gatsby
6 Readers’ Hearts Seek Connection: Transactional Theory Applied to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
7 Disturbing the Universe: Reading The Stranger Through a Lens of Philosophical Criticism
8 What Does The Glass Menagerie and Its Discussion Questions Teach About Disability? And How to Undo It
9 Reinterpreting Revolutions: An “Encoding/Decoding” Analysis of Animal Farm
10 When New Criticism and Reader Response Aren’t Enough: Reading “Against” To Kill a Mockingbird Through a Critical Whiteness Lens
11 Literary Authorship and Community Seers in Bless Me, Última and The House on Mango Street: “Let Me Begin at the Beginning”
12 “We Got to Be Smart to Git Away”: Revisiting African American Language and Emancipatory Literacy in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Sapphire’s PUSH
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Critical Approaches to Teaching the High School Novel

This edited collection will turn a critical spotlight on the set of texts that has constituted the high school canon of literature for decades. By employing a set of fresh, vibrant critical lenses—such as youth studies and disabilities studies—that are often unfamiliar to advanced students and scholars of secondary English, this book provides divergent approaches to traditional readings and pedagogical practices surrounding these familiar works. By introducing and applying these interpretive frames to the field of secondary English education, this book demonstrates that there is more to say about these texts, ways to productively problematize them, and to reconfigure how they may be read and used in the classroom. Crag Hill is associate professor of English Education at the University of Oklahoma, USA. Victor Malo-Juvera is associate professor of English Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA.

Routledge Research in Education

This series aims to present the latest research from right across the field of education. It is not confined to any particular area or school of thought and seeks to provide coverage of a broad range of topics, theories and issues from around the world. Recent titles in the series include: Building Trust and Resilience among Black Male High School Students Boys to Men Stuart Rhoden Researching and Enacting Change in Postsecondary Education Leveraging Instructors’ Social Networks Charles Henderson, Chris Rasmussen, Alexis V. Knaub, Naneh Apkarian, Kathleen Quardokus Fisher, and Alan J. Daly Education and Muslim Identity During a Time of Tension Inside an American Islamic School Melanie C. Brooks Educating Young Children in WPA Nursery Schools Federally-Funded Early Childhood Education from 1933–1943 Molly Quest Arboleda Reconceptualizing Curriculum, Literacy, and Learning for School-Age Mothers Heidi L. Hallman and Abigail Kindelsperger Critical Approaches to Teaching the High School Novel Reinterpreting Canonical Literature Edited by Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com

Critical Approaches to Teaching the High School Novel Reinterpreting Canonical Literature Edited by Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera

First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-815-37988-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-21470-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is dedicated to readers and teachers of literature past, present, and future.

Contents

Preface Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: The Center of the Canon: The High School Classroom

ix xiv

1

C R A G H I L L AN D VICTO R MAL O - JUVE RA

2 Why Did the “Star-Crossed Lovers” Never Have a Chance? (Mis)Guided Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet

18

M A R K A . L E WIS

3 Dances, Dresses, and Speaking Her Mind: The Cultural Work of Pride and Prejudice

34

K ATH E R I N E MO N TWIE L E R

4 Teaching Huckleberry Finn in an Era of Tenuous Race Relations

55

J U D I TH A . H AYN AN D A UTUMN M. DO DGE

5 It’s Really All About Tom: Performances of the Masculine Self in The Great Gatsby

70

M I C H A E L M ACAL USO AN D KATI MACAL USO

6 Readers’ Hearts Seek Connection: Transactional Theory Applied to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

87

S H A R O N K A NE

7 Disturbing the Universe: Reading The Stranger Through a Lens of Philosophical Criticism S E A N P. C O N N O RS

104

viii

Contents

8 What Does The Glass Menagerie and Its Discussion Questions Teach About Disability? And How to Undo It

121

PATR I C I A A . DUN N AN D A N GE L A B RO DE RIC K

9 Reinterpreting Revolutions: An “Encoding/Decoding” Analysis of Animal Farm

145

L A R A S E A R C Y, JO N ATH A N B . A L L RE D, SE TH D. FR ENC H, A N D C H R I S T IAN Z. GO E RIN G

10 When New Criticism and Reader Response Aren’t Enough: Reading “Against” To Kill a Mockingbird Through a Critical Whiteness Lens

161

S U S A N L . G RO E N KE

11 Literary Authorship and Community Seers in Bless Me, Última and The House on Mango Street: “Let Me Begin at the Beginning”

176

R . J O S E P H R O DRÍGUE Z

12 “We Got to Be Smart to Git Away”: Revisiting African American Language and Emancipatory Literacy in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Sapphire’s PUSH

196

R A Q U E L K E NN O N

List of Contributors Index

217 218

Preface

For both of our careers as English teachers and English teacher educators, the canon has been a dominant force. Crag Hill has taught Romeo & Juliet, The Glass Menagerie, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Bless Me, Ultima, among many of others discussed in this volume, both in a secondary setting and in his methods courses. Victor Malo-Juvera taught titles such as The Lord of the Flies, The Odyssey, and Julius Caesar as a public school teacher, and now teaches a college level course that reexamines texts such as Of Mice and Men, Heart of Darkness, The Color Purple, Things Fall Apart, and The Great Gatsby. Regardless of the level of our teaching, the classic and classical texts have been persistently at the center of our experiences. From the beginning of this project, we wrestled with many questions. Perhaps the biggest one was which canon were we discussing and how could it be expanded to include authors and subjects that have been traditionally excluded. We both recognized the historic power of the university and of literary tradition to create and maintain the canon, but we were much more concerned with the texts that were taught in high schools because of our past and current positions. Once we focused on what we came to call the secondary canon, the texts that are most frequently taught in high schools and even middle schools, we had many discussions about how that canon is formed and maintained, eventually agreeing that although there are many influences on the canon, ultimately, a text must be taught and taught widely to gain entrance to the secondary canon. But the canon is not a single list. As we contemplated the numerous calls from scholars, educators, and authors to “open up” the canon, we realized that the canon cannot be opened up by any one person or school because it is not comprised of just one book list, but of innumerable book lists in schools across the United States. Paradoxically, the canon is finite—if a teacher adds a new text to instruct, another must be removed simply because only a limited number of books can be taught each year. This is even more true at schools where reading must be done in the classrooms due to text shortages and various other reasons. The dilemma of time is one we both faced teaching in public schools and as college

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professors. Do we teach fewer texts and go more deeply into them? Do we teach more texts and focus on a limited number of topics from each? Or do we mix the two, teaching a few texts in depth and then doing a survey of five or six others? Regardless of the methods employed, there is no avoiding the fact that the school year or semester is limited and that adding a new text is always at the expense of another. This topic led us to consider our experiences and the experiences of our student teachers in terms of choosing texts. Many of our student teachers do not have the academic freedom to decide what texts they will teach, and this lack of input can often continue into an early teacher’s career. We also reflected on how many teachers, regardless of their years of experience, can be limited in text selection by factors such as school or district level mandated curricula, being required to teach to any kind of a test, or simply by being limited to what is included in their anthologies and bookrooms. Thus, despite there being no shortage of texts, new and classic, that teachers may desire to teach, for many the options to include a text may be limited or nonexistent. We concluded that due to these pragmatic limitations, there may be many teachers who are searching for new ways to interrogate canonical texts with their students and that a text like ours could provide those methods. Ironically, we came together on this project at the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) workshop at the National Council of Teachers of English conference in St. Louis. In the midst of a conference featuring the latest young adult authors and titles, we were also discussing the canon. In retrospect, this is not that surprising considering there have been numerous books by Joan Kaywell, Sarah Herz, Don Gallo, and others that advocate pairing young adult texts with canonical texts. At the ALAN Conference, we also discussed the influence of critical literature pedagogy, which advocates interrogating texts for the ways in which they maintain oppressive power structures. We agreed that these were both excellent ways to expand instruction, and they are highlighted in chapters such as Raquel Kennon’s, who analyzes The Color Purple along with PUSH, and in the chapter by Susan Groenke, who uses critical Whiteness as a paradigm to interrogate To Kill a Mockingbird. However, we believed that beyond reading against texts and pairing young adult texts with classics, there were more paradigms available to expand the way we read, discussed, and taught the canon. Consider that since the publication of much of the seminal criticism that drives the instruction of most canonical texts, there has been a growth in the types of critical paradigms that scholars employ, such as queer theory, BlackCrit, and the youth lens. Thus, we believed that a text that featured fresh analyses of canonical texts could be of great value to teachers and scholars. We are confident that our authors not only met but also exceeded our expectations, and we hope that you agree.

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Volume Overview The literature commonly taught in U.S. high schools—the secondary literary canon—arguably serves as a hurdle to the kind of engagement with literature in the classroom that could extend to spaces outside the classroom, to spaces/times beyond an individual’s formal schooling. Yet the literature that comprises the high school canon was not written to be a part of such an oppressive edifice. The chapters in this book open up new critical approaches to the novels, offering interpretations that are cognizant of the strength of our differences. We present the essays in the order of publication of the novels discussed in each chapter. First, Mark A. Lewis, in “Why Did the ‘Star-Crossed Lovers’ Never Have a Chance? (Mis)Guided Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet,” illustrates that most of the fault for the lovers’ demise in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet lies with adult desires to use adolescents for their own ends. Rather than former psychoanalytic, feminist, or queer analyses, Lewis’ chapter draws upon critical youth studies that assume “adolescence” is a sociocultural construct, meaning that characterizations of adolescence are as much ascribed to youth as naturally occurring from youth. This analytic stance reveals that because of adult interference—including through their feuds, attempts at arranging marriages, manipulation of young love for ulterior motives, and rejection of youthful desire—Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, and Tybalt are doomed to fall. In “Dances, Dresses, and Speaking Her Mind: The Cultural Work of Pride and Prejudice,” Katherine Montwieler revisits Jane Austen’s wellknown and widely taught text using an interdisciplinary cultural studies approach grounded in the current #metoo movement. By examining the stances that female characters take in opposition to unjust systems, Montwieler shows readers how Austen’s text is relevant for contemporary young readers who “chafe at the limitations imposed on them by institutions beyond their control.” Especially timely in the current climate of numerous grassroots social justice movements, this chapter provides both teachers and scholars alike with a reading of Pride and Prejudice that reaffirms its significance today. Judith A. Hayn and Autumn M. Dodge believe that if Huck Finn continues to be required reading in schools, students’ reading of the book should be framed in ways that help them examine and critique the world in which we live today. Hayn and Dodge argue that students should be taught how to scrutinize Mark Twain, his language, his assumptions about race, and shown how these are different or similar to issues we still need to address today. Using critical race theory, “Teaching Huckleberry Finn in an Era of Tenuous Race Relations” provides a critique of Huck Finn that can guide teachers and students as they negotiate the reading of Huck Finn in the midst of our current era of racial tension.

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Michael and Kati Macaluso’s “It’s Really All About Tom: Performances of the Masculine Self in The Great Gatsby” pushes back against common interpretations of The Great Gatsby as centering around the American Dream and the concomitant discussions of social class and economic ideologies. By using performance studies and theories of masculinity as the lens of analysis, this chapter illustrates that Gatsby’s fall is the result of his failure to perform a hegemonic masculine identity in the face of his peers, especially Tom. With this interpretation, The Great Gatsby was never about wealth but more about Tom and his ability to maintain the self-impression of his hyper-masculine self, suggesting that the American Dream is a masculine goal and performance. This interpretation opens up the novel to interpretations beyond social class structures, including gender and identity studies. In “Readers’ Hearts Seek Connection: Transactional Theory Applied to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” Sharon Kane discusses the multiple works about Carson McCullers’ text in which scholars detail how it can be analyzed through various critical lenses, including Marxist, feminist, and psychoanalytic lenses, among others. Kane’s chapter uses transactional theory, grounded in the work of Louise Rosenblatt, to draw parallels between the story’s internal lenses and the critical lenses teachers and students can explore and apply. First and foremost is what students bring to the relationship with the text: their experiences, desires, fears, and belief systems. Though literature and philosophy are often regarded as separate scholarly projects, the two in fact share a long history, as Sean P. Connors argues in “Disturbing the Universe: Reading The Stranger Through the Lens of Philosophical Criticism.” Connors points out that the ancient Greeks fused dramatic poetry and philosophical inquiry in ethics in the pursuit of posing answers to the question about how humans live their lives. In much the same way, modern philosophers from Nietzsche to Sartre and Camus have used literature as a vehicle to present and develop their ideas. While this chapter examines Camus’ The Stranger through the lens of philosophical criticism, it also explores how the novel reproduces core assumptions associated with existential philosophy. Patricia A. Dunn and Angela Broderick in “What Does The Glass Menagerie and Its Discussion Questions Teach About Disability? And How to Undo It” utilize a critical disability studies perspective to discuss how The Glass Menagerie and the kinds of questions commonly used in teaching the play reinforce and/or create myths about real people with disabilities. The authors argue that the discussion questions teachers select to use to discuss these texts can convey harmful or at least outmoded beliefs about disability. This chapter also provides many suggestions on how to counter these myths. In “Reinterpreting Revolutions: An Encoding/Decoding Analysis of Animal Farm,” Lara Searcy, Jonathan B. Allred, Seth D. French, and Christian Z. Goering invoke Stuart Hall’s seminal Encoding/Decoding work in a modern reading of the text reconstructed to interpret the

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current complex and dynamic relationship between the United States and Russia. This chapter argues that the allegorical nature of Animal Farm is universal and thus can be applied to not only past, but also future global situations. This approach not only yields new understandings of Animal Farm but also insights into the current political environment circa 2018. Despite parental challenges to the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM) in North American high schools and evidence the teaching of the book can objectify and silence African American students in the English classroom, the book remains a staple of secondary English curriculum. Traditional instructional approaches taken with TKAM often include what some theorists call “reading with the text”—approaches that foreground a focus on literary elements (e.g., New Criticism), and/or approaches that encourage readers to relate to “coming-of-age” themes or characters present in the novel (e.g., Reader Response). Susan L. Groenke’s “When New Criticism and Reader Response Aren’t Enough: Reading ‘Against’ To Kill a Mockingbird Through a Critical Whiteness Lens” presents an alternative approach to teaching TKAM—a “reading against the text” approach that challenges the text’s canonicity, introduces important counter-stories to the text, and interrogates Whiteness, especially the White savior/hero trope. Emphasizing the elements of narratology, R. Joseph Rodríguez’s “Literary Authorship and Community Seers in Bless Me, Última and The House on Mango Street: ‘Let Me Begin at the Beginning’ ” examines how literary authorship and community seers can inform and reinterpret two novels from Mexican America to articulate adolescent and cultural knowledge in response to Mexican-origin people’s absence, erasure, and misrepresentation in the canon of American literatures. Through examining both texts’ community seers, mentors who provide ancient and communal wisdom, R. Joseph Rodríguez argues that Rudolfo Anaya (in the 1970s) and Sandra Cisneros (in the 1980s) introduced a chorus of adolescent voices from the margins of both rural and urban areas of the United States for greater inclusion, readership, study, and understanding. Employing womanist and Black feminist frameworks, Raquel Kennon’s “ ‘We Got to Be Smart to Git Away’: Revisiting African American Language and Emancipatory Literacy in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Sapphire’s PUSH” explores these novels as sister texts that embody the practice of reading and revising characteristic of the African American literary tradition. PUSH signifies the linguistic codes and epistolary form of The Color Purple by echoing the significance of claiming voice in official and unofficial spaces of learning such as the classroom for the main protagonist Precious in PUSH, or the lived world for first-person narrator Celie in The Color Purple. Each story focuses on the traumatic experiences, exploitation, and vulnerabilities of young African American girls, but Kennon’s analysis reveals their liberation comes from similar autobiographical writing practices.

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to acknowledge those who offered encouragement, advice, and recommendations as this project moved from brainstorm to full-blown manuscript, including Routledge editor Matthew Friberg. We extend special gratitude to those who provided generous and constructive feedback to chapter authors: Maia Butler, Patricia Dunn, Christian Goering, Sharon Kane, Mark Lewis, Jennifer Lozano, Kia Jane Richmond, Lawrence Baines, Rachel Myers, and Laurie Schneider. Hill would also like to acknowledge the support of Stacy Reeder and other faculty in the Department of Instructional Leadership and Curriculum at the University of Oklahoma as this work was being completed. Malo-Juvera would like to thank Tiffany Gilbert, Mark Boren, and other faculty in the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina Wilmington for their continued support.

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Introduction The Center of the Canon: The High School Classroom Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera

The mention of “a” or “the” literary canon often elicits many reactions from English teachers, professors, and educators. For some, it represents the greatest literary achievements that have withstood the test of time, the font of our cultural heritage: enduring values; impregnable ideals; abounding confidence and optimism in the American dream; and indefatigable faith in the face of challenges from every front—everyone must be baptized in this font or they will be irrevocably lost. Others believe it is a bastion of oppression that marginalizes writers and peoples who are not part of the West’s dominant White patriarchy. They argue the canon is exclusionary, power entrenching power, the lines of cultural heritage gerrymandered around the work of male writers of European descent, many from affluent backgrounds (families, schools, societies). To detractors, the canon’s hegemonic representation of this country is but one perception of the human condition, one that marginalizes or negates the perceptions of others: indigenous writers, writers of Asian, African, Central and South American heritages. Differing sides have divergent hopes for the future of the canon. Some, like Bloom (1994), want the canon preserved, others such as Greenbaum (1994) want it opened, while still some, like Thomas (2017), want it blown up and discarded. These discussions of the literary canon can incite a range of opinions and emotions; however, rarely in these arguments is it explicated which canon is being debated:

Setting: English Department Meeting to Discuss Curriculum Adoptions Marsha, the English Department chair of a mid-sized high school in a university community, prefaced the discussion of textbook adoptions for the current cycle by responding to a request in an earlier meeting to add young adult novels to the adoption request. “I know these books are exciting our students. I can’t tell you how often they’ve asked about me about The Hate U Give or The Fault in Our Stars—and what’s John Green’s latest novel? I’m thinking they’re going to read these books on their own, as well they should—they clearly resonated with our students.

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But is that what we want them to read in our classes if they’re reading them out of class?” Silence followed. Awkward? Or the kind of thought-provoking silence we want to instill in our classrooms. Some of the faculty checked the minutes from the previous meeting. Some glanced around the room, openly or furtively. “Look, if our kids are reading these books,” Kristy replied, a mid-career teacher who has taught in urban and rural schools and in this current context, “Shouldn’t we find some that meet our department’s literary standards to include in our request? I’d love to have a class set of True Diary. I can’t keep enough copies in my classroom library. They keep disappearing. That’s okay.” “I’d love a classroom set of Brown Girl Dreaming,” Vince, the senior teacher in the department, chimed in. “With the Common Core push for non-fiction, I’d love a set of March to Freedom. My juniors,” Wendy said, “could read that in tandem with the civil rights unit our students are doing in history.” Hesitant through the initial comments, Javier spoke up. “But I don’t want to give up Gatsby. We need new copies. And reading The Crucible out of our textbook makes it hard to do performance activities with it. We need copies students can hold and carry around. I want students to experience these books. We’re still reading them for good reasons.” “And I don’t want to give up those books,” Aiyana, an early-career teacher responded, “because those were two of the books that gave me a sense of our cultural heritage. We’d be remiss I think if our students graduated without exposure to them, especially considering their shortened attention spans. We need to connect our students to this cultural past.” “Gatsby is the core of our American Dream unit,” the department chair added. “And The Crucible gives students a window into the Puritan era many of our values are rooted in.” “Can we split the book choices?” Kristy asked. “The textbooks we have haven’t changed much. Let’s go for trade books like Gatsby and The Crucible and maybe a Raisin in the Sun, but let’s also get some books our kids can see themselves in.” “Will The Hate U Give and John Green be relevant by our next adoption cycle?” Dan asked. “We could be stuck with stacks of books in the bookroom none of us uses.” “I’d argue,” Kristy replied, “that All American Boys will still be relevant and relatable. Same with T.H.U.G. and True Diary. We all like to put the books we assign into historical context. That context isn’t going away.” “Same is true with Gatsby, Huck Finn, The Crucible,” Javier added. “I agree we need new copies of those, but let’s expand what we offer, as well as how we teach the novels we do include, classic or contemporary. We can have both.”

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“I agree we need copies of those, but let’s expand what we offer. That’s what I’m hearing.” “Any other responses?” the chair asked. “If not, what I’m hearing is adopt Gatsby, Finn, Crucible, Raisin, and add some YA literature, yes?” Heads nod in agreement. “Do we agree on the YA?” “Could we have a couple weeks to read some of the suggested novels?” Dan asked. “Then vote on them and select the top three?” “Sounds good to me,” the chair replies. “Agreed?” The meeting was adjourned.

To Be Taught Is to Be Canonical The texts typically accepted as canonical by their defenders and detractors alike are often described as having enduring literary quality. With the advent of literary criticism during the Renaissance period, perceptions of literary quality were mostly decided and reinforced by writer/critics such as John Dryden and Alexander Pope, and their influence is echoed in A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory’s (Cuddon, 2013) definition of the canon as “a traditional body of texts deemed by the literary establishment to be authoritative in terms of literary merit and influence” (p. 102). Before the study of literature became an academic subject in universities during the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (Kolbas, 2001), this definition certainly could be viewed as complete; however, in the modern era with literary study occurring at all levels of schooling, it would be an egregious mistake to ignore the integral role that students play in canonical formation. After World War I, intense feelings of nationalism fomented the development of American and British literary canons that thrived in university courses and led not only to modern anthologies that dominate survey courses to this day (Kolbas, 2001), but also influenced the English curriculum in many high schools where eleventh, and twelfth grade students read American and British literature respectively. Even Bloom (1994) who fastidiously defended the western canon agreed that students are a required ingredient, defining the canon as “a list of books for required study” (p. 17). Thus, despite or in addition to the influence of literary critics, public reception, and scholarly attention, there are two required elements to form a canon: a list of texts and students to read/study them. To be taught is to be canonical. The group of texts that Bloom (1994) refers to as the canon is what we call the university literary canon. These are the texts that are generally taught in university English departments such as Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” or Thoreau’s Walden in American literature surveys; Beowulf or Byron in British literature surveys; or Homer’s Odyssey or the Epic of Gilgamesh in World Literature surveys.

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There are many more texts that literary critics and scholars consider canonical. Bloom (1994) even organized the ones he considered canonical by time periods he labeled as the theocratic, aristocratic, democratic, and chaotic ages. Although some, if not many, of the texts Bloom lists are canonical in his terms, we question to which canon they belong. Moreover, we question whether they are still being read and perhaps, more importantly, being taught in secondary or undergraduate curricula. By Bloom’s own definition, to be studied is to be canonical, yet with the decline of the English major in universities across the nation, whether or not this traditional university literary canon is the canon is equivocal. There are other literary canons and though there is often overlap, at the university level the percentage of English majors who are required to take courses that offer canonical texts is 2.2% nationally (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017); on the other hand, most all students, unless they have tested out of required composition credits via course or tests taken while in high school, must take composition courses. Thus, the composition canon, the major texts required for reading in composition courses across the nation, could have far more of an impact on college students than the traditional university literary canon espoused by Bloom (1994). Lynn Bloom (1999) described a contemporary essay canon and argued that it has deeper impacts precisely because it is taught and read far more frequently compared to the university literary canon. Bloom used a frequency count to examine composition textbooks, finding that the six most frequently appearing essays (she lists over 50) were Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (p. 1) and “Shooting an Elephant” (p. 2), followed by Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook,” Thomas’ “Notes on Punctuation,” and Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” Though her study was conducted in the late 1990s, and we can assume there may have been some shifting in what is taught in composition classes, we can also assume that change is slow and that her lists probably hold much truth today. Both Lynn and Harold Bloom drive home the point that to be taught is to be canonical, and if we are to agree with that then the most powerful literary canon does not reside in universities at all but in secondary schools. Although 58.9% of the population will attend some college, few will take literature survey courses because many colleges and universities no longer have a requirement for students to take such courses. In fact, according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (2018), only 34.2% of colleges still require students to take at least one literature course. Though most college students will take composition courses and be exposed to the composition canon, they only represent an estimated 42.3% of the population who will complete an associate’s degree or higher (Ryan & Bauman, 2016). On the other hand, education is mandatory until at least the age of 16 in all 50 states (National Center for Education Statistics, 2018). In terms of impact on society and culture, then, it is unequivocal that the secondary literary canon is more read and taught

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than any other canon, and this argues strongly that the most important canon is that of secondary schools, high schools, and middle schools, because it is enforced reading for the entire population. The secondary literary canon as we define it is the set of texts that are taught most frequently to middle and senior high school students across the country. In some ways this set of texts may mirror the literary canon prescribed by Bloom (1994), but in actuality this canon is much narrower because it does not often consider the critical reception of a text. There are public schools, private schools, publicly funded private schools (charter schools), and religious schools, and although there are numerous structural differences between these sites of education, there is little variation in terms of the most frequently taught texts between these school types (Applebee, 1992; Squire & Applebee, 1968), and though there is a rich history of debate concerning what should and should not be taught in secondary schools, there have not been any paradigm-shifting changes to the center of the secondary canon since the 1960s.

The History of the Secondary Canon Debate about literary text selection in secondary schools is over a century old and is often contentious. Traditionalists have argued that students must read the best literature our culture has to offer (Hirsch, 1987; Jago, 2000; Ravitch & Finn, 1988; Scott, 1913), especially literature that has been certified by the test of time. On the other hand, some educators have repeatedly countered that students are not reading the literature deemed by teachers to be absolutely necessary for their academic and cultural growth; ergo, the curriculum must include the literature that they are reading, literature that is relevant to their experiences (Applebee, 1974; Rosenblatt, 1938; Tanner, 1907; Thurber, 1905). This conflict over what should be taught in high school English classes contributed to the disarray of secondary educational curricula in the late 1800s, especially as it related to preparing high school students for the “utter chaos” of college entrance requirements (Mackenzie, 1894, p. 148). Thus, similarly to European efforts such as The Berlin Conference of 1980 and the Oxford Conference of 1893, the Committee of Ten Conference met in 1892 to standardize secondary curricula in the United States and to align it with college entrance requirements. Not long after the Committee of Ten met in 1892 to discuss and devise a set of suggestions for a unified secondary curriculum, Thurber (1905) described a brewing conflict between canonical texts that were suggested as part of secondary study and then contemporary texts. He argued that English teachers have “become too much prejudiced against the books our boys and girls are reading. The great majority of them are harmless, often even stimulating” (p. 176). The independent reading students were doing had value, if not necessarily the literary merit many of his colleagues were

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insisting upon. First and foremost, young men and women were reading these contemporary texts eagerly, as many do now over one hundred years later. Yet he wrote that teachers described those titles to their classes as “trash” (p. 176), an epithet that can still be heard today in classrooms and in teacher workrooms. In reporting the findings of a committee that surveyed over 60 schools on the teaching of English, Tanner (1907) found agreement from other teachers that schools need to include the reading that students are already doing outside of school. This is one of the first quantitative studies of the list of books schools were including in their curriculum, many suggested by College Entrance Requirements, such as Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Silas Marner (see Table 1.1, p. 14). Tanner found that teachers in general did not approve of the college requirement because the books were too difficult or were not suited to the students’ needs. He quotes one respondent: I know of no better way to kill interest in reading than the plan of requiring the reading of certain books. What should be a pleasure becomes toil, in most cases. The better way, as it seems to me, is to stock a library with good books, and let the pupils choose for themselves. All day long they have acquired knowledge from books under a rigid system of school government and instruction: why not give them entire freedom when they go to the library? (pp. 43–44) The committee found that a large majority of teachers took a middle ground, not requiring a strict reading list but also not allowing students freedom in what they read in schools. As evidenced by Scott’s 1912 NCTE President’s address, “Our Problems,” published in the first issue of the second volume of the English Journal (1913), the tension between high culture (in this case Joseph Addison’s work) and low culture (popular magazines of the day which included essays and stories relatable and accessible to students) has a long history and continues to be one of the “problems” in English teaching to this day. Scott asked, “How can we arouse and maintain in our students a genuine interest in the English classics?” (p. 2). One answer Scott received from the principal of a New York High School was, “not to read them at all, but to read something else in their place. . . . His contention [the principal], if I read him aright, is that English classics must go. They are obsolete” (pp. 5–6). Yet Scott continued to argue that students should read the English classics because at some indeterminate time in the reader’s future the seed planted by these readings will bloom into insight: A single sentence of Addison, once it is really liked and appreciated, will vibrate in the memory for a lifetime, whenever it recurs attuning

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the mind to its own sweet and gracious harmony, whereas the thousands of clever sentences of a Robert Chambers or a Gouverneur pour through the brain-paths like a flood and depart and leave no trace, unless it be, in the case of the worst of them, a slimy sediment. (p. 8) Scott later quoted English poet and theologian Cardinal Newman, who held a similar view about the necessary germination period for readers of classical literature: Passages, which to a boy are but rhetorical commonplace, neither better nor worse than a hundred others, which any clever writer might supply . . . at length come home to him, when long years have passed, and he has had experience of life, and pierce him, as if he had never before known them, with their sad earnestness and vivid exactness (p. 8) Thus, the conflict between less accessible canonical texts and more relatable modern titles has a long history and continues to be one of the “problems” in English teaching to this day. Mid-Twentieth Century Positions As the teaching of English picked up the mantle of progressivism (Squire & Applebee, 1968) and reader response theory was born (Rosenblatt, 1938), a call grew for a curriculum that built on what students were already reading, then moving them toward more challenging books. Rosenblatt’s (1938) rationale was based in civic responsibility, arguing that a wider array of literary choices increased its “potential as an educationally liberating force” (p. 214). Students will not only read books from the past or present, but they will not be confined to reading only American and British literature. “Instead, [they] will be permitted an insight into ways of life and social and moral codes very different even from the one that the school is committed to perpetuate” (p. 215). Echoing arguments that came before and persisted after her, Rosenblatt (1938) believed that we introduce classical literature to students “at an age when it is impossible for them to feel in any personal way the problems or conflicts treated” (p. 216). Rosenblatt counters Scott, Newman, and others who believed that students need to read the classics in high school because there will never be another time for this reading to occur. Rosenblatt deeply disagreed: “Those who try to crowd into the school years everything that ‘ought to be read’ evidently assume that the youth will never read again after school years are over” (p. 218). LaBrant (1951) chimed in later, stating “The study of literature should be aimed at understanding rather than at unquestioned acceptance of the judgment of

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others” (p. 260). Starting with their own experiences with a text, students should be asked how a book continues to be read despite the weaknesses they perceive in it. The aim of schools should be to develop students into inquisitive readers who may in their adult lives encounter these classics when they are intellectually and emotionally prepared, at a time when these texts may have a relevance for them. Rosenblatt was not alone in calling for a more inclusionary secondary reading list for study, as Smith (1940), in response to a 1928 study that found only 25% of students understood the reading required in high school classes, urged teachers to take students’ interests into account and argued teachers need to pay attention to the psychology of adolescence as they select books for whole-class study. Smith believed “general education aims to promote in boys and girls the habit of consciously seeking in progressively better and better books the satisfaction of their educational needs, the deepening of their understanding of human personality, and the broadening of their outlook on human affairs” (p. 714), a belief similar to that of Kittle (2013), Lesesne (2010), Miller (2014), and others in the present in undergirding a program of reading in secondary classrooms. Smith (1940) quotes the reply the president of Wellesley College gave to a question about what was most essential to culture that colleges help shape: “A capacity for being at home in a large world” (p. 716). She explains that general education aims not to inculcate students in American or English literature “as a purely national or racial product,” but rather provides a range of literature through “which the nations of the world may throw off the restrictions of race or color or geographical location and come to understand one another as human beings subject to the same passions and human limitations, devoted to the same aspirations and aims” (p. 716). The books teachers choose to read in their classrooms and the books students choose to read on their own are not meant to reinforce any one culture’s norms and values, but rather they are meant to invite readers into a larger world, one without borders. Smith (1937) earlier argued, More fundamental than an intimate knowledge of any one book is the ability to find information in printed sources; more vital than detailed acquaintance with any single author, the breadth of outlook and deepened sympathies come from extensive association with many; more significant contact with a few set classics, the gradual development of a habit of seeking in progressively better and more challenging books a source of personal satisfaction and enjoyment. (p. 107) During the same period as Rosenblatt, Smith, LaBrant, and others included the reader in the meaning-making equation, the field of literary theory was making a very different argument as New Criticism was born. New Criticism, a school of American critical theory born between the World Wars, first named by poet and scholar John Crowe Ransom (1941),

Introduction

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began to dominate both secondary and university classrooms. Prior to Ransom’s naming, I. A. Richards, William Empson, T. S. Eliot, and other literary critics theorized that the inherent meaning of a literary work lay in the work itself, not in the biography of the author or the historical context in which the work was composed. O’Connor (1949) summarized their positions by writing that the reader “should (1) center his attention on the literary work itself, (2) study the various problems arising from examining relationships between a subject matter and the final form of a work, and (3) consider ways in which the moral and philosophical elements get into or are related to the literary work” (p. 489). Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, and W. K. Wimsatt Jr. in the following decades refined Ransom’s approach. Utilizing close reading of texts, particularly the connotative meanings of words and phrases, these critics developed a practice of reading that is not only prevalent in many of today’s English classrooms but is also the theoretical orientation that drives the design of tests such as the AP Language and Literature Test, the SAT, and state standardized exams, as well as state and national standards for literary study such as the Common Core State Standards. Thus, New Criticism has molded and reinforced the traditional literary canon as teachers teach the texts that have stood up to close reading, and as the readings teachers impart to students replicate widely accepted interpretations. Vietnam War Era to the Present The decade of cultural revolution, the 1960s, left changes on concepts of nationalism, patriotism, and racial equality, but these changes were not yet felt in most English classrooms despite the birth of the multicultural education movement (Banks, 2008). For example, Squire and Applebee (1968) found that canonical texts continued to dominate the curriculum and that contemporary literature, despite being identified by students as the most relevant to them, had been relegated to the margins of curricula, if they appeared at all. Squire and Applebee found that teachers relied mostly on anthologies and class sets of books for reading material and that the most frequently instructed texts were Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, A Tale of Two Cities, The Return of the Native, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, Moby Dick, and Our Town. Though the students in Squire and Applebee’s (1968) study rated “the literature program as the most valuable part of the English curriculum,” perhaps echoing the dissatisfaction with the status quo that permeated most facets of culture during the 60s, they also claimed it was the “most in need of improvement and modification” (p. 252). Dissatisfaction with English curricula was not limited to secondary schools, as the dominance of New Criticism in colleges and universities began to break during the 1960s as a variety of critical approaches disputed the conviction that the text possessed a singular meaning that the reader must unlock. Reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1938), feminist

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criticism (Showalter, 1977/2016), Marxist criticism (Eagleton, 1976/2006; Jameson, 1971), structuralism (de Saussure & Harris, 1921/2016; Fry, 1957/2000), and post-structuralism (Derrida & Spivak, 2016; Foucault & Rabinow, 2010) posit that texts do not exist in vacuums; rather they are situated in complex personal and social contexts, each different context engendering different readings. Along with this shift in theoretical paradigms, there was a call for a wider variety of textual choices that represented the cultural and ethnic diversity of the nation and the world, giving birth to what Bloom (1994) would call the School of Resentment during what became known as the culture wars or survey wars of the 80s and 90s. During this time university English departments were locked in heated battles over what texts would remain in survey courses (Aston, 2017; Donadio, 2007; Graff, 1992; Ravitch, 2002). While the ivory towers were battling, secondary schools began to sink into their own conflicts, but these were not based on inclusion, but in privatization under the guise of performance. The 1970s brought increased attention to basic skills as the public grew concerned that graduating high school students lacked the abilities to fill the needs of the changing job market. These concerns led to A Nation at Risk (Gardner, 1983), which was penned by mostly non-educators handpicked by William Bennett, Ronald Reagan’s conservative Secretary of Education. The report claimed that American schools were failing and were falling behind other nations at all levels: elementary, secondary, and university. Though the findings in this report were debunked in The Manufactured Crisis (Berliner & Biddle, 1995), and subsequent reports that take socioeconomic status into account when dealing with academic performance, this report created a narrative that led to calls for increased cultural literacy (Bennett, 1988; Hirsch, 1987) and a vocabulary shared by all citizens (Hirsch, 1987), based in the belief that these would not only strengthen a student’s preparedness for a variety of jobs but would engage them in carrying the best of our culture into the world throughout their lives. Mirroring Harold and Allan Bloom’s derision of multicultural literature, Bennett and Hirsch both argued for “reasserting a focus on texts of cultural importance, the ‘great works’ of Western civilization that have been ostensibly replaced by less important writings by women and minorities” (Applebee, 1990, p. 131). This deficit perspective on education and blame on liberal ideals continue to dominate education to this day in initiatives based on the fictive findings of A Nation at Risk in federal educational laws and initiatives such as No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Specifically, in regard to English curricula, its impact can be felt in the textual choices in recommended book lists for the CCSS and in its reliance on New Criticism which is no better highlighted than by current College Board President (think AP tests) David Coleman who argued that “people really don’t give a shit about what you [students] feel or what you think” (Ravitch, 2012).

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Ironically, in the midst of the culture wars that were raging across university English departments that saw staunch canonical defenders such as the Blooms at odds with multiculturalists such as Henry Louis Gates, because of low scores on a nationally administered survey, formulated from questions by National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP), Ravitch and Finn (1988) posited that “there is assuredly no canon, and no one could venture a confident guess as to what is read by American students at any time in their schooling” (p. 10). Yet the canon was indeed very much in the center of the secondary English curriculum as numerous studies have shown (e.g., Applebee, 1992).

An Overview of the Current Secondary Canon Though there have been some changes to the secondary canon since Tanner’s 1907 survey of 67 Midwestern high schools’ assigned readings, Shakespeare was the center of the canon then and continues to occupy that spot; the non-Shakespearean texts such as Ivanhoe, Milton, and The Vision of Sir Launfal that occupied the center of the canon over 100 years ago have been largely replaced by texts that had yet to be written at that time—the works of Homer being the major exception. The texts that dominate secondary schools across the nation today are not much different from fifty years ago when Squire and Applebee (1968) published a book-length study of the English programs of 158 urban high schools across 45 states (see Table 1.2 on p. 14 for most frequently taught texts). Since Squire and Applebee’s survey there have been numerous regional and national examinations of book-length works taught in high schools, and in our review of studies that assessed more than one high school it is apparent Shakespeare still has a privileged spot in the center of the canon, as his works have occupied two to four spots in each subsequent survey of texts taught in high schools (see Tables 1.3 through 1.9 on p. 14). On the other hand, there have been some changes at the center of the canon as texts such as Silas Marner, The Return of the Native, The Red Badge of Courage, and Moby Dick have not appeared in any subsequent top ten lists and appear to have been replaced by titles such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, and Night. If we accept that a final premise/requirement for a text to enjoy inclusion in the secondary canon is for it to be taught, then the possible size of the canon is limited by the amount of reading that can be required between eighth and twelfth grades. In Tanner’s (1907) study, he measured the amount of books studied in each grade; results showed the average amount of books read by grade to be 3–6 in ninth grade, 4–7 in tenth grade, 4–6 in eleventh grade, and 4–8 in twelfth grade. Over 100 years later, Shanahan and Duffet (2013) found similar results in a survey of teachers from 46 states and the District of Columbia showing that 77% of middle school and 88% of high school English language arts teachers required their students to read at

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least one novel per year. Furthermore, of those who share that requirement, 68% of middle schools required 2–5 books read per year while 19% read six or more; high schoolers read slightly less, with 76% reading 2–5 books per year and 10% reading six or more. Thus, we can estimate in perhaps the roughest way possible that the majority of students read about 20 fulllength works between eighth and twelfth grades. The size of the canon also appears to be expanding. Stallworth and Gibbons (2012) found that when comparing their 2011 study of book-length works to a similar study done in 2006, there was an increase in overall assigned titles; moreover, they represented not only traditionally canonical texts, but also contemporary, multicultural, and young adult titles. Beyond the center of the canon as represented by Tables 1.1 through 1.8 on p. 14 which show overall dominance of texts across grades, some studies (e.g., Stotsky, Goering, & Jolliffe, 2010; Stotsky, Traffas, & Woodworth, 2010) provide the most taught texts by grade level, and these lists show a continually expanding canon. For example, Stotsky Traffas, and Woodworth found S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967) to be the 17th most assigned title, being read more often than traditional literary classics such as Great Expectations, The Glass Menagerie, The Red Badge of Courage, and even Macbeth. Beyond The Outsiders, which is considered the seminal text that gave birth to the modern genre of young adult literature, contemporary young adult literature has also found its way into the hands of many secondary students, as Stotsky, Traffas, and Woodworth found in their national survey of English teachers that Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (1999) was the 20th most taught book in high schools and was the 8th most taught text in ninth grade. Thus, although top ten lists usually dominate discussions of canonicity, because of the number of assigned texts that students read during their secondary school years, and due to the expanding variety of titles that teachers are assigning, we could estimate that that size of the secondary canon may be upwards of 40 books. As the canon simultaneously slowly expands but at the same time retains the texts that have comprised its center over the last 40 years, it is important to examine the major influences on the canon.

How the Canon Is Formed and Maintained Because membership in the secondary canon is determined by the frequency with which texts are taught, perhaps the best way to understand how the canon may change, or remain unchanged, is to get a better understanding of how teachers choose texts for instruction. Although scholars and critics often believe that literary awards, critical reception, and scholarly research are powerful influences, it appears that more pragmatic forces may be the dominant determinants of whether or not a text ends up in the hands of a student reader. Over the last fifty years, researchers (Applebee, 1992; Holloway & Greig, 2011; Squire & Applebee, 1968) have found that the two primary sources for assigned readings were literary anthologies and class sets of

Introduction

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texts. These findings should not be surprising for anyone who has taught in a high school as at the end of every summer during the week before school starts English language arts teachers can often be founding browsing through the literary anthologies for titles to teach or searching through the bookrooms to see how many class sets there are and what kind of shape they are in. Bookrooms represent the cultural history of a schools’ English department, and the texts there can be decades old, reflecting the literary values of colleagues who may be long into retirement. With the recession caused by the housing bubble crisis in the late 2000s, and with the reduction in available funds exacerbated by money being funneled to charter schools, commercial curricula and technologically driven programs such as Accelerated Reader, many schools have not had funding in years, if not decades, to purchase class sets of novels (Gallagher, 2009). Some schools also have policies that prevent teachers from asking students to purchase their own texts, effectively locking teachers into the choices that can be found in the bookroom. The availability of texts in the bookroom is often a driving force during department discussions when texts are chosen as grade level selections. Taken together it is straightforward, no matter any other factor, that you cannot teach a text that you do not have. Although this dearth of funding can also impact anthologies, most schools do have class sets of anthologies and these carry a great deal of power in influencing what English teachers teach as they are sometimes the only source teachers have for texts. Thus, the contents of these anthologies are important to examine. Despite a dearth of research on the subject, Hansen (2005) found in a content analysis of Florida high school literature anthologies in 1991 and 2003 that the majority of non-White authors who have been traditionally excluded from the secondary canon, who were included in the 2003 anthologies, were overrepresented in the genre of nonfiction. She further found that the 2003 anthologies showed little change in the literary selections which continued to be dominated by White authors. Thus, despite the influences of state and national standards, sensitivity reviewers from both the left and right (Ravitch, 2003), and the influence on textbook design by large states such as Florida, Texas, California, and New York, it appears that literary anthologies have not changed much in terms of full-length fictive selections.

What Can Change? This book in a pragmatic way addresses many of the calls from those who would like to open up the canon. The canon itself cannot be opened like a door, since the canon does not exist in one place—it is not a single text list for a classroom or even a district-wide curriculum. It is more like the Internet, existing in and between thousands of English classrooms, thus the only way for a text to enter the canon, even if it is just the outer edges as opposed to the center, is for the text to be taught. And taught a

Julius Caesar Macbeth Silas Marner Milton’s Minor Poems Merchant of Venice Burke’s Conciliation Vision of Sir Launfal The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner Ivanhoe Macaulay’s Addison

Macbeth Julius Caesar Hamlet Silas Marner The Scarlet Letter A Tale of Two Cities The Return of the Native Huckleberry Finn The Red Badge of Courage Moby Dick Our Town

Romeo and Juliet Macbeth Huckleberry Finn Julius Caesar To Kill a Mockingbird The Scarlet Letter Of Mice and Men Hamlet The Great Gatsby The Lord of the Flies

Source: Applebee (1992)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Table 1.3 Public Schools Nationwide, Grades 7–12 (488 schools surveyed)

Source: Squire & Applebee (1968)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10

Table 1.2 Metropolitan High Schools Nationwide (158 schools surveyed)

Source: Tanner (1907)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Table 1.1 Midwestern High Schools (67 schools surveyed)

3 The Crucible 4 To Kill a Mockingbird 5 The Great Gatsby 6 Of Mice and Men

4 The Scarlet Letter 5 The Lord of the Flies 6 Romeo and Juliet

3 To Kill a Mockingbird 4 Julius Caesar 5 The Crucible 6 Macbeth 7 Romeo and Juliet 8 Wuthering Heights 9 A Raisin in the Sun

3 The Scarlet Letter 4 Romeo and Juliet 5 Julius Caesar 6 The Crucible 7 Macbeth 8 Huckleberry Finn 9 Animal Farm

Source: Hoffman (2007)

10 The Odyssey

10 The Scarlet Letter

8 Lord of the Flies

6 Night

6 Hamlet

4 The Crucible

4 Of Mice and Men

3 The Great Gatsby

2 Romeo and Juliet

1 To Kill a Mockingbird

Table 1.6 Minneapolis-St Paul High Schools (29 schools surveyed)

Source: Stallworth, Gibbons, & Fauber (2006)

10 Lord of the Flies / OurTown / Huckleberry Finn (three-way tie)

2 The Great Gatsby

2 The Great Gatsby

10 A Separate Peace

1 The Scarlet Letter

2003–2004 school year

1 To Kill a Mockingbird

2002–2003 school year

Table 1.5 Alabama Secondary Schools (72 schools surveyed)

Source: Stallworth (1999)

10 The Great Gatsby

9 Of Mice and Men

8 A Separate Peace

Source: Stallworth & Gibbons (2012)

8 The Scarlet Letter

7 Their Eyes Were Watching God

6 Night

5 To Kill a Mockingbird

3 The Odyssey

3 The Crucible

2 Romeo and Juliet

1 The Great Gatsby

Table 1.9 Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee Secondary Schools (216 teachers surveyed)

Source: Stotsky, Traffas, & Woodworth (2010)

10 The Scarlet Letter

9 Huckleberry Finn

8 Lord of the Flies

7 The Great Gatsby

6 Night

5 Of Mice and Men

4 Julius Caesar

3 The Crucible

2 To Kill a Mockingbird

1 Romeo and Juliet

Table 1.8 National Survey, Grades 9–11 (406 teachers surveyed)

Source: Stotsky, Goering, & Jolliffe (2010)

10 Night

9 Animal Farm

8 The Odyssey

7 Antigone

2 Julius Caesar

3 Julius Caesar

7 To Kill a Mockingbird

1 Romeo and Juliet

2 The Pearl

Table 1.7 Arkansas High Schools (400 teachers surveyed)

1 Great Expectations

Table 1.4 Alabama High Schools (72 schools surveyed)

Most Frequently Taught Texts: Results from Studies Conducted from 1907–2012

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lot. This is how Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel Speak (1999) made it into Stotsky et al. (2010) lists of most frequently taught texts. It is not because of the scholarly attention the text has received—in fact, it has probably received as much scholarly attention because it has been taught by so many teachers in so many different school districts. So Speak teaches us a paradoxical lesson—that it is possible for a young adult novel to make its way into the canon, but at the same time the center of the canon remains much unchanged Although there are changes to the canon, they are occurring mostly in the outer circles. So what are the choices for a teacher with a bookroom of texts that have occupied the center of the canon for the last forty years? This book attempts to provide some options. Although we would like to see the canon diversified, we are also pragmatists and understand that teachers may only have access to canonical books and in many places may even be required to adhere to mandated text lists. Thus, as the center of the canon holds steady, teachers can instead examine and teach texts from different paradigms, reading against the dominant interpretations of these texts.

Works Cited American Council of Trustees and Alumni. (2018). What will they learn? 2017–2018: A survey of core requirements at our nation’s colleges and universities. Retrieved from www.goacta.org/images/download/What-Will-They-Learn-2017-18.pdf Anderson, L. H. (1999). Speak. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Applebee, A. N. (1974). Tradition and reform in the teaching of English: A history. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Applebee, A. N. (1990). Literature instruction in American schools. Report 1.4. Albany, NY: Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature. Applebee, A. N. (1992). Stability and change in the high-school canon. English Journal, 81(5), 27–32. Aston, R. (2017). A culture of text: The canon and the common core. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 32(2), 39–52. Banks, J. A. (2008). An introduction to multicultural education. Boston, MA: Pearson. Bennett, W. J. (1988). Our children and our country: Improving America’s schools and affirming the common culture. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, Inc. Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. (1995). The manufactured crisis. New York, NY: Perseus. Bloom, H. (1994). The western canon. New York, NY: Riverhead-Putnam Books. Bloom, L. Z. (1999). The essay canon. College English, 61(4), 401–430. Cuddon, J. A. (2013). A dictionary of literary terms and literary theory. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Derrida, J., & Spivak, G. C. (2016). Of grammatology. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. de Saussure, F., & Harris, R. (Trans.). (1921/2016). Course in general linguistics. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Donadio, R. (2007, September 16). Revisiting the canon wars. New York Times Book Review, 16–17.

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Eagleton, T. (2006). Criticism and ideology: A study in Marxist literary theory. London: Verso Books. Foucault, M., & Rabinow, P. (2010). The Foucault reader. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Frye, N. (1957/2000). Anatomy of criticism: Four essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gallagher, K. (2009). Readicide: How schools are killing reading and what you can do about it. Portsmouth, NH: Stenhouse Publishers. Gardner, D. P. (1983). A nation at risk. Washington, DC: The National Commission on Excellence in Education, US Department of Education. Gates, H. L. (1992). Loose canons: Notes on the culture wars. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Graff, G. (1992). Organizing the conflicts in the curriculum. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 25(1), 63–76. Greenbaum, V. (1994). Expanding the canon: Shaping inclusive reading lists. The English Journal, 83(8), 36–39. Hansen, A. L. (2005). Multiculturalism, public policy, and the high school United States and American literature canon: A content analysis of textbooks adopted in the state of Florida in 1991 and 2003. University of South Florida: Graduate Theses and Dissertations. Retrieved from http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/2913 Hinton, S. E. (1967). The outsiders. New York, NY: Viking Press. Hirsch, E. D. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Hoffman, J. (2007). The western canon in today’s high schools. Minnesota English Journal, 43(1), 140–151.Holloway, S. M., & Greig, C. J. (2011). Literacy text selections in secondary school classrooms: Exploring the practices of English teachers as agents of change. Brock Education Journal, 20(2), 25–42. Jago, C. (2000). With rigor for all: Teaching the classics to contemporary students. Portland, ME: Calendar Islands Publishers. Jameson, F. (1971). Marxism and form: Twentieth century dialectical theories of literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kittle, P. (2013). Book love: Developing depth, stamina, and passion in adolescent readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Kolbas, E. D. (2001). Critical theory and the literary canon. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. LaBrant, L. (1951). We teach English. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and World. Lesesne, T. S. (2010). Reading ladders: Leading students from where they are to where we’d like them to be. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Mackenzie, J. C. (1894). The report of the committee of ten. The School Review, 2(3), 146–155. Miller, D. (2014). Book whisperer: The awakening the inner reader in every child. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. National Center for Education Statistics. (2017). Digest of Education Statistics: Table 322.10. Bachelor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by field of study: Selected years, 1970–71 through 2015–16. Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/ dt17_322.10.asp?current=yes National Center for Education Statistics. (2018). State education reforms: Compulsory school attendance laws, minimum and maximum age limits for required

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free education, by state: 2017. Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_1.asp O’Connor, W. V. (1949). A short view of the new criticism. The English Journal, 38(9), 489–497. Ransom, J. C. (1941). The new criticism. Norfolk, CT: New Directions Books. Ravitch, D. (2002). Education after the culture wars. Daedalus, 131(3), 5–21. Ravitch, D. (2003). The language police: How pressure groups restrict what students learn. New York, NY: Knopf. Ravitch, D. (2012, December 12). TIME columnist mocks common core standards [Web blog post]. Retrieved from http://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/01/ time-columnists-mocks-common-core-standards/ Ravitch, D., & Finn, C. E. (1988). What do our 17-year-olds know?: A report on the First National Assessment of history and literature. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1938/1983). Literature as exploration. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Ryan, C. L., & Bauman, K. (2016). Educational attainment in the United States: 2015. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved from www.census.gov/content/ dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf Scott, F. N. (1913). Our problems. The English Journal, 2(1), 1–10. Shanahan, T., & Duffett, A. (2013). Common Core in the schools: A first look at reading assignments. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Showalter, E. (1977/2016). A literature of their own: From Charlotte Brontë to Doris Lessing. London: Virago. Smith, D. V. (1937). American youth and English. The English Journal, 26(2), 99–113. Smith, D. V. (1940). General education and the teaching of English. The English Journal, 29(9), 707–719. Squire, J. R., & Applebee, R. K. (1968). High school English instruction today: The national study of high school English programs. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Stallworth, J. B., & Gibbons, L. (2012). What’s on the list… now? A survey of book-length works taught in secondary schools. English Leadership Quarterly, 34(3), 2–3. Stotsky, S., Goering, C., & Jolliffe, D. (2010). Literary study in grades 9, 10, and 11 in Arkansas. University of Arkansas. Retrieved from https://cied.uark.edu/_ resources/pdf/literary-study-czg.pdf Stotsky, S., Traffas, J., & Woodworth, J. (2010). Literary study in grades 9, 10, and 11: A national survey. Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. Retrieved from http://alscw.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/forum_4.pdf Tanner, G. W. (1907). Report of the committee appointed by the English Conference to inquire into the teaching of English in the high schools of the middle west. The School Review, 15(1), 32–45. Thomas, P. (2017). The tyranny of canonical texts. Radical Eyes for Equity. Retrieved from https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2017/11/15/the-tyrannyof-canonical-texts/ Thurber, S. (1905). Voluntary reading in the classical high school: From the pupil’s point of view. The School Review, 13(2), 168–179.

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Why Did the “Star-Crossed Lovers” Never Have a Chance? (Mis)Guided Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet Mark A. Lewis The fearful passage of their death-marked love And the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove, —Chorus, The Prologue

Probably since the play was first performed in the mid-1590s, debates over who is the most to blame for Romeo’s and Juliet’s tragic ends have proliferated, from the theater public to literary scholarship to secondary English language arts classrooms. Some argue for the feud between Lords Montague and Capulet, some point to the hotheadedness of Mercutio and Tybalt, and some look to the weakness of Prince Escalus. However, an oft cited argument places the responsibility squarely on the decisions and actions of Juliet and Romeo themselves. In particular, the argument relies upon the age of the protagonists as the underlying reason, namely that they were simply too young for such reckless and forbidden love. In other words, their tragic end is based upon “adolescent” indulgence and immaturity (cf. Cox, 1976). However, this age-based argument is a much more recent perspective on the play because the stage of life we commonly label “adolescence” has only been viewed in these primarily pejorative ways for the last 120 years or so. Prior to Stanley Hall’s sturm and drang characterization of people typically aged 12 to 18—which he promulgated in the first two decades of the 1900s—people were typically divided into childhood and adulthood (cf. Lesko, 2012; Tait, 2012). As well, many societies and cultures had specific ceremonies or rituals to demarcate when a person moved from childhood to adulthood. In 1500s London, people in their late teen years were more often viewed as adults, often working, able to get married, and participating civically; they were even tried as adult criminals as early as age 12 (Orme, 2003). Therefore, it is more likely that Shakespeare was not preoccupied as much over the age of his protagonists as contemporary readers and educators are today. For example, Juliet is 14 but Paris clearly understands that to be a perfectly acceptable

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age for marriage and motherhood—12 was the typical age of consent in the time of Shakespeare—as he argues that “younger than she are happy mothers made” (Act I, Scene II) when Lord Capulet encourages him to wait two more years. Of course, Lord Capulet also changes his mind about waiting two years later in the play. It should also be noted that the ages of Romeo nor any of the other youthful characters are ever mentioned in the play. Thus, grounding an argument for who is to blame for Romeo and Juliet’s tragedy on their age seems to ascribe contemporary, often stereotypical, notions that circulate publicly about adolescence onto the play, rather than what the story actually reveals. Indeed, as my opening quotation from the prologue reveals, it seems that Shakespeare considered the “parents’ rage” as the central driving force of the entire plot. With these ideas in mind, I set forth in this chapter to read the play with a youth lens analysis (Petrone, Sarigianides, & Lewis, 2014) as a way to answer the question of who carries the onus for the “star-crossed” lovers’ demise from a different perspective. Prior to describing my findings, I review pertinent literature to frame the chapter. Then I close with some implications for teachers.

Divergent Perspectives of Adolescence and Youth A primary focus in scholarship examining and interpreting Romeo and Juliet has been on the age of the lead characters, as well as their friends and rivals. In particular, scholars have attempted to tease out how the characters’ relative age influences their behaviors, decisions, relationships, and, ultimately, their fate (Changizi, Pourgiv, & Latifian, 2016; Prusko, 2016; Schwaber, 2006). In this brief literature review, I begin by presenting scholarship employing psychoanalytic frameworks grounded in a developmentalist perspective of adolescence, which relies upon contemporary Western understandings of what it means to be an adolescent. After discussing a cultural consequence of such analyses, I explain the theoretical framework for my interpretation of the play, which significantly departs from this previous scholarship.

Psychoanalytical Perspectives of Romeo and Juliet Writing in the mid-1970s, Marjorie Kolb Cox opened her essay on the play in Psychoanalytical Review claiming that the story is about the “impact of adolescence” on Romeo and Juliet as they attempt to react to internal and external struggles (1976, p. 379). She then proceeds to explain how internal adolescent processes, as opposed to external realities, explain the motivations and desires of the characters. Namely, that Romeo’s seclusion and wavering of romantic interests stems from the “upsurge of sexual feeling” due to the internal changes related to his age (p. 381); that Tybalt’s

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tendency toward dueling reveals how adolescent passion can be extreme and deadly; that Romeo and Juliet rebel against their parents’ desires due to an inherent adolescent need to detach themselves from their parents; and that Romeo’s and Juliet’s final suicidal decisions reflect adolescents’ tendency to leap into action without thought of consequences. This psychoanalytical interpretation, based upon a developmentalist model of adolescence and youth, became a primary framework for other scholars through the end of the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first century. For instance, this influence can be seen 40 years later in Changizi et al.’s (2016) post-modern psychoanalytical analysis of Romeo and Juliet (in which they cite Cox). They focus on several developmentalist psychological aspects of adolescence, relying upon post-structuralist conceptions, a theory that primarily responds to the problematic creation of binaries through the concrete naming of objects, such as an adult-adolescent binary that always places the adult as primary and more desirable. Describing the play as a “tragedy of adolescence” (p. 89), they employ limerence, a psychological term referring to romantic feelings that are involuntary to the actor, in their analysis. They argue that Romeo’s seemingly rapid shift in romantic feelings from Rosaline to Juliet is based on a supposed adolescent tendency to idealize love and objectify the subject of their feelings. Further, they posit that adult interference works to intensify adolescents’ romantic feelings, explaining why Romeo and Juliet resist and rebel against their parents’ wishes, which apparently is named the “Romeo and Juliet effect” in social psychology (Driscoll, Davis, & Lipetz, 1972, as cited in Changizi et al., 2016). Social psychologists use this term to identify the underlying reasons for the behaviors of adolescent couples, particularly an “unhealthy” increase in romantic feelings, in response to parental interference in their relationship. Their analysis, then, leads them to the conclusion that the play is an example of a “failed adolescent rebellion against parental authority and a failed process of individuation” (p. 93), and, therefore, a “tragedy of adolescence.” Prusko (2016) argues that Romeo and Juliet are examples of adolescents resisting outside norms—namely that they should be enemies because of their familial backgrounds—and define themselves through their private conversations and actions without adult supervision. She argues that the tension and conflict between Juliet and her parents over her impending marriage to Paris provides an “extended exploration of the teenaged subject” (p. 119). This exploration works under the assumption that youth desire privacy away from adult interference, which, she argues, can be highlighted by focusing on the multiple private scenes in which Romeo and Juliet engage throughout the play. She also examines what she identifies as the private language of the couple, which she characterizes as prone to storytelling, word play, and evasiveness. In a final example, Schwaber (2006) examines the sexuality of the young characters and determines

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that, since they are “youngsters with rushing feelings and grownup bodies” (p. 299), their affair is frenetic and they have a need for romantic certainty. As this scholarship begins to reveal, if one begins an analysis of Romeo and Juliet with the lens that the story is about adolescence understood through a developmentalist paradigm, then it seems inevitable (or star-crossed) that any analysis would lead to a conclusion that the young characters are misunderstood by adult characters, rebellious, violent, and/ or sexually preoccupied.

The “Teening” of Romeo and Juliet Scholarship with this psychoanalytical perspective has also contributed to a contemporary understanding that Romeo and Juliet is a play primarily about adolescence, which has had both cultural and educational consequences. For example, in her analysis of Baz Luhrmann’s cinematic adaptation of the play, Angela Keam (2006, 2008) identifies how contemporary adaptations and interpretations of the play have become more rooted in White middle-class understandings of adolescent identity. These adaptations, in her words, have caused a “teening” (2008, p. 39) of Shakespeare’s work with a late twentieth-century veneer. In other words, she argues that this phenomenon has resulted in an appropriation of the play to meet the viewing preferences of the U.S. adolescent, particularly in the actors that are selected to play the lead characters. In particular, she interprets Claire Danes’ portrayal of Juliet in Luhrmann’s film as presenting a “transitory ‘femininity’ that resonates with the teen female viewer’s own physical and psychological maturation” (2006, p. 11). In this way, Keam argues, Juliet (through Danes) has the potential to influence—both positively and negatively—female adolescents’ views of femininity, as well as impact how they negotiate their own female identity. This “teening” of the play has also affected the focus and motivation of high school English language arts curricula in that many teachers use Romeo and Juliet as a cautionary tale for their adolescent students, namely that poor decision-making has tragic ends, and, again, to discuss the negative repercussions of adolescent rebellion, violence, and sexuality. Colson (2008), for example, concisely outlines how high school curricula on Romeo and Juliet often functions to control adolescent sexuality in three ways, which he argues is based upon a Foucauldian perspective of power. First, the act of adult control of any curriculum focused on the themes of sexuality present in the play places the locus of power on the teacher. Second, curricula are used to advance an adult agenda to control the sexual desires of youth. He argues that the sexual innuendos present in the Shakespearean language of the play afford opportunity for teachers to raise issues around the taboo of adolescent sexuality, and then use that opportunity to discourage adolescent sexual thoughts and behaviors

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through labeling and stigmatizing. Third, the ultimate outcome of Romeo and Juliet’s adolescent romance is used as a warning for those that might desire such a relationship. Of course, this curricular focus firmly relies upon one of Lesko’s (2012) confident characterizations, namely the assumption that adolescents are governed by hormonal desires. Nys (2003) outlines teaching ideas for the play with the goal for adolescents to learn about the link between impulse control and teen violence. She argues that since Romeo and Juliet are adolescent characters, they have poor communication skills which lead to their tragic end. She encourages teachers to create “talk opportunities” for adults to model both thinking processes and social values, particularly around issues related to impulse control, peer pressure, and conflict resolution. Another goal of these talk opportunities is for secondary students to examine their own lives, and for teachers, in her words, to tell adolescents that they are in the “stage where they are learning to handle intense emotions” (p. 39) so it is acceptable for them to communicate with an adult about those emotions. Since the play contains teen violence, she contends that teachers could use it to help students understand their own circumstances by relating to the adolescent characters. Of course, such a curricular approach assumes that all adolescents experience, and perhaps are considering, violence, and, since they struggle in communicating about those experiences and thoughts, discussions around the play allow adults to guide adolescents through, in her terms, catharsis related to experiencing violence. In this chapter, however, I aim to disrupt these common curricular approaches present in secondary classrooms that overly rely upon a psychological understanding of adolescence.

Considering Romeo and Juliet Through a Youth Lens Keam’s analysis of Luhrmann’s adaptation begins to recognize a more complex understanding of adolescence and youth. First, that youth have agency in their decisions about how they identify themselves and how they perceive the realities of adolescence. Second, they are capable of recognizing how youth are represented in cultural texts, including plays and movies, and are quite adept at being critical consumers of those representations. These assumptions undergird an asset-based conception of adolescence and youth—an essential disposition for imagining an enhanced interpretation of the adolescent characters’ behaviors, decisions, relationships, and outcomes. Further, understanding adolescence as a social construction, in addition to more developmentalist paradigms proffered by fields such as psychology and biology, also provides a more multifaceted analysis of adolescent-adult relationships. By socially constructed, I mean that these relationships should be viewed as formed primarily by external contextual factors, rather than solely internal factors. Unfortunately, many adults

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tend to ascribe certain notions of adolescence onto youth, including that they are hormone-governed, peer-oriented, and should follow a leisurely progression into adulthood (Lesko, 2012). This adult-gaze is present in the scholarship I discussed previously, and it is present in how the adult characters behave toward Juliet and Romeo in the play, as I will illustrate in my analysis. My analysis relies upon a “youth lens” (Petrone et al., 2014) which draws upon critical youth studies scholarship (e.g., Best, 2007; Ibrahim & Steinberg, 2014; Lesko & Talburt, 2012) that views adolescence as a social construct and with an asset-based lens. This type of analysis asks questions about the representations of adolescence and youth in cultural texts, including literature, and the roles and relationships available to both youth and adults in these texts. These analyses can reveal a more complicated understanding of youth as individuals, their complex worldviews, and how adults view youth alters their interpersonal relationships. For example, Thein, Sulzer, and Schmidt (2013) illustrate a youth lens analysis through their examination of the two versions of Wes Moore’s memoir, one marketed for adults and the other marketed for youth. They found that each significantly differs in how it approaches the effect society and institutions have on decision-making—in the adult version these outside forces are significant, in the young adult version these external forces are less significant than individual choices—which communicate divergent messages to youth. Sieben (2015) weaves queer theory with a youth lens analysis of Bill Konigsburg’s Openly Straight. Her analysis reveals how setting can influence adolescent identities, such as how interactions on athletic teams—in this case, interactions related to LGBTQ issues such as fitting into the expected role of an athlete and combatting homophobic slurs—can be interpreted as complex metaphors for the lives of youth. Finally, I have examined how comics illustrator’s artful choices characterize youth in both enchanting and nostalgic ways (Lewis, 2016). As well, I have employed Cory Doctorow’s technology-based young adult literature to demonstrate the savvy critical literacy practices of youth (Lewis, 2018), and the tensions between “being and becoming” adolescent-athletes in sports-related young adult literature face both in and out of the arena (Lewis & Rodesiler, 2018). For the purpose of my analysis of Romeo and Juliet, I primarily focus on the roles adults play in what finally happens to the young lovers at the conclusion of the tragedy.

The Fateful Missteps of Adult Parenting and Mentoring Once the reader tempers more stereotypical preconceived notions of how developmentalist paradigms, particularly stemming from psychology and biology, view adolescence as rooted in rebelliousness, driven by hormones, and irrational (Lesko, 2012), it becomes easier to focus upon the

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magnitude of adult characters’ roles in determining the fate of Romeo and Juliet. To be clear, the lovers make many missteps in how they handle the trials of their families’ feud and their personal romance. However, a youth lens analysis reveals that many of their thoughts and actions should be ascribed to external social forces more than internal strife. In particular, their parents’ attitudes toward and decisions about their children create external circumstances that highly influence the outcome of Romeo and Juliet’s affair. As well, the mentors in the youths’ lives push them into certain decisions that seal their fate. In order to illustrate this argument, I begin by describing how the Lords and Ladies Capulet and Montague create an environment both hostile and untenable for the young lovers. I then examine the decisions of the Nurse and Friar Lawrence in their attempts to mentor Juliet and Romeo.

Montagues’ and Capulets’ Parental (Mis)Guided Behavior The relationships between teenagers and their parents seem to dominate the concerns of not only parents, but also of psychologists, social workers, and educators, if not all of U.S. society. The centrality of this concern can be seen in rhetoric about how problematic single-parent homes or absentee fathers can be for youth, city officials defending curfew ordinances, and school boards apologizing for low test scores. Of course, such relationships matter, perhaps not at the drastic levels often heard in such rhetoric, but they do have an impact on the lived experiences of both youth and their parents. Therefore, when reading Romeo and Juliet, it is useful to pay close attention to the actions and words of the Lords and Ladies Montague and Capulet in relation to their son and daughter. Beginning with the Montagues, early in the play they relate their worry over Romeo’s recent reclusiveness and his ostensible depression to Benvolio. When he asks them if they know the cause of Romeo’s behavior, they admit that they do not. Although Lord Montague explains that he has tried to speak with Romeo, and has asked others to do so as well, it is clear—by the standards of any time period—that he and his wife do not have a healthy, open relationship with their son. A telling moment is when Romeo approaches them and Benvolio, he and Lady Montague leave at Benvolio’s request, rather than staying to at least greet their son. Yes, Lord Montague is hoping that Benvolio can find out the underlying reasons for Romeo’s behavior, but it seems odd for them to avoid their youthful son, especially if they are worried he is depressed. As well, it should be noted that the reader never sees Lord or Lady Montague speak with Romeo again. For the Capulets and Juliet, the discussion and decision about her marriage to Paris is central to their relationship. In the first act, Lord Capulet

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expresses to Paris that he believes him to be a good suitor for Juliet and encourages him to pursue her: But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart; My will to consent is but a part. And, she agreed, within her scope of choice Lies my consent and fair according voice. (Act I, Scene II) At this point in the story, it seems that Lord Capulet will only give his full consent for Paris to marry Juliet if she also gives her consent for the match. However, his attitude toward Juliet’s agreed upon consent shifts as the play progresses. As discussed previously, Lord Capulet also believes the courtship should last two years so that Juliet is older before she weds. Paris disagrees, perhaps planting the germ of that possibility in Lord Capulet which might have led to his later change of mind. Lady Capulet has a different view of this possibility of marriage. She goes to see Juliet to discuss the matter, and it quickly becomes clear that she and her daughter disagree about marriage, as Juliet quickly tells her that marriage is an “honor I dream not of” (Act I, Scene III). Just as quickly, Lady Capulet attempts to persuade her daughter to change her mind: Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, Are already made mothers. By my count I was your mother much upon these years That you are now a maid. (Act I, Scene III) Lady Capulet had Juliet at a similarly young age, and she reminds her that “ladies of esteem” in Verona are already mothers, indicating that young pregnancies are normal for the elite class. Yet, at this point in the play, she is only encouraging Juliet, and providing her space to make her own decisions—both about the general prospect of marriage and the suitability of Paris as a possible husband. It only takes a couple of days, however, for Lord and Lady Capulet to change their perspectives and to alter how they approach the subject with Juliet. As the tragedy unfolds—Mercutio and Tybalt are dead and Romeo has been banished—the Capulets allow their feelings to overcome their logical and careful approach to Juliet’s possible marriage to Paris. Without consulting Juliet, they discuss the marriage with Paris, and Lord Capulet determines a date for the wedding 10 days later. While this practice might have been common during this era, their behavior is in direct opposition to their earlier behavior of having open conversations

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with Juliet about the prospect of marrying Paris and waiting for her to also agree to marry before acting. When they finally speak with Juliet about this new plan, it does not go well. Juliet, of course, expresses her dismay at the decision and politely states that, although she wants to do her parents proud, she will definitely not marry Paris. At this, Lord Capulet simply loses his mind: Mistress minion you, Thank me no thanking, nor proud me no prouds, But fettle your fine joints ’gainst Thursday next To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church, Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage! You tallow face! (Act III, Scene V) The list of insults is impressively horrible. He twice tells her that she is a burden due to her gender, as “minion” and “baggage” had this connotation in Shakespeare’s time. He calls her a criminal since he would have to “drag” her on a “hurdle,” which is exactly how criminals were taken to their executions in 1500s London (although that is an apt metaphor for the wedding to Juliet). Finally, he insults her ashen appearance due to her appalled reaction by telling her to rid herself of her “green-sickness carrion” and “tallow face.” This reaction reveals a quite different Lord Capulet than the one in Act I who favors a more careful approach and tells Paris that he needs both his and his daughter’s consent prior to marrying. Both his emotional outburst and his capriciousness are often traits attributed to adolescence and youth, but in this case Juliet is polite and measured in her continued refusal of Paris as a suitor, and her parents are the ones who have lost control of their emotions and who rapidly shift their decisions. Indeed, their deteriorating relationship with their daughter is due to their lack of control and rudeness, and not the actions of their teenaged daughter. Through their (in)actions, the Lords and Ladies Montague and Capulet have created an environment in which Juliet, and, in some regards, Romeo find untenable. First, there is the enduring feud between the families that makes their love forbidden, thereby causing them to meet and elope in secret. The feud is also the reason for Tybalt’s anger toward Romeo and his friends for attending the Capulet party, eventually leading to his death at Romeo’s hands and the subsequent banishment of Romeo. Second, the types of relationships they establish, or fail to establish in terms of the Montagues, with their children as the play progresses creates a milieu perfect for Juliet and Romeo to feel disenfranchised and make the decisions that they do.

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Seemingly Ulterior Motives of the Nurse and Friar Lawrence The Nurse has attended to Juliet’s personal needs since she was born, hence how Shakespeare chose to name her character to indicate immediately that she began as a nursemaid and is not simply a servant newly assigned to Juliet. Therefore, it should be clear to the reader that the Nurse has an intimate relationship with Juliet and serves as both handmaiden and confidant. This relationship is confirmed at the conclusion of Act I when Juliet asks the Nurse to find out the name of the gentleman that spoke to her at the Capulet party. Once the Nurse returns with that information, Juliet immediately confesses her feelings toward Romeo as anyone would to a confidant. The Nurse, however, in her interactions concerning Juliet’s relationship could be construed as more “adolescent” than her 14-year-old ward. As the play progresses, the Nurse uses that confidence in her attempt to mentor Juliet as she makes decisions about her budding relationship with Romeo. She begins by attempting to disrupt and delay their relationship as it grows toward marriage. For example, when she inquires into Romeo on Juliet’s behalf, she warns Romeo about his supposed intentions to ensure that he is sincere: But first let me tell you, if you should lead her in a fool’s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behavior, as they say. (Act II, Scene IV) Her warning could be interpreted as only representing her care for Juliet, but it could also be interpreted as her first attempt to thwart Romeo’s advances by scaring him off. This latter motive becomes more apparent as she praises County Paris to Romeo as a suitor, a “good soul,” and a “properer man” than Romeo; and disparages Juliet’s view of Paris as a “very toad” just a few moments after her initial warning. Upon her return to report back to Juliet on Romeo’s intentions, she attempts—rather juvenilely—to delay informing Juliet what she discovered by claiming that she was too tired and “out of breath.” She then tries to undermine Juliet’s feelings again by naming her decision to pursue Romeo as a “simple choice” and claims that Juliet does not know “how to choose a man.” The Nurse also insults Romeo’s appearance by claiming that his face and other looks are “not to be talked on,” and characterizes him as “not the flower of courtesy” (Act II, Scene V). Her final attempt to delay the marriage is to persuade Juliet that she does not need to see Friar Lawrence immediately. Of course, she ultimately acquiesces. In this way, the Nurse acts with traits often associated with

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adolescence by modern audiences, thereby putting into question who the adult actually is in this relationship. Perhaps the most egregious act by the Nurse toward Juliet is her decision to support Lord and Lady Capulet’s decision to force the marriage to Paris. Once Romeo is banished from Verona, she changes her mind about what would be best for Juliet—despite her previous assistance in helping Juliet meet secretly with Romeo, visit Friar Lawrence, and get married. After the Capulet parents inform Juliet of their decision to marry her to Paris and leave, Juliet turns to the Nurse and exclaims, “O God! O Nurse, how shall this be prevented?” (Act III, Scene V), clearly thinking that her mentor remains supportive. The Nurse, however, responds with surprising advice based on her previous actions: I think it best you married with the County. O, he’s a lovely gentleman! Romeo’s a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart, I think you are happy in this second match, For it excels your first, (Act III, Scene V) She once again denigrates Romeo, calling him a dishrag or something easily tossed aside, and praises Paris, claiming that he could best an eagle in his majestic looks. Moreover, she asserts that this feeling has always been in her heart, as any astute reader of the play would understand. In this scene, she reveals her true self to Juliet—that she is more conniver than mentor. As a manipulator, she also represents how adults have a desire to control youths’ decisions and actions, particularly around love and sex (Lewis & Durand, 2014; Trites, 2000). As well, the Nurse’s actions illustrate how adults have trouble with honest mentorship with youth because of their diminished views of adolescents’ ability to make sound decisions about their futures. Of course, Juliet understands this lack of transparency and seeks the Friar’s advice instead—a disastrous decision. Juliet’s decision to seek out Friar Lawrence turns disastrous not because she made another “bad” decision due to her age, but because he turns out to be another adult wanting to manipulate youths for his own agenda. His adult manipulation is witnessed when Romeo approaches him about performing the marriage ceremony. At first, the Friar questions Romeo’s veracity of feelings toward Juliet, primarily because of his seemingly rapid shift in romantic feelings away from Rosaline. Romeo confirms that he is now truly in love, not because of some adolescent mercurialness but because he has learned what love feels like if it is returned in favor. At

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this confession, the Friar agrees to assist in the ceremony, but not for the sake of love but for Verona: In one respect I’ll thy assistant be, For this alliance may so happy prove To turn your households’ rancor to pure love. (Act II, Scene III) The Friar does not really believe that Romeo’s feelings are fully realized, as he calls him a “young waverer” and warns him to be “[w]isely and slow. They stumble that run fast.” Yet, rather than counseling him further about moving slowly in order to ensure that his feelings hold over time, he decides that the marriage might end the Montague-Capulet feud, thereby using Romeo for his own ends. Yes, once the Friar makes his decision to wed the couple, he has become complicit in the affair; and, therefore, must assist Romeo to escape Verona when he is banished and assist Juliet to fool her parents. One might argue these actions reveal that he understands they are truly in love, but his actions in the remainder of the play demonstrate that he makes these decisions in his own best interests. His first selfish action is to help Juliet fake her death when she comes to him asking for counsel concerning her problem—she is already married to Romeo but her parents are insisting on her marrying Paris. She claims she is ready to take her own life rather than succumb to her parents’ wishes. He tells her that, yes, “it wilt undertake/A thing like death to chide away this shame,” (Act IV, Scene I) implying to Juliet that since her honor is at stake, he will help her with finding a solution through (a fake) death. Considering his role as the adult in this situation, one would think that he would advise Juliet to admit her “mistake” to marry Romeo. However, since he too would be viewed as complicit in furthering the affair, his decision is perhaps more about his desire to maintain his status in the community than it is to assist Romeo and Juliet. His decision begs the question of whether it is adults who always make the “best” decisions. The latter argument is fortified by the role he plays in confirming Juliet’s fake death and by chastising the Capulets for their sadness in her death. Finally, his actions in the closing act confirm his apparent inability to take responsibility for his own actions. Upon hearing others coming to visit the tomb where Paris’s and Romeo’s dead bodies lay, he immediately runs away and leaves a rather vulnerable Juliet alone: I hear some noise.—Lady, come from that nest Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep. ... Come, I’ll dispose of thee

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Mark A. Lewis Among a sisterhood of holy nuns. Stay not to question, for the watch is coming. Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay. (Act V, Scene III)

The Friar’s desire to run is reprehensible, but his desire to “dispose” of Juliet in a nunnery is worse. In other words, rather than confessing his own sins to all of Verona, he would rather hide evidence of his complicity. Again, this reveals his mentorship and guidance to be false in terms of helping them and is more about his attempt to manipulate the young lovers to aid his ever-changing agenda. Moreover, as part of his connivance, he describes death much differently to Juliet than he does when chastising the Capulets over Juliet’s death for not being consoled that their daughter had moved to “above the clouds, as high as heaven” (Act IV, Scene V). The Friar, like the Nurse, throughout the play demonstrates his desire to control youths’ thoughts and actions.

Punishing Misbehaving Adults Where be these enemies?—Capulet, Montague, See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love, And I, for winking at your discords too, Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished. —Prince Escalus, Act V, Scene III In contemporary young adult literature, it is common for adolescent characters to get punished for their “poor” decisions, thoughts, and actions, with the definition of “poor” stemming from the gaze of the adult characters (Lewis & Durand, 2014; Trites, 2000). Therefore, it is refreshing to read a story in which, as Prince Escalus indicates, the adults also get punished for their poor decisions, thoughts, and actions. Indeed, Shakespeare’s punishment is acute. Lady Capulet, upon seeing Juliet’s body, laments that the sight seems like a bell reminding her that she, too, is on the way to a “sepulcher.” Lady Montague never witnesses Romeo’s death, as her grief in response to his banishment alone has “stopped her breath.” Lord Montague also worries that Romeo’s death shows him his own immortality, and Lord Capulet suffers utter shock at Juliet’s death. The play concludes with Lords Capulet and Montague agreeing to end their feud and join together as their children would have. Yet, Escalus reminds them, and the reader, that their peace is “glooming” and that the “sun for sorrow will not show his head” as a final punishment for all of them. This aspect of adult punishment for their responsibility in Romeo and Juliet does not seem to be highlighted enough in secondary English language arts curriculum.

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Romeo and Juliet Is More Than a Story of Adolescence Through my theoretical framework and analysis of the play, I hope teachers will resist teaching Romeo and Juliet as a warning story of adolescence. Rather, I encourage them to review the scholarship from the field of critical youth studies and shift toward an asset-based view of youth and their experiences. Lesko (2012) and the edited collections from Ibrahim and Steinberg (2014) and Lesko and Talburt (2012) would be informative resources with which to begin. I often use these resources, or chapters from the edited collections, with my own undergraduate and graduate education students, and they find them accessible, enlightening, and useful in broadening their perspectives on youth and teaching. Moreover, an asset-based disposition would not only be important for teaching this play or any piece of literature but would also lead to more productive relationships with secondary students and, perhaps, better teaching. I also encourage teachers to read Romeo and Juliet with questions based upon a youth lens analysis, such as how do youth and adult characters build relationships in the play, and what conflicts preoccupy youth characters and what meanings do adult characters attribute to those conflicts. I believe it would complicate previous interpretations of the themes of Shakespeare’s work in useful ways. Through such a reading, teachers could focus on the assets—or positive characteristics, decisions, and ideas—of Romeo and Juliet. For example, teachers could examine Juliet’s agency and logical decisions for deciding not to marry Paris or Romeo’s attempt to end the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt. As well, a youth lens reading would inform a comparison of the youth characters, their conflicts, and their relationships to contemporary youth. I encourage teachers to consider whether Romeo and Juliet truly reflect the lived experiences of today’s youth, particularly youth of color, LGBTQ youth, working-class youth, and youth living in urban and rural settings. Finally, I suggest teachers use the play as an opportunity for secondary students to discuss the maligned adolescent-adult relationships in Romeo and Juliet, and how those relationships effect the tragedy. A youth lens analysis that focuses on both youth and adults in a cultural text affords analyses that more closely honor diverse representations of adolescent-adult relationships, which interpretive readings that only focus on the “adolescence” of cultural texts, including Romeo and Juliet, cannot. Therefore, it is my conviction that such a reading of this play would benefit both secondary students and teachers as they grapple with who is to blame in this classic tragedy.

Works Cited Best, A. L. (Ed.). (2007). Representing youth: Methodological issues in critical youth studies. New York, NY: New York University Press.

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Changizi, P., Pourgiv, F., & Latifian, M. (2016). Tragedy of love and language par excellence: A post-classical and post-modern psychoanalytic reading of Romeo and Juliet. Studia Universitatis Petru Major—Philologia, 21, 89–104. Colson, D. (2008). The pedagogisation of sex, and sexualisation of pedagogy: Foucault, Shakespeare, and adolescent sexuality. 49th Parallel, 22, 49–59. Cox, M. K. (1976). Adolescent processes in Romeo and Juliet. Psychoanalytic Review, 63, 379–392. Driscoll, R., Davis, K. E., & Lipetz, M. E. (1972). Parental interference and romantic love: The Romeo and Juliet effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24(1), 1–10. Ibrahim, A., & Steinberg, S. R. (Eds.). (2014). Critical youth studies reader. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishers. Keam, A. (2006). The “shakesteen” genre: Claire Danes’s star-body, teen female fans, and the pluralization of authorship. Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, 2(1), 1–24. Keam, A. (2008). Claire Danes’s star-body, teen female viewers and the pluralisation of authorship in Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. English in Australia, 43(2), 39–46. Lesko, N. (2012). Act your age!: A cultural construction of adolescence (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Lesko, N., & Talburt, S. (Eds.). (2012). Keywords in youth studies: Tracing affects, movements, knowledges. New York, NY: Routledge. Lewis, M. A. (2016). Illustrating youth: A critical examination of the artful depictions of adolescent characters in comics. In C. Hill (Ed.), Teaching comics through multiple lenses: Critical perspectives (pp. 49–61). New York, NY: Routledge. Lewis, M. A. (2018). Supporting media-savvy youth-activists: The case of Marcus Yallow. In C. Z. Goering & P. L. Thomas (Eds.), Critical media literacy and fake news in post-truth America (pp. 127–139). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Sense. Lewis, M. A., & Durand, E. S. (2014). Sexuality as risk and resistance in young adult literature. In C. Hill (Ed.), The critical merits of young adult literature: Coming of age (pp. 38–54). New York, NY: Routledge. Lewis, M. A., & Rodesiler, L. (2018). Between being and becoming: The adolescent-athlete in young adult fiction. In I. P. Renga & C. Benedetti (Eds.), Sports and K–12 education: Insights for teachers, coaches, and school leaders (pp. 135–150). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Nys, A. M. (2003). The Montague and Capulet catharsis. The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 70(1), 38–42. Orme, N. (2003). Medieval children. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Petrone, R., Sarigianides, S. T., & Lewis, M. A. (2014). The Youth Lens: Analyzing adolescence/ts in literary texts. Journal of Literacy Research, 46, 506–533. Prusko, R. (2016). Youth and privacy in Romeo and Juliet. Early Theatre, 19(1), 113–136. Schwaber, P. (2006). For better and for worst: Romeo and Juliet. In R. A. Kind (Ed.), The Psychoanalytic study of the child (pp. 294–307). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Sieben, N. (2015). Openly Straight: A look at teaching LGBTQ young adult sports literature through a queer theory youth lens. In D. Linville & D. L. Carlson (Eds.), Beyond borders: Queer eros and ethos (ethics) in LGBTQ young adult literature (pp. 199–217). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishers. Tait, G. (2012). Population reasoning. In N. Lesko & S. Talburt (Eds.), Keywords in youth studies: Tracing affects, movements, knowledges (pp. 103–111). New York, NY: Routledge. Thein, A. H., Sulzer, M., & Schmidt, R. (2013). Evaluating the democratic merit of young adult literature: Lessons from two versions of Wes Moore’s memoir. English Journal, 103(2), 52–59. Trites, R. S. (2000). Disturbing the universe: Power and repression in adolescent literature. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.

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Dances, Dresses, and Speaking Her Mind The Cultural Work of Pride and Prejudice Katherine Montwieler

Introduction This essay explores the cultural work of Pride and Prejudice at the beginning of the #MeToo moment. In these still new days of 2018, possibly more than at any other time in history, more women than ever before are articulating their experiences, particularly their experiences with sexual assault and negotiating socio-sexual boundaries. Although women have expressed themselves for centuries (at least!), given the unparalleled reach of social media, more people are sharing their stories and listening to the stories of others than was previously conceivable. The individual participant in this new moment sees the pitfalls around her and how others negotiate their culture, their tactics, their strategies, their successes, and their failures. The relatively new (historically speaking) platforms of Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook have led hundreds of thousands of women to realize they are not alone in the world, and that their stories and experiences are achingly similar. If many men were new (and somewhat surprised) listeners to these narratives, they were quickly schooled in how prevalent sexual assault and harassment were because masses and masses of women spoke up and out. For the several months in 2018, women posted, texted, and tweeted about their own personal experiences, and the world listened. In a similar way, Jane Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, was a cultural phenomenon that touched a broad base, especially in the early nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, and the early twentyfirst century. The #MeToo movement is fundamentally about the sharing of personal narratives—that is, the virtual community is created by individuals sharing their stories with an audience whom they will (most likely) never physically meet; Austen, too, encourages, what Devoney Looser (2017) has described as an “imagined intimacy with audience” (p. 4). In other words, when people read her novels, which focus on young women and their families, because of that narrow focus on personal lives, they often feel close to Austen’s subjects; similarly when many people read the accounts of individual women, they feel close to the writers as well. In her

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most famous novel, Austen let readers into a world of her own making; in doing so, she taught hundreds of thousands of us how to read and of the precarity of the female condition. In that extraordinary story of a somewhat ordinary experience, Austen provided for her audience an example of a woman who speaks (and a man who listens); in doing so, she modeled for her readers both how to speak and how to listen up. Austen’s contemporaries recognized her acumen and her audacity, claiming she “gave away more about how women think and behave than any previous writer had cared or thought right to do” (Harman, 2009, p. 91). And so, just as Tarana Burke and Alyssa Milano created an empowered community of readers through storytelling, so, too, did Jane Austen. Two hundred years ago she penned what would become one of the most famous novels in the world: a story about a woman raising her voice. The world has never stopped listening.

Historical Reception of Austen and Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice appeared in 1813, two years after Sense and Sensibility was printed under the byline “by a Lady.”1 Pride and Prejudice was also published anonymously, but the title page announced the novel was “by the Author of Sense and Sensibility.” With that declaration, Austen affirms both her feminine anonymity and her professional credibility. These twin competing interests—how to be feminine and how to own her authority—were crucial to Austen’s reputation in the early nineteenth century, and, in some ways to womanhood today. If Austen’s publisher highlighted her proper feminine decorum on both novels’ title pages, we still expect such behavior from women in the current spotlight—when they are not ladylike, the world takes note and is fast and loud in its criticism.2 With her second published work, Austen emphasizes her modesty (her name does not appear), and she asserts her expertise; after all, she has published before. That fine line between embodying proper feminine humility and possessing the credibility to speak is one that women continue to negotiate. This tension is of course what Austen’s most famous protagonist Elizabeth Bennet also navigates, as her early readers were quick to point out. This heroine was strikingly different from previous heroines. Unlike the saintly Clarissa and Pamela, Samuel Richardson’s two most popular heroines and paragons of virtue both who appeared in the novels that bear their names, Bennet’s claim to fame was her intelligence and her wit. She was quick with repartee, not with feminine submission. Perhaps surprising to readers today, this woman speaking her mind was lauded at the time; readers appreciated Bennet’s moxie. The first run (between 700–1500 copies) of Pride and Prejudice quickly sold out; it was reprinted the same year and again in 1817. Appreciation of Austen’s novel by those with cultural capital goes back to that initial

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appearance. For example, the contemporary review in The British Critic noted, “It is very far superior to almost all the publications of the kind which have lately come before us” (reprinted in the Broadview edition of Pride and Prejudice, p. 482). According to Claire Harman, one of the most important playwrights of the day Richard Brinsley Sheridan privately called the novel “one of the cleverest things he ever read” (p. 60) and the appraisal in in The Critical Review publicly claimed Pride and Prejudice “rises very superior to any novel we have lately met with in the delineation of domestic scenes” (Harman, 2009, p. 61). Austen died a few years after the book’s publication, at the untimely age of 41.3 Her books were not reprinted for decades, though they developed a respectable readership, particularly through the medium of circulating libraries. In 1833 Austen’s novels were re-issued, and since then, though some scholars have argued they have “been continuously in print” (Folsom, 1993, p. x), they hardly exploded on the scene. Rather, according to Harman, “Austen’s novels were not essential reading for the high Victorians, and certainly were not ‘beloved’. [Unlike the novels of Dickens, Collins, and Thackeray, which all sold] in the hundreds of thousands,” Austen’s readership was “insignificant” (p. 120). If most Victorian readers were consuming penny dreadfuls, newspapers, and other ephemera as quickly as they could get their hands on them (and before they disintegrated), they were generally not reading Austen’s regency romances. Mainly forgotten for much of the nineteenth century, Austen was reintroduced to the reading public writ large in 1870 when her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh wrote his Memoir of Jane Austen, the original biography of the woman whom England would come to name “Aunt Jane.” “Combined with Austen-Leigh’s saccharine portrait of his aunt— ‘there was scarcely a charm in her most delightful characters that was not a true reflection of her own sweet temper and loving heart’—[the Memoir] established at a stroke the highly popular and durable cult of Jane Austen’s sweetness and gentility” (Harman, 2009, pp. 131–132). Austen-Leigh emphasized his aunt’s proper femininity rather than her acerbic wit or her criticism of mean-spirited aristocrats. Thus, Jane Austen was re-imagined as sweet and saintly, packaged anew for the Victorian conservative age. Austen-Leigh’s Memoir paved the way for additional Austen biographies in the 1880s and 1890s, and the first dissertation on her work—by a Harvard University student no less—announcing her arrival within the academy.4 Her scholarly and public reputation followed the course that had been so politely and deftly directed by her nephew; for example, the 1885 Dictionary of National Biography entry on Jane Austen followed the now familiar pattern of appreciating Austen’s “scale,” which is, to say, “her understanding of ‘the precise limits of her own powers’ (cue the little bit of ivory) and how, within her tiny world, she is ‘flawless’” (Harman, 2009, p. 157).

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The feminine Jane Austen was entirely appropriate for the mid-Victorian audience, for at the same time that she was being rediscovered, more girls in England were being educated than ever before—and these new students needed reading material, preferably primers that taught social mores, British identity, and feminine behavior in addition to literacy. William Baker points out that the British Parliament Education Act of 1870 created state-run, publicly funded compulsory primary schools, “insisted on universal literacy and the use of literary teaching as a national heritage, and the fostering of the awareness of national pride” (p. 547). Universal schooling offered an ideal opportunity to teach children the joys of British literature, including the work of Austen. Free schools ensured that more students became indoctrinated into proper British behavior, identity, and literature. Austen-Leigh had chosen an ideal time to introduce his subject to the country. Not only did the public clamor for more editions of Austen, but so did public institutions; as Devoney Looser (2017) observed, “the growing number of school editions and abridgements of her novels are a reliable indication of Austen’s increasing popularity towards the end of the century” (pp. 202–223). Austen was popular not only in schools but in homes as well; sales of a newly illustrated edition of Pride and Prejudice soared: Hugh “Thomson’s super-fussy fine pencil-work, the blandly interchangeable faces he gave to all the ‘attractive’ females . . . and the exaggerated physiognomies of the ‘comic’ characters proved immensely popular” (Harman, 2009, p. 160). Sales bear out this assessment; the original run sold more than 11,000 copies, and the illustrated edition remained in print through the twentieth century. The rise in girls’ education was shortly followed by the ascendancy of the suffragists and the “New Woman” movement. If Austen had been held up by conservatives as an exemplar of “verbal restraint and quiet life” (Harman, 2009, p. 170) and ambassador from “a lost golden age of courtship and marriage” (Looser, 2017, p. 144), progressives, including the feminist journalist Millicent Fawcett, who had first read her work in schools, championed her as a “foremother—a foregrandmother— whose very existence and achievements proved the rightness of their cause for expanding women’s rights and opportunities” (Looser, 2017, p. 144). Readers could see what they wanted to in Austen; but what they couldn’t do was avoid her or her importance to British education and British identity. The study of British Literature became formalized in the late nineteenth century, shortly before women began entering the university en masse. Once again, this timing is not coincidental. “British letters” was seen as a “soft science,” one that even women could excel at, so in some ways the British canon is very much a response to women entering the academy. Teachers and literary scholars cued on Austen’s attention to manners and decorum, perhaps led by her famous self-assessment when she playfully

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and ironically “confessed” she wrote only on a two-inch bit of ivory, but they, I believe, were correct to focus on the importance of femininity in her works.5 Many didn’t see her critique of institutions or of the precariousness of the feminine position, even as they saw her apparent preoccupation with manners and good behavior. Indeed that Austen as a woman writer who focused on issues of femininity made it into the British canon at a time when the British Empire was growing—due to the victories of the British Navy and nascent commercial industries—is one of the fascinating paradoxes of her reception history. She was heralded as an icon of Britishness, as if to be British was to be domestic, reserved, and feminine even as the Empire’s very existence was dependent on colonialism, power, and masculinity. But Austen, as subtle readings of her point out, criticizes the institutions with which she is so intimately associated, so her being embraced by them is one of the serendipitous ironies of British literature. Austen was remembered as quintessentially feminine, quintessentially British, quintessentially well-mannered, when in fact she was deeply attendant to the injustices facing women and (some of) the disenfranchised by the British state and social systems. So Austen becomes the face of the British institution—and particularly the institution of British femininity—at the same time that she critiques it. It’s no surprise then that in the early twentieth century, Austen had a secure spot in the English canon. In no place was this more evident than in the trenches of the Great War. In another cultural event that may surprise people who see Austen as the mother of chick lit, her books were sent by the case to soldiers overseas. Harman (2009) explains “the trenches were full of Janeites” (p. 181). The writer vicariously met many soldiers on their return as well, for her books were chosen as “‘salubrious reading for the wounded’ and prescribed as an aid to convalescence for the most severely shell-shocked soldiers . . . it is odd to think of how many damaged and dying men in field hospitals and convalescent homes might have swum in and out of consciousness to the sound or the memory of ‘Divine Jane’s’ words” (Harman, 2009, p. 183).6 Jane Austen in the twentieth century is a cipher indeed.

Influential Scholarship on Pride and Prejudice No novel more firmly represents this puzzle than Pride and Prejudice. On one level the novel lays the template for the romantic tableau of a young woman who comes from nothing bewitching the landed Englishman. If this trajectory appears to be a conservative love story, when marrying into the aristocracy represents happiness and the apex of femininity, on another level the novel can be read as supporting a woman speaking her mind, articulating her desire, choosing her own path, and being rewarded for it. Elizabeth Bennet’s having an idea, a voice, and a romantic partner (with an estate) who adores her for what others perceive as her faults lays the foundation

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for innumerable love stories, as well as becoming the “prototype for chick lit” (Gymnich, 2015, p. 13). Without any claim to power other than her intelligence (and, not insignificantly, her beauty), Elizabeth Bennet marries into a class previously thought unattainable—this Cinderella story has been lauded by some as transgressive in its cross-classing subversive potential and conservative by others in the heroine’s ultimate submission to a class structure based on bloodlines and property ownership. The popular Austen compendium illustrated by Thomson was followed in 1923 by the first scholarly five-volume edition of Austen’s works edited by Robert Chapman, which presaged the first “properly researched biography” Jane Austen by Elizabeth Jenkins in 1938 (Harman, 2009, p. 220). Those same decades saw theatrical and film adaptations of Pride and Prejudice. And so, even as Austen was making her mark in Hollywood, she was making her way in the academy. Critics as diverse as Geoffrey Gorer (1941), F. R. Leavis (1948), Marvin Mudrick (1952), Ian Watt (1963), and Raymond Williams (1973) all explored Austen in the annals of literary criticism. By the late century, Austen was established as a fixture in the canon and in the classroom. The 1970s saw a redoubling of interest in Austen, no doubt influenced in part by the second wave of the women’s movement. Again, whether readers interpreted Austen as conservative or progressive, they were forced to reckon with her. Inarguably among the most influential readings of Austen are Alistair Duckworth’s The Improvement of the Estate (1971; republished in 1994), Marilyn Butler’s Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), and Margaret Kirkham’s Jane Austen, Feminism, and Fiction (1983). Duckworth reads across Austen’s oeuvre a coherent conservative vision, which he locates in “the context of contemporary landscape gardening” (p. xviii), arguing that Pride and Prejudice moves from introductory chaos to a conservative social stabilizing marriage, in which “the three classes of her fictional world—nobility, gentry, and trade—come together finally in the park at Pemberley” (1971, p. 130). Marilyn Butler follows Duckworth in arguing that Austen is fundamentally conservative, for “the more one examines the novel the more difficult it becomes to read into it authorial approval of the element in Elizabeth which is rebellious” (1975, p. 203). Austen’s novels, Butler argues, were a conservative response to Romantic aesthetics and Jacobin politics. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar also find conservative tendencies in Austen’s novels, though they perceive the writer as more troubled by conservativism than either Duckworth or Butler do. Austen’s novels, Gilbert and Gubar claim, describe women who are “caught in the contradiction between status as human beings and their vocations as females” (1979, p. 155), concluding that in ultimately submitting to male protagonists and social systems, Austen’s heroines compromise any chance at real happiness or authentic fulfillment they might have.

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But, just as late nineteenth-century feminists found progressive inspiration in Austen, so did some late twentieth-century critics. Margaret Kirkham’s Jane Austen, Feminism, and Fiction presents an alternative reading of Austen, considering the writer in light “of eighteenth-century feminist ideas and of the Feminist Controversy of the turn of the eighteenth century” (1983, p. xi). According to Kirkham, Austen’s views on women’s education and rights were inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Claudia Johnson concurs in the 1988 Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, conceding that within Austen’s oeuvre conservativism’s “basic imperatives—benevolence, gratitude, family attachment, female modesty, paternal authority—are wrested from their privileged claims and made . . . to relinquish their ‘moral elevation’” (p. 166). Critical analyses of Austen’s work continue to proliferate. For example, Devoney Looser’s magisterial study explores how Austen’s persona and her works have been variously reinterpreted and marketed over the last two centuries, leaving the writer and the novels as enigmatic as ever. In no small measure the polyvocal Austen found in the pages of scholarly tomes was matched in (and possibly generated by) the film and television adaptations that began to appear in the 1990s. The titles of recent scholarly studies devoted to Austen emphasize the breadth of scholarship on the writer and her heirs. When attempting to trace the wide range of approaches to Austen available today, we might glance across a library shelf and find Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield’s Jane Austen in Hollywood (1998), Brian Southam’s Jane Austen and the Navy (2000), William Deresiewicz’s Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets (2005), Jillian Heydt-Stevenson’s Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions: Subversive Laughter, Embodied History (2005), and Gabrielle D.V. White’s Jane Austen in the Context of Abolition: ‘A Fling at the Slave Trade’ (2006). These titles underscore the significance of new historicism, cultural studies, and close reading in relation to Austen studies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Claire Harman’s Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World (2009) and Looser’s The Making of Jane Austen (2017) have been especially important to this essay, as they deliberately, carefully, and thoroughly trace the reception of Austen’s texts and others inspired by them in compelling prose and meticulous detail. My own interpretation also owes a strong debt to a 1994 article by Isobel Armstrong, who suggests that if the novel “is implicitly about averting revolution, it is just as strongly concerned with challenging repression, and the double programme creates complexities which glance off its superficially glittering surface” (sic; p. 160). I believe these subtleties are the cause of the novel’s endurance. It’s the multiplicities that Austen allows for that lets readers see different political agendas in the novel; that tension makes Pride and Prejudice a constant favorite across decades

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even as readers argue for which Austen they think is authentic, or which character most accurately speaks for the writer. One indisputable observation we can make of Austen and of Pride and Prejudice in particular is the focus on gender relationships, and women negotiating boundaries—generational, sexual, social, and economic. This negotiation, as Armstrong observes, has everything to do with the Bennet sisters representing themselves whether through speech, clothes, affect, or behavior. In an insight particularly relevant for young people today, Armstrong notes the Bennet girls are particularly concerned with how much they can say because they “can so easily transgress the limits of decorum by doing or saying what will bring public censure” (1994, p. 172). Women today with technology almost inevitably within reach of their fingertips are more keenly aware than ever of the importance of both marketing their availability, their beauty, and their desirability, but, crucially, only to a certain point. It’s a fine and invisible line that separates admiration from slut-shaming. If the tools with which women announce their desirability, their availability, and their opinions are new, the vulnerability of the feminine position is not. And that liability is particularly linked to self-expression. Showing off—or speaking one’s mind—can lead to vindication or to ostracism in Austen’s world and in our own. Armstrong explains that “It is through the uncomfortable limits of sexual signals that the novel indirectly explores a profoundly important political question: when is it right to conceal or to reveal information; when is it right to speak out” (1994, p. 172). These questions have not disappeared in the two hundred years since Austen’s novel was published; indeed now perhaps more than ever boundaries matter, and one reason why they do is because they are always shifting. These issues, are, of course, particularly salient for the #MeToo movement as well.

Cultural Studies Cultural studies, an interdisciplinary field, yokes Marxism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, and new historicism together to explore how dominant and subversive ideologies play out in various texts— literary, anthropological, musical, and visual—in seemingly endless possibilities. If one generalization about the discipline could be made, it’s that cultural studies often analyzes the relationship between systems of power (including social, economic, and political) and artifacts or practices. The field is most closely associated with Stuart Hall, Michel de Certeau, Dick Hebdige, and the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society: 1780–1850 (1958), Mary Poovey’s The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer (1984), and Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (1984) are all seminal books for students interested in learning more about the discipline, particularly in relation to Jane Austen.

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Cultural artifacts or texts perform cultural work, which means they convey ideologies, or political ideas in addition to surface messages. Analyses informed by cultural studies often draw our attention to the political, historic, and economic reasons we value certain texts; for example, as we have seen, the canon of British Literature was created at a time when the British Empire was expanding and academicians and people with cultural capital wanted to create a national tradition that could justify global expansion. The cultural work that texts perform changes depending on the moment in which they are read. Pride and Prejudice serves different functions or promotes different ideologies depending on the moment in which it is being read and the context of the reading. In other words, the cultural work of Pride and Prejudice changes, even though the source text does not, and because the novel (or indeed the figure of Austen herself) has been interpreted so many times in so many different ways, it (or she) is an ideal source text for cultural studies. Furthermore, scholars of cultural studies often look at popular representations of texts (for example, any of the numerous film adaptations of Pride and Prejudice), and may explore how those adaptations transform the ideologies of the primary texts. The adaptations reveal not only insights into the original source text, but if read closely, they also reveal ideologies about the moment in which they were produced. In this essay I will nod to popular representations of Pride and Prejudice—and I encourage teachers to read Austen’s novel alongside contemporary adaptations—but the bulk of the remainder of my analysis will address the original text. Certainly asking students to explore how the 2003 Bollywood film Bride and Prejudice rewrites Pride and Prejudice would yield a wonderful discussion. One way to think about the cultural work of an object is to consider how an object functions and reverberates at specific moments in history. For example, a typewriter may have signaled progress, connections, and speed in the early twentieth century; in the 1950s the machine was equated with emerging female professionals; by the early twenty-first century it was a sign of nostalgia and quaint technology. Literary texts, too, “do” cultural work, and they are tied to the historical moment and place in which they are read—as well as the moment in which they were produced—they are not merely neutral vehicles for communication and ideas. When one looks at the cultural work of a novel, one studies why and how the novel is meaningful and how it is used and resonates in particular historical moments. The cultural work that a novel does may either conform to the surface story or plot of the novel, or it might challenge or change that narrative. As we’ve seen, some argue that Pride and Prejudice reifies conservative mores about marriage and the privileges that come with land ownership and primogeniture, and others read the novel as performing a different kind of cultural work—one that is more subversive because it suggests that young women should have autonomy, should speak up for themselves, and that they may even know more than their

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social betters do. Understanding the cultural work of texts is important for high school teachers because it’s a useful and provocative way for students to understand the world around them. Asking students to consider how canonical novels both subvert and uphold traditional ideas might make the books more appealing to new readers who may have the (mistaken) impression that the texts are conservative, traditional, or old school. In a world in which young people are inundated with advertisements, manipulative messages, and political propaganda, by analyzing the cultural work of novels, students can learn to explore how all kinds of texts affect them in ways that they might not at first realize. By learning about cultural studies, young readers, too, can learn to become savvy consumers, critics, and citizens.

Pride and Prejudice and Cultural Studies Today At different points over the past two centuries, the cultural work of Pride and Prejudice has done different things. At times the novel was used to justify the hegemony of the British Empire. At other times Pride and Prejudice was used to glorify heterosexual romance and heteronormativity. The book has also been used to emphasize women’s power and intelligence. In this essay I am arguing that the cultural work Pride and Prejudice performs today is tied to its ability to show young people that they have insights into unjust systems and that they can critique those systems; this reading of the novel is then very much tied to the #MeToo phenomenon. Rather than simply being a novel about dances, dresses, or desire, Pride and Prejudice is a novel that anticipates Maggie Kuhn’s famous words, “speak your mind—even if your voice shakes” (1991, p. 159). Women speak over and over again throughout Pride and Prejudice, and they demand that men and their social superiors listen to them. Mrs. Bennet speaks in the first few pages, Elizabeth and Jane speak, even Lydia and Charlotte Lucas speak. Women’s words—their conversations—matter, Austen shows us. In the early nineteenth century writing itself was an act of audacity—for to publish a novel was to assume an audience—and when the subject matter was the private desires and thoughts of women, the work was more audacious than ever. Jane Austen assumes an audience, even as Burke and Milano do today, and this act of inviting people to read and/or to listen to the stories of the Bennet sisters is revolutionary on Austen’s part. More controversially, one could argue that in order for a particular voice to matter, people must hear and engage with it. #MeToo matters not because one person told her story, but because unprecedented numbers of people listened and created a community; if they originally read Tarana Burke or Alyssa Milano’s account on their own computer screen, they were joined by hundreds of thousands of other people who also read and responded. Although reading is usually a solitary pursuit (that is, one generally reads to oneself rather than aloud to others), the cultural work of Austen,

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like the cultural work of #MeToo, is a social one. The actual reading of Pride and Prejudice may occur in isolation, but the novel matters because of the conversations that have been generated about it. Reading communities—and the work of Austen lends itself to communal reflection and discussion—offer unique settings for individuals to reflect on their reading experiences, to listen to others, and to build on their ideas in a community of respect, that allows all in the room—whether literal or virtual—to reach a more sophisticated understanding of the work under discussion, and of themselves as well. Sound familiar? Because there have been so many Jane Austens—and each reading experience is unique even as she is discussed communally—she is ideally situated as a subject of cultural studies. The novel as a medium that transcends the personal and the public lays the template for the new modes of communication with which teens and tweens approach the world. Today, our students are not only reading the words of others; they are sharing their seemingly private intimate thoughts with a global audience in ways previously unimagined. But if the way that stories and reputations are shared—has changed, the stories themselves, in some ways, have not. The cultural work of Pride and Prejudice at the #MeToo moment is in some ways about negotiating boundaries and speaking up for oneself; these two practices are as important for young people today as they ever have been. The relevance of Pride and Prejudice is visible not only in the legion books and articles that address it, but perhaps, most dramatically, in the hundreds of adaptations that have appeared since its publication, which include not only new narrative retellings but also films, YouTube sensations, memes, and pornography.7 The 1995 BBC mini-series introduced a new generation to the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy and cemented Colin Firth’s reputation as a leading man; the 2005 film starring Keira Knightley lifted Austen’s star higher yet; and the 2009 parody novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was made into a 2016 film, giving a whole new context to the regency romance. Even if most contemporary U.S. high school students now come to Austen through television or film adaptations, the original 1813 novel remains a staple of English literature syllabi.8 As time passes and different versions proliferate, the origin text stays a constant, as do many of its heroines’ preoccupations, including finding a voice, exercising autonomy, negotiating heterosexual courtship and family boundaries, wrestling with body image, and living in economic uncertainty. Austen’s audience is vast and varied. If, for the sake of simplicity, we can argue the wise appreciate her gentle chiding, the young her characters’ independence, the scholars her subtlety, the romance readers her dramatic arcs, the conservatives an emblem of British Empire, the feminists a subversive truth-teller, it’s clear that we can find, I think, what we want to within her work. And in no year was this more apparent than 2017, the

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200th anniversary of her death, which coincided with her appearance on the British ten-pound note and the broadcasting of the #MeToo message. Austen’s visage was everywhere—The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, and also in scholarship, fiction, and the web. As NPR commentators breathlessly announced, Jane Austen societies flourished in the United States, Pakistan, India, and China, all one-time colonies far removed geographically and chronologically from their inspiration’s roots. Such groups are not based in university settings but in the social circles of book clubs, confirming Marion Gymnich’s succinct claim that “what sets Pride and Prejudice apart from many other literary classics is that it has become a true pop-cultural phenomenon” (2015, p. 11). It’s not nostalgia that accounts for Austen’s popularity or relevance today but her perceptiveness of social relations, her humor, and the likeability and vulnerability of her heroines. The preoccupations of the Bennet sisters, including negotiating the arenas of romance, desire, beauty, autonomy, and economic insecurity, are not unlike preoccupations of young people today, in spite of the addition of other complications, even those more pressing—careers, education, child having and/or rearing, political agency—to their lives. If Pride and Prejudice is to remain a staple on high school syllabi, on movie screens, and in book clubs, it will be because of the insights a two-hundred-year-old author can share with her twenty-first-century audience, because it fosters interaction and exchange, because it is a living document—not an irrelevant artifact, because it continues to perform meaningful cultural work. What makes Pride and Prejudice accessible and relevant to readers now—and the readers of tomorrow—is that, if they are introduced to Austen in middle-, high-school, or even college classrooms, they, too, like so many of her heroines, are socially and emotionally vulnerable and living in a world whose rules were established by people and institutions older than they are and seemingly divorced from their quotidian lives and insecurities, but whose rules they must abide by and learn to negotiate. All of the Bennet sisters, even sweet Jane, chafe at the limitations imposed on them by institutions beyond their control—and this particular relationship to the world is one that persists notwithstanding that so many facets of our lives have changed from those of Regency-era England. So, in attempting to show students the relevance of Austen’s cultural work, teachers might ask their classes to show them examples of how the young Bennet sisters’ relationships to institutions prefigure or anticipate their own. For example, Jane wishes to ride in the coach to Netherfield to see the Bingleys, but her mother tells her “‘your father cannot spare the horses’” (p. 68); later Elizabeth begs “that the carriage might be sent for them in the course of the day,” but “Mrs. Bennet sent them word that they could not possibly have the carriage before Tuesday” (p. 97). Parents controlled vehicles—and consequently the movement of

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their children—two hundred years ago, as well as yesterday. And children were miffed at their decision. More dangerously, Elizabeth submits to Mr. Collins’ request to dance with him at the ball—being polite trumps her own desires (p. 121). These moments might tie in to our students’ own experience with authority—whether that is parental, romantic, or professional—young people, particularly young women, are expected to be polite, even if that means acting against their own desire. Doing so, of course, encouraging submission, has everything to do with the eventual potential for harassment and assault. Indeed that Lydia is the only Bennet sister who suffers sexual assault (given how compliant most of the girls are) may be the most imaginative detail of the novel. Insightful teachers might ask students at what point are the girls physically vulnerable? Where do we set that vulnerability? Does Austen encourage girls to take care of each other or to shame those who act indecorously? Within Pride and Prejudice, older people and institutions in often apparently arbitrary, unfair, and irrational ways proscribe much of the lives of young people. And that relationship—between the young and disenfranchised and the old and the powerful who have—at the moment— more authority and control—remains the way in to an appreciation for Austen’s novel and a way to appreciate its cultural work in the twenty-first century. When Lady Catherine tells Elizabeth not to marry her nephew, she famously refuses, “‘I am not to be intimidated into anything so wholly unreasonable’” (p. 358), exemplifying strength, stability, and, to use a contemporary term, grit. Here Austen shows readers how to negotiate institutions and how to speak up. When one is reading Austen’s fiction, one generally identifies with the underdog because those in power are so crass, offensive, and mean-spirited. The portrait of Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a case in point: her “air was not conciliatory, nor was her manner of receiving them, such as to make her visitors forget their inferiority or rank. She was not rendered formidable by stance; but whatever she said, was spoken in so authoritative a tone, as marked her self-importance” (p. 188). If the sentence structure may be alienating to contemporary readers, the character type is not. We all know a Lady Catherine. Teenagers and most students living in the United States today, whatever their class, their race, their gender, or their family structure, can relate to the apparent injustice of adults having power over them.9 The Bennet girls who lack so much social power thus are figures with whom young readers—and indeed anyone who is a dependent—can relate. Austen’s endurance will depend on teachers’ illuminating this vulnerability to future generations of students, and showing them that they, too, can relate to Austen. Though the nuances of specific social structures have changed, the structures themselves, the struggles one has with them, and the responses to those struggles have not. Now, we encourage all of our students to make decisions for their own good, to respect their own wishes, and to trust their own individual dignity. Having

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read Elizabeth Bennet, students, too, like Elizabeth, Fanny Price, or Anne Eliot, may realize that they too can speak up, that their voices matter. The sprightly intelligent heroine bristles at the limitations imposed on her personally by her family, the Bingleys, and Lady Catherine and institutionally by the class and gender conventions that try to determine her future. We see this rebelling when she refuses to marry Mr. Collins, when she ignores the Bingley girls’ and Lady Catherine’s slights, and when she walks across the meadow to see Jane. When she initially refuses Darcy’s marriage proposal and when she refuses to humor Lady Catherine, Elizabeth says “no,” forcing the other characters—and the audience—to acknowledge her refutation. Elizabeth says she is willing to risk her reputation to stand up for herself. Like Burke and Milano, Elizabeth exemplifies for her readers the courage of standing up and of speaking out, of refusing to submit. This individual rebelling against social and institutional constraints is what so much nineteenth-century literature addresses and indeed what so much literature and art is based on.10 Although some conventions no longer restrict young people—for example, marriage is no longer the preferred path towards economic empowerment or personal fulfillment in the United States—other conventions have replaced them.11 The pressure to be attractive and to publicize one’s experiences may be more intense than ever before. And, certainly, as #MeToo has shown us, girls and women are still encouraged to submit to bad behavior rather than to call people out on their abuse of others. Although expectations have changed, the structure of expectations themselves continues to influence the lives of people, particularly young people. Learning when to follow and when to break the rules is as important a rite of passage or coming to know oneself as any other. Elizabeth delightfully challenges expectations even as she is confined by others. In saying “no,” in refusing to submit to polite conventions, Elizabeth Bennet anticipates future women’s repudiation of conventional behavior, offering a model of standing up for oneself even hundreds of years later. Elizabeth Bennet sees some social codes and chooses to break them in both small and large ways. If Elizabeth acts rebelliously in walking alone to see her sister early in the novel, “crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity, [until she finds] herself at last within view of [the Bingley] house, with weary ancles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise” (sic; p. 70) because Jane is ill, then the novel’s cultural work indicates sororal empathy is more important than good manners. Austen encourages her readers, too, to say no to partnering with inferiors when Elizabeth refuses Mr. Collins’ marriage proposal because she finds him ridiculous. Elizabeth Bennet’s independence—a woman who says no— continues to resonate. Recent adaptations of Pride and Prejudice have honored her original characterization. Anne Cherian’s A Good Indian Wife (2008) and Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible (2016) transform the English

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countryside to contemporary San Francisco and Cincinnati, but they keep the heroine’s acumen, sensitivity, humor, and voice intact. (Teachers might ask students how contemporary writers change the endings of the novels, and then what kind of cultural work the re-tellings perform). If Austen gives Elizabeth Bennet a fairy-tale ending in terms of marrying a handsome man with an awe-inspiring estate, more importantly, and particularly, for Austen’s relevance today, she gives Elizabeth a perceptiveness of injustice in the world (especially as they affect her) and a voice that addresses those injustices as the scene with Lady Catherine exemplifies. Lady Catherine tells Elizabeth she is an upstart “‘young woman without family, connections, or future,’” and Elizabeth retorts, “‘I am a gentleman’s daughter’” (p. 357). Her marriage to Darcy might represent either a championing of conservatives mores (at last the heroine is silenced) or of feminist ideals (the upstart woman wins all that she desires), but whether we see the ending as capitulation to conservative principles or as vindication of women’s autonomy, it is the way that Elizabeth—and Austen—engages with the world around her—perceiving and commenting on it—that keeps Pride and Prejudice relevant today and guaranteed of a future. Through Elizabeth Bennet, Austen models for her readers how to raise their voices; she shows them, one might say, “#YouToo” can speak your mind. Pride and Prejudice is relevant today because most people in the United States are adolescent or emerging adults when they first read the novel, and they are in a position similar to Elizabeth’s. That is, like Elizabeth, they (usually) lack economic power and social capital. Like Elizabeth, they usually live in homes where adults dictate their actions and places where unspoken codes govern their lives and determine where they can go just as they govern Elizabeth’s. Like Elizabeth, they crave more autonomy than they have. Like Elizabeth, they see that some of the adults and some of the institutions are unfair, uncaring, and indifferent to the injustices they themselves perceive. As Pamela Bromberg explains, Pride and Prejudice “speaks powerfully and directly to . . . students about their own emerging identities and values, especially about mediating among individual, family, and social interests in choosing friends and mates” (1993, p. 126). One can start work, go to college, have a child, have an abortion, get a driver’s license, join the military—the possibilities appear limitless. Yet, marriage is still idealized in many works of contemporary culture, even as fewer people in the U.S. find themselves in wedlock. If the urge to wed has declined with recent social and institutional embraces of alternative sexualities and the rise of the divorce rate, the desire to speak, to find one’s voice, and to want to be heard transcends centuries, genders, and continents even as the ways we express ourselves have changed. Finding one’s voice and finding the courage to speak aloud remains one of the great constants across cultures, times, and continents. How else could we explain Austen’s reception in places as diverse as France, Pakistan, China, Japan, and Iran?

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In some ways, then, I’m riffing (without the pedagogical egocentrism) on what Daniel R. Mangiavellano describes as readers’ “deeply personal” response to Pride and Prejudice. He observes that, “As teachers, we celebrate this level of engagement with the text because it is evidence of our classes influencing students’ larger personal and intellectual development” (2012, p. 550). But what is unique to Austen, I believe, is that we engage with her by laughing, not by crying. The identification with a character does not lead to the kind of emotionally intense experience one has when reading a sentimental or tragic novel but rather offers the reader a lesson in a kind of obtainable distance marked by humor. If we see ourselves and others in Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Mrs. Bennet, then we realize how silly our preoccupations are. If Austen is a didactic novelist, she is paradoxically teaching us not to take ourselves so seriously—and to realize things for ourselves—not to be changed because we have been lectured to. Austen’s impact depends on her humor, which is evident in at least two ways—most obviously in her characterization of the powerful she offers students a way to critique those in authority. For example, when Lady Catherine comes to the Bennet household, “she entered the room with an air more than unusually ungracious, made no other reply to Elizabeth’s salutation, than a slight inclination of the head, and sat down without saying a word. Elizabeth had mentioned her name to her mother, on her ladyship’s entrance, though no request of introduction had been made” (p. 353). Lady Catherine’s sheer rudeness belies the dignity of her title. In portraying her ladyship as so offensive, Austen gives the powerful their due. One could argue then that the cultural work of the novel is to criticize the aristocracy. These characters are clearly lampooned, which becomes a central process in this text. In a more subtle way, she also encourages her readers not to take themselves so seriously when they see aspects of their heroines getting lampooned as well. The cultural work of this lesson may be harder for the young to swallow, and though students today can see the humor in the ridiculousness of certain characters, they might need encouragement to recognize the humor in their own situation, the way Elizabeth can. This is clearly where group reading and discussion help. For if reading as an exercise tends to be individualistic, discussing one’s reading in a class, a coffee shop, or someone’s house is a social activity, and in those communal places, we often laugh with others. Austen, if we listen to her, has a democratizing influence that is directly related to her humor. The bond between the Bennet sisters runs more tightly than any of the romantic bonds in the novel. There are more conversations between the girls, more tenderness in their letters than there are in moments between sexes, and the meta-textual Austen network is one that doesn’t expand from the top down but rather across time and space. In this way, the Austen network is like the #MeToo network, but gentler in its delivery. Yet Austen is still political in her dressing-down of hierarchies. If Austen,

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the canon, and the study of British literature have been criticized as elitist by those who haven’t read her or are too intimidated to pick up her novel, then it’s incumbent on teachers to show their students that reading can be a democratic act and that reading closely can be particularly subversive. Austen—and Pride and Prejudice in particular—echoes as clearly as she does in women’s networks across former colonies because of her awareness and capturing of the hypocrisy and problems of hierarchy. Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who holds the most social power within the novel, is ridiculed; “there was little to be done but to hear Lady Catherine talk, which she did without any intermission till coffee came in, delivering her opinion on every subject in so decisive a manner as proved that she was not used to have her judgment controverted. She enquired into Charlotte’s domestic concerns familiarly and minutely, and gave her a great deal of advice as to the management of them all” (p. 189). Mr. Collins is ridiculed for his sycophancy, his groveling to a higher social class unworthy of praise; “the respect which he felt for [Lady Catherine’s] high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a clergyman, and his rights as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, selfimportance and humility” (p. 104). No character deliberately attempts to offend either Lady Catherine or Mr. Collins, but Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins reveal their limitations, even their stupidity. Teaching Austen gives faculty a unique opportunity to engage in a democratic exercise— after all, if one is a hierarchical know-it-all, one’s students, following the author’s example, might see the apparent authority in the room as a figure ripe for mocking. In some ways Pride and Prejudice forces the teacher to participate with the students democratically or to risk being leveled otherwise—for in either case the students will recognize their own shared experience and will bond and will exchange observations about power dynamics and agency. In that leveling of authority, in the undercutting of those who have a certain power, Austen gives her heroines a certain power with which the young can identify. And in discussing these scenes, in talking with students about how the great are brought down, our classrooms provide a safe space where students can recognize their own power—even if other social structures don’t give that to them. In this moment, which social media as the prevalent method of communication emphasizes, democratic communities are created through the dissemination of and commenting on information. In a similar way, Gymnich tells us that “reading Austen’s novel and/or watching an adaptation of her work [often creates a] communal experience shared by a group of women” (2015, p. 27). So, if the focus of the novel is on the individual finding her voice, its power comes not just from another individual’s reading experience but also from a collective analysis of it. The classroom conversation ideally follows doing one’s homework. The Austen network thus offers us a unique model for the endurance of

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the Humanities both inside academia and in popular culture: the marriage of both the work that one must do on one’s own and the collective conversation that occurs afterwards, when one shares one’s insights in a time and space, where others can listen to, engage with, build on, and act on collective insights. That conversation gives the reading meaning whether the subject under discussion is the marriage market, sexual assault, or speaking up. Women’s voices, Austen shows us, matter. Our stories continue to matter. The exercise of reading the novel encourages students to develop their concentration, analytical skills, memory, and imagination; the exercise of talking about the novel encourages them to develop empathy, synthesis, analysis, and listening. In this new cultural moment, the cultural work of Austen paradoxically recalls the work of Burke—we must speak and we must listen. Reading Pride and Prejudice next to contemporary retellings, whether Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Anne Cherian’s A Good Indian Wife or any of the other numerous adaptations, may be a particularly useful way to approach the text in light of cultural studies. Looking at the novels next to each other, or listening to our students talk about them, forces us to recognize the limitations of universalizing conclusions—in learning of our limitations, in seeing what others say, which we may not have yet seen, we realize that others can teach us, that we do not know everything. Cherian’s A Good Indian Wife shows readers the complications facing one young immigrant woman in the United States; Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible reimagines one of Austen’s characters as transgender. Cinematic adaptations from the 1940 film to the 2004 Bride and Prejudice offer yet more material. The adaptations show us respect for the author, respect for women’s communities, and also the importance of calling people out on their limitations. In their willingness to draw on the source text, contemporary writers and filmmakers show us that we can learn from our elders and that we can illuminate their works as well. What an important lesson for Elizabeth Bennet—and her fans! And it’s not that the young are always right either—Lydia Bennet is as silly and as ignorant as Lady Catherine is, and of course some of Austen’s readers will be as well. By putting books into conversation with each other, by leading inclusive, respectful, and dignified conversations, we show our students how we, too, are continuing to learn. Some of course have their doubts. In an analysis of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Yung-chao Liao concludes, “we need to caution again this new mechanism of disciplining the female subject through the celebration of hybridization, for it risks promoting a neoliberalism that seemingly embraces diversity without really engaging with the power relationship involved” (2016, p. 127). Austen herself however encourages us to face the power structure head on in the very encounters between Elizabeth and Lady Bennet. And if we acknowledge the power relation in our classrooms, if we look at them and analyze them, I believe those environments

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might become more like ideal book clubs—or the online #MeToo community—when readers respect and challenge themselves and each other. Austen will certainly do this; the first time one encounters her, if one is young, one may be discomfited by her language—and yet if we show our students that Austen respects them as readers, that they can handle this assignment, that we believe in their abilities and that we respect them, then they, too, may learn to trust themselves and to demand more of themselves than they knew they were capable of. If they see that Elizabeth Bennet’s saying no is a sign of her self-respect, then they, too, may learn to say no, to not become the next addition in the #MeToo narrative. Elizabeth Bennet offers hope, resilience, and strength. We need to challenge our students and accept and encourage their own challenges to authority. For in doing so we show them they are worthy of respect and capable of feats—even reading 300-page novels—that they did not realize they were. We see them take and lose positions; we see them take risks, stumble, and mature. In this way even fan fiction, spin-offs, and adaptations—no matter how silly or bizarre they are—provide their readers a service in that they challenge authority (Pride and Prejudice!), break rules, and allow their readers and viewers to enjoy defying conventions and restrictions with agency and self-respect, claiming their own seats at the table, their own worth, and their own voices.

Notes 1 Though Sense and Sensibility was not Austen’s first book, it was the first one to be published. 2 See, for example, the recent “silencing” of Meghan Markle, previously outspoken in her criticism of social injustices, who, shortly before marrying Prince Harry, deleted her Facebook and Twitter accounts. 3 Before she died, Mansfield Park and Emma were published; Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published posthumously. 4 The dissertation was also published. See George Pellew’s Jane Austen’s Novels (Boston: Cupples, Upham, 1883). 5 See, for example, Joanne Wilkes’s “Pride and Prejudice: The Critical Reception.” 6 The most famous example of Jane Austen in the trenches is the late Rudyard Kipling short story “The Janeites,” which was published in The Storyteller in 1924. 7 See, for example, Gymnich and Looser. 8 See, for example, Valerie Strauss’s “List: What Common Core Authors Suggest High School Students Should Read.” Washington Post, December 5, 2012. 9 At no time in recent history did this become more apparent than during the March for our Lives. 10 See, for example, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. 11 See, for example, Claire Cain Miller’s “Marriage is Valued but in Decline” in The New York Times September 26, 2017. A 15.

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Works Cited Armstrong, I. (1994). Politics, pride, prejudice and the picturesque. In R. Clark (Ed.), “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice” (pp. 159–179). London: St. Martin’s Press. Austen, J. (2002). Pride and prejudice (R. P. Irvine, Ed.). Peterborough: Broadview. Bromberg, P. (1993). Teaching about the Marriage Plot. In M. M. Folsom (Ed.), Approaches to teaching Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (pp. 126–133). New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America. Butler, M. (1975). Jane Austen and the war of ideas. Oxford: Clarendon. Cherian, A. (2008). A good Indian wife. New York: Norton. Deresiewicz, W. (2005). Jane Austen and the romantic poets. New York: Columbia University Press. Duckworth, A. (1971/1994). The improvement of the estate: A study of Jane Austen’s novels. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Folsom, M. M. (1993). Preface to the volume (X–XII). In Approaches to teaching Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America. Gilbert, S., & Gubar, S. (1979). The madwoman in the attic: The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gorer, G. (1941). The myth in Jane Austen. American Imago, 2, 197–204. Gymnich, M. (2015). 200 years of reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; or where the literary canon meets popular culture. In H. Birk & M. Gymnich (Eds.), Pride and Prejudice 2.0: Interpretations, adaptations and transformations of Jane Austen’s classic (pp. 11–31). Gottingen: Bonn University Press. Harman, C. (2009). Jane’s fame: How Jane Austen conquered the world. Edinburgh: Canongate. Heydt-Stevenson, J. (2005). Austen’s unbecoming conjunctions: Subversive laughter, embodied history. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Johnson, C. (1988). Jane Austen: Women, politics, and the novel. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kirkham, M. (1983). Jane Austen, feminism, and fiction. Sussex: Harvester Press. Kuhn, M. with Long, C., & Quinn, L. (1991). No stone unturned: The life and times of Maggie Kuhn. New York, NY: Ballantine. Leavis, F. R. (1948). The great tradition. London: Chatto & Windus. Liao, Y. (2016). When muskets join with katanas: Revisiting the politics of hybridity and female subjectivity in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. NTU Studies in Language and Literature, 36, 101–129. Looser, D. (2017). The making of Jane Austen. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Mangiavellano, D. R. (2012). First encounters with Pride and Prejudice in the composition classroom. Pedagogy, 12(3), 550–555. Mudrick, M. (1952). Jane Austen: Irony as defense and discovery. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Poovey, M. (1984). The proper lady and the woman writer: Ideology as style in the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago press.

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Radway, J. (1984). Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy, and popular literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina press. Sittenfeld, C. (2016). Eligible. New York: Random house. Southam, B. (2003). Jane Austen and the navy. London: Hambledon & London. Troost, L. and S. Greenfield. (1998). Jane Austen in Hollywood. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Watt, I. (1963). Jane Austen: A collection of critical essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. White, G. (2006). Jane Austen in the context of abolition: ‘A fling at the slave trade.’ New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilkes, J. (2012). Pride and Prejudice: The critical reception. In L. W. Mazzeno (Ed.), Critical insights: Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen (pp. 86–105). Pasadena, CA: Salem Press. Williams, R. (1958). Culture and society, 1780-1850. New York: Columbia university press. Williams, R. (1973). The country and the city. London: Chatto & Windus.

4

Teaching Huckleberry Finn in an Era of Tenuous Race Relations Judith A. Hayn and Autumn M. Dodge

Huckleberry Finn: 2016 It’s a thick old book, but anyone can recognize the fear and intolerance on those pages inked with racism like an old man, withered cane in hand, leaning heavy on his hate— this is straightforward. Harder to understand, though, is how to feel about all the falsehoods and half-truths. —Paul Wiegel © 2017 by Paul Wiegel

Section One The Controversy—More Than “the Word” Over 130 years ago, the publication of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn triggered a response of moral condemnation. Marx (1985) reminded us that the first reviewers in 1885 found it “disgusting and offensive, . . . vulgar, inelegant, ungrammatical, coarse, irreverent, semi-obscene, trashy, and vicious” (p. 150); he also noted that the Concord, Massachusetts library banned the book. In contrast, by the 1930s Hemingway had acclaimed Huckleberry Finn as the work from which all modern American writing originates, and Eliot (1950) added his praise for Twain’s innovative use of the English language. Having survived the earlier critical and public outcry, by the 1950s, the book became ensconced in the high school English canon. Then in 1957 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called Huckleberry Finn racially offensive, and the book grew into “the object of another, angrier and more damaging kind of moral condemnation” (Marx, 1985, p. 150). That indictment led to additional objections to the novel where the narrator, the 14-year-old son of the town drunk, matter-of-factly refers to Blacks as “niggers” throughout the novel; according to Tally (2013), Huck uses the pejorative term 213 times.

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Many Black activists and others believe the use of this epithet is enough to prevent the book from being taught in schools. The pressure to remove the text from classrooms has grown. Indeed, Smagorinsky (2016), in his controversial article (where he switched Jim to a female Kim) in the English Journal’s “Special Section on Teaching Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Essays in Conversation,” asserted that by the 1990s it was the fifth most challenged book in the country, and by the 2000s still ranked 14th. Tally (2013) examined the controversy that swirls around Huckleberry Finn as part of a larger debate over the role of literature in education and modern society. He began with the words of Trilling, who in the Liberal Imagination published in 1950 stated that Huck and Jim formed a “‘community of saints’” (pp. 104, 106), thus authenticating the work as a national benchmark. Despite his view, the controversy ballooned when a NewSouth Edition of the book (2011), edited by Gribben, substituted what the Twain scholar thought were less offensive synonyms for the racist words. The outcry was intense as defenders of the original book reacted to perceived censorship, objecting that perhaps these substitutions were grounded in political correctness. Gribben justified his work as an attempt to keep the novel in classrooms where it was in danger of disappearing. Tally decried much of Gribben’s attempts as pacification of the censors, including his adoption of the word “slave” as the so-called synonym of choice for n*****; he summarized that Gribben’s choices may do “more damage, than the original, bigoted language of the novel was doing” (p. 104). By pacifying the racist term n*****, editors like Gribben deprive and protect readers from the discomfort that accompanies the reading of this racist slur; it also sidesteps the violence (physical, mental, social) that surrounded the word’s use then and today. In other words, for White readers, a change from n***** to slave protects what DiAngelo (2011) has described as a fragile White identity. In her article “‘Nigger’ or ‘Slave’: Why Labels Matter for Jim (and Twain) in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Smith (2014) also critiqued Gribben’s censorship, saying that despite ultimately gaining his freedom, Jim “remains subjected to the dehumanizing label of ‘nigger,’ which expresses a permanent state of (non) being,” (p. 185) explaining that “‘Slave’ was a label Jim could outrun. ‘Nigger’ was not” (p. 186). Smith asserted that to use “nigger” and “slave” interchangeably “is to undermine the meaning of Jim’s struggle for existence and the larger African American experience” (p. 186). Thomas (2016) utilized the substitute n***** in her article “Is Huck Finn Still Relevant? Revisiting the Case for Conflict,” and these authors will adopt her usage. Thomas addressed the issue of relevance when considering the teaching of the novel in light of twenty-first century realities. She stated: “Our rendezvous with inevitable demographic change means that teachers are entering classrooms that are more diverse than ever. Diversity and difference lead to divergences in opinions and perspectives, including over what should be taught” (p. 85). Thomas believed, as do

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these authors, that reading literature can foster empathy, and thus emphasized the importance of the role English teachers play in education in a democracy. Thomas explained that the English teacher’s “. . . role is to guide students through the reading and interpretation of stories, both fiction and nonfiction, that helps us bridge our differences” (p. 86). In other words, English teachers are in a unique position to help students use their understanding of literature to improve social relationships and divisions. Carey-Webb (1993, 2001) reminded us that Applebee found Huck Finn to be required reading second only to Shakespeare in his study of American high schools, appearing as a requirement in 70% of American public high schools and in 76% of private, faith-based schools. Thus, Carey-Webb (1993) began his article, “Racism and Huckleberry Finn: Censorship, Dialogue, and Change,” with this caveat: The most taught novel, the most taught long work, and the most taught piece of American literature, Huckleberry Finn, is a staple from junior high . . . to graduate school. Written in a now vanished dialect, told from the point of view of a runaway fourteen-year-old, the novel conglomerates melodramatic boyhood adventure, farcical low comedy, and social satire. Yet at its center is the relationship between a white boy and an escaped slave, an association freighted with the tragedy and the possibility of American history. (p. 22) The author reduced the issues surrounding a controversial text to their essence. Carey-Webb’s article, originally appearing in English Journal in 1993 and later included as a revision chapter in Literature and Live: A Response-Based, Cultural Studies Approach to Teaching English (2001), apparently originated from a 1991 decision to ban the book from a suburban school district near Carey-Webb’s campus; complaints from Black students and parents led to the novel’s removal in the district’s two high schools. Although the book was reinstated the next year, Carey-Webb examined the continual controversy surrounding the book that often leads to “problems of interracial communication and respect” (p. 23). As he continues to teach the novel, Carey-Webb keeps this belief at the forefront. Carey-Webb argued that Huckleberry Finn remains the only mosttaught novel that deals with slavery, represents Black dialect, and has a major character who is African American. He cited the 1992 publication Satire or Evasion? Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn as a seminal collection of the views of Black scholars and writers with their views on teaching the book. Issues and objections addressed included the depiction of Jim as similar to that of a nineteenth century black-face minstrel, Twain’s contradictory attitudes toward race, and especially the final

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chapters of the book where Huck deserts Jim in order to return home with Tom Sawyer and Aunt Sally’s plans for adoption, apparently jettisoning the ever-loyal Jim. One of the most outspoken opponents of teaching Huck Finn was John Wallace, a former administrator at Mark Twain Intermediate School in Fairfax County, Virginia. As Henry (1992) says, in her chapter “The Struggle for Tolerance: Race and Censorship in Huckleberry Finn” in Satire or Evasion, Wallace in 1982 led a campaign to remove the book from school curricula; he called the book “racist trash” and continued to fight for its removal. He also authored what Henry calls an “adapted” version (p. 27). Henry discussed the inherent dilemma in deciding whether or not to include Huck Finn as twofold. One obstacle lies in how the average reader outside academia and scholarly criticism perceives the text. The other is centered on school administrators and teachers who “have to deal with the context into which the novel is introduced” (p. 38). Given the objections Black scholars continue to have with Huck Finn, Henry asked this question: Given the powerlessness of highly discerning readers to resolve the novel in a way that unambiguously redeems Jim or Huck, how can students be expected to fare better with the novel’s conclusion?. . . . If an eighth or ninth grader proves incapable of completing the process begun by Twain, then the ideological point is lost. (p. 38) Indeed, if the novel offers so many barriers as scholars noted, then what is the rationale for continuing to require the teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? We have previously addressed Carey-Webb’s commitment to the teaching of Huck Finn; he espoused the value of using multiple lenses for critically analyzing literature in his text Literature and Lives: A Response-Based, Cultural Studies Approach to Teaching English. In Bruce’s review of the text (2003), she maintained that Carey-Webb combined the positive elements of reader response theory, where readers interact with text and create personal meaning, and “. . . imports critical dimensions from cultural studies to help readers understand the self in relation to society” (p. 90). In addition to reader response, Carey-Webb examined cultural studies approaches and included new criticism; historical and new historical analyses; feminist theory; multiculturalism; postcolonial, post-structural, post-modern, and post-Marxist methodologies; along with deconstructionism as options. He recommended specific contemporary literature to align with each theory and posited that studying texts within this paradigm could raise adolescent awareness about social justice. Pertinent to this discussion, in Chapter 6 of his 2001 work, “Huckleberry Finn and the Issue of Race in Today’s Classroom,” and in the earlier 1993 English Journal article, Carey-Webb tackled the issues of race and censorship when teaching the book. In his analysis, he applied a cultural studies

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lens to the novel and reviewed African-American scholarly objections; he also advocated the discussion of race in the classroom and urged English teachers to participate in the expansion of the canon. Arac (1997) espoused his views on interpreting the novel in his text Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The Functions of Criticism in Our Time when he warned against the impact of other critics, like Trilling and Marx (Whitley, 1999), who have turned the book into what he called a “national narrative.” He expanded on this term in his 1992 article, “Nationalism, Hypercanonization, and Huckleberry Finn,” where he lamented the lack of emphasis on other works by those who wrote in the same era. Instead, Arac proposed a realistic analysis of Huck Finn based on the history of the period; his current writings continue to examine Twain and works of other late-nineteenth century writers through a historical criticism lens. Additional scholars who work with English teachers like Chadwick (2016) advocate uniting contemporary student readers with issues of their twenty-first century world that resonated in Twain’s society; she also recommended looking at the historical periods which frame the book, supporting Arac’s contention that Huck Finn not be canonized, but regarded instead as a successful “literary narrative” (p. 18), along with others that define the period. Analyzing another lens, Jackson (2002), in “The Emergence of Mark Twain’s Missouri: Regional Theory and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” refuted what he considered to be the prevalent attitude among literary scholars that regionalism is too limiting. He advocated “the capacity of notions of region, the knowledge of specific geographic landscapes, and their cultures” as the essence of regionalism, which can “inform literary texts” (p. 48). For him, Huck Finn provided the ultimate case study for regional criticism. He recommended that readers examine slavery within the context of an antebellum Missouri and its contiguous connections to the Mississippi River; doubtless, the times when and places where Twain lived influenced his viewpoints of the world he described in his works. Jackson summarized: “The premise of Huckleberry Finn—a raft journey down the Mississippi around 1845—should be understood in the context of all the regional concerns . . .” he outlined in his article (p. 58). In conclusion, Jackson iterated his agreement with Morrison’s “assumption about the fundamental connection between the canon and imperialism” and her “critical notion of race” (p. 67); he interpreted her work in light of regionalism. Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992) critically addressed the “apparently limitless store of love and compassion the black man friend has for his white master; and his assumption that the whites are indeed what they say they are, superior and adult” (p. 56). She argued that what is disturbing though is not Jim’s characterization, but what Twain, Huck, and Tom need from him; Jim’s subservience prevents his acquisition of the freedom Huck and Tom seek and find. Her additional work, “Unspeakable Thoughts Unspoken” (1990), attempted to identify the connection between the repression of

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African American culture and the maintenance of an imperialistic model of the American national literary canon as “the protected preserve of the thought and works and analytical strategies of white men” (p. 202). Morrison continued to favor broader interpretations of the novel in order to remove it from its inviolate position in the canon. In a more supportive vein, Levy (1964) examined psychological, or moral, literary criticism as applied to Huck Finn. He began with the works of Parsons and Smith and their devotion to conscience as Twain manipulated it in the novel. Levy attacked the sentimentalists who saw the relationship between Huck, the proverbial son, and Jim, a surrogate father. He believed instead that Huck and Jim both seek freedom and are liberated by the idyllic journey on the raft. He questioned whether or not the conscience Twain introduces represented society or not. “Evidently, then, conscience is something more than the voice of the depraved community”—society as Twain lambasted it. Furthermore, as Levy noted, “Twain is particularly concerned with enormous and crippling guilt that conscience can engender” (p. 390). It is this quality that more than any other, Levy asserted, that makes Huck Finn a hero. The literary theorists may look at the novel from multiple viewpoints, but the controversy engendered since its publication continues. Henry, referring to Huck Finn, validated the controversy dealing with racial tension in 1992 when she asserted: “The tenuous status of race relations in the United States complicates the undertaking of such an instructional unit” (p. 17). Over 25 years later, gathering evidence of the racial tension that permeates our society in the twenty-first century is not difficult. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education catalogs the publications that deal with racial unrest on college campuses from 2017 through January 2018 (www.jbhe. com/incidents/); the list is daunting—25 incidents at institutions of higher education. The Southern Poverty Law Center maintains a “Hate Watch” blog and tracks incidents of racial discrimination daily. In a 2018 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) found that in 2017 the number of hate groups rose to 954 from 917 the prior year, up 4%. Within the White supremacist movement, neo-Nazi groups saw the greatest growth—soaring by 22% from 99% to 121% (Beirich & Buchanan, 2018).

Section Two Using Critical Race Theory as a Lens for Interpreting and Teaching Huck Finn From our discussion, we see that Huck Finn is an instantiation of a complex history of race, racism, power, and American tradition. We believe that if Huck Finn is still required reading in a school as part of the literary canon, students’ reading of the book should be framed in ways that help students examine and critique the world in which we live today, which

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is still rife with racial inequity and dominant White power structures. Students need to be taught how to scrutinize Mark Twain, his language, his assumptions about race, and how these are different or similar to issues we still need to address today. Importantly, if we are to teach Huck Finn, we need to leverage the book as a means to help our White students transition from reading the book critically to assuming responsibility for where they stand in White society relative to complicity in racism, and for their own acts of racism. Critical Race Theory (CRT) offers frameworks for examining race and racism in a variety of venues in our society, as well as a means for overturning racial oppression. It can also serve as a legitimate framework for the literary critique of Huck Finn that can guide teachers and students as they negotiate the reading of Huck Finn in the midst of our current era of racial tension. Origins of Critical Race Theory Critical Race Theory (CRT) unfolded in the 1970s from the work of critical legal studies (CLS); lawyers, legal scholars, and activists who saw the substantial gains of the civil rights era as being rolled back coalesced and became the early founders of the field (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). Early founders of CRT included Derrick Bell, Cheryl Harris, Richard Delgado, and Alan Freeman. Differing from Critical Legal Studies, CRT has an activist bent, and aims to rectify historical wrongs and affect concrete social change (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; DeCuir & Dixson, 2004). Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, and Crenshaw (1993) explained, “Critical race theory works toward the end of eliminating racial oppression as part of the broader goal of ending all forms of oppression” (p. 6). CRT can be understood and unpacked through a series of tenets. The first tenet of CRT is that “racism is a permanent component of American life” (Bell, 1992, p. 27). Critical race theorists began with the assumption that racism is the status quo (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012) and is endemic to the experience of people of color in America (Matsuda et al., 1993). CRT proponents see this endemic racism as the means through which concrete instantiations of privilege and status are conveyed, such as jobs, schooling, housing. Therefore, they see concrete change in systems and institutions as the only avenue for disrupting racism. Harris’ foundational work (1995) asserted this status quo of racism as enshrined through the legal legitimatization of “whiteness as property,” where the privileges of Whiteness are held parallel to other types of property (p. 277). Accordingly, CRT eschews liberalism, which asserts the neutrality of constitutional law and takes a stance of colorblindness and the possibility of equality despite the different histories and current contexts of people of color (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). The second tenet of CRT is what Delgado and Stefancic (2012) describe as “our system of white-over-color ascendancy,” which “serves important purposes, both psychic and material, for the dominant group” (p. 7). For

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Matsuda et al. (1993), this tenet entails the view that all manifestations of advantage and disadvantage stem from racism. CRT materialists suggest that dominant societies “demonize their subjects to feel better about exploiting them” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 21) and that the only way to dismantle oppression is to change the physical circumstances of people of color (p. 25). A third tenet of CRT is the “social construction” thesis, which “holds that race and racism are products of social thought and relations” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 8). CRT idealists focus on these social constructions of race and assert that the goals of dismantling oppression can occur through changing the systems of “thinking, mental categorization, attitude, and discourse” that sustain racism (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 21). A fourth tenet of CRT is differential radicalization, which entails the ways that members of the dominant group racialize minority groups in “different ways at different times” to serve the needs of those in power (p. 8). Differential racialization of Blacks across time have ranged from simpleminded, minstrel Sambo stereotypes (as with Jim in Huck Finn) to racialized as threatening and aggressive (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Robinson, 1988). A fifth tenet of CRT is “the notion of intersectionality and antiessentialism.” Intersectionality acknowledges that no individual has a unitary identity that can be characterized, but instead has “potentially conflicting, overlapping identities, loyalties, and allegiances” (Delgado & Stafancic, p. 10). A sixth tenet of CRT revolves around the “unique voice of color” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 10). Critical race theorists maintain that because people of color have experiences with oppression that are markedly different than those of the dominant group, they inherently hold knowledge that their White counterparts are unable to know (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Matsuda et al., 1993). The power of voice for CRT can be realized through storytelling and counter storytelling (Matsuda, 1995). DeCuir and Dixson (2004) describe counter storytelling as: a means of exposing and critiquing normalized dialogues that perpetuate racial stereotypes. The use of counter stories allows for the challenging of privileged discourses, the discourses of the majority, therefore serving as a means for giving voice to marginalized groups. (p. 27) Delgado and Stefancic (2012) detail that legal storytellers like Bell and Willams draw on the history of slave narratives that functioned to “unmask the gentility that white plantation society pretended to” (p. 44). Critical storytellers can also harness the power of stories to destruct societal constructs that are embedded in “imagines, tales, blog postings, and other scripts” (p. 48). Delgado and Stefancic (2012) contend that “attacking embedded preconceptions that marginalize others or conceal their humanity is a legitimate function of all fiction” (p. 48).

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Critical Race Theory in Education After differentiating itself from Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory was taken up by various fields, including political science, sociology, education, and more. Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) were the first to forward a CRT of education. They took up this cause to interrogate how education policies, instructional practices, and more were rooted in the historical, systemic, and ideological workings of racism (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1999; Tate, 1997; Tate, 1999). As they explicated CRT in education, they cautioned that using CRT in education should not drift too far from the original scholarship in legal studies (Dixson & Rousseau, 2005, p. 9). Instead, Tate (1999) suggests, CRT in education should “build on and expand” the legal literature of CRT (p. 268). Literature, especially works that are in one way or another seemingly intractable members of the canon, are one way in which race and racism can be perpetuated in the stream of social thought. CRT analysis of literature can be an avenue for exposing how literature of the past— most often written by White men who grew up under another world’s ethos—are rooted in systems of inequality and serve to maintain cultural and social power. CRT analysis can also be used to unearth ways that literature can be deconstructed to push back these same systems of power and dominance. For these reasons, we use CRT to analyze Huck Finn. Most broadly, we contextualize and critique Huck Finn as a staple of the American literary canon, and therefore, a product and tool of dominant White society. We then analyze the novel attending to power relationships, language, particular themes, characters, and voice, Following the original legal scholarship of CRT, we adopt a version of the idea of “legal indeterminacy”—“the idea that not every legal case has one correct outcome” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012, p. 5). Similar to CRT’s assertion regarding legal cases, the conclusions of literary analysis can go either way “by emphasizing one line of authority over another, or interpreting one fact differently from the way one’s adversary” (p. 5). Therefore, the CRT literary analysis we utilize takes on the “case” of Huck Finn. Heeding the warnings of Ladson-Billings (1999) and Tate (1999), we consistently tie our analysis of Huck Finn back to core tenets of CRT.

Applying CRT to Huckleberry Finn In his essay concerning pedagogy with Huck Finn, Barrish (2002) addressed the existence of an “ever-growing body of secondary literature [that] focuses on the pedagogical challenges posed by the more than 200 appearances of the word” (p. 128). He stressed that the teacher’s task is to guide students in recognizing “the implicit quotation marks around the offensive word and to understand the subversive work they perform” (p. 129). He maintained that n***** is a “uniquely powerful indictment

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of racist culture” (pp. 128–129). Barrish used the approach of teaching the word within his concept of ironic quotation marks; he devotes a full class session to this and often utilizes close textual analysis. He also asks his students to focus on socio-linguistic contexts of the 1840s setting, the 1880s writing, and the twenty-first century, despite the stress and frustration he faces in a diverse university classroom. “Part of my acute discomfort when discussing the word ‘nigger,’ I suspect, comes from the sensation of a collision between my own symbolic position as liberal professor and the racial real of my university, my classroom, and my psyche” (p. 133). He writes “about liberal white antiracist pedagogy as practiced within privileged educational contexts” (p. 136) and vows to continue, despite the uncomfortable process. In another contemporary example for teaching Huckleberry Finn, the CRT lens underpins Martin’s (2014) study, “Critical Race Theory, Hip Hop, and Huck Finn: Narrative Inquiry in a High School English Classroom.” Her study was conducted in a racially diverse alternative high school, and she examined the impact of reading Huckleberry Finn, which was required for sophomores, on both teacher and students. In noting the ties between CRT and culturally responsive teaching, she cited Gay’s 2010 second edition of Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice: “Culturally responsive pedagogy runs parallel to CRT because it required educators to possess not only the will to end oppression but the knowledge to inform their choices and actions” (p. 246). Martin contended that teachers who implement CRT must possess both the desire and the information to determine their culturally responsive decision-making in the classroom. Martin provides a template for a culturally responsive teacher to introduce critical race theory when teaching this controversial novel. She maintained that the process involves “selecting culturally responsive curriculum, problematizing the curriculum, engaging in conversations about students’ lived experiences, engaging in social and political critique, problematizing one’s privilege and standpoint, and facilitating critical thinking” (p. 247). Thus, the challenge to implementing culturally responsive pedagogy belongs to the teacher and the text, perhaps simultaneously. Much of her discussion covered the history of the author and the book, along with the controversy over using the word n*****. Martin found the following: Many students’ experiences with racially charged language (as with sexist and homophobic language) is largely unexamined in schools. Most students indicated that they had not been challenged in a school context to think about the implications of their language choices. (p. 258) The inherent risk in raising the issue of uncomfortable usage of language may mean that students have not been asked to discuss the issue before; Huck Finn offers one text that can facilitate the process, but teachers need to be aware of students’ unfamiliarity with the process.

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Section Three Is Huck Finn Worth the Drama? In deciding whether or not to include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as required reading, perhaps a place for teachers to start is with their curriculum and at what level the book is taught. Henry highlighted a 1983 study at Penn State “that measured the effects of reading Huckleberry Finn on the racial attitudes of ninth graders” (p. 42). The researchers concluded that younger readers did not understand the complexities of the novel and read it simply as an adventure story; the results led to a recommendation that the book be read at the junior or senior levels. Ensuring readers have the developmental skills necessary to deal with the text beyond the level of humorous adventure story or lively satire is a first step. Besides age appropriateness, the essence of conflict in the classroom continues to be an issue. Thomas (2016) confirmed the divergent views among English teachers in her dissertation workshop. Thomas studied the discussions the teachers had as they examined Dakin’s “The Case for Conflict,” a 2008 article in English Journal where the author iterated her rationale for continuing to teach Huck Finn despite negative feedback from an African American English teacher who would never teach it. Thomas, after analyzing her group’s discussion, concluded: “Although we have all had different experiences with race in our society, finding ways to relate to each other is vital. It is indeed easier in our classrooms to sidestep racial conflict instead of dealing with it” (p. 86). Others suggest different approaches to the novel. Chadwick (2016), cited above, is a staunch advocate for underrepresented populations in English education; she participated in a summer workshop at the Mark Twain Museum in Hartford. Led by an English teacher and the museum director, the institute included 60 sophomores who examined how Twain’s ideas echo concepts in our contemporary society. If you are among those who do not believe the novel has relevance, Chadwick listed pertinent issues that the students identified, including the following: religion; racial, gender, LGBTQ insensitivity; civil disobedience; bullying; and guns. She proposed a reading of the novel in conjunction with researching Twain, including the man and his world; his relationships with African Americans of the time; his handling of voice through a myriad of characters; his reliance on strong women in his works; and allusions to African American writers prior to Huck Finn’s publication. Additionally, Carey-Webb (1993) recommended teaching the novel in a way that is sensitive to the racial makeup of the students, addressing the use of n***** openly while building a language policy for the classroom, examining the objections by Black authors, and letting parents know that the text is being offered with options for alternative assignments. “It is crystal clear to me that Huckleberry Finn should not be taught in

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a curriculum that simply showcases literary works without developing student skills at challenging the classics and thinking critically about literature, history, politics, and language” (Carey-Webb, p. 28). Marx, in his essay, “Huck at 100,” published in The Nation in 1985, continued his defense of teaching the novel. As one of the devout believers in the brilliance of the work, he countered the criticisms waged by early reviewers, including the Concord Public Library’s banning of the book. He noted the subsequent revival of the book and its subsequent inclusion in the standard high school curriculum until 1957 when the NAACP called Huckleberry Finn racially offensive, based on Huck’s repeated use of the word “n*****s.” The protest then gathered momentum: “In a number of cities across the country, indignant parents, educators and school-board members have demanded that the book be removed from the curriculum and even . . . that it be banned from school or public libraries” (Marx, p. 150). Marx (1985) decried the “extremity of antagonists’ views” and questioned why this book generated “diametrically opposed attitudes toward American racism” (p. 150). He iterated that readers need to recognize that through using the first-person narrative voice of a 14-year-old boy, Twain hides his own viewpoint. He decried those who lambasted the novel as racist by mistaking “the hero’s flagrant if erratic racism for the novel’s— the author’s—viewpoint” (p. 152). He insisted that teachers are the most qualified to decide whether or not to allow the study of Huckleberry Finn in their classrooms. Carey-Webb (1993) outlined a cogent rationale for teachers when deciding whether or not to teach the text. He espoused the following philosophy: “It is crystal clear to me that Huckleberry Finn should not be taught in a curriculum that simply showcases literary works without developing student skills at challenging the classics, and thinking critically about literature, history, politics, and language” (p. 28). He advocated that teachers “be sensitive to the racial dynamics of the classroom,” openly address the term n***** and have a strategy for dealing with it, utilize additional texts by Black authors to compare with Twain, and inform parents that the text will be used so alternative works can be assigned to those who are uncomfortable reading the novel. Carey-Webb (1993) further noted: “Talking across racial lines about questions of race always carries emotional impact” (p. 28). He recommended that the maturity of students be a driving force for decisionmaking, and juniors are perhaps the lowest grade level where the book should be taught. Compounding problems can occur in a classroom where there are no Black students and where White students taught by a White teacher may never reach the level of understanding and empathy necessary for understanding the complexity of the novel. We acknowledge that including Huckleberry Finn in a school’s English curriculum may be outside the control of the classroom teacher. If teachers

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are free to influence the decision, Chadwick (2016) provided a framework for our rationale: If at times teachers, at whatever level they teach, hit a roadblock, perhaps this impediment is due to our own predilections of codifying our students, stereotyping them before we even listen to them, much less get to know them. We can learn much from students if we listen and allow ourselves to learn along with them in lieu of our wanting to shut down, close out, and shun uncomfortable conversations because I am of color and my students are White or you are White and your students are of color. (p. 91) The choice to teach Huckleberry Finn is fraught with tough considerations for teachers. Using Critical Race Theory as the frame gives us a starting point in an effort to establish an anti-racist approach in teaching “the word” and the rest of the novel.

Works Cited Arac, J. (1997). Huckleberry Finn as idol and target: The functions of criticism in our time. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Barrish, P. (2002). The secret joys of antiracism pedagogy: Huckleberry Finn in the classroom. American Imago, 59(2), 117–139. Beirich, H., & Buchanan, S. (2018). 2017: The year in hate and extremism. Southern Poverty Law Association. Retrieved from www.splcenter.org/fightinghate/intelligence-report/2018/2017-year-hate-and-extremism Bell, D. A. (1992). Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism. New York: Basic Books. Bruce, H. (2003). Engaging adolescent readers: The value of contemporary literary theories. English Journal, 92(6), 90–91. Campus Racial Incidents (n.d.). The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Retrieved from www.jbhe.com/incidents/ Carey-Webb, A. (1993). Racism and Huckleberry Finn: Censorship, dialogue, and change. English Journal, 82(7), 22–34. Carey-Webb, A. (2001). Literature & lives: A response-based, cultural studies approach to teaching English. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Chadwick, J. A. (2016). We dare not teach what we know we must: The importance of difficult conversations. English Journal, 106(2), 88–91. Dakin, M. E. (2008). The case for conflict in our classrooms. English Journal, 97(3), 12–14. DeCuir, J. T., & Dixson, A. D. (2004). “So when it comes out, they aren’t surprised that it is there”: Using critical race theory as a tool of analysis of race and racism in education. Educational Researcher, 33, 26–31. Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2012). Critical race theory: An introduction (2nd ed.). New York, NY: New York University Press.

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DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54–70. Dixson, A. D., & Rousseau, C. K. (2005). And we are still not saved: Critical race theory in education ten years later. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 7–27. Eliot, T. S. (1950). “Introduction to Huckleberry Finn.” In The adventures of Huckleberry Finn (pp. vii–xvi). London: Cresset Press. Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Gribben, A. (Ed.). (2011). Mark Twain’s adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The NewSouth Edition. Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Books. Harris, C. I. (1995). Whiteness as property. In K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, & K. Thomas (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writings that informed the movement (pp. 276–291). New York, NY: The New York Press. Henry, P. (1992). The struggle for tolerance: Race and censorship in Huckleberry Finn. In J. S. Leonard, T. A. Tenney, & T. M. Davis (Eds.), Satire or evasion? Black perspectives on Huckleberry Finn (pp. 25–48). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jackson, R. (2002). The emergence of Mark Twain’s Missouri: Regional theory and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. The Southern Literary Journal, 33(1), 47–69. Ladson-Billings, G. (1999). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? In L. Parker, D. Deyhle, & S. Villenas (Eds.), Race is . . . race isn’t: Critical race theory and qualitative studies in education (pp. 7–30). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97(1), 47–68. Levy, L. B. (1964). Society and conscience in Huckleberry Finn. Nineteenth Century Fiction, 18(4), 383–391. Martin, J. L. (2014). Critical race theory, hip hop, in Huck Finn: Narrative inquiry in a high school English classroom. Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education, 46, 244–267. Marx, L. (1985, August 11). Huck at 100. The Nation, 150–152. Retrieved from www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-3911469.html Matsuda, M. (1995). Looking to the bottom: Critical legal studies and reparations. In K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, & K. Thomas (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writings that informed the movement (pp. 63–79). New York, NY: The New York Press. Matsuda, M., Lawrence, C., Delgado, R., & Crenshaw, K. (Eds.). (1993). Words that wound: Critical race theory, assaultive speech and the first amendment. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Morrison, T. (1990). Unspeakable thoughts unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American literature. In H. Bloom (Ed.), Toni Morrison (pp. 201–230). New York, NY: Chelsea House Press. Morrison, T. (1992). Playing in the dark: Whiteness and literary imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Robinson, F. G. (1988). The characterization of Jim in Huckleberry Finn. Nineteenth-Century Literature, 43(3), 361–391. Smagorinsky, P. (2016). Huck and Kim: Would teachers feel the same if the language were misogynist? English Journal, 106(2), 75–80.

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Smith, C. L. (2014). “Nigger” or “Slave”: Why labels matter for Jim (and Twain) in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Papers on Language and Literature, 50(2), 182–205. Tally, R. T. (2013). Bleeping Mark Twain? Censorship, Huckleberry Finn, and the functions of literature. Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice, 6(1), 97–108. Tate, W. F. (1997). Critical race theory and education: History, theory, and implications. In M. W. Appel (Ed.), Review of research in education (Vol. 22, pp. 191–243). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Tate, W. F. (1999). Conclusion. In L. Parker, D. Deyhle, & S. Villenas (Eds.), Race is . . . race isn’t: Critical race theory and qualitative studies in education (pp. 251–271). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Thomas, E. E. (2016). Is Huck Finn relevant? Revisiting “The case for conflict”. English Journal, 106(2), 85–88. Twain, M. (2003). The adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Publishing. Whitley, J. S. (1999). Huckleberry Finn as idol and target: The functions of criticism in one time. [Review of the book]. The Journal of American History, 86(2), 871–872.

5

It’s Really All About Tom Performances of the Masculine Self in The Great Gatsby Michael Macaluso and Kati Macaluso

The Great Gatsby is America’s greatest novel about class. In fact, it’s the only one of its canonical peers (Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Invisible Man, Beloved) that foregrounds class instead of race. (Corrigan, 2014, p. 16) Thus, when an individual appears in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilize his activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his interests to convey. (Goffman, 1959, p. 4)

Introduction “A dud.” “Painfully forced.” “Unimportant.” “Inferior.” To say that The Great Gatsby was not entirely popular upon its initial publication in the spring of 1925 is an understatement. Even Fitzgerald, by May of the same year, acknowledged, in personal correspondence with friends, Gatsby’s “flop” (Garber, 2015; Corrigan, 2014). Despite his early success with his other novels, Fitzgerald died in relative obscurity, earning only thirteen dollars in royalties for Gatsby (Lucey, 2013). A series of events over the course of about twenty years after Fitzgerald’s death brought increased attention to Gatsby, including an adaption into a Broadway play, a 1926 and 1949 film, and importantly, the Council on Books in Wartime, which shipped free, “Armed Services Edition” books to American soldiers overseas, where Gatsby became incredibly popular and resonate with American servicemen (Corrigan, 2014). The Great Gatsby eventually became a widespread success and now continues to sell over 500,000 copies annually (Donahue, 2013). Most of these contemporary sales may be comprised of high school students, who read the novel as part of their required reading curricula. Indeed, national research conducted over the past several decades investigating the most frequently assigned and taught texts in secondary schools has indexed The Great Gatsby since the early 1990s (Applebee, 1993; Stallworth,

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Gibbons, & Fauber, 2006; Stotsky, 2010). As recently as 2012, The Great Gatsby replaced Romeo and Juliet as the most frequently taught text in United States schools (Stallworth & Gibbons, 2012). This most recent surge in popularity coincided with Baz Lurhmann’s much-marketed film adaptation, released in 2013, which—to much pomp and spectacle—starred Leonardo DiCaprio, an American icon in his own right, and featured music by contemporary pop artists such as Lana Del Rey, Jay-Z, will.i.am, Fergie, and superstar Beyoncé, another American icon. Other cinematic versions of Gatsby exist, including the 1974 film starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow and a made-fortelevision version in 2000 starring Mira Sorvino and Paul Rudd. However, the Luhrmann adaptation, with its popular and diverse casting, managed an impressive feat, and one not typically ascribed to many other texts so closely aligned with the formal curricula of schooling: a canonical text nearly a century old became trendy and relevant in the twenty-first century. With The Great Gatsby having become a part of recent popular culture, more students are reading about the trials and tribulations of Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan than ever before (Stallworth & Gibbons, 2012). Perhaps Gatsby’s appeal on both the silver screen and classroom syllabi throughout the U.S. speaks to its ability to capture the American imagination—an ability that stems from its resonance with American ideals and values, most notably the American Dream. Indeed, from its first coinage by James Truslow Adams (1931), the concept of the American Dream has been linked to the trope of “rags to riches,” self-made manhood (Batchelor, 2014), and self-fulfillment in knowing one has reached his or her fullest potential in American life, regardless of the limitations and privileges afforded by birth. Pulsing with notions of self-reliance and the possibilities of and for social mobility, Jay Gatz—impoverished North Dakota resident-turned-tycoon—epitomizes the American Dream. Consequently, his inability to survive the novel’s plotline has, for many scholars of literature (e.g., Pearson, 1970; Callahan, 1996; Nagel, 2013) and scholars of English education (e.g., Tyson, 2011), rendered the novel a commentary on the failure of the American Dream. How and why the American Dream remains unattainable for Gatsby has been explained, in large part, from a social class perspective. As Corrigan (2014) notes in the quotation that begins this chapter, Gatsby foregrounds class. Argued by some (e.g., Barron, 2009; Makowsky, 2009; Canterbery, 1999; Posnock, 1984) to be at its core anti-classist and anti-Capitalist, the novel has lent itself to what often ends up being a social-class Marxist critique. Appleman (2009) has argued that a Marxist social-class lens gives readers a method for seeing how “the class to which we belong determines our degree of economic, political, and social advantage” and referenced The Great Gatsby, in particular, as an ideal text for a Marxist reading in English language arts classrooms (p. 143). Tyson (2011), too,

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has argued that Marxism holds particular analytic purchase in the reading and teaching of Gatsby because it helps to link the American Dream with capitalism, thereby illuminating an explanation for the American Dream’s failure: that the Dream “celebrates as a virtue the individual’s rise to the highest plateau of financial achievement of which he or she is capable” (pp. 110–111). In short, there is a thematic coherence to Gatsby that lends itself to a Marxist reading capable of critiquing the capitalist ideology of the American Dream and the exclusivity of the select few for whom the Dream remains a viable possibility. Our purpose throughout this chapter is to offer readers another theory with which to read Fitzgerald’s curricular staple of the English classroom—one that nuances the more commonly invoked Marxist interpretation. Relying on Erving Goffman’s performance theory (1959), we examine how it is that Gatsby—a member of the billionaire New England class—fails to survive Fitzgerald’s plotline. Analyzing several scenes that Goffman’s performance theory lens helps to illuminate, we argue that Gatsby’s failure to survive the novel is—contrary to what scholars like Corrigan (2014) might purport—explained by more than just class. We argue that Goffman’s performance theory lends itself to an interpretation of Gatsby’s failure as his inability to convincingly perform a hegemonic masculine self, as illustrated through Tom Buchanan, which is inherently a part of what it means to belong to an elitist class. Reading with performance theory, then, helps to nuance class as more than a marker of one’s economic status within a particular social context, and might actually critique the American Dream as not only capitalist, but also hegemonic and masculine in nature.

Popular Theoretical Interpretations of The Great Gatsby Though Gatsby will always be linked to Marxist conversations, the text has also been taken up in other ways, though arguably to a lesser degree. For example, Hanzo (1956) saw the novel as an allegory for American morality, with “the conflict between the surviving Puritan morality of the West and the post-war hedonism of the East” (pp. 68–69). Roulston (1980) conceived of Gatsby as a celebration of the American West, while Lewis (1959) took a different focus, interpreting Gatsby and America as an allegory for Adam and the Garden of Eden. Seminal scholarship has also examined the novel from feminist, critical race, and religious perspectives (see Beuka, 2011 for a thorough summary of these major trends, themes, and topics of Gatsby literary scholarship, analyses, and interpretations). Recent scholarship has taken up gender and sexuality issues in Gatsby, reading the novel for signs of Nick’s implied homosexuality (Froehlich, 2010), the intersections of gender and class for women characters in the novel’s 1920s setting (Elkins, 2009; Bryer, 1984), and even the repressed love between Nick and Gatsby (Wasiolek, 1992).

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Scholars of English education (e.g., Tyson, 2006, 2011; Appleman, 2009) have proposed a host of theoretical lenses through which to read Gatsby. Tyson (2006) in particular offered several theory-driven readings of Fitzgerald’s novel, including psychoanalytic, structuralist and deconstructivist, queer, African American, and postcolonial, in her book, Critical Theory Today. The goal of these scholars’ works is not only to diversify the range of interpretations possible with Gatsby, but also to illuminate how different theories allow readers to see different characters, different narrative arcs, and different themes within the same literary text. Corrigan’s quotation that begins this chapter nods to what has perhaps, as noted in our introduction, proved the most popular concept or theorydriven interpretation of The Great Gatsby: class. In fact, many online literary analysis websites popular with teachers and students, including SparkNotes.com, CrossRef-It.info, and Cliffsnotes.com, include detailed Marxist social-class interpretations of the novel. Reading Gatsby through a Marxist lens, readers can more easily see how class advantage plays out, seeing, for example, the divide between new and old money (illustrated by West Egg and East Egg), the structures in place that keep certain people (like the Wilsons) from rising up through the class system, and, quite frankly, the injustices of capitalism, which allow for this unfair and unbalanced system to thrive (like Gatsby and Wolfsheim’s illicit accumulation of wealth). Marxism also allows readers to see how the working and middle-class are mere pawns to the wealthy class, as Tom and Daisy “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness . . . and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (Fitzgerald, 1925, pp. 187–188). Gatsby and Wilson, the victims of Tom’s machinations, find the American Dream—both social mobility and the notion of self-fulfillment—elusive and unattainable in the context of this oppressive and morally corrupt economic ecology. If the premise of a Marxist interpretation is to critique class oppression and the commodification and consumption associated with a capitalist economy, then a Marxist interpretation of this novel can only go so far. Though Gatsby’s methods are questionable and serve as a damning illustration of the means someone must take to rise through social classes, a Marxist lens cannot really account for his fall, for his inability to actualize his life beyond his attainment of wealth and the American Dream. He does, after all, beat the system and finds himself among the echelons of the upper-class, and “for Marxism, getting and keeping economic power is the motive behind all social and political activities” (Tyson, 2006, pp. 53–54). So what is this quality, aside from wealth and status, that accounts for one’s success as a member of the elite upper-class? Marxism does not really answer this question, not because it fails to, but because it is beyond the scope of its paradigm, as its analytic purchase sets out to critique class, the class system, and the advantages of the upper-class. Marxism, in other words, can lead readers to a critique of classism and capitalism in the

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novel without offering a sufficient explanation for Gatsby’s inability to successfully assimilate into the upper-class. Thus, building on Marxism and in an attempt to read Gatsby through a wider analytic lens, we offer that explanation in this chapter. More specifically, we use Erving Goffman’s performance studies (1959) as the lens of analysis arguing that Gatsby’s fall is the result of his failure to perform an upper-class, hegemonic masculine identity in the face of his peers, especially Tom. With this interpretation, in addition to the novel’s “always already” emphasis on economics and Marxist critique that drives the actions of the novel, more analytical credit can be given to the ways in which class is taken up and performed—to the ways in which individuals perform social class and gendered identities. Using this lens opens up the novel to interpretations beyond social class structures and economic ideologies, showing how class is never solely about material possessions and economic standing. As a result, we argue that The Great Gatsby is actually more about Tom and his ability to maintain and perform the self-impression of an upper-class, hyper-masculine self, suggesting that the American Dream is a masculine goal and performance. Although the novel combats and exposes the oppressive socioeconomic ideologies at play in this stacked class system, and how characters are influenced and motivated to act within this system, it also suggests that status and solidarity in a certain performance are key parts of living out the American Dream.

Performance Theory Erving Goffman, a social psychologist, offered his theory of “the performance of self” in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). In likening performance to dramaturgy, or the practices associated with actors and the theater, he argues that, much like an actor on a stage, the self is an outcome of a performance. Individuals, in other words, play a part, or perform, depending on different contexts and social situations. Performances generally include “all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants” (1959, p. 15). In this sense, performances are intentional, with the purpose of influencing both the social situation and the people in and of that situation. Because of this intended purpose of influence, Goffman conceives of these performances as the management of one’s self-impressions; for that influence to work, the audience must be “convinced” of the individual’s reliability and authenticity. This implies an onus on individuals in that their “presentation . . . is consistent with the aspired goal of who [they] are or want to be” (Hancock & Garner, 2009, p. 105). In other words, the self needs to be reconciled with both the social context and the desired or intended self-impression, so as to appear in the best possible light. Thus, for Goffman, the self is always defined in

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relation to the social context, audience, and expectation, and selfhood is essentially the successful management of self-impressions. Because the self is dependent on the social situation, Goffman implies that the individual performer may not be genuine in his or her performance. In fact, for Goffman, a key part of impression management is the ability to know what kind of performance is warranted at any given moment and to adapt to that moment accordingly, taking into account audience, context, and expectation. Because the self is the outcome or construction of a performance, individuals possess no “authentic” core or self. The self is not a coherent, pre-existing essence who performs (Brickell, 2003). Instead, the self is a “performed, manipulated, fluid, external persona” (Hancock & Garner, 2009, p. 103). The self finds both agency and constraint in the space of interaction depending on context and social norms and expectations. Thus, performances are not necessarily entirely voluntary. A performance of gender, for example—since gender is a social construction—can be a performance that reveals normative, constructed notions of gender. To consider the masculine self in Goffman’s terms is to consider the degree to which an individual exhibits masculine behavior that, by normative standards, is recognized as such by the appropriate audience. Class, too, is not a status one possesses, so much as it is a performance of a classed identity. In considering social class, specifically, Goffman argues, “A status, a position, a social place is not a material thing, to be possessed and then displayed; it is a pattern of appropriate conduct [. . .] that must be enacted and portrayed, something that must be realized” (1959, p. 75). To read literature through a performance lens, then, is to analyze the degree to which characters successfully (or unsuccessfully) manage their self-impressions in the presence of others. In considering the self as the outcome of a performance and as the management of self-impressions, anyone can therefore “research” how the self is done and undone in social situations. Furthermore, one can consider how individuals (or characters) succeed or fail in their performances. For example, one way to read Gatsby through a performance lens is to analyze the degree to which characters pattern their conduct in a manner appropriate to the normed expectations of their respective class. Irwin (2014) has taken up performance theory to argue that Gatsby’s tragic downfall is partly a product of believing in his own performance, which has been indicated through his material wealth, including his mansion on Long Island. Irwin’s analysis pays particularly close attention to the relationship between Gatsby and Nick, whom Irwin argues is a mere pawn in Gatsby’s quest to build a desirable impression. In our own performance theory-driven analysis of Gatsby, we, too, argue that Gatsby’s downfall is related to the quality of his performance. However, we suggest that Gatsby’s “pattern of appropriate conduct, coherent, embellished, and well-articulated” (p. 75) must account for class and gender, especially a hegemonic masculinist self. This line of argument propels us to pay

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particularly close attention to the dynamics between Gatsby and Tom at key moments of social interaction throughout the novel. A close comparison of Gatsby and Tom ultimately inspires us to broaden the exigence of our argument beyond its implications for just the characters in the novel itself, allowing us to consider whether the achievement of the American Dream is reserved for only those who successfully perform a hegemonic masculinist identity.

Thinking With Tom To illustrate the novel’s implicit argument that to succeed in pursuit of the American Dream one needs to perform a specific masculinist identity, we begin first with a thick description of Tom, as his characterization helps to manifest that performance. And because Gatsby is so tied to the Marxist themes of the novel, concentrating on Tom helps to deemphasize those exclusively classist conversations for the time being so that we might elevate the performances at play. Readers are given insight to Tom’s performances from early on in the novel. When readers first meet Tom, Nick describes him as physical, sturdy, aggressive, and powerful. He sees the “enormous power” of Tom’s “cruel body” that could not be masked by “the effeminate swank of his riding clothes” (p. 11). He was a “gruff husky tenor” with “Two shining, arrogant eyes [that] had established dominance over his face” (p. 11). All of these details, though physical in nature, contribute to Tom’s presentation of self. Nick adds that all of these features taken together “seemed to say,” in Nick’s words, “‘Now don’t think my opinion on these matters is final . . . just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are’” (p. 11). Nick’s lines here give credence to Tom’s impression management as someone more masculine, as someone whose masculinity forecloses and shuts down other people and perspectives, as someone decidedly masculine. Indeed, as someone who subjugates, dominates, and controls. Even Tom’s voice, full of “paternal contempt” (p. 60), contributes to his performance of a hyperhegemonic masculinity. Added to Nick’s impression of Tom in the subsequent pages are Tom’s actual actions and words, which contribute to this masculine impression and constitute his masculine performance. Nick repeatedly reveals Tom to be someone who cuts off and interrupts others, hovers over people, and judges those with him, including those Tom presumably loves like his wife Daisy, her friend Jordan, and her cousin, Nick. For example, in the middle of a dinner conversation, Tom eventually and “violently” joins the conversation with an outburst on the demise of civilization: Civilization is going to pieces . . . Have you read “The Rise of the Coloured Empires” by this man Goddard? . . . The idea is if we don’t

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look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged . . . It’s up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things. (p. 17) In addition to inferring Tom’s racism, readers can also infer that Tom is someone who desires control and power, who prefers to subjugate rather than to be subjugated. But what is also important here is how these comments construct a performance of hegemonic masculinity and Tom’s impression management. Everything about Tom’s self, in other words, is reliable, authentic, and consistent with who he wants to be, and his performance—typified here by his violent addition to the conversation—is strong, clear, and convincing. Tom’s introduction highlights that his usual, patterned management of self-impression is about control and the exercise of power, where he can influence social situations, have both his wife and mistress, and bully others to his own whims. These qualities of control, power, and subjugation align with a specific, essentialized notion of masculinity (Bean & Harper, 2007; Connell, 2005), and through his subjugation of others, Tom performs a type of hegemonic masculinity (Woloshyn, Taber, & Lane 2013; Connell, 2005; Dutro, 2002). Though certain conceptions or versions of masculinity may change and develop over time and context, in this sense, Tom’s version of masculinity evokes control, cis-heterosexuality, and subjugation of other men and women. There exists a superiority, in his estimation, of his status and place within the upper-class. But while other characters may also perform a masculine self, “hegemonic masculine practices typically are privileged in that they present men as strong protectors and leaders who deserve to be in positions of authority over women and marginalized men” (Woloshyn et al., 2013, p. 151), and as such, this performance is also tied to heterosexuality. Further, “common practices” of this version of masculinity may include “shouting and being loud, call out and interruptive behaviours, laughing, joking, misbehaving, acting tough” (Dalley-Trim, 2007, p. 203). Tom’s performance consistently evokes and encapsulates this hegemonic masculinity, and as such, it constructs his positioning or impression of power and dominance, granting him influence in social situations.

Comparing Gatsby and Tom Tom’s masculinist performance can be juxtaposed with the readers’ first significant introductions to Gatsby, which do not come until nearly a quarter of the way into the novel when Tom’s performance has already been firmly established. In the car with Gatsby, Nick notices Gatsby’s restlessness: “he was never quite still.” His “formless grace” of nerves “was continually breaking through his punctilious manner” (p. 68). In

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relaying information about his past, Gatsby “looked at [Nick] sideways,” causing Nick to conclude, “I knew why Jordan Baker had believed he was lying,” as Gatsby “hurried the phrase ‘educated at Oxford,’ or swallowed it or choked on it as though it bothered him” (p. 69). When compared with Tom, Gatsby seems uncomfortable, possibly unconvinced of his own self-impression; there’s an emotional nervousness that pervades Gatsby’s demeanor, with Nick having noted earlier that “I’d got the strong impression that [Gatsby] was picking his words with care” (p. 53). Whereas Tom seems confident and able to subjugate those around him, Gatsby fails to dispel—at least in Nick, the narrator through whom we hear and see Fitzgerald’s plotline—other interpretations about himself, his motivations, and his background. In short, Gatsby fails to be convincing in the management of his self-impression. Nick closes this scene with the thought, “I wondered if there wasn’t something a little sinister about him after all” (p. 69) and a minute later, “I suspected that he was pulling my leg” (p. 70). Nick has no such thoughts about Tom; in fact, it’s quite the opposite, as Nick finds his impression “compelling” (p. 16) and powerful, referring to Tom as “a force” (p. 159). Gatsby’s inability to successfully perform iterations of a hegemonic masculinity is noticeable elsewhere as well. For example, when Nick and Gatsby run into Tom at lunch, Gatsby looks strained, embarrassed, and disappears immediately from the confrontation (p. 79). Nick describes Tom, on the other hand, in more forceful terms: “he demanded” (twice!) and “jumped up to greet them” (p. 78). Even in this fleeting moment, Tom proves his control over the situation, to the point that Gatsby literally disappears in his presence. When he is faced with the standards of hegemonic masculinity that Tom so consistently and successfully enacts, Gatsby cannot successfully manage his own self-impression or even perform an equally consistent self. Part of Gatsby’s failure stems from his mistaken belief that one’s classed identity primarily amounts to the accumulation of material possessions. In telling Nick and Jordan why he wants to meet Daisy, he announces his plans for her to see his house and proceeds to show off all of his material possessions (including his shirts) when she tours his mansion. Gatsby thinks that these “things” will satisfy his self-impression for her. But Goffman (1959) directly states, “To be a given kind of person, then, is not merely to possess the required attributes, but also to sustain the standards of conduct and appearance that one’s social grouping attaches thereto . . . [it is] something that must be enacted and portrayed” in order to be realized (p. 75). Certainly, Gatsby’s “things” are important to him and to his performance for Daisy, but the conspicuous display of possessions is not consistent with the patterned behavior of Tom. Rather, Tom’s performance is about masculinity. His brutish confidence, his behavior, his performance—not his possessions—establish and cement his status and control. Though trying to put on airs for

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Daisy and Nick and everyone else, Gatsby’s performance—particularly when juxtaposed with Tom’s—is not enough because it fails to take into account class and gender.

Performances in Focus: The Plaza Hotel Reading through a performance lens not only illuminates the comparative consistency and control with which Tom manages his self-impression, but also draws attention to a pivotal scene where that consistency and control begin to weaken. Occurring near the end of the novel, at the moment when Tom realizes Daisy and Gatsby have been having an affair, Nick observes a curious comparison between the once “forceful” Tom and a character described as a mere “ghost of a man”: George Wilson. Having observed the joint realization of both Tom and Wilson—that both had been duped by the infidelity of their spouses—Nick notes “that there was no difference” (p. 131) between the two men in that moment. In addition to having realized his wife’s affair, Tom also learns that his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, is slipping beyond his control as George announces their plans to move across the country. Tom, too, concedes to selling his car to Wilson, relinquishing ownership of the object he had previously used to control Wilson and gain access to his wife. Until this point, Tom has succeeded in controlling social situations. Now, though, control seems to evade him, and he struggles with his impression management. As a result, Nick sees a marked change in Tom. He notes, “Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control” (p. 131). With these lines, Tom begins to break down, showing signs of panic and anxiety in his otherwise calm, cool, and collected performance. Nick describes Tom’s changing, or perhaps breaking, performance in the face of panic and loss. For example, when Tom first realizes the affair between Gatsby and Daisy, Nick sees how his “temper cracked a little . . . His hand, trembling with his effort at self control, bore to his lips the last of his glass of ale” (p. 126). When they drive in separate cars into the city, Nick also observes Tom as he keeps looking back—in panic—to see that Gatsby and Daisy are still following him to the hotel, worried that they may “dart down a side street and out of his life forever” (p. 132). Ironically, Tom’s restlessness and worry harken back to Gatsby’s behavior when he and Nick were driving together. At that time, Nick found Gatsby’s performance to be unconvincing. Similarly, because this worry and anxiety is out of character, or rather, because it is an unusual performance for Tom, Nick treats all of these (seemingly) minor actions as notable. Tom’s performance breaks down when his self-impression of control seems to elude him, and his panic and anxiety become noticeable. Nick continues to note Tom’s performance at the Plaza hotel, as he watches

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Tom and Gatsby finally erupt in a verbal sparring match. Tom, firmly grounded in a hegemonic masculine self, deals with conflict through confrontation. In his attempts to re-assert his control over the situation, he tries to dent Gatsby’s reputation and performance by asking him about his past, calling out his shady business dealings and directly accusing Gatsby of overstepping his bounds with Daisy, “What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?” (p. 136). These are moments where Tom, ever a master of the social situation, begins to re-assert his influence and take control of the situation—mainly because he has felt his control and manhood threatened. Throughout most of this confrontation, Gatsby can respond to and deflect Tom’s jabs with curt and confident comments to the point that Nick felt “renewals of complete faith in him” (p. 136). Gatsby’s responses usually come in the form of clarifying his past, but nonetheless, he says things like, “I told you I went [to Oxford],” in a way that decidedly shuts down Tom’s affront. Perhaps aided by a newfound sense of confidence caused by his reunion with Daisy and his sense of Tom’s fading impression management, Gatsby even attempts to influence the situation toward his own end by telling Tom, “Your wife doesn’t love you . . . She’s never loved you. She loves me” (p. 137). Fitzgerald’s note of “said Gatsby quietly” (p. 137) reinforces the collected cool that Gatsby operates under during this moment and contrasts with Tom’s erratic behavior. This serves as an important moment in the novel because, for the first time, there is an equivocality to Tom’s performance of control as Gatsby attempts to subjugate him. But Tom refuses to give in, and Fitzgerald notes that Tom, in pleading with Daisy, spoke with a “husky tenderness” (p. 139) that allows him to maintain his masculinity while attempting to influence the situation through his appeals to Daisy. He shifted his attention from Gatsby to Daisy, allowing him that influence. As a result, Daisy succumbs to the admission that she did in fact love Tom. And with this admission, Gatsby’s performance begins to unravel and break down. Seizing the moment, Tom pummels Gatsby with invectives: he spoke “savagely” in a way that his “words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby” (p. 140) and proceeds to challenge Gatsby’s classed performance. He calls Gatsby a “bootlegger” and gambler and refers to his work as “stunts” (p. 141). He even “cried” at one point: “Don’t you call me ‘old sport’!” (p. 141), attacking Gatsby’s signature line attached to his impression management. In these moments, Gatsby does not, as Goffman would put it, “know how best to act in order to call forth a desired response” (Goffman, 1959, p. 1). His performance of masculinity fails because he proves unable to verbally spar with Tom and thus to reassure Daisy through the management of his own cool self-impression. Nick observes: “he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up . . .” (p. 142). Gatsby’s inability to

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one-up Tom, a key feature of masculinist competition, secures his defeat. This is confirmed when the scene ends and Tom says to Daisy and Gatsby, “You two start on home, Daisy . . . In Mr. Gatsby’s car . . .” (p. 142). Contrasted with his panic when Gatsby and Daisy were together in the car only moments ago, Tom’s impression of control is now clear and firmly reestablished, as evidenced by him actually inviting them to drive together. The performances in this section illustrate that the attainment and maintenance of wealth is only one condition of being part of the upper class—a point Gatsby has overlooked. A necessary performance that evokes stereotypical, hegemonic, and masculinist qualities also constitutes a larger classed identity. In other words, although Gatsby prepared for the situation of class, he underestimated its intersectionality with masculinity, the role masculinity played with class and what that performance of self should look like. Tom, the master performer of this intersectional identity, exposes or breaks Gatsby’s performance. Just as Tom showed panic and anxiety when his performance and self-impression were threatened, so too does Gatsby. The difference is that Tom recovers control of the situation; whenever Tom is present, Gatsby is unable to influence the social situation. The hotel scene serves as an important turning point, but when read through a performance theory lens, it becomes more noteworthy, as it reveals the tenuous nature—and crucial significance—of social situations, of performances, and of impression management. One can only wonder what could have been had Gatsby been able to acknowledge and actualize the warranted, hegemonic, masculine performance called for in this situation.

The Possibilities of Performance Theory Nuancing the Narrative Structure What cannot be denied throughout this performance analysis is Nick’s role as the narrator who filters readers’ impressions of these characters. Since impression management is part of Goffman’s performance theory, then Nick’s role in the novel becomes even more significant beyond mere storyteller. If we accept, as most recent Gatsby scholarship does, Nick’s homosexuality (Froehlich, 2010), then the performance theory analysis becomes even more credible. For one, part of Nick’s unreliability stems from his deep love for Gatsby, whom he describes as “gorgeous” (p. 6) with a “rare smile” (p. 52) and a “romantic readiness” (p. 6). Second, Nick’s homosexuality only magnifies Tom’s violent and aggressive masculinity, not to mention his cis- and hyper-heterosexuality. He sees in Tom someone so different from himself that his narration highlights Tom’s hegemonic masculinity in comparison with his own (i.e., “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are” p. 11). In telling the story of Gatsby, Nick draws attention to this performance, as he possibly sees

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that it could be lacking in both him and Gatsby. Or, perhaps rather, Nick has no interest in performing a hegemonic masculinist self; it is not who he is or wants to be. Illuminating Minor Characters A performance theory analysis offers other possibilities with the text as well. In addition to unifying disparate theories about the novel under one overarching lens of performance, it also leaves opens analytic possibilities for other seemingly minor characters like Gatsby’s “boarder” Klipspringer and Meyer Wolfsheim. Neither of these men enjoy “old money” status, yet both of them seem to manage in way that Gatsby does or cannot. Why is this? Perhaps both of them play the required part called for in their classed situation. It is possible that someone like Meyer performs a similar hegemonic masculinity in order to convince others to partake in or carry out his business dealings. His impression of control (i.e., as someone who can fix the World Series or manage the actions of others) fits in the context of a hegemonic masculinity and classed identity. Klipspringer takes advantage of Gatsby’s hospitality, even demanding his tennis shoes upon hearing of Gatsby’s death. Was Gatsby likewise reserved with him or did Klipspringer perform in a way that allowed him to fit in with the upper-class? More important, how might Jordan or Daisy have performed a hegemonic masculinity in order to exercise control of the social situations? Their gender as women does not preclude them from masculinist performances. Had Daisy performed in a way similar to Tom, perhaps the novel could have been completely different—she could have left him, she could have carried on an affair with Gatsby, or perhaps their marriage would have been explosive as they battled for power and dominance in the relationship. Regardless, performance theory encourages readers to ask these questions and hypothesize possibilities. Reframing the Novel Through Tom The literary analysis offered herein, informed by performance theory, offers another dimension to the discussions of class and economic ideologies that tend to pervade this novel. It shows that Gatsby, so narrowly focused on rising up through the social ladder, assumed that an accumulation of wealth and a mansion on West Egg would afford credibility to his status. As a result, he overlooked the mandate of masculinity tied to his assumed membership in the upper-class. If performances are influenced and constrained by certain normed expectations of who a person is or should be in any given context (Hancock & Garner, 2009), then Gatsby failed to realize the role of a patterned, articulated performance of masculinity connected to expectations of class.

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Tom, on the other hand, epitomizes this performance, and though his performance of self and the management of his self-impression may not be as intentional as Gatsby’s, they are no less calculated and calculating, consciously or not. In fact, it is easy to see from this new perspective of Tom’s masculine performance that many of the actions of the plot actually revolve around Tom and the conditions he sets for the social situations in which the characters are embedded. Table 5.1 offers a summative look at the novel through the performance theory

Table 5.1 A Performance theory interpretation of The Great Gatsby through plot structure. Exposition

Rising Action

Climax

Falling Action

Resolution

Readers are quickly introduced to Tom Buchanan and his impression of control. Through his words and actions, including his verbal treatment of Daisy, manipulation of George, and physical abuse toward Myrtle, Tom establishes a performance of hegemonic masculinity. This performance sets the tone for the rest of the novel, and much of the action is driven by Tom until Nick meets Gatsby in Chapter 3. Until the hotel scene in Chapter 7, all action to further the plot of the novel has to happen in absence of Tom because if Tom were present, he would likely control the situation. For example, when Gatsby and Nick have lunch in Chapter 4, Gatsby leaves immediately upon realizing Tom is also there. Tom comes to Gatsby’s party on his own terms, “I’d a little rather not be the polo player . . .” (p. 112), and expresses his interest in researching Gatsby’s background and means of attaining his money. Soon after, Tom realizes the affair between Gatsby and Daisy and sees his control slipping. At the hotel in Chapter 7, Tom’s performance of masculinity decidedly destroys Gatsby’s image and, with Gatsby’s failure to one-up Tom and influence the social situation, Tom regains control of the social situation and his own impression management. Firm in his performance, Tom tells Gatsby and Daisy to drive home together from the hotel. He then manipulates George by telling him that Gatsby was driving the car that killed Myrtle, noting to Nick that Gatsby “had it coming to him” (p. 187). With his mistress dead and with his hand upon Daisy’s at the kitchen table, Tom maintains control of the situation with his masculine performance. He and Daisy eventually leave town for some time, and later, Tom justifies his actions to Nick, resulting in Nick to conclude that Tom and Daisy are “careless people” (p. 187). In reflecting on Daisy’s story after Gatsby went off to war, Nick realizes, “She wanted her life shaped now, immediately—and the decision must be made by some force—of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality . . . That force took shape . . . with the arrival of Tom Buchanan” (p. 159).

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lens by de-centering Gatsby and social class and re-centering Tom and notions of a hegemonic masculinity. The table illustrates how Tom actually drives the actions and plot of the novel through his hegemonic, masculine performance. The novel may be titled The Great Gatsby, but performance theory helps readers to see that it’s really all about Tom. From this perspective, the story again becomes about control, proving that Tom has always been in control.

Conclusion Performances of one’s identity happen in everyday life just as they do in the novel and having a sense of the performances that define the presentation of one’s self matters in one’s own contexts and relationships, regardless of—or in addition to—economics. If “our behavior is not only reactive but also intentional in that we desire that the presentation of ourselves is consistent with the aspired goal of who we are or want to be” (Hancock & Garner, 2009, p. 105), then the American Dream—as a dream that indicates who we want to be—has been wrapped in a performance of hegemonic masculinity, as illustrated through Tom. Though the American Dream can purportedly be for anyone, the novel suggests that it can only be actualized by those who recognize, take up, and perform a pattern of an upper-class, hyper-masculine self. As Nick notes in the last lines of the novel, Gatsby’s dream eluded him; “it was already behind him” as “we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (p. 189). A performance lens troubles the nature of Gatsby’s dream as something mired in the patriarchal past of the American Dream and of America itself. Hegemonic masculinity, we argue, may be the “foul dust” that preyed on Gatsby and indeed continues to “float in the wake” (p. 6) of the American Dream today.

Works Cited Adams, J. T. (1931/2017). The epic of America. New York, NY: Routledge. Applebee, A. N. (1993). Literature in the secondary school: Studies of curriculum and instruction in the United States. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Appleman, D. (2009). Critical encounters with high school English (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Barron, J. N. (2009). Teaching regionalism and class in The Great Gatsby. In Bryer & VanArsdale (Eds.), Approaches to teaching Fitzgerald’s the great gatsby (pp. 59–67). New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America. Batchelor, B. (2014). Gatsby: The cultural history of the great American novel. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bean, T. W., & Harper, H. (2007). Reading men differently: Alternative portrayals of masculinity in contemporary young adult fiction. Reading Psychology, 28(1), 11–30.

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Beuka, R. (2011). American icon: Fitzgerald’s the great gatsby in critical and cultural context. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Brickell, C. (2003). Performativity or performance?: Clarifications in the sociology of gender. New Zealand Sociology, 18(2), 158–178. Bryer, J. (1984). Style as meaning in The Great Gatsby: Notes toward a new approach. In Donaldson (Ed.), Critical essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the great gatsby (pp. 117–129). Boston, MA: G.K. Hall & Co. Callahan, J. F. (1996). F. Scott Fitzgerald’s evolving American Dream: The “pursuit of happiness” in Gatsby, Tender is the Night, and the last Tycoon. Twentieth Century Literature, 42(3), 374–395. Canterbery, E. R. (1999). Thorstein Veblen and The Great Gatsby. Journal of Economic Issues, 33(2), 297–304. Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Corrigan, M. (2014). So we read on: How the great gatsby came to be and why it endures. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company. Dalley-Trim, L. (2007). “The boys” present . . . Hegemonic masculinity: A performance of multiple acts. Gender and Education, 19(2), 199–217. Donahue, D. (2013, May 7). The Great Gatsby by the numbers. USA Today. Retrieved from www.usatoday.com Dutro, E. (2002). “Us boys like to read football and boy stuff”: Reading masculinities, performing boyhood. Journal of Literacy Research, 34(4), 465–500. Elkins, M. (2009). Teaching The Great Gatsby through examining gender roles. In J. R. Bryer & N. P. VanArsdale (Eds.), Approaches to teaching Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (pp. 181–188). New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America. Fitzgerald, F. S. (1925/1995). The great gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner. Froehlich, M. G. (2010). Jordan Baker, gender dissent, and homosexual passing in The Great Gatsby. The Space Between, 6(1), 81–103. Garber, M. (2015, April 10). To its earliest reviewers, Gatsby was anything but great. The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York, NY: Doubleday. Hancock, B. H., & Garner, R. (2009). Changing theories: New directions in sociology. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Hanzo, T. A. (1956). The theme and the narrator of The Great Gatsby. Modern Fiction Studies, 2(4), 183–190. Irwin, J. T. (2014). F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction: “An almost theatrical innocence”. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Lewis, R. W. B. (1959). The American Adam: Innocence, tragedy, and tradition in the ninetieth century. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lucey, B. (2013, May 3). Why it took so long for “The Great Gatsby” to be considered a literary classic? Newspaper Alum. Retrieved from www.newspaper alum.com Makowsky, V. (2009). “Among the ash-heads and millionaires”: Teaching The Great Gatsby through the lens of class. In J. R. Bryer & N. P. VanArsdale (Eds.), Approaches to teaching Fitzgerald’s the great gatsby (pp. 59–67, 181–188). New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America. Nagel, J. (2013). The Great Gatsby and the American dream. In Dickstein (Ed.), Critical insights: The great gatsby (pp. 113–124). Pasadena, CA: Salem Press.

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Pearson, R. L. (1970). Gatsby: False prophet of the American dream. The English Journal, 59(5), 638–645. Posnock, R. (1984). “A new world, material without being real”: Fitzgerald’s critique of Capitalism in The Great Gatsby. In Donaldson (Ed.), Critical essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the great gatsby (pp. 201–213). Boston, MA: G.K. Hall & Co. Roulston, R. (1980). Traces of Tono-Bungay in The Great Gatsby. Journal of Narrative Technique, 10, 68–76. Stallworth, B. J., & Gibbons, L. (2012). What’s on the list . . . now? A survey of book-length works taught in secondary schools. English Leadership Quarterly, 34(3), 2–3. Stallworth, B. J., Gibbons, L., & Fauber, L. (2006). It’s not on the list: An exploration of teachers’ perspectives on using multicultural literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(6), 478–489. Stotsky, S. (2010). Literary study in grades 9, 10, 11: A national survey. Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. Tyson, L. (2006). Critical theory today: A user friendly guide (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Tyson, L. (2011). Using critical theory: How to read and write about literature (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Wasiolek, E. (1992). The sexual drama of Nick and Gatsby. The International Fictional Review, 19, 14–22. Woloshyn, V., Taber, N., & Lane, L. (2013). Discourses of masculinity and femininity in The Hunger Games: Scarred, bloody, and stunning. International Journal of Social Science Studies, 1, 150–160.

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Transactional Theory Applied to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Sharon Kane “What is the main idea of this story?” Did you just cringe as you read this question? It is one virtually all of us recognize from our school years, and I suspect some of us have asked it of our own students. Commercial materials and assessments ask questions about literature that discourage expansive thinking and reinforce the idea that there is “a perfect reading hiding out there somewhere” (Probst, 1994, p. 38). Imagine a multiplechoice exam for Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940, 1968). It might read something like this: 1. Who is the Christ figure in the novel? a. b. c. d.

John Singer Dr. Benedict Mady Copeland Willie Copeland Spiros Antonapoulos

2. What do we know about Mick Kelly by the end of the story? a.

She has given up her tomboy ways and embraced her entry into female adulthood. b. She has been utterly defeated by poverty and social injustice. c. She retains something of her androgynous character, and represents the 22-year-old author. d. Though she now has a full-time job at Woolworth’s to add to the family income, she still has hope that her dreams involving music and travel can someday become a reality. 3. What is the primary theme of the novel? a.

Racism, classism, and sexism are so strong in this 1930s Southern mill town that most individuals do not have a chance of succeeding. The story addresses systemic inequality. b. Everyone is seeking connection, but every individual is ultimately alone, unable to understand others or be understood by others.

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Everyone is connected to everyone else, in ways both visible and unperceived by the characters. We are not alone. d. Religion is central to the story, expressed in a multitude of ways. Love is the only answer to the evils and plights of society. Actually, various literary critics and reviewers have represented all of the choices in the questions above, as they cite evidence from the text; and they have often contradicted each other. This phenomenon raises further questions: Whose opinions are the most valid, or valued? Whom should we believe? McCullers’ contemporaries, such as Richard Wright? Current scholars (e.g., Proehl, 2016; Rejan, 2017)? Celebrities, such as Oprah Winfrey, who provided a guide when she chose it for her book club (2004)? McCullers herself, who left us with an outline of the book that explains some of her reasoning and choices (1972)? This chapter will present a sampling of critics’ reactions to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, then use transactional theory to address the questions raised above, as well as the discrepancy of interpretations and the role of the reader in relationship to the meanings of texts.

Literary Critics and Reviewers Respond to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter P. L. Thomas (2018) bemoans, “Traditionally, fictional texts and poetry have been reduced in formal schooling—in English courses—to mere vehicles for ‘guess what the text means,’ or more pointedly ‘guess what the teacher claims the text means.’” A review of scholarly literature on almost any classic novel, play, or poem clearly shows the folly of purporting that a text conveys a single, uncontestable meaning. Critical responses, whether representing New Criticism, feminist scholarship, queer theory, psycho-analytical theory, or any other form or branch of literary criticism, are all over the map where The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is concerned. At least one respected reviewer publicly admitted that he was unable to come up with a way to say, even to himself, what the meaning of the novel is. Richard Wright, whose Native Son was also published in 1940, wrote of McCullers’ debut, “I don’t know what the book is about; the nearest I can come to indicating its theme is to refer to the Catholic confessional or the private office of the psychoanalyst” (1940, p. 195). He was, however, willing to discuss his impressions as a particular reader, as well as to risk conjecture about the author based on the work of fiction: To me the most impressive aspect of “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” is the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer, for the first time in Southern fiction, to handle Negro characters with as much ease and justice as those of her own race. This cannot be accounted for stylistically or politically; it seems to stem from an attitude toward

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life which enables Miss McCullers to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness. (p. 195) McCullers’ depictions of Dr. Copeland and his family have intrigued more recent scholars as well. For example, Groba (2015), after referring to Wright’s “allowing them to express themselves as complex human beings beneath the prevailing stereotypes” (p. 66), agrees that McCullers was able to avoid the stereotype of the victimized African American; Dr. Copeland’s complex personality includes major flaws, including his extreme behavior that actually leads to alienation. “[H]is purported concern for the members of his race is tarnished by the egocentric monologism of one who sees everything through the prism of an individual obsession” (p. 67). Millichap (1971) sounds much less tentative or personal than Wright in his interpretations of the novel. He begins discussing McCullers, much as I did above, with a recognition of wildly conflicting scholarly opinions “regarding the interpretations of individual works, the value of her overall achievement, and her place in American literary history” (p. 11). Citing several experts, he lays out the problem presented when some critics interpret The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter as “an allegory, a Gothic romance, or a fable” (p. 11) that pays little or no attention to the political or social, while others find it a proletarian novel. Millichap determines, “These critical differences can only be resolved through a careful analysis of the novel’s structure” (p. 11) and “The Realistic Structure of ‘The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter’” provides his own analysis. Millichap notes the three-part structure of the novel, with Part One introducing setting, characters, plot, theme, and style while also establishing “the fundamental tension between the personal and the social worlds, as the central human relationship is mirrored in the social lives of all the other characters” (p. 12). The fifteen chapters in Part Two, covering the span of a year during 1938 and 1939, create what Millichap describes as a coherently structured series of events. “Blount provides a connection with economic exploitation, Copeland with racial prejudice, Mick with the alienation of youth. The threads of each character’s development are woven into a tapestry depicting Southern society at the end of the depression” (p. 12). The novel’s final part takes place during a single day and shows the reactions of the four protagonists to the death of John Singer. Millichap sums up his interpretation of the structure: “Mrs. McCullers had created a confused, brutal world, shown a momentary order in it, destroyed that order, yet in the very destruction, in the very moment of despair, shows us the foundation of a possible order in the tragic revelations of defeat” (p. 12). Millichap contends that the character relationships in the novel present a pattern even more complicated than that of its plot structure, and

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that “Style functions organically with structure” (p. 14). After explicating these literary devices, he concludes, “Careful analysis of its structure demonstrates how all elements of the novel—character, plot, style, setting, and symbol—are integrated in the larger purpose of presenting the failure of communication, the isolation, and the violence prevalent in modern society” (p. 16). Much more recently, Shakely (2011) applies intersectional theory to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, showing how systems of power intertwine in ways that keep two female characters from succeeding. She points out that some critics have seen the novel as apolitical, often examining the text as a religious allegory; and those who have focused on social or political themes have not looked for connections among them. Shakely asserts, “I would therefore like to oppose the idea that the novel has one central, ‘universal’ theme completely separated from politics and society, and other subordinated, peripheral themes dealing with social and political issues” (p. 7). She further claims that, while these have not been acknowledged by critics, McCullers “positions new understandings of race, gender, and sexuality” (p. 8). She proposes to address these with intersectionality theory, which “problematizes the notion of people having one single identity and also examines how structures of power intersect” (p. 9). Shakely (2011) positions herself within the feminist tradition but argues that “. . . it is too simplistic to view Mick only from a feminist perspective, and thus ignore the power structures of class and race that shape her experiences” (p. 12). She worries, “readings of Mick done through one certain framework focusing merely on her experiences as either a woman or working-class will most likely lead to marginalizing her intersectional experiences as a working-class woman” (p. 16). In the novel, after Mick has been pressured into taking on a full-time job that robs her of the space and emotional capacity to focus on the music she loves and her dreams of travel, she is angry and feels cheated. But she can’t figure out who exactly has cheated her, which frustrates her even more. While Mick does not have the words to describe what has befallen her, Shakely does, and in her essay supplies them. “Most likely she is mad at the power structures she is subject to, she is mad at the fact that she has been cheated, she has been cheated in the intersection of class, gender, and race: being an economically disadvantaged woman has prevented her from fulfilling her artistic aspirations” (p. 20). Shakely goes on, “She has been forced to conform herself to white ideals of femininity in a society where tomboyishness and female sexuality is considered shameful. Sex and class expectations has (sic) forced her to let go of her musical aspirations, and furthermore, because of her class and sex, she must help support her family instead of studying or developing her artistic talent” (p. 20). Shakely turns her attention to Portia, a character in the novel whom most critics have marginalized or ignored. According to Shakely, Portia

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demonstrates internalized racism. She believes that her light skin tone and her work in a White family’s house raises her status, as does the fact that she is married and religious. Her father, Dr. Copeland, is disappointed and upset that Portia and her brothers seem content with their lot; he compares her work to slavery. (And it is true that she makes three dollars per week as opposed to the ten dollars Mick earns at Woolworth’s.) The Kellys, poor as they are, can still afford to maintain Portia as a cook. It’s clear that “African American women’s labour . . . is worth little in the intersection of capitalism, racism, and patriarchy” (p. 26). Some responses to McCullers’ novel are clearly and unabashedly aesthetic. For example, the title of Masad’s “13 Emotional Reactions to Reading ‘The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter’, Which Is Such a Brilliant Masterpiece, It’s Almost Bewildering” (2015) allows for no possible mistake about her stance, even though Masad recognizes that the text could allow for different types of reading, noting that McCullers managed “to pour the entirety of America in the 1930s into a relatively short novel. Gender, sexuality, class, race, religion—all of it is packed into this book, yet, somehow, you never feel like you’ve been zonked over the head with a history lesson. . . .” (n.p.). Masad adds, “The novel can be read as a political and socially critical (sic)—but it can also be read as simply a novel, one that’s beautifully written about people feeling and living and being” (n.p.). Among the 13 emotional states Masad says she feels every time she rereads the book are curious, sad, uncomfortable, worried, freaking out, pitying, loving, seriously confused, and depressed. She cites events and characters’ actions to elaborate on the causes of her feelings. She never tries to argue that she is right, or that others should feel these emotions or interpret the text the way she has. She simply emotes. Martin (2009) attempts something quite different in “Speech, Silence and Female Adolescence in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop.” She brings in examples from a body of criticism that she has chosen as the theoretical framework for her own interpretation as she explores “the implications of these ideas when applied to language and speech” and discusses “the ways in which these two writers explore the extent to which women can ‘speak for themselves’ by working within and against existing social and cultural models of womanhood” (p. 4). Yet she keeps herself very much in the equation: “In my reading of McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) and Carter’s The Magic Toyshop (1968), I focus on the female adolescent as a figure on the threshold of adult womanhood and sexuality” (p. 5). After providing an example of an interpretation of McCullers’ text by another critic, Martin counters, “However I would argue that Mick’s behavior is less a fear of her own body, than a fear of how she will be treated and expected to behave by society once she has become a fully grown woman, defined—and confined—by her materiality” (p. 10). Martin presents herself as being in conversation with others who have read and responded to

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the novel; she backs up her voice with reasons and textual citations but is clearly aware that she is arguing one position among many. Several critics have studied the novel through the lens of music, including Magome (2016) in “The Image of the String Quartet Lurking in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (2016). She quotes a scene where Singer’s four visitors, who usually see him singly, happen to come to his room at the same time; and, when the dynamics are awkward, Singer starts to move his hands nervously. She offers an alternative to what might be a common interpretation of the scene. “Of course, he may be encouraging his quiet guests to talk to each other by gesture, but on another level, the scene also looks like that of a musical performance, where a conductor stands at the center of musicians, making them play according to the movement of his hands” (p. 104). She asks us, her readers, to look at the scene through the lens she has chosen. Magome ends her essay in a way that goes beyond analysis of the novel. “It is time for us to explore more closely how and to what degree musical structures can affect literary and or social ones and how we can use the image of a string quartet to make our present world better toward the future” (p. 109).

Enter Louise Rosenblatt It’s difficult to summarize transactional theory, partly because it is not a single framework that has remained static; it evolved and was debated and refined over the seven decades Rosenblatt actively used and promoted it. Literature as Exploration went through five revisions between 1938 and 1995. That’s a lot of time for clarification, responding to critics, changing one’s mind, expanding on nuances. I will state some of her theory’s main tenets, as explained in The Reader, the Text, the Poem (1978), then bring in some critiques of her work and her later response to critics and others who misinterpreted or misapplied her teachings. Rosenblatt (1978) uses the term poem in a unique way, representing the event that occurs when a specific reader comes together with a specific text at a particular place and time. The relation between text and reader is not linear. She warns against focusing too narrowly on the mind of the reader. “Emphasis on the reader’s role does not in any way minimize the importance of the text” (p. 34). Rosenblatt (1978) differentiates the activities readers perform depending on their purpose. She labels reading where the reader’s primary concern is what he [she always used the masculine pronoun in this book] will take away from the reading—facts, information, directions—as efferent. In contrast, the reader’s foremost purpose in aesthetic reading is what he is living through during the reading event itself. He pays attention to feelings, attitudes, and associations within himself that have been aroused by the text. The same text can be read aesthetically or efferently, and readers can shift back and forth between the two stances. Noting that

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great literature is emotive plus possesses a strong cognitive or intellectual element, Rosenblatt explains, “the mark of the reader’s aesthetic activity is precisely that he does not respond to either of these elements separately, but, rather, fuses the cognitive and the emotive” (p. 46). In Rosenblatt’s (1978) framework, what the reader brings to the text is crucial, for both the evocation and the reaction. “[M]ultiple and equally valid possibilities are often inherent in the same text in its transactions with different readers under different conditions” (p. 75). She worries that some readers never learn to make the shift from the efferent toward the aesthetic end of the spectrum. “In our schools, the emphasis in the teaching of reading is almost entirely on the efferent stance. Comprehension in reading tests is assumed mainly to be of this type” (p. 79). Rosenblatt (1978) pushes back against those who infer that her emphasis on the reader’s actions and reactions in evoking a poem implies that any reading is as valid as any other reading. “Any such view would of course lead to critical chaos. But nothing in my insistence on the reader’s activity necessitates such a conclusion” (p. 105, italics in original). She presents the theory of E. D. Hirsch in his Validity of Interpretation (1967) as the opposite of hers, since, Rosenblatt explains, he completely rejects the reader, insisting rather that there is one right interpretation of a text, and that is the one that matches what the writer meant. Rosenblatt counters, “In dismissing the creative evocation of the poem as mere imaginative guesswork, Hirsch has thrown out the experienced work of art and retained only the scholarly apparatus” (p. 110). Rosenblatt does not reject the “validity of the desire to ascertain the author’s intentions” (p. 112); she differs with Hirsch in his belief that “the author’s reconstructed intention must be the only-and universally accepted—criterion of the sole ‘meaning’ of the text when it is read aesthetically” (p. 113). Rosenblatt (1978) notes that readers who bring particular belief systems to texts need to be aware of the effect that will have. She gives religious affiliations as well as Freudian or Marxist ideologies as examples (p. 128). “But the intrinsic value of a literary work of art resides in the reader’s living through the transaction with the text” (p. 132). She laments, “Recent critical and literary theory is replete with references to ‘the informed reader,’ ‘the competent reader,’ ‘the ideal reader.’ All suggest a certain distinction from, if not downright condescension toward, the ordinary reader” (p. 138). Rosenblatt sees things differently. “Given this fact that every reader is to some degree an embryonic critic, and every critic one who carries further the inherent activities of the reader, the distinction between ordinary reader and critic is a vague and wavering one” (p. 138). She refers to the work of Samuel Johnson at this point, referring to a continuity between the common reader and the critic. Rosenblatt (1978) decries the “hegemony of the New Criticism and parallel movements of ‘objective’ literary analysis, such as those applying

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the frameworks of Freudian symbolism, Jungian mythology, Marxian determinism. . . . [and] structuralism” (p. 139). She offers a solution, which “lies in rejecting the preoccupation with some illusory unspecifiable absolute or ‘correct’ reading or ideal reader” (p. 140). She believes, “We have come far indeed from the notion of ‘the work’ as an object, existing ‘out there’ for the enterprising reader and critic to illuminate” (p. 65). Yet Rosenblatt does not see herself at the far other end of the continuum. She has a problem with deconstructionists, who have “dualistically replaced the notion of single determinate meaning with the opposite extreme, the notion of the ‘unreadability’ of the text, and the reader’s unchecked ‘playfulness’ in relation to it” (1998, p. 915). A great many scholars and educators have been ongoing adherents of Rosenblatt’s framework. For example, Probst (1994), warning, “The literary text must not be reduced to exercise or drill, but must be allowed to live as a work of art, influencing the reader to see and think and feel” (pp. 37–38), advocates using Rosenblatt’s framework in the English curriculum, recognizing the fundamental assumption “that there is a validity to unique and divergent readings, that we must respect and trust both the text and the reader” (p. 39). Yet opponents of Rosenblatt abound, and their criticism can be biting. Justman (2010), for example, states that Rosenblatt’s Literature as Exploration, described by him as having been canonized, has been exempted from criticism, but promises, “This lack I propose to remedy forthwith” (p. 126). He does so with a vengeance. Justman asserts that the “Rosenblatt doctrine subordinates the teaching of literature to the imperative of mental well-being” (p. 127). He accuses her of having the goal of altering students’ personalities, saying that Rosenblatt students undergo a type of psychotherapy, not necessarily with their knowledge or consent. According to Justman (2010), “Literature in the Rosenblatt classroom is harnessed to draw students toward their own maturation—but also, more implicitly, toward the political doctrine presumed to underpin human well-being: liberalism” (p. 130). He considers the book to be full of redundancies, generalities, and contradictions, ultimately “a six-hour sermon” (p. 135). One of his final complaints is that, “Indeed, her book contains not one flicker of irony” (p. 135), leaving this reader to wonder why a book on transactional theory would be expected to contain irony. Justman accuses Rosenblatt of speaking in an apodictic tone. (I think he might do well to put his own essay to the test, also, since his words come across as though they are clearly beyond dispute, incontestable.) Rosenblatt regularly engaged in the ongoing conversation about her theory, and was not afraid to tell people when she felt they had gotten something wrong. In “Readers, Texts, Authors” (1998), she expresses her gratitude to Robert E. Innis (author of “Pragmatism and the Fate

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of Reading,” pp. 869–884 in same journal) for his intensive reading of two of her books, then takes him to task. “I welcome the stimulus of direct disagreement, but unfortunately sometimes the disagreement is with positions that I do not espouse . . . Indeed, at crucial points the concept of transaction itself is forsaken” (p. 886). Innis had referred to Rosenblatt’s use of evocation as a Janus-faced term. Rosenblatt accuses him of reifying a distinction by making a backward-forward formulation, and explains, “My purpose was precisely to contradict such a false opposition. The experiential/perceptual and the semiotic are for the reader simultaneous interfused aspects of the reading process” (p. 886). She notes, “Failure to understand the transactional process leads to the mistaken claim that I assert ‘the primacy of evocation to interpretation’” (p. 887). Not so, she insists. Rather, “Instead of a static reader digging out a determinate meaning embedded in a text, transaction named a developing event in which a particular reader and a particular text, each conditioning the other, contributed to evoking meaning” (p. 890). Innis believes, according to Rosenblatt (1998), that her theory makes the reader predominate, while he maintains that the text is predominant. She says asking whether the reader or the text is more important is the wrong question to ask, similar to asking whether oxygen or hydrogen is more important in constituting water. She explains, “The inclusiveness of the definition of the reading event as a transaction between a reader and a text at a particular time and under particular circumstances leaves open the door to all of the possible ways of thinking about this kind of experience. . . . all the approaches or frameworks that can be applied to criticism—such as historical, social, cultural, feminist, Marxist, psychoanalytic” (p. 913). An interesting recent development is an effort to reconcile Rosenblatt and the New Critics instead of treating them as a dichotomy. Rejan (2017) argues, “Rosenblatt and the New Critics were pioneers of parallel, rather than opposing, pedagogical traditions, shaped by the shared influence of I.A. Richards and John Dewey” (p. 10). He finds a remarkable degree of overlap in the two types of literary criticism, and thus recommends that, rather than looking at Rosenblatt and the New Critics “as variously tinted glasses we might take on and off or as a source of questions and activities to engage student readers, we might instead turn to Rosenblatt’s and Brooks’ most textured and astute theorizations to shape principles of practice that foster a disposition toward readings that are careful and imaginative, judicious and just, true to the lived-through aesthetic experience of a text” (p. 37). How would Rosenblatt respond to Rejan? His essay strikes me as exemplifying the principles of transactional theory as he offers his interpretations of his evocation, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of various critical texts—a unique response indeed.

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Applying Transactional Theory to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Unlike with some types of literary criticism, one cannot stay within the boundaries of the text when applying transactional theory. By definition, the reader is a required element, and what is being analyzed is not just the words on paper, but rather the unique evocation whenever a text is being read by a particular reader. In the earlier section where I presented some of the critical reviews of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, it’s easy to see how the scholars approached the text using chosen lenses, thus bringing themselves to their reading and interpretation. I will use several more authors of written critiques or reflections on The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter as I apply transactional theory in my analysis of their texts. Rosenblatt (1998) alludes to the reader seeking in the text indications or clues as to the author’s intention concerning stance and genre. “So far as the reader is concerned, however, awareness of the author’s precise intentions can never be complete” (p. 900). She does give permission for us to still ask, infer, and surmise; so that is what I will do, providing textual evidence for my interpretations. I will also rely on my own evocations while re-reading the novel, which will allow me to draw certain conclusions and perhaps raise further questions (considered by Rosenblatt to be a rich aspect of an invested reader’s response). Rountree (2016) brings knowledge of science and current events to her reading of the novel, and looks for something different, too, in “An ‘Archaeology of [Narrative] Silence’: Cognitive Segregation and Productive Citizenship in McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (2016). Her essay begins with statistics about the sharply increased institutionalization of feeble-minded and mentally ill people in the decades preceding the 1940 publication of the novel. Rountree chooses to concentrate on a minor character, Antonapoulos, explaining, “By reading Antonapoulos’ institutionalization as manifest of national politics regarding mental deviants in the early twentieth century, I ultimately map out how the same logic that compels cognitive segregation as a liberal technology also underwrites the narrative structure of Lonely Hunter” (p. 190). Rountree interprets the story’s events within one aspect of the history of the period. “Antonapoulos’ various deviancies, all organized around mental deficiency, reveal the exploitative treatment of feeble-minded persons, both in the narrative and more broadly in U.S. history” (p. 202). Furthermore, she asserts that McCullers’ literary construction of sending Antonapoulos to the margins of the narrative was not only “influenced by its literary moment,” but also “. . . helped to shape the American imagination at a key moment . . .” (p. 204, italics in original). Rountree consciously offers her analysis as a statement about our country’s continuing cognitive segregation of individuals, including in school settings. She concludes her essay with a call to action, again going beyond the text: “We must work to

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improve social infrastructures to benefit the quality of life for cognitively different persons” (p. 205). What seems to be missing in Rountree’s analysis, as I read it, is a recognition that readers don’t, and can’t, know McCullers’ intentions as she sent Antonapoulos away. True, as Rountree points out, it freed Singer to be able to relate to the four other characters who visited his room; it shaped her narrative. But did McCullers approve of his institutionalization? It came with a huge cost, that of the loss of Singer’s happiness. McCullers also, with her pen or typewriter, sent Willie Copeland to jail, where abuse resulted in the loss of his legs; she confined Mick’s sister Etta to her bedroom with a painful ovarian infection, which could not be treated medically because of the family’s poverty; she dashed Mick’s dreams by sentencing her to a full-time job at Woolworth’s. So couldn’t we read McCullers as critiquing the prevailing practice of isolating persons perceived as nonproductive, even as she has Antonapoulos institutionalized? Rosenblatt might point out that Rountree constructed a particular poem as she transacted with the text; it is not the only poem, so other readers of the essay, like myself, can join the conversation, question the interpretations of the essayist, and offer alternative possibilities. Who has the right to tell readers what or how they are supposed to feel about a text? Rubin (1977) expresses strong feelings in terms of how readers can, should, and do react to McCullers’ work. He states that McCullers’ novels are for the young, since they evoke intense feelings, but adds that “the kind of perspective that makes the act of criticism meaningful is something that is possible only when the reader gets beyond the intense, uncritical emotional response . . .” (p. 269). He contends, “. . . the way in which her work can speak to the young reader is not susceptible to very much critical analysis, because it comes at a stage at which the reader’s response is based upon intense emotional assent and identification rather than a mere selective discrimination” (pp. 269–270). Rubin concludes, “Carson McCullers is in certain important ways a writer for young readers, and one has to be young to receive what she offers” (p. 270). We could counter Rubin’s conclusion about McCullers’ texts not being in the realm of literature worthy of literary criticism not only with dozens of examples of published critical essays, but also with Rosenblatt’s own words. “Yet an adolescent girl or boy absorbed in reading that text, drawing on a very different linguistic-experiential reservoir and bringing different needs to the transaction, may be living through a valuable aesthetic transaction, discovering that reading can yield heightened experience of people and their relationships” (1998, p. 915). She suggests, “Perhaps we should abjure dogmatic and rigid evaluations of texts per se and, as with all evaluation, ask ‘good in what respects for whom under what circumstances?’” (1998, p. 915). Proehl could add another perspective to this conversation on adolescents and adolescence. In “Coming of Age in the Queer South: Friendship

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and Social Difference in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (2016), she reflects, “Given that friendship and identity development are two of the most persistent themes in adolescent literature, it is perhaps unsurprising that this genre features a proliferation of queer friendships. Situated at the margins of childhood and adulthood, adolescence is a liminal developmental period” (p. 147). Proehl explains, “By integrating representations of sympathy and identification, queer friendship becomes a vehicle through which authors meditate on issues of social equity, citizenship, and the bonds that form the body politic” (p. 147). Proehl sees queer friendships as both permeating the novel and central to it. She notes Mick’s presentation as boy-like and her ways of relating to others, perhaps especially her obsession with Singer, as marking her as queer. Mick has divided her life, her self, into an outer room and an inner room, and Singer belongs in the latter. Proehl concludes, “the inner room thus becomes a symbolic representation of closeted queer identities as well as a site of friendship” (p. 150). Proehl’s evocation of the story’s end is pessimistic. “The future for each of the novel’s characters—and, in particular, that of the gender non-conforming, adolescent girl—is marked with uncertainty and solitude” (p. 154). Bin’s “Seeking the Meaning of Loneliness: Carson McCullers in China” (2016) exemplifies Rosenblatt’s recognition of multiple factors that influence readers’ evocations of text and construction of meaning. Noting that McCullers is “a phenomenon in China” (p. 209), she details two waves of ‘McCullers craze,’ one in the 1980s and another in the twentyfirst century. She asserts that readers both times recognized the theme of loneliness, but the earlier generation saw the isolation within community, while the latter perceived the alienation in a crowd (p. 209). There were historical and cultural reasons for the difference. Bin describes McCullers as “culturally very Chinese at heart” (p. 210), accounting for her popularity. Sims Bishop (1990) gave us the metaphors of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors for what books can do for readers. Bin’s phrase could imply that books, characters, and authors might, for certain individuals or groups, serve as all of these together. Bin explains that the novelist strikes a sympathetic chord, most recently because currently, “China is undergoing a crucial stage of social transformation toward modernity that exerts a great impact on social life. . . . The Chinese society has faced a rising crisis of faith in interpersonal relationships; meanwhile, the alienation of human nature by capital in the process of modernization has led to increasing estrangement and apathy among individuals. (p. 225) Therefore, Bin concludes, “McCullers’ loneliness is endowed with new meaning by a new generation of Chinese readers, and with multiple possibilities of updated interpretation, the previously unique Chinese experience of loneliness eventually becomes part of the global experience” (p. 226). When we take the examples Bin has provided, and then realize how many other factors—e.g., age, gender, family, political stance, abilities,

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peers, personal experiences—will help determine how an individual reader in China constructs meaning and responds emotionally to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, it’s easy to understand Rosenblatt’s tenet that each reading is a unique aesthetic experience. “A specific reader and a specific text at a specific time and place: change any of these, and there occurs a different circuit, a different event—a different poem” (Rosenblatt, 1978, p. 14). Any theory that is predicated on meaning being dependent on an author’s intention would not be able to account for Bin’s claim that McCullers (and by extension her work) is, culturally, Chinese at heart. Another example in the novel that demonstrates this impossibility of ascertaining an author’s intended meaning is the scene where Mick and Harry, her neighbor who is a few years older than she, go bicycling, and end up having sex. What can account for some readers saying that Harry takes advantage of the young girl or tries to make her feel guilty for what he perceives as their terrible sin, while others say that Mick seduces Harry? Which interpretation would represent what McCullers intended? Or, might she have deliberately written ambiguity into the scene, thereby necessitating the reader’s participation in the construction of meaning? Maybe McCullers was Rosenblattian at heart. And now I consider my own reading of the novel. When I first read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter as a young adult, yes, I identified with Mick, the character most like me. But Dr. Copeland—a sick, older Black doctor filled with both love of his people and rage at their seeming inability to understand and resist their oppression—stayed with me for a long time. I did not then know a Dr. Copeland in my life, but I could still talk back to this person who became very real to me through my evocation of the text. Why? I could not have articulated, as Champion (1991) succinctly did, that “He fights against everything his children become—subservient, uneducated, and passive reactors against racism” (p. 48). Though I can’t recreate my exact thoughts, I think they would have sounded something like this: “Please, Dr. Copeland, look at your wonderful daughter Portia, a beautiful young woman with integrity who loves you. Stop judging her because she continues to speak dialect rather than Standard English and doesn’t match your expectations. Accept her.” Through the decades and through several re-readings, I came to understand Dr. Copeland in a deeper way, as my own children decided on what values (not always matching my own) to live by, and as I did meet people in my life who shared characteristics with him. Why did The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter evoke such love in my young reader’s heart? It certainly was not that I had the background knowledge to understand the social issues. Jake rants about the evils of capitalism and the benefits of communism, beliefs totally contrary to anything I had been taught during my Cold War school days. Nothing in my sheltered life would have prepared me for Biff’s wearing his dead wife’s clothes and perfume, or Singer’s isolation as a deaf and mute person who has

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had the one person—the one man—he loved torn away from him and institutionalized. To say I was unprepared for understanding his suicide would have to be an understatement. And yet, the book spoke to me, and stayed with me my whole life. I sought out biographies of Carson McCullers, and read other texts by her. I taught the novel in a college English course. In my continuing studies and career, I learned more about disabilities; social and economic inequities; LGBTQIA issues; literary criticism. I met Louise Rosenblatt. I re-read the book every several years, each time creating a different poem as a changed reader and the same text came together. And now, as I obsessively read criticism of the novel spanning threequarters of a century in order to write this chapter, the view in the mirror becomes clearer, if more complex, and the windows open ever wider, revealing an ever-expanding landscape. It is as if there is a three-way, recursive transaction among the reader, the literary text, and related texts offering varied ways of relating to the story and its dynamic characters. It’s like I’m part of a virtual literature circle whose members span decades, and which has no geographic boundaries. Carson is in it; Louise is in it. What does all this mean in terms of how teachers might guide students in using the lens of transactional theory as they read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter? While this chapter has already shown themes that critics found important—alienation, coming of age, interconnectedness, oppression, loneliness—Rosenblatt would have us listen to students (and listening is a huge theme in this novel—when characters want to be listened to, they visit Singer, who cannot hear them) in order to determine what themes to pursue. As a reader, I am increasingly struck by the many layers of the themes of love—unreciprocated love and unconditional love, as well as the love of individuals, of groups, of music, of ideas, of life. But my job is not to deliver those themes to students dependent on me for a meaningful response to the literature. Authentic learning is not linear. McCullers and Rosenblatt have deepened my awareness of the necessity of reciprocity, in education as well as personal relationships. Today, teachers and students might zero in on the seemingly minor incident of Mick’s little brother Bubber shooting a four-year-old girl who was being groomed for beauty pageants by her mother. “What?” I can hear them say. “How did this second-grader get hold of a rifle? This is why we need gun control in this country!” Mick’s family, already impoverished, then has to go further in debt, actually losing their home, to pay for Baby’s medical and cosmetic bills. “We need universal health care, too!” Reading of Singer’s death could lead to discussions of recent news of the suicides of famous people, or of more personal experiences involving family members or friends, or of characters in newer YA literature. Students might wish to talk about societal causes of, or responses to, a rise in suicides; they may want to explore programs or information about suicide prevention. Have they strayed too far from the text? Or have they made the text their own?

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When I first read the book, in my late teens, I’m pretty sure I did not pay all that much attention to the multiple depictions of Mick that reference gender. I had been an avid reader throughout my childhood and adolescence and the trope of the pre-pubescent tomboy was firmly established in my reader’s repertoire. No big deal. But given the changes in laws; the prevalence of news and social media; and the plethora of literature involving LGBTQIA topics, we can assume that today’s students, along with adult critics, have a lot more information, understanding, convictions, and/or biases regarding gender identity issues. This will have an effect on what they notice and how they feel as they read about Mick’s clothing, desires, words, and actions throughout the story. Are these legitimate readings of McCullers’ texts? Rosenblatt calls them evocations by particular readers with particular interests at particular times. Teachers can take advantage of unique interpretations to encourage students to talk with each other, look deeply in the text for evidence or evocative language, and explore issues beyond the text that could inform their interpretations. “OK, Jesse, you’re thinking Mick might be gender fluid? Read this chapter from this biography of Carson McCullers and see if it adds credence to your stance.” “Shalene, I see you were really struck with the image McCullers gave us of how the characters related to Singer. ‘Their thoughts seemed to converge in him as the spokes of a wheel lead to the center hub’ (p. 204). Perhaps you could draw this and visually represent relationships in other novels you’ve read.” Suggestions like these could be the start of other reading triangles among students, literary texts, and additional voices from secondary texts, much like what was described above about my own revisiting the novel after transacting with critical essays. Looks like the theme of interconnectedness is not confined to the novel.

Conclusion Hill (2014) ponders issues relating to literature that is written by adults for teenagers, asserting that many of the claims we make about young adult literature really “hinge on the reader’s close identification with the narrator, a winnowing down of potential subjectivities” (p. 19). He then asks (and I can hear the echo of Sims Bishop), “Wouldn’t it be equally productive for readers to not find themselves in a novel, but to meet others with differences? Couldn’t a reader then also learn about themselves, their place in their environment, in relation to others?” (p. 19) Rosenblatt’s transactional theory helps answer Hill’s questions in the affirmative. There are several main characters in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter who are extremely different yet share a feeling of isolation and a yearning for connection. Readers, depending on a multitude of factors not always obvious or predictable, will identify with certain characters in specific ways at various times.

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Louise Rosenblatt was political, and so is her transactional theory. She tells us, “In 1938 . . . an important factor in my thinking was the threat to democracy, mainly by forces and ideologies emanating from outside. And if today I am still urgently impelled to explicate these ideas, it is because, more than at any time in the intervening years, democracy is again threatened, this time mainly by converging forces from within” (1998, pp. 917–918). What would she say now, two decades into the twenty-first century? I dare not venture into that larger territory. But what transactional theory applied to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and other literature confirms, for me, is that we should celebrate the diversity of responses—aesthetic as well as efferent—to literature, and we should desist from presenting students with multiple-choice questions that imply, falsely and destructively, that there is one right answer to questions of literary interpretation.

Works Cited Bin, L. (2016). Seeking the meaning of loneliness: Carson McCullers in China. In A. Graham-Bertolini & C. Kayser (Eds.), Carson McCullers in the twenty-first century (pp. 209–232). Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan. Carter, A. (1968). The magic toyshop. London: Heinemann. Champion, L. (1991). Black and White Christs in Carson McCullers’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. The Southern Literary Journal, 2(1), 47–52. Groba, C. G. (2015). “So far as I and my people are concerned the South is Fascist now and always has been”: Carson McCullers and the racial problem. Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 37(2), 63–80. Hill, C. (2014). Introduction: Young adult literature and scholarship come of age. In C. Hill (Ed.), The critical merits of young adult literature: Coming of age. New York, NY: Routledge. Hirsch, E. D. (1967). Validity in interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Innis, R. E. (1998). Pragmatism and the fate of reading. Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society, 34(4), 869–884. Justman, S. (2010). Bibliotherapy: Literature as Exploration reconsidered. Academic Questions, 23(1), 125–135. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com. ezproxy.oswego.edu:2048/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=fc9cabdaef98-40a7-a4be-1fe93541741d%40sessionmgr102 Magome, K. (2016). The image of the string quartet lurking in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. In A. Graham-Bertolini & C. Kayser (Eds.), Carson McCullers in the twenty-first century (pp. 97–112). Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan. Martin, C. (2009). Speech, silence and female adolescence in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 11(3), 4–18. Masad, I. (2015). 13 emotional reactions to reading “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, which is such a brilliant masterpiece, it’s almost bewildering. Retrieved from www.bustle.com/articles/73342-13-emotional-reactions-to-readingthe-heart-is-a-lonely-hunter-which-is-such-a-brilliant

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McCullers, C. (1940). The heart is a lonely hunter. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. McCullers, C. (1968). The heart is a lonely hunter. New York, NY: Amsco School Publications. McCullers, C. (1972). Author’s outline of “The Mute”. In M. G. Smith (Ed.), The mortgaged heart (pp. 121–148). London: Barrie & Jenkins. Millichap, J. R. (1971). The realistic structure of “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”. Twentieth Century Literature, 17(1), 11–17. Probst, R. (1994). Reader-response theory and the English classroom. The English Journal, 83(3), 37–44. Proehl, K. (2016). Coming of age in the queer south: Friendship and social difference in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. In A. Graham-Bertolini & C. Kayser (Eds.), Carson McCullers in the twenty-first century (pp. 143–156). Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan. Rejan, A. (2017). Reconciling Rosenblatt and the New Critics: The quest for an “experienced understanding” of literature. English Education, 50(1), 10–41. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Rosenblatt, L. M. (1998). Readers, texts, authors. Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society, XXXIV(4), 886–921. Rountree, S. (2016). An “archaeology of [narrative] silence”: Cognitive segregation and productive citizenship in McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. In A. Graham-Bertolini & C. Kayser (Eds.), Carson McCullers in the twenty-first century (pp. 189–208). Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan. Rubin, L. D., Jr. (1977). Carson McCullers: The aesthetic of pain. Virginia Quarterly Review, 53(2), 265–283. Shakely, R. (2011). Intersectional identities in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Sodertorn University, School of Culture and Communication. C-essay 15 ECTS credits. Sims Bishop, R. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, 6(3), ix–xi. Retrieved from https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windowsand-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf Thomas, P. L. (2018, May 11). Negotiating meaning from text: “Readers are welcome to it if they wish”. Radical Eyes for Equity. Retrieved from https:// radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/negotiating-meaning-from-textreaders-are-welcome-to-it-if-they-wish/ Wright, R. (1940). Inner landscape: Review of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. New Republic, 103(6), 195. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com. ezproxy.oswego.edu:2048/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=c2c5429c-0c1e4d9b-a632-2da0bb072922%40sessionmgr101 Your guide to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. (2004). Retrieved from www.oprah. com/oprahsbookclub/the-heart-is-a-lonely-hunter-by-carson-mccullers_1

7

Disturbing the Universe Reading The Stranger Through a Lens of Philosophical Criticism Sean P. Connors

Introduction What is the point of suffering? Does life have meaning and purpose? What does it mean to live a “good” life? Philosophers and writers have long asked existential questions of this sort, but so, too, do many young people (Appleyard, 1990). Indeed, in the more than twenty years that I have spent reading and talking about literature with students in high school and college English classes, I have found that when they are challenged to examine ontological questions of the sort that interest philosophers, their intellectual curiosity is piqued, they are more involved in class proceedings, and they are willing to think more deeply and critically about literary texts they read. As a philosophical line of inquiry that interested philosophers, writers, and artists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, existentialism may not, at first blush, appear particularly germane to the work of English teachers. Its influence is felt, however, in the work of many writers whose novels, short stories, and plays are read and studied in upper-grade English classes, from Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Beckett on the one hand, to Camus, Salinger, and Heller on the other. Existentialism is not a formal philosophical school, and many of the writers and artists who are referred to today as “existentialists” resisted that label in their lifetime (Kaufmann, 1956/1975). What these writers and thinkers share in common is an abiding interest in the absurd condition we humans face as we search for meaning and purpose in a universe that, according to existentialism, is without meaning. In this chapter, I bring together two disciplines—literature and philosophy—which are often regarded as separate intellectual projects. In doing so, my intention is to call attention to the complex readings that are possible when teachers and students examine canonical works of literature through a lens of philosophical criticism (Gillespie, 2010). To begin, I discuss some of the critical lenses that literary critics have traditionally applied to Albert Camus’ (1942/1988) classic novel The Stranger. Having done so, I explain what I have in mind when I use the

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term “philosophical criticism,” after which I examine different ways that teachers and students can productively apply this critical lens to works of canonical literature. Next, drawing on Sartre’s (1957/1985) discussion of existentialism, and Camus’ (1955/1991) treatise on the Absurd, I outline a conceptual framework that I have used with high school students to examine how canonical literature explores questions and ideas associated with existential thought. I then apply this framework to Camus’ (1942/1988) The Stranger, a text that I have taught in upper-grade high school English classes, to demonstrate how the novel can be read as operationalizing different tenets of existential philosophy. To conclude, I address questions about the propriety of introducing existentialism—and philosophical criticism more broadly—in high school English classes. In doing so, I argue that many of the questions that existentialism invites students to ask—including whether they are willing to disturb the universe by defining themselves on their own terms and choosing the meanings according to which they wish to live by—are addressed in literature that students are required to read in English classes.

Critical Perspectives on Camus’ The Stranger In the introduction to Camus’ L’Entranger: Fifty Years On, a collection of critical essays on Camus’ classic novel, Adele King (1992) asks of the work: “Is it possible to find any incident, sentence, even detail that has not been subjected to some critical analysis” (p. 12)? Since it was first published in 1942, literary critics have examined The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988) through a variety of critical lenses. According to Heffernan (2014), criticism of the novel has, broadly speaking, fallen into three phases. The first, from 1942 to 1960, made use of philosophical criticism to examine Absurdist themes in the novel; the second, from 1960 to 2000, saw critics examine the novel through the lenses of feminist literary theory and postcolonial studies respectively; and the third, from 2000 to the present, has sought to evaluate Camus’ literary legacy (p. 2). Early scholarship on The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988) examined the novel through a lens of philosophical criticism. This was influenced by the work of the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1955), who, in his critical essay, “Camus’ The Outsider,” linked the novel to Camus’ (1955/1991) The Myth of Sisyphus, a collection of essays in which the writer articulated his theory of the Absurd. In his essay, Sartre (1955) interpreted the latter text as an attempt on Camus’ part “to make a philosophical translation of his fictional message” (p. 29), and he concluded that “the absurdity of the human condition” constituted The Stranger’s “sole theme” (p. 28). It is perhaps not surprising that Sartre’s essay inspired a generation of critics, such as Brombert (1948), to categorize The Stranger as a “novel of the Absurd” (p. 119). Indeed, the emphasis on this interpretation led Hudon (1960) to remark that, in the case of criticism of the novel, “Many

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[critics] put their nickel in the philosophical slot, and existentialism comes out of everywhere” (p. 59). He went on to argue that a heavy focus on Absurdist themes in the novel presented a barrier to understanding it, and he proposed that the text “becomes simple and clear once it is divested of critical and philosophical misinterpretations” (p. 59). Other literary critics have examined The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988) through the lenses of postcolonial studies and feminist literary theory. In doing so, they have attended closely to how the novel represents Algerian Arabs and women. Noting that Camus “systematically excluded” both of these populations from his work (p. 54), Horowitz (1987) asked whether the writer’s “formulation of the Absurd is not, contrary to popular thought, rooted in a very particular experience, whose roots are at once misogynist (if not homoerotic) and racial” (p. 55). In debating the racial and gender politics of The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988), other critics have also offered political analyses of the text. Speculating that the murder of an Arab would have made Meursault’s crime more palatable to European readers at the time the book was published, Grimaud (1992) argues that Camus reproduced the colonialist social system of his time by “[choosing] to tell a story in a way that took that society’s racism for granted, in effect exploiting it for fictional purposes” (p. 175). Camus’ biographer, Patrick McCarthy (1988/2004), on the other hand, demonstrates how the novel, in portraying racial and class tensions between the French Algerian working class and Algerian Arabs, can be read as subtly questioning colonialism’s prevailing ideology of assimilation. According to McCarthy, Camus’ inability to represent “Arabs as they perceived themselves” is evidence of “how intractable are the problems posed by a settler-colony” (p. 51). Approaching the novel from the perspective of feminist literary theory, other literary critics have debated the novel’s representation of females. Horowitz (1987), for example, argues that “the double roots of racial and sexual violence find a voice” in a scene where Raymond Sintes, an acquaintance of Meursault, brutally beats his Arab girlfriend (p. 56). McCarthy (1988/2004) links Raymond’s relationship with the Arab girlfriend, and his subsequent conflict with her brother, to a tradition in literature that has positioned women in colonial society as “a prize for the colonizer and colonized to fight over” (p. 43). Still other critics have noted how Meursault objectifies his girlfriend, Marie Cardona, in the novel. Offering an alternative take on this reading, Arthur Scherr (2011) interprets the character of Marie more favorably, demonstrating how she functions as both “a type of fertility goddess” and a “natural woman” (p. 7). In this chapter, I build on a tradition of scholarship that has examined The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988) through a lens of philosophical criticism. In doing so, I am interested in understanding how applying a particular philosophical framework—existentialism—to the novel can

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enrich readers’ understanding of it and help them to appreciate the text as a simulation of philosophical ideas and arguments that the author was working through at the time he wrote it. Although the novel’s treatment of existential themes has received attention from literary critics, I argue that applying this particular critical perspective to the novel is a valuable intellectual exercise for teachers and students. Indeed, at a time when school shootings, fake news, and political corruption are seemingly de rigueur, attending closely to the philosophical questions The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988) invites readers to ask about meaning may provide teachers and students with a blueprint for understanding how to live in what literary critic Brent Sleasman (2014) has called our “age of Absurdity,” characterized as it is “by contradiction and unanswered, and, perhaps, unanswerable questions” (p. 170).

What Is Philosophical Criticism? In American schools, literary criticism and philosophy are sometimes treated as though they are separate intellectual projects with disparate methods and concerns. In The Fragility of Goodness (2009), however, philosopher Martha Nussbaum explains that in the fourth and fifth centuries “some of the major figures whom we call philosophers and include in our histories of Greek philosophy were themselves poets, and wrote placing themselves in a poetic tradition” (p. 124). Conversely, writers who are today regarded as poets were recognized by their contemporaries as philosophers (p. 124). Literature and philosophy, in other words, were not always separated. In Doing Literary Criticism (2010), Gillespie argues that philosophy and literature share a common concern in their quest to examine the human condition. He argues that when educators bring the two disciplines together, drawing on their respective affordances, they create the conditions for philosophy and literature to complement and inform each other. Unlike some of the other critical lenses that are addressed in this book, philosophical criticism is not a formally developed literary theory. It is better understood as an approach to reading that involves applying philosophical frameworks and questions to literary texts for the purpose of interpreting them more fully and satisfyingly. This definition is based on Eckert’s (2006) characterization of philosophical criticism as “a method of constructing interpretation by applying philosophical schools of thought (e.g., existentialism, creationism), the theories of an historic philosopher (e.g., Hume, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), or even a specific theology (e.g., Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism) as prior knowledge for unlocking the text” (p. 116). In his book, Gillespie (2010) identifies several ways that teachers can bring philosophical criticism into the classroom. On the one hand, a teacher might help students to place a work of canonical literature into

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its proper philosophical context. Students are arguably better equipped to understand Thoreau’s (1897/2016) Walden, for example, when they have a working knowledge of transcendentalism. Likewise, familiarizing students with the philosophical doctrine of determinism can deepen their appreciation for the despair that characters in novels by Edith Wharton and other American Naturalist writers, such as Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair, experience as they struggle to break free of social conventions that ensnare them and prohibit their finding happiness. Another way that Gillespie (2010) suggests teachers can support students’ reading literature through a lens of philosophical criticism involves their asking them to consider how individual texts grapple with questions that are of interest to the field of philosophy. For example, one might ask how Henderson the Rain King (Bellow, 1959/1996) comments on the human search for meaning and purpose; alternatively, one could attend closely to metaphysical questions the same book raises about the nature of reality. In the case of Frankenstein (Shelley, 1818/1985), one might read the novel as a commentary on the moral and ethical limits of rationality and science. Still another way that teachers and students can practice philosophical criticism is to apply formal philosophical frameworks to literary texts for the purpose of interpreting them more fully and understanding how they function as a sort of simulacrum for philosophical arguments. Applying Foucault’s (1977/1995) theory of disciplinary power to Hawthorne’s (1850/2004) The Scarlet Letter or Atwood’s (1986/1998) dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, for example, can yield insights into how the gaze functions to subjugate Hester Prynne and Offred. Alternatively, reading these same novels with de Certeau’s (1984) discussion of tactics in mind can call attention to moments when the two women exploit gaps in their respective societies’ power structures, thus exercising agency. Returning to Shelley’s (1818/1985) Frankenstein, applying Rousseau’s philosophy of education to the novel can help students understand how the Creature’s account of his early development imagines him as a tabula rasa that is written upon as he gains experience interacting with humans. Regardless of how one chooses to bring philosophical criticism into the classroom, it is well suited for use with high school and college students. In Becoming a Reader, Appleyard (1990) surveyed a range of people to understand how readers experience literature and stories at different developmental stages, from childhood to adulthood. While it is impossible to draw sweeping generalizations, Appleyard’s findings suggest that teenagers turn “to stories to discover insights into the meaning of life, values and beliefs worthy of commitment, ideal images, and authentic role models for imitation” (p. 14). By the time they enter college, it is not uncommon for students to have developed a healthy sense of skepticism and to have begun interrogating their beliefs. Some of them may wonder about the meaning and purpose of life, while others are interested in

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understanding how they can navigate their desire to be an individual while also existing as a contributing member of society. Literature can serve as a vehicle for investigating these and other essentially philosophical questions. In the next section, I draw on Sartre’s (1957/1985) discussion of existentialism and Camus’ (1955/1991) treatise on the Absurd, to present a conceptual framework that teachers and students can use to identify and examine existential questions and concerns in works of literary fiction. I then apply this framework to The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988) in order to demonstrate how the novel can be read as operationalizing tenets of existential philosophy.

Existentialism As explained, existentialism is not a formal philosophical school. Indeed, many of the philosophers and writers who are referred to today as “existentialists” resisted that label in their lifetime (Kaufmann, 1956/1975). The origins of existentialism are often traced to the work of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century, but its influences are felt in the work of several canonical authors, including Dostoevsky, Kafka, Salinger, Beckett, and Kesey; however, existentialism is perhaps most closely associated with European philosophers and writers working in the mid-twentieth century, the most prominent being the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Existentialism has been criticized for promoting nihilism and an ethos of hopelessness and despair, but it is important to contextualize the historical period in which Sartre and his contemporaries wrote. Events that occurred during this period of time included but are not limited to: the rise of Fascism in Europe; the Nazi occupation of France; World War II; the Holocaust; the bombing of Hiroshima; the dawn of the Cold War; and the advent of the nuclear age. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that Sartre, Camus, and other existential writers questioned the existence of God, and hence of external meaning. It is also worth noting that in Existentialism and Human Emotions, arguably his most accessible discussion of this philosophy, Sartre (1957/1985) vehemently countered arguments that characterized existentialism as nihilistic. At its core, existentialism is concerned with the absurd condition in which humans find themselves as they search for meaning in a universe that, according to existentialists, is without meaning. Although Christian existentialists acknowledge the existence of God, they argue that His plan is inaccessible to people, and hence impossible to know. Atheist existentialists, on the other hand, deny the existence of God altogether and conclude that, in the absence of a master architect or planner, there are no values or meanings that are superior to humankind. This is not to say that meaning does not exist. Rather, whether it is of the Christian or

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atheist variety, existentialism assumes that people give their lives meaning as they act in the world. Their denial of God’s existence leads atheist existentialists like Sartre (1957/1985) to reject the assumption that humans are born with an innate essence or predetermined nature. In taking this stance, they reject a doctrine of essentialism that had long guided Western philosophy. Instead, existentialists argue that humans exist (are born) first, and only later define themselves as they act in the world. A first tenet of the philosophy might therefore be expressed as follows: a person “is nothing else but what he makes of himself” (p. 15). If this is the case, then an individual cannot simply dismiss bad behavior by attributing it to human nature. “If existence really does precede essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature” (p. 22). At the same time, if people are responsible for who and what they are, existentialism assumes that they are also capable of reinventing themselves. As Sartre explains, “There’s always a possibility for the coward not to be cowardly any more and for the hero to stop being heroic” (p. 15). If, as atheist existentialists argue, there is no God, then there can be no external values or meanings to which people can turn for guidance. Instead, existentialism leaves people to discern right from wrong, and good from evil, in a world of conflicting values and false beliefs. Faced with this knowledge, and recognizing that we are nothing but what we make of ourselves, what is a person to do? On the one hand, one could simply accept the beliefs and values that society creates, as people often do, but to do so is to abdicate one’s responsibility to define oneself. Nor is there any guarantee that adopting the values and beliefs society creates for us is in our best interest. Alternatively, one could choose one’s values for oneself, but how to choose? This is the dilemma that Sartre (1957/1985) has in mind when he espouses a second tenet of existential philosophy: namely, that people are “condemned to be free” (p. 23). In the past, when I have introduced the latter tenet in class, students have voiced the following objection: “If there are no external values a person can turn to for guidance, and if we’re free to define ourselves, then that means there are no limits or boundaries. People can do whatever they want to do.” Yes, and no. On the one hand, existentialism does argue that in the absence of external values, a person is left to choose the values according to which she wishes to live by. On the other hand, the emphasis that existentialism places on self-definition means that we are obliged to respect the right of other people to define themselves. To impose oneself on another person constitutes a failure in this regard. When choosing a value or a course of action, Sartre (1957/1985) cautions that we ask, “What if everyone acted that way” (p. 18)? A third tenet of existentialism might therefore be expressed as follows: a person “is not only responsible for his own individuality, but he is responsible for all men” (p. 16).

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Throughout my teaching career, I have found that when students are introduced to existentialism for the first time, it is not uncommon for some (or many) of them to characterize it as a philosophy of despair. Their argument generally takes the following form: “If there is no meaning, and if there is nothing to look forward to after this life, then what’s the point of even living?” In some ways, the concern that underlies this question indicates that students have begun to confront what Camus (1955/1991) called the Absurd. Through discussion, I attempt to help them understand that while existentialism assumes that the universe is without meaning, it still acknowledges people’s capacity to create meaning in their lives. That is, as Sartre (1957/1985) argues, “Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose” (p. 49). To further complicate students’ thinking, I challenge them to consider whether our appreciation for the short time we have on earth isn’t made all the more precious by the knowledge that there might not be anything beyond this life. Rather than give in to despair, in other words, one could just as well choose to live one’s life to its fullest. Such an awakening might even motivate us to see past the mindless minutiae of the daily routines that so often consume our attention. Equally important, I explain to students that in his treatise on the Absurd, Camus grappled with the very problem they identified. In The Myth of Sisyphus (Camus, 1955/1991), the writer identifies three responses that he suggests a person can have upon confronting the Absurd. On the one hand, a person can choose to end her life, an option that Camus rejects as absurd given that it hastens the arrival of the very thing that person sought to avoid. Alternatively, one could turn to religion and find hope in faith, but as an atheist, Camus likens this to “philosophical suicide,” arguing that it merely constitutes an act of elusion (p. 8). Finally, he raises a third possibility: namely, accepting the Absurd and finding satisfaction in the small meanings one creates in one’s life. For Camus, this latter response is personified by the myth of Sisyphus, a mortal man whom the gods condemned for eternity to roll a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down at the end of each day. In the figure of Sisyphus, Camus finds an absurd hero who perseveres despite having no hope of success, yet who nonetheless manages to find happiness in his situation. Bringing his essay to a close, Camus writes: I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. (p. 123)

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In describing the happiness that Sisyphus finds in his daily toil, Camus expresses what I suggest is a fourth tenet of existentialism: namely, that accepting the absence of external meaning and purpose need not preclude one’s living happily. The four tenets of existentialism that I have discussed in this section are depicted in Figure 7.1. Together, they provide a conceptual framework for reading canonical works of existential fiction critically. For each tenet, I have identified a series of corresponding questions that teacher and students can ask of literary texts to assess the extent to which they operationalize the aforementioned tenets. In the next section, I apply this framework to Camus’ (1942/1988) The Stranger, a work of canonical fiction that I have taught in upper-grade high school English classes and which has tended to generate a considerable amount of student interest and discussion. By applying the framework to the novel, and thus practicing philosophical criticism, I intend to demonstrate how the text can be interpreted as operationalizing tenets of existential thought. Tenet 1: A person is nothing else but what she makes of herself. • • • •

In what terms would you describe characters in the text? How do characters’ actions or beliefs shape the reader’s perception of them as particular kinds of people? When do characters’ self-perceptions fail to align with how others see them? Do characters reinvent themselves in the text, and how do they do so?

Tenet 2: The individual is condemned to be free. • • • •

When do characters in the text struggle with important choices or decisions? What makes the choices or decisions a character faces “difficult”? How do characters approach making decisions? How do a character’s choices impact other characters in the text?

Tenet 3: A person is not only responsible for her own individuality, but for all people.

Tenet 4: Accepting the absence of greater meaning and purpose need not preclude one’s living happily.

•

•

• • •

Which characters consider the interests of others when making decisions? Which characters neglect to do so? When do characters in the text impose themselves on others? Which characters struggle to define themselves, and what complicates or impedes their ability to do so? How do a character’s choices or actions affect others in the text?

• • •

Are characters’ core belief systems ever challenged, and if so, how do they respond? Which characters despair? Which characters persevere, and what enables them to do so? How do individual characters create meaning in their lives? When are characters in the text compelled to reevaluate how they’ve been living, and what motivates their introspection?

Figure 7.1 Questions to ask of existential literature.

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Examining The Stranger Through a Lens of Existential Philosophy The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988) is a work of absurdist fiction that is set in the city of Algiers at some point during the French colonization of Algeria. The novel follows an otherwise nondescript office clerk, a man named Meursault, from his mother’s funeral to a prison cell where, at the end of the novel, he is left to await his impending death. The novel is divided into two parts. In Part One, the reader learns that Meursault’s mother has died, and that he has ventured to the institution where she lived to attend her funeral. From the beginning of the novel, the reader has the impression that Meursault is wholly unaffected by the loss of his mother. He smokes in front of her casket; elects not to view her body when he is given the opportunity to do so; is unable to recall her age; and confesses that, were he not obliged to attend her funeral, he’d have delighted in taking a walk through the pastoral countryside. In the days that follow the funeral, Meursault’s behavior is no less strange. The morning after the funeral, he recreates at the beach, where he meets a former co-worker—a woman named Marie. That night, the two go on a date and attend a movie. During the workweek, Meursault mindlessly goes through the motions of his daily routines, reporting to work, eating lunch at the same local café, and returning to his flat at night only to dream of his next sun-filled weekend at the beach. One day, while Marie is visiting Meursault, the couple is disturbed by shouts and cries emanating from the apartment next door. When Meursault steps into the hallway, he finds a policeman interviewing Raymond Sintes—a neighbor who is rumored to be a pimp, but who insists that he is a warehouse guard—about allegations that he had physically abused his girlfriend. Later, after the policeman has left, Raymond asks Meursault to testify on his behalf at the local police precinct, and Meursault consents to do so. As a sign of gratitude, Raymond invites Mersault and Marie to spend a weekend with him at his friend Masson’s beach house. As the men walk on the beach they encounter two Arabs, one of whom is the brother of Raymond’s girlfriend come to seek retribution. Following a brief tussle, the two parties go their separate ways. The first part of the novel concludes with Meursault returning to the beach and shooting the Arab several times, presumably due to the effects of the sun. In Part Two, the reader follows Meursault through the French legal system. Although he is ostensibly placed on trial for having committed the crime of murder, the prosecutor’s case against him in fact hinges on his behavior in the days immediately after his mother’s death. Unable to comprehend a man who did not cry at his own mother’s funeral, the jury finds Meursault guilty, and the court sentences him to death by guillotine. When a prison chaplain visits him in his cell and insists that he profess his belief in God so as to enter the afterlife, Meursault, an atheist, declines.

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When the chaplain persists, Meursault drives the man from his cell in a fury. At the novel’s conclusion, he accepts the universe’s indifference to him, and expresses his desire for a large crowd to greet him with cries of hatred on the day of his execution. If, as existential philosophy argues, “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself” (Sartre, 1957/1985, p. 15), one might begin a close reading of The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988) by attending closely to the character of Meursault. Specifically, one might ask how Meursault’s actions and beliefs shape the reader’s perception of him. The novel’s opening lines, arguably among the most famous in all of existential literature, position the reader to regard Meursault as a different sort of person when he narrates: “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday” (p. 3). One might wonder at this point, as students have in the past, how a person could be so seemingly untouched by the death of his mother. Meursault’s behavior at her funeral is no less curious. Given the opportunity to view her body for a final time before she is put to rest, he declines the invitation. Later, when he keeps vigil at her wake, he casually smokes a cigarette in front of her casket with the home’s caretaker, at one point even falling asleep. When elderly residents of the home come to pay their final respects, Meursault expresses his irritation with a woman who persists in crying, at one point even expressing his desire not to “have to listen to her anymore” (p. 10). Curious about Meursault, the old people huddle opposite him in a group, causing him to feel as though “they were there to judge me” (p. 10). Meursault is especially taken aback when, at the conclusion of the wake, his mother’s friends stop to shake his hand as they file out, as though “that night during which we hadn’t exchanged as much as a single word had somehow brought us closer together” (p. 12). As students often point out, Meursault’s behavior in the days following his mother’s funeral is no less bizarre. Rather than stay at home and grieve, he spends the next morning at the beach, where he meets a former co-worker, Marie Cardona, with whom he later has sex. That night, the couple attends a comedy at a local movie theater. Curiously, while his mother’s death doesn’t appear to trouble Meursault, the condition of the drying towel in the restroom at the office where he works does. He informs the reader that while he tends to enjoy washing his hands each day at lunchtime, he doesn’t “enjoy it so much in the evening, because the roller towel you use is soaked through: one towel has to last all day” (p. 25). He brought this issue to the attention of his boss once, but the latter dismissed it as “a minor detail” (p. 25). Consistent with the novel’s title, Meursault is for all intents and purposes a “stranger” to his society, and arguably to the reader as well. When I have talked about the book with high school students, they have expressed their dismay at a person who does not behave in the ways they

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would expect him to behave. If the manner in which Meursault conducts himself appears strange, however, it is only because he refuses to perform the countless social niceties that his society demands of him. In Camus’ own words, Meursault refuses “to play the game” (Bloom, 2001, p. 19). Put another way, he expresses only what he feels, and is unwilling to say anything more. As explained, although existentialism holds people responsible for who and what they are, a second tenet assumes that, in the absence of external values to which people can turn for guidance, “man is condemned to be free” (Sartre, 1957/1985, p. 23). That is, we are left to create ourselves in a world of false beliefs and conflicting values “with no support and no aid” (p. 23). To further complicate matters, a third tenet of existentialism holds that an individual is responsible not only for herself, but for all people, the result of which necessitates our exercising discretion when making choices. As an example, Sartre argues that by choosing to marry, a person is effectively “involving all humanity in monogamy” insofar as her choice can be understood as condoning the institution of marriage (p. 18). Recognizing the weight of this responsibility, Sartre cautions that one ask, “Am I really the kind of [person] who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions” (p. 20)? With this in mind, one might again attend closely to the character of Meursault, this time asking how he approaches decisions in the novel, and how his choices impact other characters. As explained, Meursault typically defines himself on his own terms, yet he seldom invests himself deeply in interrogating choices that present themselves to him. Instead, he approaches life as though the outcome of his choices were “all the same” (Camus, 1942/1988, p. 41). In some cases, the resultant effect is humorous. In a scene that calls to mind Sartre’s (1957/1985) discussion of marriage, for example, Marie interrogates Meursault’s intentions toward her, asking whether he is willing to marry her, despite the fact that they have only recently begun dating. In response, Meursault tells her that “it didn’t make any difference” to him and “that [they] could if she wanted to” (Camus, 1942/1988, p. 41). When Marie, for a second time, inquires as to whether Meursault loves her, he responds (honestly) that he probably does not. In a moment of pique, Marie asks why he would consent to marry her if he does not love her, to which Meursault responds, “that it didn’t really matter and that if she wanted to, we could get married” (p. 41). On other occasions, however, the consequences of Meursault’s moral ambivalence are graver. When Raymond mercilessly beats his girlfriend, he asks Meursault to accompany him to the local police precinct and testify on his behalf. Despite having observed the crying girl’s bruises, Meursault agrees to do so. Later, when Raymond asks him to write a letter on his behalf luring the girl back to his apartment so that he can sleep with her and then beat her again, Meursault consents to do so, reasoning

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that he wants “to please Raymond because I didn’t have any reason not to please him” (Camus, 1942/1988, p. 32). His failure to approach this moral decision in a responsible manner sets in motion a sequence of events that culminates with the girl’s brother seeking vengeance on Raymond and Meursault. When Meursault, armed with a gun, confronts the brother on a beach, he reflects, “It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot” (p. 56). In the end, he shoots the girl’s brother several times, an action that leads the French judicial system to define him as a murderer and sentence him to death. As Meursault sits in a prison cell awaiting the end of his trial, he comes across a weathered scrap of newspaper lodged between the mattress of his bed and his bed frame. On it is printed a story about a Czechoslovakian man who had left his village to venture out into the world and make his fortune. Twenty-five years later, now a wealthy businessman, the man had returned to his village intending to surprise his mother and sister, who were the proprietors of a local hotel. When they failed to recognize him, the man decided to show off his money and reserve a room. That night, his mother and sister crept into his room, bludgeoned him to death, and stole his money, after which they deposited his body in a local river. When the man’s wife visited the hotel the following morning to inquire about him, his mother, upon learning the truth, hanged herself, and his sister, distraught, committed suicide by throwing herself down a well. Having read the article several times, Meursault concludes that “the traveler pretty much got what he deserved and that you should never play games” (Camus, 1942/1988, p. 80). It is possible to interpret Meursault’s remark as an indirect critique of his failure to exercise discretion by weighing the potential outcomes of his choices in order to accept responsibility not only for himself, but also for other people around him. Throughout his trial, Meursault is little more than a witness to the absurd proceedings. Denied the chance to refute the allegations made against him, his one opportunity to defend himself occurs when a presiding judge interrogates him about his decision to kill the Arab. In response, Meursault explains that he had experienced the effects of the sun. While this is arguably the closest approximation to the truth of the matter, his explanation is met with laughter in the courtroom. Throughout the remainder of his trial, Meursault is unable to escape the impression that he is “an odd man out, a kind of intruder” (Camus, 1942/1988, p. 84). Like the elderly residents at his mother’s wake, the jury now sits opposite him, assessing and judging him. Unable to fathom a man who did not cry at his mother’s funeral, the jury finds Meursault guilty. When reading a work of existential literature, one might ask: When are characters in the text compelled to reevaluate how they’ve been living, and what motivates their introspection? Alone in his cell, Meursault confronts the Absurd. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus (1955/1991) describes two

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possible relationships a person can have with time. For much of one’s life, he argues, “time carries us,” but there inevitably comes a day when we begin to “carry it” (p. 13). In making this observation, Camus means that upon reaching a certain point in life (for example, middle age), a person comes to regard the passage of time as carrying her closer to her death. In The Stranger (Camus, 1942/1988), Meursault reaches an equivalent understanding when he reflects: Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. (p. 121) To soothe the terror that the prospect of death inspires in him, Meursault initially contemplates the possibility of his escaping prison. Later, he fantasizes that the guillotine might fail to function properly, sparing him. In the end, however, he rejects these outcomes as wishful thinking and concedes that, even if his daydreams were to come to fruition, he would only find himself “caught up in the machinery again” (p. 109). Hope is not easily abandoned, however, and for a brief time, Meursault fantasizes about the possibility of his winning his case on appeal. Eventually, however, he concludes that this would only prolong the inevitable: “Whether it was now or in twenty years, [he] would still be the one dying” (p. 114). If Meursault finds the prospect of death terrifying, it also inspires in him a deeper appreciation for life. He recalls a story his mother had once told him about his father having decided to attend the execution of a murderer. Although the prospect of witnessing this gruesome event had caused his father to experience feelings of nausea, he had gone anyway, only to return home and become physically ill. As a child, Meursault recalls having been disappointed in his father. Now, however, faced with his own mortality, he wonders how he had ever failed to understand “that there was nothing more important than an execution,” and he vows that, were his life to be spared, he “would go and watch every execution there was” (Camus, 1942/1988, p. 110). Alone in his prison cell at the novel’s conclusion, Meursault recalls having learned that, toward the end of her life, his mother had taken a “fiancé,” a decision that had confounded him at the time. Although he had been unable to make sense of her decision then, Meursault suddenly feels as though he understands his mother for the first time. “So close to death,” he reflects, “Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again” (Camus, 1942/1988, p. 122). Having accepted the Absurd, Meursault reflects: “for the first time, in that night alive with signs and

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stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world” (p. 122). Like Sisyphus, he, too, manages to find happiness despite having accepted that the universe is void of meaning and purpose.

Disturbing the Universe With Philosophical Criticism Given the gravity of the issues and questions existentialism raises, and considering the emphasis it places on meaninglessness, one might wonder whether it is an appropriate subject to explore in high school English classes. This is a legitimate question, and one that I have admittedly wrestled with as an educator. In the end, however, for myself, I have answered this question in the affirmative. As a form of philosophy, existentialism challenges students to think deeply and critically. It also invites them to entertain ideas and perspectives they might not otherwise have considered. As a teacher, I believe these are worthwhile endeavors, and I aspire to create opportunities for students to experience them. Likewise, I hope that the time they spend in my class will help students to appreciate the pleasure that can be found in playing with ideas. When I have introduced existentialism in class, I have tended to preface our study of it by informing students that my intention is neither for them to embrace it as an unquestioned truth or to fold it into their value system. Rather, I invite them to approach it as a thought experiment: that is, as one of many ways that philosophers and writers have invited us to think about and understand our relationship with the world. Moreover, I encourage students to push back on ideas and arguments that do not sit comfortably with them, as I want them to understand themselves as having the agency to contribute to larger, ongoing intellectual discussions. In T. S. Eliot’s (1963) modernist poem “The Lovesong of Alfred J. Prufrock,” the speaker, a man who aspires to a relationship with a woman, but who is unable to act on his desires due to fear and a sense of his own inadequacies, ponders the question, “Do I dare/Disturb the universe” (p. 4)? On its surface, the anxieties that underlie this existential question might not seem to have much to do with high school and college students. As is often the case with canonical literature, the speaker is an adult wrestling with questions and issues that are of concern to adults. In the young adult novel The Chocolate War (1974), however, author Robert Cormier revisits Prufrock’s question. In the book, Jerry Renault, a teenage boy, confronts his mortality after he loses his mother to cancer. Concerned that he will fall into the mindless, day-to-day routines that he believes characterize his father’s existence, Jerry worries that he, too, will end up living life as an automaton. By having Jerry ask, “Do I dare disturb the universe?,” Cormier recasts the question as one that is of concern to young people. When teachers create opportunities for students to examine canonical literature through the lens of existential philosophy, or of philosophical

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criticism more broadly, they encourage them to explore questions similar to the one Jerry asks. Indeed, it is possible to find a variation of Jerry’s question in many of the texts that students are asked to read for uppergrade high school English classes. Dare I disturb the universe? One can imagine Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, 1951/1991), grappling with a similar question as he struggles to understand how he can avoid the “phoniness” that he associates with adult life. In Camus’ (1948/1972) The Plague, characters disrupt the universe by rebelling against death, and in turn they create meaning for themselves. In contrast, in Beckett’s (1954/1982) Waiting for Godot, the play’s two protagonists wait for meaning to come to them and have little to no impact on the world. In Life of Pi (Martel, 2001), a more contemporary novel that is sometimes taught in high school English classes, the narrator reinvents himself only after he is shipwrecked and cut off from society. In presenting the tale of a boy adrift at sea with a tiger, the novel challenges the reader to choose between two versions of the same story: one that is dark and hopeless, and a second which, steeped in elements of the fantastic, offers a promise of hope. In the end, the question of which story we wish to embrace is one that existentialism suggests we all face, young and old alike.

Works Cited Appleyard, J. A. (1990). Becoming a reader: The experience of fiction from childhood to adulthood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Atwood, M. (1986/1998). The handmaid’s tale. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Beckett, S. (1954/1982). Waiting for Godot: A tragicomedy in two acts. New York, NY: Grove Press. Bellow, S. (1959/1996). Henderson the rain king. New York, NY: Penguin. Bloom, H. (2001). Albert Camus’s the stranger. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers. Brombert, V. (1948). Camus and the novel of the “absurd”. Yale French Studies, 1, 119–123. Camus, A. (1942/1988). The stranger (M. Ward, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books. Camus, A. (1948/1972). The plague (S. Gilbert, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books. Camus, A. (1955/1991). The myth of Sisyphus and other essays. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Cormier, R. (1974). The chocolate war. New York, NY: Ember. De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Eckert, L. S. (2006). How does it mean? Engaging reluctant readers through literary theory. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Eliot, T. S. (1963). Collected poems, 1909–1962. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Foucault, M. (1977/1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.

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Gillespie, T. (2010). Doing literary criticism: Helping students engage with challenging texts. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers. Grimaud, M. (1992). Humanism and the white man’s burden: Camus, Daru, Meursault, and the Arabs. In A. King (Ed.), Camus’s L’Entranger: Fifty years on (pp. 170–182). New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Hawthorne, N. (1850/2004). The scarlet letter. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Publishing. Heffernan, G. (2014). “J’ai compris que j’étais coupable” (“I understood that I was guilty”): A hermeneutical approach to sexism, racism, and colonialism in Albert Camus’ L’Étranger/The Stranger. In P. Francev (Ed.), Albert Camus’s the stranger: Critical essays (pp. 1–25). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Horowitz, L. (1987). Of women and Arabs: Sexual and racial polarization in Camus. Modern Language Studies, 17(3), 54–61. Hudon, L. (1960). The stranger and the critics. Yale French Studies, 25, 59–64. Kaufmann, W. (1956/1975). Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York, NY: Meridian. King, A. (1992). Introduction: After fifty years, still a stranger. In A. King (Ed.), Camus’s L’Entranger: Fifty years on (pp. 1–15). New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Martel, Y. (2001). Life of Pi. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books. McCarthy, P. (1988/2004). Camus: The stranger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (2009). The fragility of goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy, part 2. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Salinger, J. D. (1951/1991). The catcher in the rye. New York, NY: Little Brown and Company. Sartre, J. (1955). Literary and philosophical essays (A. Michelson, Trans.). New York, NY: Criterion Books. Sartre, J. (1957/1985). Existentialism and human emotions. New York, NY: Citadel Press. Scherr, A. (2011). Marie Cardona: An ambivalent nature-symbol in Albert Camus’s L’étranger. Orbis Litterarum, 66(1), 1–20. Shelley, M. (1818/1985). Frankenstein. New York, NY: Penguin. Sleasman, B. (2014). Reading Camus in an age of absurdity: Toward a constructive reading of The Stranger. In P. Francev (Ed.), Albert Camus’s the stranger: Critical essays (pp. 170–184). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Thoreau. H. D. (1897/2016). The illustrated Walden: Thoreau bicentennial edition. New York, NY: TarcherPerigee.

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What Does The Glass Menagerie and Its Discussion Questions Teach About Disability? And How to Undo It Patricia A. Dunn and Angela Broderick

Introduction Canonical texts have an almost reverential glow about them. While adolescent literature and graphic novels must justify their space in the limited real estate of a school’s curriculum, other books seem riveted to the classroom bookshelves. Even routinely challenged classics seem to enjoy a default spot that it is up to the challenger to usurp. The purpose of this chapter is not to pull canonical texts from their well-worn shelves or to cast aspersions on their aesthetic quality. But we do wonder what negative unintended consequences these books may have. By facing possible harm, perhaps we can disrupt or mitigate it. We’ve already seen that some parents or community members have questioned, for example, the racist language in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or To Kill A Mockingbird. Whatever other positive features these books may have, their language, in part, may be hurtful to some readers. Less noticeable, perhaps, is the possible harm canonical texts can do regarding perceptions of disability in society. When there is a character with a disability, how is that character portrayed? While offensive, racist, or sexist language in a novel or play is easier to see and condemn (or expunged, as was done with Huckleberry Finn in a recent edition), the implied messages they send regarding disability may be harder to spot, and therefore harder to speak against. In this essay, we will reexamine The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, primarily through a disability studies lens, to see what assumptions it seems to promote about disability. We will also analyze publicly available “discussion questions” and commentary used in the study of this play. This questioning—of a text’s assumptions and of discussion questions posed about that text—is the task of theorists. The word “theory,” as rhetoricians Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee (1999) point out, comes from the Greek word theorein, which they say means to “sit in the highest row of the bleachers” (p. 53). Using this metaphor helps us understand that to theorize is to consider more than one aspect of something

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at a time. From the top row, one can see not only the game on the field, but also all the others watching the game (and their reactions to it), where the field is situated in the surrounding geographical area, as well as what clouds might be gathering on the horizon. That top-row spectator may also be in the best position to judge play-by-play or color commentary about that game. If we extend this metaphor to literary study, to theorize is to use as evidence for a claim not only “the words on the page.” Instead, to theorize in this more comprehensive way is also to consider the different people through time who might be reading that page and how they might react to its depictions of certain characters. To theorize is not simply to get the right answers to questions on an exam, but also to question the question itself and the apparent assumptions of the questioner. As Beth Wilson (2014) pointed out in an English Journal article on critical lenses, “To teach literary theory is to teach critical thinking about texts of all kinds” (p. 69). So questions about canonical texts are also candidates for analysis. We can learn much about traditional interpretations of canonical literature by examining these questions, which are the external manifestations, the footprints, of theory. Questions reveal the lens through which the question writers see a text, whether or not they are consciously aware of that lens. As the questions we find in our tour will demonstrate, traditional New Criticism continues to dominate easily available interpretations of this play. There are more current sophisticated analyses of Menagerie in academic books and journals, but for the most part, these theoretical approaches do not seem to have made much headway into commonly visited websites. If the content of these websites seeps into classrooms, either through teachers or students, there is reason to believe that many discussions today may be lacking theoretical variety and depth. We will have a number of suggestions on how to enrich those discussions. But first we will provide some background on disability studies, an area we believe should be addressed more in English classrooms. Introduction to Disability Studies Disability studies is interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary. Disability scholars can be found in departments of rhetoric and composition, history, sociology, English, women’s and gender studies, architecture, medical humanities, education, Queer studies, physical and occupational therapy, and philosophy. Unlike some fields that focus on the individual or attempt to “fix” the individual for better assimilation into an unchanging, unwelcoming society, disability studies turns its gaze back on society itself, to critique society’s exclusionary stance toward people with disabilities. This exclusionary stance is called ableism, that is, the material conditions that result when policy makers, writers, architects,

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teachers, filmmakers, advertisers, and others create their product for people assumed to be non-disabled. This pervasive stance results in videos without closed captioning, podcasts with no scripts, documents inaccessible to screen readers, images with no alt-text or image description, rooms that wheelchairs cannot negotiate, buildings with no ramps, unrepaired elevators in subway stations, and other exclusionary conditions too numerous to list here. Because disability studies concerns itself with perceptions of disability, it is also employed as an interpretive lens in literary studies, but it is not simply a theory through which we interpret or admire literary texts. Not content to analyze, disability studies seeks to mobilize. It is a perspective that questions how disability and people with disabilities are constructed. Disability studies can be used as a lens through which to interrogate a variety of texts, buildings, digital tools, curricula, as well as people’s attitudes and assumptions. It considers the material conditions that construct those without disability as “normal” and those with disability as “other.” It analyzes and critiques, with the goal of changing society so that it is more inclusive, equitable, and accessible to all people. The disability studies paradigm, sometimes called the disability rights movement, is activist. As Rosemarie Garland-Thompson (2013) explained, disability studies has “examined the identity disability in the service of integrating disabled people more fully into our society” (p. 324). Leaders in the disability rights movement are also too many to summarize here, but here are just a few. Ed Roberts is credited with starting the disability rights movement when he came to UC Berkeley in the 1960s and refused to accept the university’s non-acceptance of his needs as a wheelchair user. His efforts continue to spur universities across the country to make their campuses more accessible to students and faculty with disabilities. Paul Longmore, another early disability activist, in 1988 burned his own book to protest federal policies that restricted the ability of people with disabilities to make a living. Penny Richards noted in her 2011 Memoriam on Longmore: “His successful protest led to a policy change for disabled authors and others who earn royalties, under the ‘Longmore Amendment’.” Attorney and activist Harriet McBryde Johnson protested for many years the Jerry Lewis telethons because they used what she called “pitybased tactics” (Hevesi, 2008) to appeal to donors. Later, at Princeton, Johnson debated the philosopher Peter Singer about the rights of babies born with severe disabilities. (Singer believed euthanizing them was ethical.) She wrote about this experience in a widely read 2003 New York Times Magazine piece, “Unspeakable Conversations.” She went on to write a vivid memoir, Too Late to Die Young (2005), as well as a young adult novel, Accidents of Nature (2006), about the ableist staff at a young people’s summer camp and the disabled campers who rebel against them. We see, therefore, that resistance against disability discrimination can

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appear in literature and in literary criticism, but its ultimate goal is to change the world. Disability Studies in Literary Criticism Simi Linton’s 1998 book, Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity, played a critical role in bringing disability studies as an academic endeavor to a variety of disciplines. She drew attention to images of disability in literature and life that did not represent her experiences: In the absence of the specifics of my condition, and my life, you may find yourself conjuring up some of the readily available images of disabled women, both fictional and real: the beholden Blind Girl in Chaplin’s City Lights; the shame-riven Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie; the doleful poster child gazing up at you from the collection box at on the supermarket checkout counter; (1998, p. 5) Linton, a pioneer in the disability rights movement, critiqued a wide range of cultural artifacts, including, but not limited to, literary texts. She also critiqued material conditions that make the lives of disabled citizens more difficult. In her 2007 memoir, My Body Politic, she challenged the idea that inaccessibility is simply a part of life that people need to adjust to. Linton instead fought for policy and curricular changes that would help make the world more inclusive and accessible. While Linton brought disability studies to the many academy disciplines, she also raised specific questions in literary analysis regarding how disabled characters in literature are presented: “Why are those characters so often sad or peculiar? These things were never discussed in class” (2007, My Body Politic, p. 114). This idea of analyzing the function of disabled characters in literature is a good example of the role disability studies can play in literary analysis. Lennard J. Davis’ edited collection, The Disability Studies Reader, now in its fourth edition, was first published in 2013. That work includes samples of many influential theories applicable to many disciplines, including one idea central to the study of literary texts: narrative prosthesis, a concept named by David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder (2000). Common in many literary texts that have a character with a disability, narrative prosthesis becomes evident when the text leans on disability as a primary plot device. Mitchell and Snyder explained: “. . . disability pervades literary narrative, first, as a stock feature of characterization and, second, as an opportunistic metaphorical device” (p. 47). They mentioned the characters of Oedipus, Richard III, Captain Ahab, and many more as serving one of these roles. As protagonists, these three act as a narrative prothesis to their respective plots. In their analyses of literary texts, disability scholars also often observe how authors sometimes capitalize on one or more of

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the abundant stereotypes about people with disabilities. These are worth discussing briefly. Disability Myths and Stereotypes In their comments on literature or society, many scholars have referred to or listed myths and stereotypes surrounding disability (Haller, 2013; Nario-Redmond, 2010; Hall, 2016). Jay Dolmage, in his book, Disability Rhetoric, (2014) has one of the more comprehensive explanations (pp. 34–61), so this summary will draw heavily on a selection of his categories. One myth is that people with disabilities are sad and always to be pitied, the category Harriet McBryde so abhorred. Dolmage put Dickens’ Tiny Tim in this category. Disability is also frequently viewed as representing some internal flaw or evil that a character has (Dolmage mentioned Melville’s Ahab from Moby Dick as one example). Another of Dolmage’s categories is the “overcoming or compensation” myth, which shows disabled people having to develop some kind of special skill or super talent that can compensate for whatever “lack” their disability bestows on them. Another version of this idea is sometimes called the “supercrip” or super-hero myth, a term for which Dolmage credits Joseph Shapiro (1993). It’s also been called the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer syndrome (Dunn, 2015) because the character (Rudolph) with an unusual physical quality (red nose) had to “save the day” in order to be accepted by his society (all of the other reindeers). At the opposite end of this continuum is the story in which the person with a disability must be isolated or alone at the end, or living in an institution, away from society. Instead of being a super hero who saves the day as the price of entering “normal” society, this character, who cannot use his or her disability as a super power, is snubbed and abandoned by society. An extension of this situation is what Dolmage calls the “Kill-or-Cure” myth, and it is particularly powerful: In many narratives featuring a disabled character, the disability will be gone by the end of the story, either because the person has “overcome” the disability, been miraculously “cured,” or, more often than not, has been killed off (pp. 34–35). This myth about “overcoming” a disability sometimes manifests as advice to people to “Just try harder!” (to walk, to hear, to see, to speak, etc.). This latter myth may, like so many of the others, deliver the message that disability has no place in a “normal” world, that people cannot simply live fulfilling lives with a disability. It implies instead that they must be sad, isolated, super heroes, cured, or dead. As Wood, Meyer, and Bose (2017) argued, “Why We Dread Disability Myths,” this myth can cause harm: “The expectation to always overcome, to always appear resilient—rather than seek accommodation—creates an even more hostile environment for an already vulnerable population” (n.p.). Readers, non-disabled or disabled, who are repeatedly bombarded with these implications about

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disability, may absorb the larger, potentially more harmful myth that disability has no place in real-life society. Many scholars have analyzed literature through these disability lenses, examining how texts depict disabled characters, either by employing these myths or other representations. For example, Hall, in her critique of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury pointed out the repeated threats to Benjy that he will be sent away to Jackson, presumedly to be institutionalized (2016, p. 109), as part of the isolation myth. Dunn (2015) critiqued James Hurst’s (1960) anthologized short story, “The Scarlet Ibis,” in which the protagonist’s younger brother, who is disabled, dies at the end, illustrating another branch of the isolation-or-death myth regarding disability (2015, p. 70). The “supercrip” or super-hero myth has been discussed by many scholars both inside and outside the humanities (Maples, Arndt, & White, 2010; Dolmage, 2014; Howe, 2011). Similar analyses can be found in other monographs, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Disability Studies Quarterly, Disability and Society, and Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. Another source for information on this lens is The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability (2017), edited by Clare Barker and Stuart Murray. Disability-related analyses regarding young adult books can be found occasionally in English Journal and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Study and Scrutiny, and others. It is worth noting that many scholars in disability studies approach texts differently than do traditional or New Critical literary critics. Disability studies scholars would extend discussions of structural or aesthetic aspects of texts, including non-literary texts, to include representations of disability in those artifacts and the possible effects of those representations in the real world. For example, Margolis and Shapiro (1987) argued that discrimination toward people with disabilities may come from subliminal attitudes absorbed from literature and other media (p. 18). The most disturbing evidence of how the depiction of fictional characters can shape real people’s views of others is associated with Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Menchetti, Plattos, and Carroll (2011), writing in The ALAN Review, quoted one student’s view of Lennie, saying that he “does not know his own strength, which ends up being very, very dangerous. This is one of the reasons why I was scared of these particular people” (2011, p. 59). If it’s not alarming enough that Steinbeck’s novella has taught a young teacher to fear people with disabilities, a Salon article (Arceneaux, 2016) reported that Of Mice and Men was being used by the state of Texas to justify the death penalty for a man with an intellectual disability. After reportedly hearing all the scientific evidence regarding the definition of “intellectual disability,” the justices “rejected it all according to seven wildly unscientific factors for measuring intellectual disability, drawn in large part from the fictional character Lennie Small.” It’s unlikely that standard interpretive models, especially those focused on anticipated standardized

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exam essay questions, would take up the possible negative effects of this novella in the real world. We see, therefore, the need for resistance against disability discrimination that can appear in literature. Disability scholars do engage in literary criticism, but their ultimate goal is not so much to celebrate the quality of those texts. Their goal is to change the world. Before we look at The Glass Menagerie through a disability studies perspective, it’s important to take a brief tour of how this play has typically been interpreted.

Traditional Reception of The Glass Menagerie Many interpretations of The Glass Menagerie spend a good deal of time emphasizing Laura’s Otherness, frequently implying that, because of her disability, she does not belong within society. One scholar takes this interpretation a step further, implying that Laura does not belong among the living. For instance, in his article, “The Blue Rose of St. Louis: Laura, Romanticism, and The Glass Menagerie,” Bert Cardullo (1998) wrote that “Indeed, Laura’s physical as well as emotional frailty betokens an early demise, if not a death-wish on her part—a death that would bestow upon her the ultimate union with Nature so prized by the Romantics and so elusive or unattainable in life” (p. 85). Cardullo argued that Laura’s disability must mean that she is destined to die, or else that she is surely suicidal. The claim that Laura “seems physically unfit or unadapted to an earthly life,” and that death would offer her “perpetual release from the cellblock of her physically crippled body” (p. 88) takes the misguided idea that the disabled do not belong in society and applies it to The Glass Menagerie with a Darwinian, almost eugenic quality. Like Cardullo’s interpretation, many readings of the play are likely intended as an appreciation of Laura’s beauty and specialness. However, they simultaneously dramatize and fetishize her Otherness. In Modern Drama, Beaurline (1965) referred to “the fragile pathos of Laura Wingfield’s life,” thus tapping into the “pity” myth described above. As Tischler (1961, 2007) wrote, “She [Laura] spends hours polishing the tiny animals that are as delicate and fragile as she” (p. 10). This quote is meant as a compliment; Tischler cited Williams’ sentiment that Laura “is like a piece of her own glass collection, too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf” (p. 11). But such stereotypes objectify disabled bodies; though they are intended to be positive stereotypes, the idea that disabled people are fragile and easily broken implies that they cannot take care of themselves, and that they cannot move on their own: their beauty becomes a prison and diminishes their agency. Laura’s disability itself is often interpreted as symbolic, which also presents problems from a disability studies perspective (and acts as a “narrative prosthesis,” described earlier.) For example, Tischler (1961, 2007) argued that Laura’s disability is “a symbol of the crippling of a sensitive

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person thrust into a world unwilling to make allowances for sensitivity” (p. 11). Reading Laura’s disability as a symbol could suggest to readers that real disabilities are the result of some personal failing or flaw; that disabilities are physical projections of an inward state. Interpreting Laura’s disability as a symbol is not the only way her disability has been minimized. In comparing Jim’s perception of Laura’s disability to her own, Tischler (2007, 1961) wrote that “Jim sees the defect in Laura’s leg as only unfortunately incidental to her normal body, while Laura feels that the flaw transforms her whole being” (pp. 11–12). Tischler is correct in pointing out that Laura should not feel that her disability transforms her whole being; however, neither should it be implied that Laura’s disability is acceptable only because of its minor deviation from an ableist standard. Lori Leathers Single (1999) correctly identified Amanda, Laura’s mother, as the source of Laura’s insecurities about her body. However, this does not mean that she identifies or critiques Amanda’s ableism. As Single (1999) wrote in her article that appeared in The Tennessee Williams Annual Review: “Despite the fact that Laura’s handicap ‘need not be more than suggested on the stage,’ Amanda has exaggerated its ugliness by making it an unmentionable in their house” (p. 77). The use of the word “ugliness” implies not that Amanda is creating a problem by fixating on Laura’s disability, but that Laura’s disability was already a problem in and of itself. Indeed, Amanda does call more attention to Laura’s disability by refusing to acknowledge it even as she scrambles to compensate for it. But by using the word “ugliness” to describe Laura’s disability, Single reaffirmed the same stigma that she criticizes in Amanda and fails to point out ableism as the true source of Laura’s negative self-image. Indeed, Amanda’s stigmatization and its effect on Laura are frequently pointed out; but such interpretations rarely, if ever, challenge an ableist paradigm. As Tischler (1961, 2007) wrote in “The Glass Menagerie,” “She thinks her affliction is dreadful because Amanda thinks it is” (p. 11). There is some admission here that societal ableism, not Laura’s leg, is the source of her disability. But Tischler also wrote that “She [Laura] knows that she is like the unicorn or the blue rose, wrong for real life. Laura cannot see that Amanda exaggerates this wrongness by her impossibly romantic dreams” (p. 11). Like Cardullo, Tischler implied that Laura does not belong in reality because she is “wrong for real life,” and that her disability is the source of her “wrongness.” Repeatedly associating words like “wrongness” and “ugliness” with disability furthers the idea that disabled people have less value than non-disabled people. Society’s unwillingness to make room for Laura’s existence as a disabled person is accepted by many interpretations of the play as a given, as unchangeable. In Scene II, Laura explains to her mother that, rather than face the vomit-inducing anxiety of her typing class, she has been visiting the penguins at the zoo and the tropical flowers at the greenhouse,

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exposing herself to the winter cold and risking sickness in the process (Williams, 1945, p. 15). This scene was interpreted by Single as symbolic of Laura’s inability to survive in the real world. She wrote that “Like the penguins in the park and the tropical flowers in the big glass house, she [Laura] is as ‘peculiar’ as a flightless bird and incapable of surviving in the world outside as a hot-house plant” (p. 79). A disability studies perspective might note that, as far as temperature goes, Laura visits two distinct locations: the penguin exhibit, where the birds are perfectly at home in the cold, and the Jewel House, “the big glass house where they raise the tropical flowers.” In both cases, where the environment is tailored to suit their inhabitants, life flourishes. Laura, however, is forced by circumstances to wander in the cold. Perhaps this is more a metaphor for Laura seeking a supportive environment, one where her disability would not be considered out of place, where her needs would be understood and met: a place where she could thrive. Rather than critiquing the societal factors that disable Laura, common interpretations of the play focus on turning that criticism inward, onto Laura herself. Such interpretations are a form of the “Just try harder!” myth described earlier. Single (1999) further wrote that “Laura is lovely but cold and frozen in time. [. . .] The coldness of the images associated with her correctly places some of the blame for her condition on Laura. Her withdrawal from life, to a large extent, remains her own choice” (p. 79). Single’s interpretation, as in previous examples, attempted to compliment Laura: she calls Laura “lovely,” but robs her of her agency by equating her with the symbolism of images surrounding her. She contradicts herself, arguing both that Laura is “incapable of surviving in the world outside” and that her condition “remains her own choice.” However, seen through the logic of ableism, there is no contradiction: because Laura is “wrong,” the burden falls not on society to accept Laura, but on Laura to make herself acceptable to society. Many readings of The Glass Menagerie are similarly rife with ableist myths and stereotypes; whatever the interpretive goals of the theorists, these stereotypes are filtered, perhaps through websites, into classroom questions, where students may unknowingly be ingesting them.

Disability Studies and The Glass Menagerie Some critics have used a disability studies lens to reexamine Laura’s role in The Glass Menagerie and to disrupt interpretations such as the ones above. We have already seen Simi Linton’s critique of how Laura seems to be depicted as “shame-riven” (1998, p. 5). Sara Hosey (2013), in her article in Teaching American Literature, first pointed to previous analyses that cast Laura’s limp as a metaphor for what they saw as other flaws related to her character. Hosey argued that “classroom discussions have stagnated as a widespread acceptance of impairment as metaphor for a

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character’s internal failing and/or larger social ills have emerged as the default approaches . . .” (p. 41). Hosey’s goal, she said, is to “challenge received or obvious interpretations by drawing out textual moments that complicate or contradict the metaphorization of disability. . . .” (p. 26). Her analysis is an attempt to counter one of the dominant myths about disability, cited above, as a metaphor for some internal flaw or evil. The “disability theatre” movement is also focused on critique of received beliefs about disability. As Kirsty Johnston explained in the introduction to her edited collection, Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism (2016), “disability theatre” is “one branch of a wider international disability arts and culture movement which seeks to address and redress the very idea of disability in the modern arts and, by extension, society” (p. 15). Ann Fox (2016), in her chapter in that collection, also looked at Laura through disability theory. In “Reclaiming the Ordinary Extraordinary Body: Or, The Importance of The Glass Menagerie for Literary Disability Studies,” Fox (2016) first pointed out that “. . . theatre, like other kinds of visual representation, has been guilty of recirculating disability stereotype;” (p. 131). She also saw, however, the possibility for a “disruptive” reading of how Laura’s disability is usually interpreted (p. 135): “Williams also uses disability as manifestation of variation and indeterminacy,” (Fox, 2016, p. 140). In other words, variation could be seen as a good thing. In the same volume (Disability Theatre . . .), Galloway, Grant, Gunter, and Sandahl (2016) played assigned parts in their performance piece, “Shattering the Glass Menagerie.” In this unusual genre, the actors/authors also critique how disability is depicted in the play. Like Fox, they attempted, through their dramatic re-reading and commenting on key scenes, to find a way to see the play as possibly critiquing society’s view of disability. They discussed Laura as existing “for her own sake. And for her own pleasure—which again is imaginative” (p. 174). These qualities would at least give Laura the agency that many interpretations deny her. The authors ultimately question their own attempted queering of the play, however. Near the end of their production, one character says, “. . . fundamentally it is a deeply dated, deeply offensive piece of work—a monument to the fear and repression of the time in which it was written” (p. 179). These and similar critical approaches to The Glass Menagerie should be a part of current discussions of that play. Assumptions Evident in The Glass Menagerie We do not seek to disrespect a canonical text such as The Glass Menagerie. But we do wish to remove it from its pedestal and place it, at least momentarily, on a witness stand. We wish to consider the possible subliminal effects this play—and the ubiquitous resources about it on the web—may have on readers. We wonder to what extent The Glass Menagerie improves the lives of its readers or audience. In this play, for example,

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when Amanda rises to get the dessert, she says, presumably as an attempt at humor, “I’ll be the darky” (Williams, 1945, p. 7). She casually uses an even more racist term a few lines later in the same scene (p. 8). We wonder whether this racist remark, or the play’s ableist remarks, are discussed as often as is the symbolism in this play. Tom, the play’s narrator/character practically invites us to focus on symbols when he says this, explicitly, about the gentleman caller: “I am using this character also as a symbol; he is the long delayed but always expected something that we live for” (p. 5). Williams’ emphasis on symbolism within his own play may be part of the reason why so much traditional discussion of the play also focuses on symbolism. But if we are to carefully consider the effects such a focus may have on reality, it is important to look beyond symbolism, and a disability studies lens is an effective tool for doing so. Jim, seen through a disability studies perspective, is annoying. It’s possible, of course, that we’re meant to see Jim as an insufferable know-it-all, but the “words on the page,” if interpreted literally, may not support that view. Jim is described in the cast of characters as “A nice, ordinary, young man” (xviii), and we’re told in the stage directions in Scene VII how “Jim’s warmth overcomes her [Laura’s] paralyzing shyness” (p. 70). So his lectures to Laura seem to be endorsed by the text. In fact, the reason that Laura’s “clumping” may have made her so severely self-conscious is because Laura fits a textbook definition of social phobia (Heimberg, 1995). As Heimberg explained, affected persons have an intense fear of social situations, which triggers an “anxiety program:” an elaborate cocktail of somatic, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms, especially before and during a social event (1995). Laura’s vomiting at the typewriting class, her social isolation, her obsessions with the Victrola and the menagerie, her panicked avoidance of Jim and refusal to see him when he first arrives, her negative perceptions of herself, and her identically negative perceptions of how others view her are all indicators that her social phobia is keeping her from living a healthy life. Jim’s sweeping claim that Laura should, essentially, just “get over” her “embarrassment” ignores the realities of both her anxiety and her physical impairment. Even if Laura did not suffer from social phobia, and even if the sound of the “clumping” was severely exaggerated in her mind, the act of coming in late to class every week and walking past a room full of peers, all while wearing a leg brace, would be an embarrassing experience for anyone, and yet Jim displays a self-assured, casual disregard for Laura’s very legitimate struggles. And the “Get over it” myth prevails. In Scene VII of the play, when Laura says her leg brace “clumped so loud” when she came into the auditorium, Jim disputes her account, telling her, “I never heard any clumping” (p. 75). Remember that Jim is a fictional character, created by a non-disabled writer. A writer with Laura’s impairment might not have framed Jim’s interaction with Laura the same way, with Jim getting the last word. And Jim’s memory of the past seems

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to be received as the more accurate one. He goes on to tell Laura, “You shouldn’t have been self-conscious” (p. 75). When she admits that her leg interfered with her ability to make friends, Jim scolds her again: “You shouldn’t have let it!” (p. 76). Later in that scene, Jim, interrupting her, proceeds to tell Laura what is wrong with her: “You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? Inferiority complex!” In the long lecture that follows, he outlines her “principal trouble”: “A lack of confidence in yourself as a person. You don’t have the proper amount of faith in yourself. I’m basing that fact on a number of your remarks and also on certain observations I’ve made” (pp. 80–81). He goes on to list those. His advice is the cheery pep talk that non-disabled people frequently dish out to those with disabilities. It’s a form of “Just try harder!”: society’s default command that essentially blames the individual for any problems he or she may have, related to disability. Jim’s prescription for Laura may also spring from the “overcoming” myth about disability, discussed above. Analyzing Discussion Questions We’ve seen how ableist assumptions seem to underpin numerous interpretations of Laura in this play. Similar assumptions can also lurk behind its easily googled “discussion questions” and often suggested “answers.” These materials should be examined as well because they are like the glass-bottomed boats on the pond of theory: clues to the theoretical assumptions of their creators, and they may well be influencing classroom discussions of texts. Simple questions posed in class, such as “What does the object (tree, glass animal, rabbit, river, whatever) in the text symbolize?” can send students and teachers alike scurrying to websites like CliffsNotes or Shmoop.com in order to find commonly accepted answers to these text-dependent questions. Without thinking, some students (or inexperienced teachers) might read right over, or even absorb, ableist assumptions embedded in these materials. Stereotypes and disability myths in the play or in its secondary materials must not be left unchallenged, or they may simply be perpetuated. At the very least, we need to supplement business-as-usual discussions with more pointed questions about what the text might be doing. Discussion questions are critical because questions reflect theory. They should be posed not only in reverence to the play’s aesthetic or literary reputation and received interpretation. Questions should also be posed about how these texts might reflect, even help shape, society’s views of different groups of people. If we ultimately decide, after careful deliberation, that a text’s harmful messages should not necessarily make it unworthy of a position in the literary canon, then we must at least ensure that such a position of privilege is balanced by an acknowledgment and qualification of those messages. Such qualification is the business of challenging questions.

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As we have seen, a number of critics have raised eyebrows about how disability is represented in The Glass Menagerie. However, the bulk of this criticism does not seem to have made much of a dent in changing how these canonical texts are discussed, if online questions are any clue. A quick tour of easily available online “Discussion Questions” will bear that out. First, a caveat: a quantitative study of easily available discussion questions is beyond the scope of this essay. Questions and commentaries were chosen primarily because of the ease with which panicked students, or busy teachers, could find them. We googled “discussion questions for The Glass Menagerie.” This method, we reasoned, would quickly reveal questions and commentary likely to play a part in how this play is framed in many English literature classrooms. Because interpretation shapes questions, and questions, in turn, shape interpretation, this analysis is necessarily interwoven with typical discussion questions and answers found on the web, examined for their potential to accept or critique the status quo. We will also suggest alternate, critical discussion questions that help us be what Judith Fetterley (1978) called “resisting readers,” that is, rejecting questionable assumptions embedded in the text. These questions need not replace traditional questions, but they can supplement them and perhaps disrupt further sedimentation of disability stereotypes. None of the discussion questions we found blamed Jim for his rude, presumptuous, and inappropriate comments. We question his authority to talk down to Laura about what he thinks is wrong with her. He is a guest in her home, having neither seen nor spoken to Laura since high school, about six years ago. The two are practically strangers, and yet Jim decides to kiss Laura, with complete disregard for the fiancé he is being unfaithful to, because he assumes that he knows what Laura needs, and that it is his place to remedy her problems. As far as we know, Jim has no idea what it is like to have anxiety, or a physical disability, and yet he confidently passes out advice on how Laura should handle hers. Jim’s “advice” is often touted as the solution to Laura’s problems, despite the admitted fallibility of the man giving it. For example, a study guide on teachwithmovies.org offers this sample question and answer: •

What advice did Jim give Laura about her disability? Do you think it was good advice? [. . .] Suggested Response: He told her to ignore it and go on with her life and to give people the benefit of the doubt. It was good advice.” (teachwithmovies.org, n.d.)

Both the questions and the “suggested answer” section, particularly the latter, perpetuate negative stereotypes about disability. To begin with, the fact that the second question, which concerns the advice given to Laura

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about her disability, is phrased as a matter of opinion at all lends a moral equivalence to the two possible answers: whether or not Laura received good advice. The “suggested response” (“It was good advice”) actually doubles down on Jim’s sentiment, arguing that Laura ought to “ignore it and go on with her life.” Furthermore, “ignore it and go on with her life” echoes the “Just try harder!” advice that is part of the “overcoming” myth. “Give people the benefit of the doubt” implies that Laura has trouble becoming close to others because she is not trying hard enough. The easy advice to just “ignore it and go on with her life” presumably implies that Laura will only be perceived as different insofar as she allows her limp to make her feel different. Perhaps Jim’s behavior is so easily accepted because he is not only White and male, but because symbolically, Jim represents the opposite of Laura’s disabilities: his title as “a nice, ordinary young man” contrasts with Laura’s physical disability and persistent fears that she lacks normalcy. His charm and easygoing attitude in social situations is juxtaposed with Laura’s social phobia. His engagement to Betty and financial stability contrasts with Laura’s loneliness and poverty. Because he is framed as Laura’s superior in every way, and because this configuration goes unchallenged, Jim is seen as an authority on Laura, and his offensive, ableist remarks are quickly dismissed. The popular website Shmoop.com, written by graduate students, occasionally takes a more contemporary view of characters’ behaviors in canonical texts. Shmoop took a step in that direction, at least regarding one incident. Shmoop criticized Jim for kissing Laura while he was engaged to another woman (Shmoop.com, 2018). But in the end, the Shmoop writers, like the teachwithmovies.org site mentioned above, also think Jim’s advice is just fine. Even in criticizing Jim, Shmoop’s points are qualified at every turn. He had no romantic interest in Laura, which excuses his cheating. Whether or not he said something hurtful to Laura, or whether he ought to have been so forward with her, is eclipsed by his “honest desire to help.” His relationship with Betty, Shmoop tells us, “isn’t love at all.” “Poor Jim,” says Shmoop (2018; Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008c). Meanwhile, no such qualification or reflection on the character’s poor circumstances applies to Laura for the way she manages her disabilities. The site www.teachwithmovies.org (n.d.) also assumes Jim is the “healthy” one: “Jim: This character symbolizes the “common man”: dynamic; emotionally healthy; and able to deal with his environment unencumbered by the problems that complicate the lives of the Wingfields.” The site goes on to compare Jim’s traits to “Laura’s handicap and feelings of shyness,” claiming that “It is this strength and optimism that attracts Laura.” Like Tischler (1961, 2007) and Single (2009), the site implies that Jim is normal, a “common man,” while Laura is abnormal. That Laura is supposedly attracted to Jim’s “strength” implies that

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Laura’s disability constitutes a lack, and that Jim’s able body compensates for her alleged inadequacy. Like Cardullo (1998), who romanticizes Laura’s Otherness, and Tischler and Single, who essentialize her lack of agency, teachwithmovies.org completely removes the societal forces that fabricate an able/disabled binary (n.d.). These critics are fine with Jim blaming and berating Laura for her situation. Nowhere in the play is society implicated in any way for Laura’s feelings of being excluded. It’s all on her. It might be argued that it’s not the job of literature, especially literature from the middle of the last century, to be aware of, let alone critique, society’s ableist views of people with disabilities. But it is the theorists’ job to look at these texts from a distance and to raise questions about how characters are depicted—to ask questions about what might have happened in Laura’s early life that taught her to be self-conscious when she walked into that auditorium, late, wearing her leg brace. Surely some students turned to gawk and giggle. Perhaps her classmates’ reactions contributed to her social phobia. Our “nice, ordinary, young man,” however, assures Laura her fears are all in her head. A disability studies lens can help identify and question harmful stereotypes about disability, and to critique the reinforcement of them. Indeed, the same type of “advice” that Jim gives to Laura is often applied to real people whose disabilities are not simply there as props to a story. But outside the walls of The Glass Menagerie, where Jim’s comments are granted undue legitimacy, such advice is far from helpful. Whether or not critical theorists decide to interrogate harmful narratives about disability may have a real impact on how real people are treated in society. Neither Amanda’s advice to Laura that she should work harder to compensate for her disabilities, nor Jim’s advice that she should, in effect, ignore her disabilities, are messages that should be left unquestioned in a class discussion of this play. One way to avoid passing along the “just try harder” narrative mentioned above is to use questions that assume a flaw in its logic. For example, instead of asking whether Amanda or Jim gave Laura “good advice,” a better set of questions might be these: • •

What are some ironies or inconsistencies with Amanda’s or Jim’s advice to Laura? What similarities in their characters prompt them to give such advice?

In this case, the words “ironies” and “inconsistencies” key readers in to the questions’ premise that the advice offered by both characters to Laura have significant flaws. The second question asks readers to draw connections between Amanda and Jim’s characters in order to call attention to the similarities in their mindsets. A wide variety of explanations would satisfy both of these questions. Most obvious would be that Amanda’s advice is

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ironic; she cites Laura’s absent father as a model for how Laura should behave. “When people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it—develop charm—and vivacity—and charm! That’s all you have to do! [She turns again to the photograph.] One thing your father had plenty of—was charm!” (pp. 17–18). The irony here is that, whatever the “defect” Amanda is referring to in her absent husband, his charm did not compensate for the ruin he left behind when he abandoned his wife and children, despite the fact that Amanda uses him as an example for Laura; obviously, her absent father is a poor choice for a role model. Second, as is evident in the stage directions, Amanda’s advice is hypocritical: she turns to her husband’s photograph, the symbol of her own inability to move on from the past. Amanda is, aside from perhaps Jim, the last person from whom Laura should be taking advice. Finally, her turn to the photograph of her husband shows the extent of her disconnection with Laura, as well as the inconsistency of her advice; the conversation, as well as Amanda’s advice becomes, as is often the case, more about Amanda herself than Laura. A critical reading reveals, therefore, several important interpretations. Jim’s advice is also inconsistent— similar to Amanda, he is no authority on Laura, has never thought to listen to her, and instead barrels forward with his advice. And though unlike Amanda, Jim is portrayed as mentally healthy, Jim is as just as out of touch with Laura as Amanda is—he actually echoes Amanda’s words (p. 17) exactly at one point: “Hardly noticeable, even” (p. 81). Both Jim and Amanda lapse out of reality—Jim goes all starry-eyed when he talks about Betty the same way that Amanda does when she talks about Laura’s father. Why then, do so many questions seem to focus on Laura, questions that seem to invite readers to pile on in the play’s characterization of her as fragile, helpless, and out of touch with reality? Even a New Critical close reading would reveal evidence for seeing what Laura endures regarding bad advice. But simplistic questions and shallow answers tend to reinforce stereotypes. Asking Better Questions More sophisticated questions can interrogate implicit messages in a text or in web-available questions (and suggested answers) that are complicit with ableist (or sexist) views. However, the questions we found on the web were mostly limited to superficial features such as form, symbols, characterization, plot, and technique; they use a formalist perspective exclusively, rather than drawing on the wide array of theories that help explore hidden assumptions. Examinations of how the play portrays disability, mental illness, femininity, masculinity, sexuality, work, addiction, and romantic relationships would also be relevant topics for questions.

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But what we found again and again as we visited these sites was an obsession with symbols, especially regarding Laura and disability: • • •

• • •

•

“What type of literary device is this statement?” (teachwithmovies.com, n.d.) “Discuss the symbol of the glass menagerie.” (SparkNotes Editors, 2003) “How does the epigraph comment on Laura or the overall themes of the play?” (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008a) “What is the symbolism of the fire escape?” (Gradesaver.com, n.d.) “Describe three symbols in the film and what they stand for” (teachwithmovies.org, n.d.) “How does the fire escape function as a symbol to reveal something about each character’s personality?” (Cliffsnotes.com., n.d.) “What is the significance of Laura’s unicorn?” (Cliffsnotes.com, n.d.)

From a site called “literature-america.blogspot.com” (accessed February 18, 2018) comes this ubiquitous question, and it is the first one listed: “What symbolic significance does the unicorn have in the play [sic].” The “answer,” explains: “Laura had a close bonding with the unicorn because both were special [. . .] Laura had thought that she probably had the opportunity of becoming normal like the unicorn, but that was not to be.” (2018) Again, the message is that Laura is not normal, and again she is Otherized and deprived of agency by the relentless equation of her character to the symbolism of the unicorn (2018). A second question from this same site (literature-america.blogspot.com) asks, “Which character in the play can be considered the plays [sic] hero?” Again, they answered their question: “Answer: Laura is the tragic hero of this play as her character is the most tragic.” This question and its ready answer suggest that having a disability is tragic, playing into (or perhaps amplifying) the myth that the lives of real people with disabilities are also tragic. To counter these easily found leading questions and predictable answers, we propose some alternate questions we did not find on the web—questions that should be posed: • • • •

Why is Laura’s physical disability being used as a symbol? What might be a possible effect, in the real world, of a glass animal symbolizing Laura in this play? What are some possible effects of all these questions about Laura, unicorns, and symbols? Might there be any repercussions for real people who use a leg brace?

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Any teacher or student casually googling questions or analysis of this play will be told, over and over, that Laura will never be “normal” and will never have “a normal life.” Here are the messages students with or without impairments may receive from these sure-of-themselves web resources: Having a limp is not normal. Having a limp is a deformity. Having a limp excludes one from society, and it is a permanent exclusion. These are potentially harmful messages. The relentless focus on Laura as different (like the unicorn!) might affect perceptions of real people with disabilities. A question from CliffsNotes asked: “Does Laura fully understand her position and especially the responsibility that Tom feels for her?” (Roberts, 2018). The implication of this question is that Laura is a burden, has little agency in her own life, and is part of the “trap” from which Tom feels he needs to escape (fire escape = symbol!). This play, and its easily found discussion questions, may teach young readers that people with disabilities are helpless, fragile burdens. Analysis from the “Study Questions” at SparkNotes (2018) was equally grim. In their commentary on Scene Four, where Laura falls on the fire escape, SparkNotes declared that therefore escape for Laura “is impossible,” and that for her, the fire escape “represents only the possibility of injury and destruction.” Granted, The Glass Menagerie is not a comedy, and perhaps the fire escape is a bigger physical barrier to Laura than it is to those not wearing a leg brace. But this SparkNotes answer to its own question goes beyond “the words on the page,” as does the question itself. The text tells us only that Laura “cries out” (p. 29) in that scene. She tells Amanda and Tom, “I’m all right. I slipped, but I’m all right” (p. 29). Whether or not she falls is a matter of interpretation, and even after this incident, whether it’s a slip or a fall, she says she’s all right, continues down the fire escape to the store, and manages to come back with no problem. Yet SparkNotes is sure that “escape is impossible” for Laura and that the fire escape symbolizes “only the possibility of injury and destruction.” Like Bert Cardullo (1998), the literary theorist mentioned earlier who concluded that “Laura’s physical as well as emotional frailty betokens an early demise, if not a death-wish on her part” (p. 85), SparkNotes operates on the assumption that, since Laura is disabled, she is “wrong for real life,” and that, since she is wrong, her destruction is the only logical conclusion. Thus Laura Wingfield joins a long line of other literary or fairy tale characters with disability who have no agency or are fragile or evil in some way: Lennie Small, Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, Tiny Tim, Benjy Compson, Captain Hook, Ahab, Tiresias, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Richard III, etc. These fictional characters, with their fictional qualities (fragility, burdensome, agentless, superhuman, evil, etc.), become part of the unspoken assumptions and myths about non-fictional people with disabilities. Laura becomes for the plot what Mitchell and Snyder (2000), mentioned above, call “narrative prosthesis.” If these metaphors are

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simply reinforced in web-based questions and answers, the status quo in the real world, which is oppressive for many, is also reinforced. These easily available questions and sure-of-themselves answers should not go unchallenged. Here are alternate questions we might pose to counter the implications of these insipid materials with their embedded messages: • • • • • • • • •

•

•

Why might an individual with a limp feel “not normal”? Who is “normal,” who is not, and who gets to say so? Are “normal” people without physical flaws? Why does society seem to want to think that a disability is not normal? To what extent does this play challenge the view that having a limp is not normal? To what extent does this play perpetuate the view that having a limp is not normal? To what extent does this play challenge or perpetuate the view that emotional disabilities are a sign of weakness? If a person limps, are they then “not normal”? What do online questions, answers, and the play itself seem to imply? What ideas might be planted in readers’ minds about physical or other disabilities? (That people with physical disabilities in real life also have symbolic impairments?) Will they think that people with emotional disabilities are exaggerating or overestimating the extent to which their disabilities affect them? What are we invited to think about people with injured hands, back problems, or limps?

There are countless other ways of creating interesting questions without perpetuating disability myths. For example, take the passage in which Laura’s mother, Amanda Wingfield, calls her daughter’s physical impairment a “slight disadvantage” (p. 18) and advises her to “cultivate other things to make up for it” (p. 18). Rather than debating the validity of Amanda’s advice—a debate conspicuously absent in Shmoop’s coverage of Jim’s “advice” to Laura—we propose this alternate question: •

Out of all the main characters, whom is Amanda most trying to convince that Laura is not disabled? Why?

This question uses Amanda’s denial of Laura’s disabilities as a given for its premise, rather than a possibility to be debated. The phrasing here creates an objective separation between the reader and the values presented in the text. That is, this phrasing frames the question within Amanda’s skewed perspective, instead of treating her as an authority on Laura and asking

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readers to comment generally on her advice. This alternate question, with its attached “Why?,” ensures that the message behind Amanda’s advice is insulated by the question, rather than presented to readers as authoritative. Here is another question that can help readers resist ableist assumptions lurking in the play: •

Does this scene challenge or reinforce the myth that disability can (or should) be overcome?

This question invites readers to examine how disability is portrayed within the text. It uses as its premise the idea that “disabilities can be overcome” is a myth and requires that readers build their response based on that premise. Alternate questions, therefore, can explicitly address the play’s handling of disability. They assume not only that there may be problems with the messages implied in the play, but that the play contains implied messages in the first place and invites readers to see that some of those messages may be harmful. Each question also carefully avoids inviting the reader to engage with harmful assumptions about disability they may have already internalized, and instead prompts them to question those harmful assumptions whenever they are wielded by the characters of the play. Overall, these alternate questions are designed individually and collectively to model the mindset that ideas have values behind them, that those values have real consequences, and that it is up to the reader to choose—actively, rather than passively—which of the text’s internal messages they want for themselves. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that students will also look to the internet to help them write essays about the canonical texts they read in school. A number of sites provide easily lifted fodder that also reflects the assumptions of the writers who composed them. For example, Shmoop.com (www.shmoop.com/glass-menagerie/laura-wingfield.html) has a clickable feature called “Character Analysis.” They described Laura as “oh-so-fragile,” “delicate,” and “very breakable,” and link this to “her slightly crippled leg,” which they claim is “a physical manifestation of this fragility” (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008b). Like Tischler (2007) and Single (1999), both literary critics mentioned earlier, the Shmoop writers privileged a symbolism that repeatedly Otherizes Laura and characterizes limps as “not normal”—a pattern that may have implications in the world outside the play. Whatever other messages this play may have about The Great Depression, or families, or the human condition, it also has the unspoken but very clear message that having a disability makes one vulnerable, delicate, fragile, and breakable. This condition is inescapable. If this “analysis” that students might find at Shmoop.com is not anticipated and challenged, this powerful, possibly harmful, and wrong insinuation about real people with disabilities ends up being perpetuated.

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The writers who create literary texts might well argue that their allegiance is to their art—that they see it as their duty to create drama, represent life, or say something about the human condition, not to reflect whatever more progressive views of disability or gender or race might emerge in the decades following the publication of their work. The writers of easily found “discussion questions” and “answers” might well argue that their allegiance is to teachers and students who have to deal with high-stakes, standardized tests that give the same prompts about the same themes and symbols year after year, and canonical texts like The Glass Menagerie are handy tools to help them write about themes and symbols. But where does our allegiance lie? Surely we as scholars and theorists do not have the same allegiance to Williams’ play as he did, or to standardized test prompts as commercial websites might.

Conclusion Predictable questions will receive predictable answers. Theorists should aim higher than ruminating on simple symbols and metaphors alone. If canonical works truly are preserved because they are the best that has been thought and said, then surely those thoughts and words can stand to be tested. If using these texts remains a desired or perceived necessity, and we continue to pose questions about these texts, we need to analyze and expose the theoretical underpinnings and implicit assumptions not only in the texts themselves, but in the publicly available questions about those texts and the handy answers frequently provided. What’s more, we need to help readers scope out these theories and assumptions, and to question them as they see fit. In this essay, we have focused on one play, and mostly on one theoretical lens: disability studies. However, our discussion of Menagerie here should be seen as a microcosm of analysis that could be applied to other texts. Disability studies, like most critical lenses, does not exist in isolation, but frequently overlaps and intersects with other post-structuralist theories that critique dominant power structures and analyze their treatment of an Other. And many texts contain more than one type of Other. For example, the frequently cited images of fragility and helplessness that populate conversations about Laura are not only patronizing towards people with disabilities, but tend to leverage antiquated stereotypes about women. Jim’s presumptive mansplaining (and ablesplaining) is insulting to Laura from both a disability studies and a feminist standpoint. We can appreciate many works of canonical literature as works of art without treating them as handbooks for reality. Just as we evaluate texts for their use of language, their characters, their pacing, their story, and their style, we must also take into account the effects their messages may have outside the boundaries of their pages. If we are serious about examining texts critically, then we must pose theoretically informed, critical questions

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about the canonical text itself, as well as about the attendant texts that have proliferated around it for decades. Doing so will not only enrich and dramatize discussions. It may help make the world a better place.

Works Cited Arceneaux, A. (2016). Texas is using “Of Mice and Men” to justify executing this man. Seriously. Salon. Retrieved from www.salon.com/2016/04/21/texas_ is_using_of_mice_and_men_to_justify_executing_this_man_seriously/ Beaurline, L. A. (1965, Summer). The Glass Menagerie: From story to play. Modern Drama, 8(2), 142–149. Cardullo, B. (1998, Spring). The blue rose of St. Louis: Laura, Romanticism, and The Glass Menagerie. Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie. Edited by Harold Bloom, Infobase Publishing, 2007, n.p. Originally published in The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 10(2). Cliffsnotes.com. (n.d.). Study help essay questions. Retrieved December 8, 2017, from www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/the-glass-menagerie/study-help/ essay-questions Crowley, S., & Hawhee, D. (1999). Ancient rhetorics for contemporary students (2nd ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Debusscher, G. (2000). Tennessee Williams’s dramatic charade: Secrets and lies in The Glass Menagerie. The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 3, 59. Dolmage, J. T. (2014). Disability rhetoric. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Dunn, P. A. (2015). Disabling characters: Representations of disability in young adult literature. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishers. Fetterley, J. (1978). The resisting reader: A feminist approach to American fiction. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Fox, A. M. (2016). Reclaiming the ordinary extraordinary body: Or, the importance of The Glass Menagerie for literary disability studies. In Kirsty Johnson (Ed.), Disability theatre and modern drama: Recasting modernism (pp. 129–151). London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Galloway, T., Grant, M. S., Gunter, B., & Sandahl, C. (2016). Shattering The Glass Menagerie. In Kirsty Johnson (Ed.), Disability theatre and modern drama: Recasting modernism (pp. 163–181). London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Garland-Thompson, R. (2013). Integrating disability, transforming feminist theory. In J. Lennard Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader (4th ed., pp. 333– 353). New York, NY: Routledge. Gradesaver.com. (n.d.). The Glass Menagerie essay questions. Retrieved 8 December 2017, from www.gradesaver.com/the-glass-menagerie/study-guide/essayquestions/ Hall, A. (2016). Literature and disability. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Haller, B. (2013, June). What was traditional new media advocacy for disability advocates? Part 1. No.d. Web. Disability Advocacy through Media Training Course. Unit 2.11. Heimberg, R. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In R. Heimberg (Ed.), Social phobia: Diagnosis, assessment, and treatment (pp. 70). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

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Hevesi, D. (2008, June 7). Harriet Johnson, 50, activist for disabled, is dead. (Obituary) New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/ us/07johnson.html Hosey, S. (2013). Resisting the s(crip)t: Disability studies perspectives in the undergraduate classroom. Teaching American Literature, 6(1), 23–44. Howe, P. D. (2011). Cyborg and supercrip: The paralympics technology and the (dis)empowerment of disabled athletes. Sociology, 45(5), 868–882. Hurst, J. (1960, July). The Scarlet Ibis. The Atlantic Monthly. Johnson, H. M. (2005). Too late to die young: Nearly true tales from a life. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. Johnson, H. M. (2006). Accidents of nature. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. Johnston, K. (Ed.). (2016). Disability theatre and modern drama: Recasting modernism. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Linton, S. (1998). Claiming disability: Knowledge and identity. New York, NY: New York University Press. Linton, S. (2007). My body politic. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. literature-america.blogspot.com. Retrieved 18 February 2018, from http://literatureamerica.blogspot.com/2015/12/discussion-questions-glass-menagerie.html Maples, J, Arndt, K., & White, J. M. (2010). Re-seeing The Mighty: Critically examining one film’s representation of disability in the English classroom. English Journal, 100(2), 77–85. Margolis, H., & Shapiro, A. (1987, March). Countering negative images of disability in classical literature. English Journal, 76(3), 18–22. Menchetti, B., Plattos, G., & Carroll, P. S. (2011, Fall). The impact of fiction on perceptions of disability. The ALAN Review, 56–66. Mitchell, D. T., & Snyder, S. L. (2000). Narrative prosthesis: Dependencies on discourse. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Nario-Redmond, M. R. (2010). Cultural Stereotypes of disabled and nondisabled men and women: Consensus for global categories representing and diagnosing disability. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 49(3), 471–488. Richards, P. (2011, May). Paul Kenneth Longmore. In Memoriam. Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the National Historical Association. Retrieved from www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectiveson-history/may-2011/in-memoriam-paul-kenneth-longmore Shapiro, J. (1993). No pity: People with disabilities forging a new civil rights movement. New York, NY: Random House. Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008a, November 11). The Glass Menagerie questions. Retrieved March 5, 2018, from www.shmoop.com/glass-menagerie/questions. html Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008b, November 11). Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. Retrieved June 9, 2018, from www.shmoop.com/glass-menagerie/ laura-wingfield.html Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008c, November 11). Jim O’Connor in The Glass Menagerie. Retrieved June 9, 2018, from https://www.shmoop.com/glassmenagerie/jim-oconnor.html Shmoop Editorial Team. (2018, November 11). Jim O’Connor in The Glass Menagerie. Retrieved September 18, 2018, from https://www.shmoop.com/ glass-menagerie/jim-oconnor.html

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Single, L. L. (1999). Flying the Jolly Roger: Images of escape and selfhood in Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie. The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 2, 69–85. SparkNotes. (2018). The Glass Menagerie, “Study Questions.” Retrieved February 18, 2018, from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/menagerie/study-questions/ SparkNotes Editors. (2003). SparkNote on The Glass Menagerie. Retrieved August 13, 2018, from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/menagerie/ teachwithmovies.org. (n.d.). Suggested answers to discussion questions for learning guide to The Glass Menagerie. Retrieved December 8, 2017, from www. teachwithmovies.org/guides/glass-menagerie-answers.html; www.teachwith movies.org/guides/glass-menagerie.html#symbols Tischler, N. M. (2007). “The glass menagerie.” Tennessee Williams’s the glass menagerie. Edited by Harold Bloom, Infobase Publishing, 2007, 5–22. Originally appeared in Tischler, Nancy M. (1961). Tennessee Williams: Rebellious Puritan. The Citadel Press, 91–116. Williams, T. (1945). The glass menagerie. New York, NY: New Directions Books. Wilson, B. (2014). Teach the how: Critical lenses and critical literacy. English Journal, 103(4), 68–75. Wood, T., Meyer, C. A., & Bose, D. (2017, May 24). Why we dread disability myths. The Chronicle of Higher Education, n.p. Retrieved December 8, 2017, from www.chronicle.com/article/Why-We-Dread-Disability-Myths/240156

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Reinterpreting Revolutions An “Encoding/Decoding” Analysis of Animal Farm Lara Searcy, Jonathan B. Allred, Seth D. French, and Christian Z. Goering

Introduction How many students in the classrooms of America experience something similar—either the under-teaching or over-teaching of novels—and how many experience the same fate with Animal Farm itself? It is impossible to know, but what we can say pretty firmly is that the allegory is still taught; in fact, it was reported in a survey as the ninth most frequently taught text in the state of Arkansas in 2009, the most recent comprehensive study of a single state’s literature curriculum (Stotsky, Goering, & Jolliffe, 2010). It is a staple of the literary canon and is most often approached as allegory of the Russian Revolution, the dominant mode of teaching Animal Farm follows the dominant interpretation of the text. Although this isn’t surprising, these facts combined to prompt the authors to seek new and engaging ways of studying the text. Following the election of Donald J. Trump as United States President in 2016, Juris (2017) tracked book sales during the first four weeks of 2017 vs. the same four weeks in 2016 and found that Animal Farm was the ninth more frequently purchased book; a sign that Animal Farm is perhaps gaining in relevancy, though any specific conclusions as to why cannot be determined. We provide those teaching the novel with a new twist on the classic text—reading it through a mass communications theory, that of Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding.” In the following chapter, we provide a literature review of Animal Farm, a background to “Encoding/Decoding, a pedagogical analysis of teaching Animal Farm using “Encoding/ Decoding” approaches, and finally, a critical analysis on reading Animal Farm in today’s terms, not those of the common connections between it and the Russian Revolution, reading it as “a cautionary story for the democratic West” (Baker, 1996, p. xii).

Orwell’s Purpose for Writing Animal Farm Orwell’s purpose for writing Animal Farm, according to Woodcock (1966), was to (a) reveal how Russia was preventing and distorting truth and (b) decry England’s refusal to acknowledge the inherent flaws

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of communism. Perhaps even more insightful are the words presented in Homage to Catalonia, Orwell’s personal account of his involvement in the Spanish civil war. Orwell (1980) explained that the civil war had broken out in 1936, right around the time he got married. Desiring to help the Spanish government, he joined the battle, resulting in a shot to the throat by a fascist sniper. After seeing people shot and imprisoned, he and his wife escaped Spain alive but having learned an important lesson: totalitarian regimes can overpower and control the voice and opinion of the people, even in democratic countries. He stated that every major piece he wrote after that experience had the purpose of fighting totalitarianism and supporting democracy. In the preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, Orwell stated that his purpose for writing the novella was to provide an allegory for the Russian revolution (Orwell, 2002). More modern interpretations of the text have suggested an expansion from such a specific focus on the Russian revolution. Pearce (1998) posited that common readings of Animal Farm have possibly over-emphasized the connection between the book’s plot and Russian history, suggesting that Orwell’s purpose was a much broader commentary on oppression generally. Reviewing other critical readings of the novella over the years reveals several common interpretations as to the meaning and significance of Orwell’s work—especially in universal and global situations. The influence of Animal Farm goes beyond the academic, literary world. The story has been referenced in popular culture through music, film, video games, and more. For example, two different musical artists have taken major elements of the text and spun them into song. “Half Man Half Biscuit,” an English rock band, wrote a song called “Arthur’s Farm” in which two men travel to Manor Farm, drink with Napoleon, seemingly amputate all animals’ limbs, and reign supreme (“Arthur’s Farm,” 1987). “Ice Nine Kills,” an American band, wrote a song called “Nature of the Beast,” referencing animals biting the hand that feeds, revolting against man, and ultimately becoming the thing they hated in the first place (“Nature of the Beast,” 2015). Specific quotes from Animal Farm have been incorporated into popular television shows. In 1966, an episode of Doctor Who referenced Animal Farm when the character Mavic Chen said, “Although we are all equal partners with the Daleks on this great conquest, some of us are more equal than others” (“Doctor Who,” 1966). An episode of Johnny Bravo, an animated series, depicts a man dressed in a pig costume on a farm. He becomes frustrated with a farmer, removes him from the farm, stirs up the other animals, and finally jumps in a mud puddle shouting repeatedly “Four legs, good! Two legs, bad!” (“Johnny Bravo,” 1999). An episode of the television series Lost includes the quote, “The pigs are walking,” when a character thinks two others are becoming power hungry and losing control (Kitsis, Horowitz, & Williams, 2007).

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More than 70 years after its publication, Animal Farm is, as of this writing, getting adapted into a video game, in cooperation with George Orwell’s estate. The game recreates Manor Farm and allows the player to assume the role of an animal on the farm before the revolution; alternatively, the player can choose to be the farmer and work to maintain the farm (LeFebvre, 2017). And finally, in a move that is reminiscent of Orwell’s other popular novel, 1984: Weibo, one of China’s most popular social media websites, has blocked the use of the term “Animal Farm” (as well as several other phrases related to disagreement with political powers) on all posts within the platform (Zhao, 2018). Critical Readings of Animal Farm Animal Farm received mixed reviews for several decades after publication. While some early critics said that the novella was wise and revealing (Schlesinger, 1946), clear and concise (Weeks, 1946), and top-notch writing (Wilson, 1946); others said it was dull and indirect (Soule, 1999), a few years too late (Rosenfeld, 1946), and full of unhelpful cynicism (Pryce-Jones, 1971). Although stating that Animal Farm was Orwell’s best satire and the work most likely to stand the test of time, Elliott (1957) says that the story is not creative enough and that the political notions found within lack substance and depth. Just two years after Animal Farm was published, Dempsey (1947)— while admitting that Animal Farm had quickly become a “Book of Month” favorite amongst the masses—called the novella “a little parable on the failure of the Russian Revolution” with low-brow satire informed by Orwell’s personal disillusionment, and that it lacks “intellectual enlightenment” (pp. 146–147). He argued that Orwell’s satirizing of revolutionary ideals and his focus on the powerful few versus the incompetent masses “all contribute to the failure of Animal Farm” (p. 147). Alldritt (1969) questioned the overall purpose and literary significance of Animal Farm, accusing Orwell of using allegory to avoid society’s harsh realities instead of facing them. He suggested that a story which results in simple ideas and obvious conclusions is not effective for such a complex issue as the Russian revolution. He also argued that Animal Farm is nothing more than a story for children, specifically mentioning that Orwell must have gotten inspiration for the animals’ revolutionary laws and chants from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. Blount (1974) similarly reported that Animal Farm was commonly found in the juvenile section of libraries and bookstores largely because it is written simply and in an entertaining fashion; however, she disagrees with Alldritt (1969) on the depth and import of the story, stating that the political and social ideas found within Orwell’s novella are anything but simple or juvenile. Concerning the fable element of Animal Farm, Hollis (1962) suggested that animal fables should be happy and lighthearted, not bitter

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or overly realistic. Greenblatt (1974), however, felt that Orwell had transcended such expectation within the genre in a powerful way, having written a tragic, dark animal fable that acts as a cautionary tale for future revolutionaries. The allegorical nature of the story, including personification of farm animals and the idea of revolution, has provided fertile ground for metaphorical readings of Animal Farm. For example, Letemendia (1992) viewed the animals in the story as a diverse working class and the literary men as greedy, corrupt capitalists. Sun (2015) deepened and extended these metaphors, arguing that Orwell’s story reveals three main comparisons: humans are animals (potentially referencing the Soviet Union or any non-democratic society), leaders are pigs (symbolizing the greed of those in power), and names are identities (i.e., Orwell chose names for his characters that reflected specific personality traits). Kirschner (2004) recognized a similar political purpose in the novel but added that the political purpose was fused with an artistic purpose that has possibly been neglected in critical analyses of the novel. Other scholars have avered that Animal Farm highlights the inequalities and injustices in our society. Ferreira (2016) recognized that the animals’ freedom from Mr. Jones didn’t result in true freedom; instead, the pigs took control and enslaved the other animals. Likewise, in our society, legal rules that abolished slavery have not resulted in true freedom for all people—social, moral, and religious ideologies still promote imbalance in power and social position. In that regard, Animal Farm emphasizes the need for education and self-confidence in the proletariat to promote democracy and to spur social movement (Letemendia, 1992). Attempts at revolution within dystopian texts, such as Animal Farm, are often an exercise in futility, which seems to reflect Orwell’s own faded hopes at revolution in the real world (Vaninskaya, 2003). Shortly after commencing to write Animal Farm, Orwell published an article in which he lamented the apparent impossibility of a world where “human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another,” stating that “whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness” (Orwell, 1943). Eckstein (1985) described Orwell’s political attitudes found in his writing, whether explicitly stated or implied, as inextricably linked to his complicated, conflicted, eccentric personality: “He generally wrote in hot emotional reaction to his immediate perceptions of events—and these fierce emotional reactions (which are, after all, one source of his writing’s enormous power) came out of his difficult personality” (p. 47). In an attempt to shed light on Orwell’s personality, Patai (1984) approached Animal Farm from a feminist perspective. She lamented that all leaders of the animal revolution were boars (male) and condemns Orwell’s treatment of Clover, the mare (female horse) who struggled to speak her mind, couldn’t read, and “never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal” (see Orwell,

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1945, p. 3). Patai (1984) criticized such covert treatment of women in the text, especially considering Orwell’s wife assisted her husband with several factual and logical elements within Animal Farm (pg. 51). Overall, the modern reader should expand the interpretation of Animal Farm from a reference to Russian history into a general commentary on any power that causes oppression, suffering, and injustice (Sun, 2015) which is why we suggest the innovative “Encoding/Decoding” approach as a way to experience new understandings and make helpful connections to modern society. In doing so, readers not only widen the scope of allegory, but also widen the scope of interpretive paradigms used to read the text.

Hall’s Development of “Encoding/Decoding” and Others Who Have Used “Encoding/Decoding” for Similar Purposes In thinking about why having a frame is relevant to readers, it is helpful to view any piece of literature through a universal understanding of the sender (author), message (text), and receiver (reader). This process, according to Hall in his seminal work, “Encoding/Decoding” (1980), is a “complex structure in dominance,” rather than a linear model of communication. Similar to the Rhetorical Situation, writing, or communication, it occurs within a rhetorical situation which has three components—an exigence (or occasion for writing), an audience, and constraints (which can influence audience response and the potential of the writer to make change) (Bitzer, 1968). Thus, understanding and analyzing situations, whether through media or text, help contribute to strong communication. These scenarios, explored through the canonical, allegorical text of Animal Farm, should be viewed as universal and thus may be able to be applied to other global situations in order to yield new understandings. Animal Farm is a prime example of how an event—primarily, the Russian Revolution—became a “a fairy story,” as Orwell called it (Baker, 1996), and its “message form” is a determinate moment especially when taught. As Hall states, “an event must become a ‘story’ before it can become a communicative event,” (1980, p. 164) which is why Animal Farm extends to many mediums—“a political tract, a satire on human folly, a loud heehaw at all who yearn for Utopia, an allegorical lesson, a pretty good fable of the Aesop tradition, and a passionate sermon against the dangers of political innocence” (Baker, 1996, p. viii). Several decades prior to Hall’s development of “Encoding/Decoding” (1980), the world had experienced a period of increasing industrialization in the late nineteenth century known as the era of mass society. In this era, information circulated to an extent that had never been seen before. Hitler’s rise and the rise of Fascism during the mid-1930s to 1940s demonstrated this reality with atrocious impacts through propaganda and other media messages. Shortly before Hall’s theory development, Elihu Katz and

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colleagues had been working to develop “uses and gratifications” theory, which had three basic assumptions: “people are active users of media;” “people know why they use media and can explain these reasons;” and “there are common patterns to media consumption among users” (Kropp, 2015, p. 12). The uses and gratifications model is what Stuart Hall and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham built upon through their work. This time period marked a paradigm shift in the field of cultural studies from how media influenced people to how people use media. Claude LeviStrauss’ work and the structuralist school of thought also influenced Hall, as well as Roland Barthes’ post-structuralist semiotic philosophies; Kropp (2015) asserts that Barthes’ marriage of semiotics-structuralism with the Frankfurt School’s post-Marxist paradigms were foundational to Hall’s work. In 1973, Hall’s Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse article was published, which he wrote for CCCS students. After several years of circulation as a sort of template in cultural studies, in 1980 Hall published his more widely known book chapter, Encoding/Decoding, in Culture, Media, Language, a set of papers which highlighted the impact Hall’s work had on the work being accomplished through the CCCS at the University of Birmingham (Steiner, 2016). In publishing this work, Hall’s self-proclaimed goal was to “explain the relationship between the producers of messages, the messages themselves and audiences” (Kropp, 2015, p. 12). In explaining the usefulness and popularity of Hall’s theory within its historical context, Steiner (2016) writes: [Encoding/Decoding] was rich and provocative. Researchers could investigate how encoders try to win the assent of the audience, how communicative forms and structures are used to “prefer” the dominant reading. Although Hall did relatively little empirical work applying [Encoding/Decoding], researchers took up Hall’s invitation to research how different audiences refused to adopt the hegemonic decoding position. (p. 107) Indeed, researchers did. Since its original publication in 1973, over two dozen studies around the world have been published using Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” as a guiding framework. Of these studies, perhaps the most notable are: Morley and Brunsdon’s (1978) Nationwide study that examined the “preferred” readings of this BBC evening news magazine program; Morley’s (1980) follow-up study, The Nationwide Audience, analyzed how viewers from different socioeconomic backgrounds decoded messages from the Nationwide program in distinct ways; Liebes and Katz (1990) explored different ethnic groups’ television experiences; and Cooper (2003) investigated heterosexual audiences’ decoding of Will & Grace.

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Cooper (2003) was interested in how heterosexual viewers of Will & Grace would decode the show’s messages and characters associated with homosexuality, and anticipated that they would provide negotiated readings of their experience with the show in which they could appreciate the sitcom’s jokes, characters, and references, without necessarily identifying with them on a personal level. Another of Cooper’s hypotheses was that the audience members’ individual genders would play an important role in how they decoded characters of the same gender, offering a more critical perspective of a character’s sexuality if they shared the character’s gender identification. Twenty-five college students participated in this research, first watching a representative sample of Will & Grace, then completing questionnaires about their perceptions. Responses indicated that participants did indeed provide negotiated readings of the sitcom as Cooper expected, though not all in ways that aligned with Cooper’s hypotheses. Other smaller studies have utilized Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” through each decade since its arrival, with the most recent study being published by Keyan Tomaselli in 2015. From large studies in the 1970’s like Nationwide to smaller ones . . . the application of the “Encoding/Decoding” has been prevalent in communication literature. Researchers have tested the ideas, put them to use and critiqued each other’s studies as well as the original process proposed by Hall. (Kropp, 2015, p. 16) For a detailed explanation of these studies, as well as an extensive appendix describing other similar studies employing Encoding/Decoding, see Kropp (2015).

Pedagogical Analysis Though “Encoding/Decoding” is most applied in the field of communication, its application can also be situated in the field of education because the same communication processes occur in reading, teaching, and learning. The teaching of literature is more of a continuous circuit of production (writer writing the text), distribution (teacher teaching the text), to production (student demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the text). So perhaps the best context for this discursive form is in a classroom setting where the discourse can be translated—transformed again—into social practices which allow learners to create meaning and long-term memories that can be used and applied to multiple scenarios (Sweller, 2009). As Hall argued, “there can be no meaning if there is no consumption” (p. 164), so for educators, it is often difficult to see the moments of “encoding” and “decoding” that happen during the reader’s content

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analysis, or interpreted meaning from the content of the text data. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory stated, “there are evident dangers of over-simplifying things and so offering a false reassurance to students facing the difficulties of topics” (Barry, 2002, p. 1)—the same is true for the teaching of literature. Teachers may have good intentions in improving students’ literacy, but “intentions are not the problem; our practices are the problem” and those practices often include the over-teaching and under-teaching of literature (Gallagher, 2009, p. 5). For many, teaching Animal Farm to high schoolers often comes with a New Historicism critical approach—teachers work hard to parallel the reading of the literary text with non-literary texts (mainly about the Russian Revolution) to strengthen connections between the allegorical characters and historical events. This mirrors the paradigm shift Hall discussed in “Encoding/Decoding” and how cultural studies shift from examining how media influenced people to how people use media (1980). This approach is similar to teaching because it is important to shift from how texts influence people to how teachers or students use the text, which is why his approach is a classic statement on the theory of meaning production and reception. Teaching any work of literature involves important social components of the communication process between sender, message, and receiver, as well as the continuous circuit of production. Therefore, the “production process,” as Hall stated, is similar to teaching because it is also a highly discursive act framed by meanings and ideas, content and pedagogical knowledge, routines, professional ideologies, institutional and student knowledge, definitions and assumptions, and understandings about adolescents as readers and writers (Hall, 1980, p. 164). Just as writers often consider the Rhetorical Situation elements, teachers draw their own “definitions of the situation,” or context, by understanding their purpose in teaching literature and knowing their audience, or students. Students produce their understanding of the text by reading to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and respond to complex texts of literary and informational genres from a variety of historical, cultural, ethnic, and global perspectives and then writing for varied purposes and audiences in specified modes. For this to happen, teachers must yield “encoded messages in the form of meaningful discourse” (p. 165). And before the learning can have an “effect,” satisfy a need, or be put to “use,” it must first involve meaningful discourse that is meaningfully decoded, and that decoding has many influences that affect perceptual, cognitive, emotional, ideological, or behavioral consequences (p. 165). Hall connected this decoding to television producers who find their message “failing to get across,” but teachers experience the same concern to “straighten out the kinks in the communication chain” and they do that by assessing how much of the message/text the audience, our students, recall so that they can improve their understanding (p. 170). If

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the viewer, or reader/student, does not know the terms employed, cannot follow complex logic of argument or exposition, is unfamiliar with the language, or finds the concepts too difficult, then they are experiencing “systematically distorted communication” between the sender (author), message (text), and receiver (reader). As Hall noted, some of these degrees of understanding and misunderstanding in communicative exchange often depend on the positions of the encoder-producer (writer/teacher) and the decoder-receiver (reader/learner). The structural differences of relation and position between the writer/reader or teacher/learner may also affect understandings and misunderstandings. In essence, encoding has an effect on constructing some of the limits and parameters within which the decodings operate. Specifically, in teaching Animal Farm, the symbols are often already coded through the frontloading of knowledge about the Russian Revolution. For example, teachers often, with little discussion, may provide students with a “Character Chart” that aligns the allegorical parallels to characters and historical events. For example, “Mr. Jones = Czar Nicholas II” and “Old Major = Marx/Lenin.” This is provided in order to clarify “misunderstandings” about social life, economic and political power, and ideology at the connotative level, but at the expense of providing a singular message about the Russian Revolution and a fear that students may experience “systematically distorted communication” between the sender (author), message (text), or receiver (reader). However, teachers should consider Hall’s three positions on how to decode understandings in a universal approach before encoding the information for students. Since cognitive load theory is concerned with procedures for reducing extraneous working memory load to facilitate knowledge acquisition in long-term memory (Sweller, 2009), it easily pairs with Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” because it provides opportunities for students to understand the complex concepts represented in literature, namely Animal Farm.

Utilizing Hall’s Three Positions Hall’s first position, the dominant-hegemonic position, considers where the viewer/reader takes the connotated meaning from the reading and then decodes the message in terms of reference codes (1980, p. 171). These reference codes could be semiotic, or social codes, which according to Chandler (2006) include: “bodily codes,” such as bodily contact, proximity, physical orientation, appearance, facial expression, gaze, head nods, gestures and posture; “commodity codes,” such as fashions, clothing, and cars; and “behavioral codes,” such as protocols, rituals, roleplaying, and games. These are the arbitrary signs evident in allegorical texts because there have to be clear distinctions between “denotative” and “connotative” understandings of the novel’s elements—characters, setting, plot, and dialogue. Reviewing just the first two chapters of Animal

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Farm, it is evident that the character list is full of these semiotic, or social, codes to describe the allegorical characters: •

•

• •

•

•

•

•

Mr. Jones, of Manor Farm: “was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.” (p. 1) Old Major, the prize Middle White boar: “had a strange dream [. . .] was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour’s sleep in order to hear what he had to say [. . .] he was twelve years old and majestic looking, with a wise and benevolent appearance.” (p. 1) Clover, the cart-horse: “was a stout, motherly mare.” (p. 3) Boxer, the cart-horse: “was an enormous beast, strong, had a stupid appearance, and was not of first-rate appearance, but he was universally respected for his steadiness of character and tremendous powers of work.” (p. 3) Benjamin, the donkey: “was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark.” (p. 3) Napoleon, the Berkshire boar: “was large, rather fierce-looking, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way.” (p. 12) Snowball, the pig: “was vivacious, quicker in speech and more inventive, but was not considered to have the same depth of character.” (p. 13) Squealer, the pig: “was the best known among them; round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements, and a shrill voice. He was a brilliant talker.” (p. 13)

Having students review the connotative meaning of these reference codes (without the aid of a pre-made “Character Chart” aligned only to the Russian Revolution) demonstrates Hall’s second position, negotiated codes. In this position, audiences/readers probably understand what was intended, and it allows for larger connections to events and a larger view of those events (1980, p. 172). This is where using Hall’s framework is beneficial because media, in all forms, should be “integrated into the social relations of the communication process” which provides a global understanding, Hall’s third position (1980, p. 164). If teachers draw from their students’ prior and current knowledge, rather than only relying on

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their understanding of teaching Animal Farm from the lens of the Russian Revolution, students then have better access to the allegorical purpose of the text beyond the literal and connotative messages. At this phase, students could make arguments about another event, such as the 2016 election, and conduct independent research in order to position themselves as experts of the society in which they live. This provides a relevant context, and the needed exigence (or occasion for writing), audience, and constraints (which can influence audience response and the potential of the writer to make change) for readers to “explain the relationship between the producers of messages, the messages themselves and audiences,” thus accomplishing Hall’s goal (Kropp, 2015, p. 12; Bitzer, 1968). Despite the changing times, Orwell’s “fairy story” analyzed with Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” critical lens provides a framework to help secondary and undergraduate readers and teachers experience literature through a broader window and seek out a long-term, universal understanding of the sender (author), message (text), and receiver (reader) that is not situated in one event. Since Hall’s self-proclaimed goal was to “explain the relationship between the producers of messages, the messages themselves and audiences” (Kropp, 2015, p. 12), then a similar goal in the field of education is to show the relationship between authors, text, and readers. In establishing these relationships, they seek to create a generation of literate readers using one of the most commonly taught books, Animal Farm, and arm them with skills—creativity, common sense, wisdom, ethics, dedication, honesty, hard work, and lifelong learning—that will make them “expert citizens” (Gallagher, 2009).

Critical Analysis Setting the Scene for “Encoding/Decoding” In our collective re-reading and analysis of Animal Farm through Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” lens, we must first acknowledge the popular culture in which we currently exist. When this chapter was proposed in January 2017, Donald Trump was then recently elected, yet to be inaugurated. The sixteen months since then have been tumultuous from any number of perspectives. There’s an ongoing federal investigation of whether or not President Trump and/or his campaign colluded with Russian actors in the election, a constant shift in what the term “fake news” means as it has been operationalized by the Trump Administration, and a spirited debate on gun control following multiple school shootings. As we alluded to earlier, Animal Farm received a “Trump bump” (Juris, 2017) following the election and it’s worth considering why that might be, at least some of which could be connected to the accusations of Russian collusion and the historical connections between the Russian Revolution and Animal Farm. When one examines the other books receiving such a boost in sales from

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the same period of time in 2016 vs. 2017, it seems safe to say that there was and is a certain amount of unrest in the country. With cuts or planned cuts to a vast number of social programs in the country in the first year of the Trump Administration and rolling back of almost every Obama era policy in one way or another, living in the United States of America is different in July 2018 than it was one or two years ago, and significantly different from Animal Farm’s 1945 publication era. These differences, however, are not at all dissimilar to the experiences of the characters in Animal Farm. In applying the three stages of Encoding/ Decoding, we first discuss the dominant-hegemonic understanding of the text next to a negotiated reading of it, the negotiated reading that adds in a current popular lens as it is applied to the original dominant reading. We’ve signified these readings by first stating the event from Animal Farm and then using parentheses or punctuation to indicate the negotiated reading. To follow, we discuss the global codes that can be extracted from both readings. After the rebellion of the animals on Manor Farm (Trump’s election), Napoleon (Donald Trump) seizes absolute control of the farm by running off his competition, Snowball (Hillary Clinton). Napoleon uses a pack of trained attack dogs and false accusations to run Snowball off the farm (Candidate and then President Trump refers to Clinton as “Crooked Hillary,” and his supporters frequently chant “Lock her up” at campaign rallies). Napoleon uses Squealer—as Orwell describes “[t]he other said of Squealer that he could turn black into white” (1945, p. 16)—to repeatedly fool the animals into thinking recent change is appropriate and will somehow make their lives better—though clearly it won’t; Trump’s Press Secretaries lie to the American public so frequently that The Washington Post concluded in a June 2018 article regarding Sarah Huckabee Sanders that “[h]er word cannot be taken at face value” and that “[b]eing partisans of the truth, the press must convey to its audience the utter unreliability of her statements,” (Rubin, 2018, n.p., para 10). This technique, in both cases, is used to deflect attention from the machinations of Napoleon as supreme leader of the Animal Farm and the Trump Administration’s constant move to rig the country and economy in the favor of the extremely rich, all the while providing rhetoric to the contrary: “when he was arguing some difficult point he had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive” (Orwell, 1945, p. 16). In addition to serving as a proxy for Hillary Clinton, Snowball—once expurgated from the farm—takes on the role of the invisible but ubiquitous villain: “It seemed to [the animals] as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence, pervading the air about them and menacing them with all kinds of dangers” (Orwell, 1945, p. 79). The negotiated reading of the ubiquitous Snowball could easily be illegal immigrants, the press in general that President Trump refers to

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as “fake news,” or the constant naming—by the President on his Twitter account—of individuals who have somehow run afoul of his policies. It seems that there always has to be an “other” for dictator-like governments to run smoothly, something to fear and distrust such as—returning to the example of illegal immigration—the act of Trump referring to immigrants from Mexico as “Bad hombres” in a presidential debate. Napoleon, sniffing the ground for signs of the evil pig, “exclaim[s] in a terrible voice, ‘Snowball! He has been here! I can smell him distinctly!’ and at the word [. . .] the dogs let out blood-curdling growls and showed their side teeth,” (Orwell, p. 79). As four English educators, we’ve informally seen the othering and targeting of individuals from other backgrounds, the same individuals we aspire to support in their education. As Unsicker-Durham (2018) writes about an experience in her Oklahoma school on the day after the 2016 election, “I strained to hear the strange cheer coming from a handful of boys [. . .] [w]ere they shouting ‘[h]urrah!’ or ‘[r]ah!’? [. . .] ‘WALL!’ ‘WALL!’ ‘WALL!’ ” (p. 119). Unfortunately, these types of othering experiences weren’t relegated to the day after the election and in one of the more horrifying statistics imaginable, the New York Times reported a 57% rise in incidents of anti-Semitism in America in 2017 vs. 2016, the largest rise in reports since the Anti-Defamation league began tracking these data in 1979 (Astor, 2018). To that last point, in Chapter Seven Napoleon ferrets out alleged traitors, forces confessions out of them, and then “the dogs promptly tore their throats out” (Orwell, 1945, p. 84) in front of the other animals. There is no direct connection to mass statesponsored killings and the Trump Administration, but the connections from the othering of individuals within a society to their mass killings or genocide is not unprecedented, historically speaking. In fact, genocide is always preceded by both false information provided by government and a clear othering of those about to be killed, a pre-justification of sorts. The whole of Napoleon’s tyrannical rule over the farm rests on misinformation, shifty rhetoric, and constant lies to the animals. A great deal of power rests in the Trump administration’s ability to do the same thing and to keep their political base supportive of their efforts, despite the facts reported by the press. The global codes then, in the case of reading Animal Farm anew in the midst of the Trump Administration’s first 18 months, are reminiscent of power and absolute control of government on a global scale. History does, in fact, repeat itself, and the warnings that George Orwell issued in 1945 through his fairy tale are universal in nature and can be applied to understand current situations in America and around the globe. The dangers of a government that lies to its people, for example, is a global code that is hard to ignore in 2018. A government that “others” members of its own society is a global code with a treacherous past and dangerous future if left unchecked. Finally, a public that either accepts heinous

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acts or justifies them in some way creates a third global code, as Boxer exemplifies following the public execution—mass killing perpetrated by the rulers—on the animal farm: “I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm. It must be due to some fault in ourselves,” (Orwell, 1945, p. 85). Of course, there are imperfections with saying that Donald Trump is Napoleon and Sarah Huckabee Sanders is Squealer or that Hillary Clinton is Snowball. These current political actors are not the named pigs from Animal Farm, per se, but rather—through an Encoding/Decoding reading, become modern day versions of their 73-year-old predecessors. This universality of possible meanings, though admittedly imperfect, demonstrates the potential for readers to constantly take up works like Animal Farm to read today along with their own experiences and perspectives into the text, to create a meaning and understanding from literature of the past.

Conclusion With all of these elements in mind, Animal Farm reads differently, we argue, then it ever has because the allegorical nature of any text should be universal and thus should be applied to many global situations. Learning about history and popular culture through historical fiction has its benefits—it provides a broader context, audience, and purpose than what the sender (author) could ever intend based on the receiver’s (reader’s) relationship with the context. As discussed in Hall’s “complex structure of dominance” the message (text) and the receiver (reader) work through a linear model of communication to explain the relationship within historical context, which provides a necessary background to understanding events, statements, or ideas of any time period. Just as Orwell, in 1943, “thought too many decent people in the Western democracies had succumbed to a dangerously romantic view of the Russian revolution that blinded them to Soviet reality,” today’s reality in 2018 provides a similar allegorical lesson against the dangers of political innocence (Baker, 1996, p. vii). Animal Farm remains a cautionary story and lesson about the human contribution to political terror and “will always be as up-to-date as next year’s election” (Baker, 1996, p. xiv).

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10 When New Criticism and Reader Response Aren’t Enough Reading “Against” To Kill a Mockingbird Through a Critical Whiteness Lens Susan L. Groenke Introduction Perhaps no other novel has captured the hearts and minds of White North American readers more than Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM). TKAM won the esteemed Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961, a year after its publication, and is considered the “best book of the 20th century” by the American Library Association. The Guinness Book of World Records ranks TKAM as the top-selling novel of all time, and the Library of Congress declares that TKAM is second only to the Bible in terms of its influence on people’s lives (Anderson, 2008). As such, TKAM consistently shows up on approved school reading lists and is one of the top-10 most frequently taught books in North American high schools (Applebee, 1993; Stallworth, Gibbons, & Fauber, 2006; Stallworth & Gibbons, 2012). A 2010 national survey found TKAM to be the second most-assigned text in the country (Stotsky, 2010). One of the plotlines in TKAM revolves around the trial of Tom Robinson, an African American man falsely accused of raping a White woman. Scout and Jem, the young White protagonists of the story, become aware of racial injustice as they observe their father, attorney Atticus Finch, defend Tom Robinson and witness the prejudice and discrimination surrounding the trial. Because of this plot focus, the novel has been deemed a “race relations pioneer” (Murphy, 2011), important for “focusing the nation on the turbulent struggle for equality” (Howell, 2007), and “liberating white people from racism” (Brokaw, 2010). However, secondary English instruction of the book in North American schools rarely takes a critical focus—a focus that can work proactively to interrupt the novel’s problematic racial ideologies. In this chapter, I briefly review traditional secondary methods for teaching TKAM in North American English/language arts (ELA) classrooms, and then introduce Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) as an alternative approach to teaching

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the canonical work. I then apply CWS to analysis of TKAM and conclude with implications for secondary ELA instruction and assessment.

Reading “With” To Kill a Mockingbird I draw on the Critical Literacy Pedagogy (CLP) work of Borsheim-Black, Macaluso, and Petrone (2014) to make a distinction between teaching canonical literature in traditional ways—what Borsheim-Black et al. call reading “with” a text—and the teaching of canonical literature in more critical ways—reading “against” a text—that attempt to “draw attention to implicit ideologies of texts . . . by examining issues of power, normativity, and representation, as well as facilitating opportunities for equity-oriented sociopolitical action” (p. 123). Traditionally, secondary ELA teachers have positioned students to read TKAM “with the text” by employing New Critical and/or Reader Response methodologies. A cursory search in English Journal, a national journal for secondary English teachers affiliated with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), reveals this kind of instruction tends to focus on the actions and motivations of the White characters in the novel. For example, Schaefer (1989) describes dressing up as Miss Maudie Atkinson to teach characterization skills. Cintorino (1993) describes enhancing adolescents’ discussion skills through teacher-focused questions about the characters of Boo Radley, Mrs. Dubose, and Aunt Alexandra. Rogers, O’Neill, and Jasinski (1995) describe drawing on multiple intelligences—especially drama—to help students build collaborative interpretations of the Ewell and Cunningham characters. Jolley (2002) focuses her poetry unit on the courage of Atticus Finch, and the compassion readers, particularly White readers, should feel for Tom Robinson and Calpurnia. Styslinger, Ware, Bell, and Barrett (2014) focus students’ use of cognitive reading strategies around analysis of Scout, Jem, and Boo Radley. Holland (2016) teaches her students rhetorical skills using Atticus Finch’s speeches in the novel as models of classic oration. When English teachers do focus on issues of race in their instruction, it is usually solely in the context of foregrounding information about the Jim Crow era, which can position racism as a thing of the past and position Black characters as helpless victims and passive bystanders who didn’t fight for their own liberation. Scholars Isaac Saney (2003), ShawThornburg (2010), and Baecker (2008) have criticized TKAM for the novel’s failure to acknowledge the historical legacy of the African American struggle for Black liberation. And as Kelley (2010) confirms in his research, English teachers don’t emphasize this history in their instruction, either: “English teachers are highly attuned to the fictional world created in the novel . . . but few specific references to landmarks in the struggle for African American civil rights (e.g., the Montgomery bus boycott, Brown v. Board of Education) [occur]” (p. 11).

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Popular instructional materials for TKAM also remain silent on what a critical approach to teaching the novel might look like. In an NCTE publication, “To Kill a Mockingbird” in the Classroom: Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes, Gibbons (2009) explains that part of her motivation for writing the book stemmed from her own experience of having an African American student in her class refuse to read the book because of the novel’s racial epithets. After reflecting on this experience, Gibbons decided the text was “worthy of study as one of our class novels” (p. xiii). She then goes on to describe her instruction of the novel, which includes a focus on literary elements, text structure, analyzing legal criticism of the novel, and comparing the text to the classic film. In addition, the National Endowment for the Arts’ “Big Read” Teacher’s Guide for TKAM focuses on Lee’s biography and “fundamental” literary elements such as point of view, characterization, use of figurative language, and symbolism. In one of the last lessons provided in the guide, race is presented as an optional theme that students can consider, in addition to justice, literacy/illiteracy, and gender. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that in a popular press piece published by Huffington Post in 2015, when English teachers were asked why TKAM endures, their responses included that the book has a “coming-of-age” theme that mimics the “coming-of-age” of most ninth graders (ninth grade being the year it is often taught in high school English curriculum), and the book “moves” readers to “feel some empathy for even the darker characters presented” (Crum, 2015). While one teacher did suggest that the book can help White readers consider their own White privilege, no comments suggested that English teachers believe the book provides opportunities to consider how and why the institutional and systemic racism Lee depicted in 1930s Alabama still endures today, and what young people can do to interrupt it. Not one comment suggests that English teachers think the disfigured and detested Tom Robinson—considered guilty until proven innocent; sentenced to a “courtroom lynching” as his due process; and then—unarmed—shot 17 times by a police guard who claimed he was trying to run away—smacks much too closely of the killings of Amadou Diallo, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Sean Bell, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, and so many other Black lives lost, mourned, and memorialized in today’s Black Lives Matter movement (Garza, 2014; Khan-Cullors, 2018). Do Black lives matter? Do Black emotions matter? If they do, why do we continue to center TKAM in secondary English curriculum, especially when we know it can traumatize African American students, causing them to experience grief and anger in the English classroom while their White peers get to feel good about themselves? And if we must teach the novel, how might we do so in ways that elucidate its problematic notions about racism and Whiteness? (Anagnostopoulos, 2011; Gibbons, 2009; Grieve,

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2012; Ricker-Wilson, 1998; Shaw-Thornburg, 2010 raise similar questions in their work.)

Reading “Against” To Kill a Mockingbird and Critical Whiteness Studies Borsheim-Black et al. (2014) suggest that a CLP focus as applied to canonical texts requires “against the text” reading—or reading that explicitly examines how canonical literature is embedded in and shaped by ideologies (p. 124). They explain: Reading against canonical literature challenges students to consider not only what is written in the text but also what is not written that still accounts for the way the story works, the characters function, and how readers come to know and understand the world. Thus, reading against canonical literature means reading between the lines to expose and interrupt embedded, dominant narratives, power dynamics, and perceived normalcy espoused by and hidden in the text. A Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) lens can prove useful in this regard, as its predominant purposes are to: (1) expose Whiteness as an invisible norm; (2) disrupt deeply entrenched myths about Whiteness that circulate in popular media (e.g., film and literature) to uphold White privilege; and (3) demand better than White complacency. White people merely recognizing their own individual prejudices and developing empathy for nonWhite Others is not enough to dismantle White supremacy. Instead, White people must commit to racial justice and act. Ultimately, CWS aims to force Whites to confront issues of race, make White dominance problematic, and work toward the abolition of Whiteness (Delgado & Stefancic, 1997; Doane & Bonilla-Silva, 2013; Feagin, 2000; Feagin, 2013; Garner, 2017; Roediger, 1991; Rodriguez, 1998; Twine & Gallagher, 2008). In what follows, I apply a CWS lens to the analysis of TKAM and attempt to flesh out some of the major tenets of CWS as described above. I focus specifically on three aspects of CWS as it applies to the novel, namely, (1) how Whiteness operates as an invisible norm; (2) how Whiteness—as a racial discourse—is constructed and maintained through the “White Messiah” trope; and (3) how Whiteness operates to protect White supremacy through its violent maintenance of juridico-political power.

“What You Up to, Miss Cal?” Whiteness as Invisible Norm As TKAM begins, the reader can see invisible White privilege writ large in the characters of Scout and Jem, who live in the center of town with their widowed father, Atticus, a well-liked lawyer. Scout and Jem have

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free reign in their well-maintained, segregated neighborhood during the summer. Scout and Jem come and go as they please, and then attend a segregated public school in the fall. The only Black person Scout and Jem know is their Black maid, Calpurnia, and despite Atticus’ dictum to “climb [into another person’s] skin and walk around in it” (Lee, 2006, p. 33), they know very little about Calpurnia’s life outside the Finch home, or about the experiences of Maycomb’s invisible Black residents who live “in that little settlement beyond the town dump” (p. 86). The White privilege of Maycomb’s most important citizens becomes even more obvious when Scout and Jem attend Calpurnia’s church one Sunday when Atticus is out of town. For the first time in the novel, Scout and Jem realize stark differences exist between their experiences and the experiences of Black people living under Jim Crow in Maycomb. At Calpurnia’s church, Scout notices “there was no sign of piano, organ, hymn-books, church programs—the familiar ecclesiastical impedimenta we saw every Sunday” (p. 136). When Jem proposes that the congregation “could save the collection money for a year and get some hymn-books,” Calpurnia replies, “Wouldn’t do any good. They can’t read” (p. 141). At this point, Jem and Scout not only learn about the material differences that mark Black and White experiences of church, but also Black and White experiences of schooling. When Jem asks Calpurnia where she went to school, she says, “Nowhere” (p. 141), and then explains she was taught to read by Miss Buford, a White woman close to the Finch household, and that she taught her son, Zeebo, to read because “there wasn’t a school even when he was a boy” (p. 142). As Scout begins to notice these differences and comes to an important realization, the reader witnesses the hidden, hegemonic normativity of Whiteness, as experienced by Scout: “That Calpurnia led a modest double life never dawned on me. The idea that she had a separate existence outside our household was a novel one . . .” (p. 143). In TKAM, Scout hasn’t needed to imagine Calpurnia’s life outside the Finch household as different from hers, because up until this point in the novel, nothing but Whiteness has been assumed. As Rodriguez (1998) argues, Whiteness maintains its invisibility by not being questioned. It is in this chapter, too, that Scout and Jem become conscious of their Whiteness and experience what it is like to be prejudiced against because of the color of their skin. When Calpurnia arrives at church with Scout and Jem, another Black woman, Lula, confronts Calpurnia, asking, “What you up to, Miss Cal? . . . I wants to know why you bringin’ white chillun to nigger church” (p. 135). Calpurnia replies, “They’s my comp’ny,” to which Lula responds, “Yeah, an’ I reckon you’s comp’ny at the Finch house durin’ the week” (p. 135). Lula continues, “You ain’t got no business bringin’ white chillun here—they got their church, we got our’n” (p. 136).

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As Doane (2013) explains, “Unlike members of subordinate groups, whites are less likely to feel socially and culturally ‘different’ in their everyday experiences and much less likely to have experienced prejudice, discrimination, or disadvantage as a result of their race” (p. 8). Up until this point in the novel, Scout and Jem have not felt socially or culturally “different” in any of the spaces they occupy in Maycomb (and certainly haven’t experienced discrimination) because the highly segregated, centrally located spaces they populate are White-dominated (e.g., Main Street, the local school, the court house). As the reader learns, however, Calpurnia’s church—First Purchase African M.E. Church, which is located “across the sawmill tracks, in the Quarters outside the southern town limits” (p. 134), is one of the few Black-dominated spaces, and even so, only on Sundays: “Negroes worshiped in it on Sundays and white men gambled in it on weekdays” (p. 134). Lula understands what a sacred space the Black church is. As Joseph (2015) explains: Black churches, specifically AME and Baptist, gave spiritual, religious, and material sustenance to African-American communities during and after slavery . . . The black church’s radical humanism harbored a fierce resistance to slavery, a love of freedom, and a thirst for citizenship and equality that made it a hotbed of internal debates, discussions, and controversies over the best course for black liberation in America. (n.p.) Lula, the only voice of Black resistance in TKAM, feels that Calpurnia threatens the sacred space of the Black church when she arrives with Scout and Jem. “It is our church, ain’t it, Miss Cal?” Lula asks (Lee, 2006, p. 136), suggesting that First Purchase on Sundays is the only space where Black people can be free from the White gaze and White domination, and at least be human and equal in the eyes of each other. Jem and Scout feel threatened by Lula’s confrontation, however, and the hypervisible Whiteness it entails: Jem tells Calpurnia, “Let’s go home . . . they don’t want us here” (p. 136). Scout agrees: “They did not want us here. I sensed, rather than saw, that we were being advanced upon” (p. 136). At this point, Calpurnia physically protects Scout and Jem and runs Lula off, who is later chastised for being “haughty” and a “troublemaker” (p. 136). This scene ultimately portrays Lula as a threat and public enemy, and Black resistance as evil, all at the hands of Scout and Jem’s Whiteness rendered hypervisible (and fragile—it must be protected by the loyal Black help). This serves an important function in the novel, as I explain in the next section. To successfully sell the myth of the great White Messiah as a necessary force in society requires that non-White Others be portrayed as either docile and loyal followers, or evil heathens (Vera & Gordon, 2003). In the case of TKAM, you get both.

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“I Couldn’t Hold My Head Up in Town” Atticus Finch as White Messiah Borsheim-Black (2015) explains that Whiteness can also be defined as a racial discourse, an ideology, that is continually constructed and maintained in ways of speaking, thinking, and interacting. Drawing on Gee’s (2008) “capital D Discourse,” Borsheim-Black defines Discourses of Whiteness as “ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, and speaking that construct, perpetuate, reinforce, and privilege Whiteness” (p. 410). One such discourse of whiteness is that of the White Messiah trope in popular culture mediums, such as literature and film. Vera and Gordon (2003) describe the White Messiah trope that circulates in popular literature and film as “a powerful cultural myth because it presents whites with pleasing images of themselves as saviors rather than oppressors of those of other races” (p. 116). This is certainly the case in TKAM, as Atticus is constructed as the ideal White self—a generous, altruistic, father figure—while the Black characters in the novel are portrayed as either dependent, faithful followers that bolster Atticus’ image (Calpurnia and most of the Black community in Maycomb), or as evil heathens (Lula) in need of a savior. Readers spend much of the last part of Part One of the novel witnessing Atticus grapple with his own moral conscience as he rationalizes defending Tom Robinson at trial. Vera and Gordon (2003) explain that the White Messiah is often characterized as an “alienated hero who is a misfit within his own society, mocked and rejected until he becomes the savior of oppressed peoples” (p. 116). Indeed, readers see that prominent White members of the Maycomb community and members of the Finch family have started to turn against Atticus and his children because he is defending Tom. During a holiday visit, Francis, Scout’s cousin, says to Scout, “I guess it ain’t your fault if Uncle Atticus is a nigger-lover . . . but I’m here to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family . . . He’s ruinin’ the family” (Lee, 2006, p. 94). Mrs. Dubose, an elderly neighbor of the Finch’s, screams at Scout and Jem from her front porch: “a Finch . . . in the courthouse lawing for niggers! What has this world come to when a Finch goes against his raising? . . . Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for!” (p. 117). But Atticus stands steadfast and stoic in his moral self-sacrifice, explaining to his children that if he didn’t defend Tom, “. . . I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again . . . I could never ask you to mind me again” (p. 86). He furthers, “This case is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience” (p. 120). Ultimately, Atticus is constructed as a White Messiah in the novel not because he wants to disrupt racism and White supremacy in Maycomb, but because he’s a true “gentleman,” “civilized in his heart” (pp. 112–113),

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a good, brave man who hopes to “jar the jury a bit” and get his kids through the trial without catching “Maycomb’s usual disease” (p. 100). Malcolm Gladwell, writing for the The New Yorker in 2009 explains, “Finch will stand up to racists. He’ll use his moral authority to shame them into silence . . . What he will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of . . . the island community of Maycomb, Alabama” (n.p.). And thus, the Atticus Finch as White Messiah trope transmutes racism into an individual problem (as opposed to a larger systemic, institutional problem) that can be fixed if we just “change our hearts and minds” and “unlearn racism” (Gladwell, 2009). This is problematic, as Anderson (2003) explains that confronting one’s own racial prejudice and race awareness is “no doubt a part of challenging the racial order, but, like studying prejudice in the absence of racial stratification, leaving things in the hands of ‘unlearning racism’ is likely to do little to unseat the apparatus of racial power” (p. 30). In addition, the White Messiah trope in TKAM also rests on the assumption that the Black characters in the novel need the White Messiah to lead their crusade for justice and liberation (Hughey, 2014). Saney (2003) and Shaw-Thornburg (2010) have criticized TKAM for its problematic positioning and (mis)representation of its Black characters: Calpurnia “had more education than most colored folks” (p. 27), while Tom is the “clean-living” (p. 86), “quiet, respectable, humble” (p. 232), disfigured Negro likened to a mockingbird—“they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us” (p. 103). Lula, the lone voice of Black resistance in the novel is a “contentious” “troublemaker,” who even Calpurnia denigrates by calling her a “nigger” (p. 136). As the writer Gloria Naylor (n.d.) suggests, Calpurnia’s in-group use of the term could indicate “communal disapproval of someone who has overstepped the bounds of decency” (n.p.). By point of contrast to the Black characters in TKAM, Atticus is portrayed as a paternalistic father figure and hero to Tom and other Black members of the Maycomb community, who extol his virtues. At Calpurnia’s church, Reverend Sykes welcomes Scout and Jem (“Mister and Miss Finch”) and reminds the congregation, “You all know their father” (Lee, 2006, p. 137). In addition, at the end of the trial, the Black community members who have attended the trial rise and stand when Atticus leaves the courtroom. As Scout observes, “I looked around. They were standing. All around us and in the balcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to their feet. Reverend Sykes’ voice was as distant as Judge Taylor’s: ‘Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’” (p. 241). Vera and Gordon (2003) explain, “The White Messiah [trope] tells us little about those of other races but much about the desire of the white self to avoid guilt and to see itself as charismatic, and minorities as needing white leadership and rescue” (p. 125).

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According to Bourdieu (1979), culture is not constructed rationally but derives from power. “Symbolic violence” refers to the imposition of systems of meaning upon people so that the symbols are recognized as legitimate. Culture is accepted as simply “the way things are,” which obscures power relations and contributes to their reproduction. Vera and Gordon (1995) explain that the White American self-concept is a “sincere fiction” that is maintained with intense symbolic labor (such as that found in literature and movies) so that people fail to recognize the brutal reality of American race relations (p. 136). As such, fictions of the White self as presented in TKAM do much to legitimize white privilege.

“Our Courts Are the Great Levelers”: White Supremacy (and White Complacency) in the Juridico-Political Sphere In her essay “Whitewashing Race,” Margaret Anderson (2003) encourages CWS scholars to connect the ideological construction of racial meaning/identities and racialization to the operation of the state (p. 29). As Feagin (2000) argues, “Systemic racism is not just about the construction of racial images, attitudes, and identities. It is even more centrally about the creation, development, and maintenance of white privilege, economic wealth, and sociopolitical power over nearly four centuries” (p. 21). As discussed in the above section, Atticus Finch is portrayed as the lone White hero of TKAM because he hopes to “jar” the deep-seated racist beliefs held by his friends and neighbors. Atticus has faith in White humanity because he believes in the “integrity of our courts and in the jury system” (p. 233). In his closing statements in the trial, Atticus explains: There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal— there is a human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. (p 233) What Atticus (White supremacy) fails (or refuses) to acknowledge, however, is that the legal system is not a neutral entity standing above interracial relations, but an agency of racial oppression. Atticus would know this. Atticus would know the Three-Fifths Compromise. Atticus would know the 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision that codified Black subordination through its judgment that Blacks were an inferior race with “no rights which the white man was bound to respect” (Mills, 2003). Atticus would know the promise of Emancipation and Reconstruction

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was betrayed by the Black Codes, the 1877 Hayes-Tilden Compromise, and the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which formally sanctioned “separate but equal” (Mills, 2003). For the next sixty years, including the time period in which TKAM is set, Jim Crow is the law of the land, with widespread Black disenfranchisement, exploitation, and inferior treatment in all spheres of life (Litwack, 1998). Atticus knows the Black people of Maycomb cannot use the White-only rest rooms, the White-only water fountains, the Whiteonly lunch counters, or the White-only parks. Atticus knows the Black citizens of Maycomb have the most menial of jobs, when they can get those. Atticus knows they experience minute-by-minute reminders of separateness premised upon their innate inferiority, and in perhaps one of the greatest ironies in the book, Atticus knows they will be segregated in the courtroom Atticus calls the “great leveler” (Freedman, 2008). Thus, for most of U.S. history, White supremacy has been de jure, and Blacks have either been non- or second-class citizens unable to appeal to the federal government to provide them equal protection (King, 1995). Atticus knows this. As Freedman (2008) explains, “Throughout his relatively comfortable and pleasant life in Maycomb, Atticus Finch knows about the grinding, ever-present humiliation and degradation of the black people of Maycomb; he tolerates it; and sometimes he even trivializes and condones it” (p. 73). Atticus also knows about the unofficial White violence used to protect White supremacy. As Scout observes, “. . . in the secret courts of men’s hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed” (p. 276). Atticus would know this false accusation has been enough to justify and rationalize the terrorization and murder of Black people for hundreds of years. As Baecker (2008) explains, “What is not treated as extraordinary in the novel is the alleged crime itself . . . In the same sense, the brute sexuality of the black race is taken for granted” (p. 108). Thus Atticus remains complacent, downplaying the local KKK organization and brushing off the lynch mob that comes for Tom by telling Jem the leader of the mob, Walter Cunningham, “just has his blind spots along with the rest of us” (Lee, 2006, p. 179). Ultimately, it is Atticus’ blind spots that contribute to Tom’s murder at the hands of a prison guard, who shoots Tom Robinson seventeen times in the back (p. 268). As Klor de Alva, Shorris, and West (1997) have written, “[Racial] categories are constructed, [but] scars and bruises are felt with human bodies, some of which end up in coffins. Death is not a construct” (p. 485). As discussed in an earlier section, racial identity is not just an individualized process, but “involves the formation of social groups organized around material interests with their roots in social structure, not just individual consciousness” (Anderson, 2003, p. 30). As Gladwell (2009) explains, “Finch wants his white, male jurors to do the right thing. But as a good

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Jim Crow liberal he dare not challenge the foundations of their privilege” (n.p.). Freedman (2008) suggests that if Atticus truly wanted to denounce White privilege, he wouldn’t have “hoped to get through life without a case of this kind” (Lee, 2006, p. 100). Freedman (2008) writes: Atticus Finch is, after all, a skilled lawyer, a friend of the rich and powerful, and for many years a member of the state legislature. Could he not introduce one bill to mitigate the evils of segregation? Could he not work with Judge Taylor in an effort to desegregate the courthouse? Could he not take, voluntarily, a single appeal in a death penalty case? And could he not represent a Tom Robinson just once without a court order to do so? (p. 75) Ultimately, White people benefit from White supremacy, and White complacency (as it is associated with White privilege) often allows for only a tokenistic response to cries of institutional racism. In TKAM, Atticus makes only a symbolic effort to defend Tom Robinson’s life, because “after all, [Tom’s] just a Negro” (p. 226).

Significance and Conclusion As Borsheim-Black et al. (2014) suggest, a reading “against the text” instructional approach with canonical novels in the secondary ELA classroom can hold implications for student assessment. They explain that “with the text” instruction often results in summative assessments in which students write literary analysis papers. These assessments can be problematic as they “contribute to the normalcy and neutrality of canonical literature curriculum and standards” (p. 131). Instead, Borsheim-Black et al. (2014) suggest that an “against the text” stance to literature instruction and assessment encourages teachers to design assignments that “position students as agents of change by setting up opportunities for them to transfer their critical reading of a canonical test to some type of social action” (p. 131). In the case of reading “against” TKAM, assignments and summative assessments might take multiple forms. In my own work with pre-service secondary English teachers, we put TKAM in conversation with Black voices across history (Groenke & Prickett, 2015), and transfer our critical reading of the novel to a direct challenge of the book’s canonical status in general, and its required reading status in our local school district in particular. As a final assessment, the pre-service teachers prepare a presentation to deliver to the school board, explaining their rationales for why the novel remains problematic, especially in its positioning of Black characters, Black history, and Black student readers, and arguing that it should be optional reading.

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Borsheim-Black et al. (2014) also suggest having secondary students “re-read and re-write their actual worlds” by producing their own media and cultural texts that interrogate how race is represented within other school curricula and school practices, such as achievement tests, school discipline data, and student representation in advanced classes. BorsheimBlack et al. (2014) also suggest that teachers and students could collaborate to design assignments by asking questions like, “After a critical consideration of [TKAM], what do I want others to know?” (p 131). (see Coe, 2017; Maher, 2013; Macaluso, 2017; Ricker-Wilson, 1998 for other good examples of “against the text” instruction of TKAM). Ultimately, however, reading “against” TKAM through a CWS lens holds opportunities for White people to own their identities, privilege, and complacency, and think about ways they can work to challenge White dominance. As Rodriguez (1998) suggests, “Mapping whiteness” in TKAM has the potential not only “to raise consciousness about one’s own possible complicity in supporting oppressive regimes, but it also positions one to encounter a multitude of critical languages that can be used to rethink and live whiteness in progressive ways” (pp. 31–32). TKAM, when read “against the text,” might provide guidance on what progressive Whiteness can look like. In perhaps a hopeful moment in TKAM, after Scout experiences the epiphany that Calpurnia lives a double life as a Black woman in Maycomb, Scout asks her, “Can I come see you sometimes? . . . Out to your house . . . Sometimes after work?” (p. 143). Similarly, it is Jem who calls out the institutionalized racism inherent in the legal system and Atticus’ complacency. After the trial is lost, and Atticus ho-hums about the “inevitable verdict” (p. 253), Jem says, “Then go up to Montgomery and change the law” (p. 251). As we’ve seen throughout history, as Black children marched to Selma and Washington to protect the adult members in their families from imprisonment, and as the young people in Parkland, Florida, have demanded new gun legislation in the aftermath of the tragic school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, it is young people who can “be the change” and make a difference in the world. And this change can start in the secondary ELA classroom.

Works Cited Anagnostopoulos, D. (2011). Teaching To Kill a Mockingbird in 21st century American classrooms: Sparking and sustaining discussions of race and racism in the English classroom. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Teacher Education and Education Policy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. Anderson, M. L. (2003). Whitewashing race: A critical perspective on whiteness. In A. W. Doane & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White out: The continuing significance of racism (pp. 21–34). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Books. Anderson, N. G. (2008). [Review of the book On Harper Lee: Essays and reflections, by A. H. Petry]. Alabama Review, 61(2), 151–153.

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Applebee, A. N. (1993). Literature in the secondary schools: Studies in curriculum and instruction in the United States. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Baecker, D. L. (2008). The Africanist presence in To Kill a Mockingbird. In C. Mancini (Ed.), Social issues in literature: Racism in Harper Lee’s to kill a Mockingbird (pp. 98–111). Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press. Borsheim-Black, C. (2015). “It’s pretty much white”: Challenges and opportunities of an antiracist approach to literature instruction in a multilayered white context. Research in the Teaching of English, 49(4), 407–429. Borsheim-Black, C., Macaluso, M., & Petrone, R. (2014). Critical literature pedagogy: Teaching canonical literature for critical literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(2), 123–133. Bourdieu, P. (1979). Symbolic power. Critique of Anthropology, 4(13–14), 77–85. Brokaw, T. (2010). “To Kill a Mockingbird” turns 50: Tom Brokaw on why it’s special. Retrieved from www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/07/10/to-kill-amockingbird-turns-50-tom-brokaw-on-why-its-special.html Cintorino, M. A. (1993). Getting together, getting along, getting to the business of teaching and learning. English Journal, 82(1), 23–32. Coe, C. A. (2017). Hearing the difference: “Mockingbird” novel inspires studentled anti-racism video project. Multicultural Perspectives, 19, 239–243. Crum, M. (2015). High school English teachers on why Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” endures. Retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/highschool-english-teachers-on-why-to-kill-a-mockingbird-endures_us_55a02146 e4b0ecec71bc269f Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (Eds.). (1997). Critical whiteness studies: Looking behind the mirror. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Doane, A. W. (2013). Rethinking whiteness studies. In A. W. Doane & E. BonillaSilva (Eds.), White out: The continuing significance of race (pp. 3–18). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Books. Doane, A. W., & Bonilla-Silva, E. (Eds.). (2013). White out: The continuing significance of racism. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Books. Feagin, J. R. (2000). Racist America: Roots, current realities, and future reparations. New York, NY: Routledge. Feagin, J. R. (2013). The white racial frame: Centuries of racial framing and counter-framing (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Freedman, M. H. (2008). Atticus Finch—right and wrong. In C. Mancini (Ed.), Social issues in literature: Racism in Harper Lee’s to kill a Mockingbird (pp. 67–76). Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press. Garner, S. (2017). Surfing the third wave of whiteness studies: Reflections on Twine and Garner. Ethic and Racial Studies, 40(9), 1582–1597. Garza, A. (2014). A herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. In J. Hobson (Ed.), Are all the women still white? Rethinking race, expanding feminisms (pp. 23–28). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Gee, J. P. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. New York, NY: Routledge. Gibbons, L. C. (2009). To Kill a Mockingbird in the classroom: Walking in someone else’s shoes. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Gladwell, M. (2009). The courthouse ring. Retrieved from www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2009/08/10/the-courthouse-ring

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Grieve, Q. (2012). A white woman addressing racial complexity in To Kill a Mockingbird. Retrieved from www.nais.org/Magazines-Newsletters/ITMagazine/ Pages/A-White-Woman-Addressing-Racial-Complexity-in-To-Kill-a-Mockingbird. aspx Groenke, S. L., & Prickett, R. (2015). Interdisciplinary opportunities with young adult historical nonfiction literature and the common core: An exploration of the black freedom struggle. In J. A. Hayn, J. S. Kaplan, A. L. Nolen, & H. A. Olvey (Eds.), Young adult nonfiction: Gateway to the common core (pp. 85–100). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Holland, B. R. (2016). Classical rhetoric in Atticus Finch’s speeches. English Journal, 105(6). Howell, K. (2007). Harper Lee wins Presidential medal of freedom. Retrieved from www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/awards-andprizes/article/14666-harper-lee-wins-presidential-medal-of-freedom.html Hughey, M. (2014). The white savior film: Content, critics, and consumption. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Jolley, S. A. (2002). Integrating poetry and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” English Journal, 92(2), 34–40. Joseph, P. E. (2015). Why the Black church has always mattered. Retrieved from www.theroot.com/why-the-black-church-has-always-mattered-1790860217 Kelley, J. B. (2010). What teachers (don’t) say: A grounded theory approach to online discussions of To Kill a Mockingbird. In M. Meyer (Ed.), Harper Lee’s to kill a Mockingbird: New essays (pp. 3–18). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Khan-Cullors, P. (2018). When they call you a terrorist: A black lives matter memoir. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. King, D. (1995). Separate and unequal: Black Americans and the federal government. Oxford: Clarendon. Klor de Alva, J., Shorris, E., & West, C. (1997). Our next race question: The uneasiness between Blacks and Latinos. In R. Delgado & J. Stefancic (Eds.), Critical white studies: Looking behind the mirror (pp. 482–492). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Lee, H. (2006). To kill a Mockingbird. New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Litwack, L. F. (1998). Trouble in mind: Black Southerners in the age of Jim Crow. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Macaluso, M. (2017). Teaching To Kill a Mockingbird today: Coming to terms with race, racism, and America’s novel. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 61(3), 279–287. Maher, S. C. (2013). Using “To Kill a Mockingbird” as a conduit for teaching about the school-to-prison pipeline. English Journal, 102(4), 45–52. Mills, C. W. (2003). White supremacy as sociopolitical system: A philosophical perspective. In A. W. Doane & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White out: The continuing significance of racism (pp. 35–48). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Books. Murphy, M. M. (2011). Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A celebration of to kill a Mockingbird. New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. Naylor, G. (n.d.). The meanings of a word. Retrieved from www.mpsaz.org/ mtnview/staff/lmbormann/class1/links/files/the_meanings_of_a_word_text_ version.pdf Ricker-Wilson, C. (1998). When the mockingbird becomes an albatross: Reading and resistance in the language arts classroom. English Journal, 87(3).

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Rodriguez, N. M. (1998). Emptying the content of whiteness: Toward an understanding of the relation between whiteness and pedagogy. In J. L. Kincheloe, S. Steinberg, N. M. Rodriguez, & R. E. Chennault (Eds.), White reign: Deploying whiteness in America. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Roediger, D. R. (1991). The wages of whiteness: Race and the making of the American working class. New York, NY: Verso Books. Rogers, T., O’Neill, C., & Jasinski, J. (1995). Transforming texts: Intelligences in action. English Journal, 84(8), 41–45. Saney, I. (2003). The case against To Kill a Mockingbird. Race & Class, 45(1), 99–105. Schaefer, B. V. (1989). A character comes to life in the classroom. English Journal, 78(6), 69–70. Shaw-Thornburg, A. (2010). On reading To Kill a Mockingbird: Fifty years later. In M. Meyer (Ed.), Harper Lee’s to kill a Mockingbird: New essays (pp. 113–127). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Stallworth, J. B., & Gibbons, L. (2012). What’s on the list . . . now? A follow-up study of the book-length works taught in secondary schools. English Leadership Quarterly, 34(3), 2–3. Stallworth, J. B., Gibbons, L., & Fauber, L. (2006). “It’s not on the list”: An exploration of teachers’ perspectives on using multicultural literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(6), 478–492. Stotsky, S. (2010). Literary study in grades 9, 10, 11: A national survey. Retrieved from http://alscw.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/forum_4.pdf Styslinger, M. E., Ware, J. O., Bell, C. W., & Barrett, J. L. (2014). What matters: Meeting content goals through teaching cognitive reading strategies with canonical texts. English Journal, 103(4). Twine, F. T., & Gallagher, C. A. (2008). The future of whiteness: A map of the “third wave.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(1), 4–24. Vera, H., & Gordon, A. M. (2003). The beautiful American: Sincere fictions of the white messiah in Hollywood movies. In A. W. Doane & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White out: The continuing significance of racism (pp. 113–127). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Books.

11 Literary Authorship and Community Seers in Bless Me, Última and The House on Mango Street “Let Me Begin at the Beginning” R. Joseph Rodríguez In this country, American means [W]hite. Everybody else has to hyphenate. Toni Morrison (1992b, The Guardian) This journey is my life, and it’s personal, and it’s the reason I became a writer: to add to those bookshelves that not only shape lives, they save them. What more noble cause than that, than to save the lives of our youth? And perhaps I’m saving myself each time I complete a book and toss it out to the sea of readers like a life preserver. Someone will grab it—grab hold of me. Rigoberto González (2017, p. 191)

Introduction In the poem “The Border: A Double Sonnet” (2015), Alberto Álvaro Ríos wrote, “The border says stop to the wind, but the wind speaks another language, and keeps going” (italics in original). This line from the poem can be used to describe a new boundary, frontier, or space and, in this case, Chicanx literature. Moreover, the line resonates with community languages native to the United States as well as the power of authorship, community, and language arts. An additional line from the poem reads, “The border, the word border, sounds like order, but in this place they do not rhyme” (italics in original). The place Ríos describes is any space colonized by a dominant group often in the guise of settlement with assimilation as a long-term project. Difference and even division create hierarchies that need dismantling and new interpretations similar to the study of literature and sanctioned texts. In spite of state-sanctioned segregation that included linguistic erasure of indigenous and Spanish languages, the works by Mexican-origin U.S. writers maintained a presence via independent presses to explore the cultures, representations, and struggles of communities seeking to contribute to the greater U.S. society.

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In Ends of Assimilation: The Formation of Chicano Literature (2015), Cutler noted the forces that permeate literary authorship and explained, “The idea of assimilation as boundary-crossing, a choice to divest oneself of ethnicity in exchange for full participation in mainstream American life, is pervasive in U.S. culture and looms over Chicano/a literature” (p. 12). Cutler noted that Chicanx literature “writes back [in response] against this idea” (p. 12). Moreover, forces connected to class and race are included; each of these affect life chances, access, and resources. Two additional structural forces to include that authors interrogate are gender and sexuality, and in Chicanx literary criticism inclusive dialogue and analysis serve as frame narratives. Overall, Cutler’s perspective can apply to the reinterpreting of canonical works that educators and researchers are rethinking and repositioning in response for greater inclusion in the study of literary works in high school classrooms across the country (Jago, 2011). Readers of all cultural and linguistic backgrounds and whose heritages are part of the United States—past to present—can benefit from inclusive approaches to literary studies (Rodríguez, 2019). During the 1970s and 1980s, the works of authors such as Rudolfo Anaya, Sandra Cisneros, Virginia Hamilton, Nicholasa Mohr, Walter Dean Myers, and Lawrence Yep, among others, were in response to absences, misrepresentations, and omissions in the U.S. literary canon with farreaching progress from then to the present. Moreover, the authors faced criticism—then and now—about the characters they created and whose coming of age in texts ignored larger circumstances and questions about civil rights, gender equity, patriarchal systems, sexual abuse and misconduct, and social justice, among others. Although matters about being marginalized or even facing injustice may appear in literary works by authors of color, these matters may not be as central to the characters the authors created. In fact, readers and theorists favored more sociocultural perspectives and civic culture of diversity as discussed in literary, political, and sociocultural studies criticism of the time (Gates, 1992; McInturff, 2003). At the same time, critics such as Bennett (1989), Bloom (1995), and others argued in favor of a Western valuing of the canon and its principles, yet Bloom (1995) added, “A literary work also arouses expectations that it needs to fulfill or it will cease to be read” (p. 18). In consideration of literary history, the term canon was an ecclesiastical term used during the Middle Ages to define the Roman Catholic Church’s sacred texts. For literary studies and in the interpretation of texts, however, a defined canon can come to embody the knowledge by which one is deemed educated or learned in a nation-state (Kolbas, 2001). In the study of American literature, significant literary works can be overlooked if intentional inclusion and a critical stance are not considered in setting the stage for more inclusive contributions by U.S. writers of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. One example to advance inclusion and all Americans in literary representation would be We Need

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Diverse Books (2018), founded as a movement at BookCon in 2014, which ushered new voices and representation—and even repositioning and reinterpreting—of works deemed as “classics” and “contemporary classics” for readership to reflect all Americans in editorial, marketing, publishing, and reading contexts. In keeping with the tradition of questioning texts and their influences upon readers and society to consider books that “arouse expectations,” a critical perspective can be adopted and applied closely on how structural forces and institutions dictate control, hierarchies, and ultimately power in the lives of young people as seen in canonical literary works and in their immediate and broader civic communities. In this chapter, I examine how literary authorship and community seercraft informs two novels from Mexican America to articulate adolescents’ coming of age and acquiring cultural knowledge in the pursuit of addressing a literary absence in the canon of American literatures by authors of color. In fact, the authors Anaya (in the 1970s) and Cisneros (in the 1980s) were essential storytellers who introduced a chorus of early adolescent and adolescent voices from the margins of both rural and urban areas of the United States for greater inclusion, readership, study, and understanding (Sagel, 1991, p. 74).

Literary Authorship The authorship process reveals the authors’ own struggles to both belong and adapt in competing environments and societies much like the youth characters they created. In response to a single-lens world, the storytelling contributions by Anaya and Cisneros expanded the literary canon with the inclusion of diverse youth characters and toward the concept of pluralism within American literatures and a community’s meaning-making. Rivera (2009) observed the power of writing as a way for “Latinas [to] insert themselves into militant platforms that call for radical change” and this often means it unfolds in the presence of White America (p. 2). In the essay “What Good Is Literature in Our Time?” (1998), Anaya answers the call for literature’s meaning in a new century and insisted, “[T]he creation of meaning within one’s smaller, particular community may be a necessity for the individual to grow and be heard. It is there people speak to their ancestors and guard their knowledge” (p. 474). Over the years since the publication of the two novels, the voices of teachers and researchers on pedagogical practices to consider for teaching Bless Me, Última and The House on Mango Street in the secondary and early college classroom gained greater readership for teacher-led research and also adoption of the authors’ earliest literary works (Cruz, 2011; Luján, 2011). Teachers presented various angles to approach the texts and to gain a greater understanding of the cultural knowledge and linguistic innovation advanced by Anaya and Cisneros in their respective works

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(Houtchens, 2011). For example, in the article “Coming of Age in Novels by Rudolfo Anaya and Sandra Cisneros” (1992), Klein noted the male and female experiences in the two novels complemented by rural and urban perspectives with narratives reflecting “one mythopoetic and one dialectic” (p. 21). In addition, Klein argues that both works “show the struggle of Chicano/a people to find identities that are true to themselves as individuals and artists but that do not betray their culture and their people” (p. 21). Cisneros acknowledges that she is often asked by readers if her first novel is autobiographical (Cisneros, 2015). In the introduction to the tenth-anniversary edition of The House on Mango Street (1994), Cisneros explains to her readers: “Am I Esperanza? Yes. And no. And then again, perhaps maybe. One thing I know for certain, you, the reader, are Esperanza. . . . You are Esperanza. You cannot forget who you are” (p. xix–xx). Hence, the novel’s protagonist is positioned as a collective voice, further confirming the early Chicanx readers’ anticipation of a literature from Mexican America that articulates the people’s sense of community. Cisneros’ response to her readers addresses the sense of self-determination, self-definition, and agency. Nevertheless, in the essay titled “Sandra Cisneros: Form over Content,” Stavans (2000) presented a misogynist and dismissive critique of both the author and novel by claiming, “What Cisneros does is tackle important social issues from a peripheral, condescending angle, drawing her readers to the hardship her female characters experience but failing to offer an insightful examination of who they are and how they respond to their environment” (p. 44). As a recent example of literary authorship and “outsidership,” in his Newbery Medal Acceptance Speech (2016), Matt de la Peña described the outsider roles often faced by both authors and readers alike in the making of stories for U.S. readers: “And sometimes when you grow up outside the reach of the American Dream, you’re in a better position to record the truth. That we don’t all operate under the same set of rules. That our stories aren’t all assigned the same value in the eyes of decision makers” (p. 2). Reinterpreting also calls for repositioning as one reads to experience points of view that challenge mindsets and values that can either hinder or support learning to foment cultural knowledge much like the “noble cause” that González’s (2017) epigraph discusses in adolescents’ lives (p. 191). Assumptions, preconceptions, and stereotypes about cultural groups and their communities are largely based on bias and prejudice. Anaya and Cisneros dismantled these biases via literary authorship and community seers to offer new direction, interpretation, and meaning. Whether it is a community in the fringes of rural or urban areas of the United States or Mexican America, a house inhabited by extended family members due to socioeconomic and cultural circumstances, or a neighborhood in the Latino quarter of a racially divided town or city, writers of Mexican

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descent Rudolfo Anaya and Sandra Cisneros introduce new literary characters and voices and community seers to American literature, shifting its ethnocentric ideology to a multiethnic literary history influenced by diverse and native cultures. Using the elements of narratology, or modes of storytelling that embody cultures, Anaya’s Bless Me, Última (1973) and Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street (1984) will be discussed in the effort to reinterpret these two canonical novels in secondary studies today.

Background on the Texts Bless Me, Última Published in 1972 by TQS Publications, a small independent press for Chicanx authors, the novel Bless Me, Ultima is required reading in many secondary and university classrooms. The novel depicts rural communities and agrarian life of New Mexico during the 1940s. Two subsequent novels, Heart of Aztlán (1976) and Tortuga (1979), complete the literary trilogy Anaya envisioned. Bless Me, Última is a commonly banned and challenged book across the country in school and libraries. Passages on religion, sexuality, and violence are often cited for the book’s review and removal from adolescent readers. Nonetheless, in 2008, the novel was selected as one of 12 classic American novels for the Big Read, a community-based reading program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (2008a; 2008b; 2008c). The novel Bless Me, Última chronicles the life of seven-year old Antonio Juan Márez y Luna during World War II and in the presence of his family and Última, who is a traditional healer, or curandera, and joins the family in her elderly years. She is described as a “woman who knew the herbs and remedies of the ancients, a miracle-worker who could heal the sick [. . .] and exorcise the evil the witches planted in people to make them sick” (p. 4). Anaya presents allegorical myths and allusion in the novel as Antonio gains maturity in the face of a complex social world marred by evil, pain, trauma, vengeance, vigilantes, and violence. Antonio witnesses ongoing conflicts partly created by his lineage of complementary opposites as well as a feud between Última and Tenorio Trementina, an evil brujo, or witch, who is driven to destroy Última. Anaya’s literary voice combines his personal voice and experience with the orature of cuentos del pueblo, the people’s sense of storytelling and storying that creates collective community and seercraft to be discussed later in the chapter. Of collective memory, Anaya explained to Martínez (1998): I understand myself as belonging to what I call a community or a tribal group. I am a member of a tribe. I not only have a personal history and a personal memory, but that group also has a group

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memory. I find it very fascinating to tap into that group memory through myself and come up with the symbols, the resources, the values, dreams, relationships, and the way of looking at the world that are not only particular to me but are particular to my tribe. This is how I understand collective memory. (p. 125) The memory Anaya describes and collective consciousness support the body of works he has created and are complemented through community voices and seers who appear in Bless Me, Última (1972). His first novel and those that follow emphasize the sense of community and place for the characters in the quest for meaning in the presence of community and individualism. Anaya’s novel faced critics such as Sommers who questioned the role of community beliefs, gendered norms, mysticism, Roman Catholicism, sacred versus secular, and the fantastic (Bruce-Novoa, 1990). Other examples abound in the novel’s critique over the years due to socially relevant issues absent in works such as Anaya’s, which gained momentum and readership as examples of Chicanx cultural life and thought. For example, the Chicanx Civil Rights Movement does not hold a prominent place in the novel nor does the quest for equity and justice in education, housing, and accessibility. Agrarian life is presented as romantic by accepting one’s lot in life, although the need to combat exploitation, racism, sexism, and rural poverty remain absent. An additional example to consider would be Antonio as he faces both humiliation and withdrawal when he begins his schooling. To further note the uses of language, the Spanish language, which is Antonio’s community language, does not have a place in his studies as he must yield to assimilation and the valuing of English as a public language for communications. Nevertheless, in the chapter titled “(Re)Reading the Chicano Literary Canon” found in Rethinking Chicana/o and Latina/o Popular Culture, Pérez (2009) argued that the novel portrays a loss of innocence, yet mystical qualities pervade in the novel. He added, “As Antonio matures, he distances himself from traditional institutions, like the [Roman Catholic] Church and his home. He adopts some of Última’s traits: paganism and curanderismo” (p. 89). Anaya’s artistic and literary authorship provides new ways of being and seeing the world through Antonio and Última. In fact, the community seercraft that is revealed presents new ways of becoming a “man of learning” while exploring the familiar cultures of families and communities (Anaya, 1994, p. 59). The House on Mango Street Published in 1984 by Arte Público Press, a small independent press for Latinx authors, the novel The House on Mango Street experienced

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various reprints that included a Vintage Contemporaries edition in 1989, a tenth-anniversary hardback edition by Alfred A. Knopf in 1994, and a 25th paperback anniversary edition by Vintage in 2009. The book appears in many translations including the Spanish-language edition as La Casa en Mango Street (1994), which was translated by Elena Poniatowska, a Mexican journalist and novelist. The novel has had stage adaptations and performances and was a selected book by major U.S. cities for reading events and programming. Even though Cisneros’ vignettes have the potential to come alive as truths, she still constructs Mango Street as a fictional narrative with insider females who serve as community-based seers as well as assistants for and protectors of children. As the main protagonist in The House on Mango Street, Esperanza Cordero is an early adolescent and emerging writer who chronicles her coming of age in a working class, Latinx community of Chicago, Illinois. In Spanish, her first name means “hope,” while her last name translates as “young lamb” or “shepherd.” Esperanza’s first-person point of view and observatory voice present the limited, oppressive, and traditional roles in her neighborhood community and the multiple ways these are often forced upon girls and women. She faces sexual harassment at her first place of employment and later is sexually assaulted at a carnival. The metaphor of a house, which becomes a dream house for Esperanza, propels the narrative forward in forty-six, short vignettes. Overall, Esperanza subverts the master narrative of control by resisting domination and seeking self-definition and empowerment in a community that may not favor female creativity and individualism. Narratives in both media and literature can often posit Mexican and Latinx-origin women as either angelic wives or saintly mothers. In response to this dichotomy, Cisneros constructs female characters in her novel as persons searching for autonomy and self-definition in the face of adversity in their communities (Ganz, 1994). To further address gender inequality and oppression, in the essay “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess” (1996), Cisneros acknowledged the imposed double standard she witnessed as a young girl. Like the narrative voice found in The House on Mango Street (2009) vignette titled “Boys & Girls” that states, “The boys and the girls live in separate worlds. The boys in their universe and we in ours,” the exclusive differences and separation of the sexes imposes restrictions and social codes of behavior on females within and beyond the house into the greater civic communities (p. 8). On the topic of icons, sexuality, and sexual behavior, Cisneros combines the personal into her literary authorship with a feminist lens for equality and explains, Did boys have to aspire to be Jesus? I never saw any evidence of it. They were fornicating like rabbits while the Church ignored them and

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pointed us women toward our destiny—marriage and motherhood. The other alternative was putahood. In my neighborhood I knew only real women, neither saints nor whores, naïve and vulnerable huerquitas like me who wanted desperately to fall in love, with the heart and soul. And yes, with the panocha [vagina], too. (p. 48) Cisneros recognizes the biased choices for females and huerquitas due to the conspiratorial silences of the Mexican and Latinx-origin and Church communities. Implicit in the description of poverty and hostility, Cisneros’ literary authorship of The House on Mango Street (2009) becomes an extension of a young person by expressing her self-determination in the face of oppression and her fears of subjugation in her community.

Community Seers and Seercraft A seer possesses communal wisdom that can provide instructive guidance to all members of a community as they face choices, dilemmas, doubts, and questions. The presence of the seer can suspend time for listening and understanding as shown in the novels by Anaya and Cisneros. The seer manages to hold a place in many communities, including literary ones, to communicate ancient and communal wisdom for a people. Anaya and Cisneros create their own sense of authorship and community by articulating the lives of the inhabitants of private spaces that merit validation in historical and literary contexts. Although the novels by Anaya and Cisneros were often marginalized by mainstream theoreticians as U.S. ethnic literature, the authors themselves read few works by U.S. authors of Mexican descent in their formal schooling and higher learning ( Martín-Rodríguez, 2003 ). The crescendo of diverse American voices—from the 1970s to today—challenges conventional exclusion and misrepresentations (Franco, 2009). Their literary contributions provide additional opportunities for readers to interpret with varied lenses for defining national, classic, and contemporary classic literature. The Western literary canon provides various interpretations about the seer in Greek tragedies by Euripides and Sophocles. For instance, in The Seer in Ancient Greece (2008), Flower noted the pervasive presence and role of seers in city-states and with individual citizens in ancient and classical Greece (800–300 BCE). Flower explained, “Just as important as what historical seers actually said and did is the way that society imagined the seer and the way in which seers represented themselves. Representation is not always, or even usually, identical with reality” (p. 3). In support of the perspectives presented by Martín-Rodríguez and Moraga, the reader finds critical passages in Chicanx literature that ascribe prophetic,

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yet humanizing, roles to community seers who are both neighbors and interlocutors in meeting ethical responsibilities to youth. The community seers appearing in the novels by Anaya and Cisneros represent themselves in ways that involve children and adolescents examining their beliefs, choices, destiny, fate, ideas, and values. In fact, the tempestuous journeys of children and adolescents may seem like independent ones that involve free will, yet they are dependent on various circumstances, forces, and persons communicating a greater presence of becoming human as one comes of age, interpreting cultural symbols in becoming knowledgeable, and making a life on one’s own terms despite the adversity and chaos. The tension unfolds with Última’s knowledge of healing and seercraft that cures the ill with medical plants, provides midwife care, and also calls for magic for the betterment of communities. The journey of the young protagonist is intermediated by community seers who are several in Anaya’s novel such as: Última, an elder curandera (community healer) who was educated by el Volaré, the flying man from Las Pasturas. The community seer also appears in moments of life changes and illnesses, providing guidance and hope in the face of impending death, in the poignant voices of women in Cisneros’ novel. Through community seers and literacy access, Cisneros positions the novel with characters who can transgress limitations and the imposed patriarchal order. For instance, in a vignette titled “Born Bad” in The House on Mango Street, Esperanza shares a poem with Aunt Guadalupe, who had a terminal illness, and then reveals the following to her niece: That’s nice. That’s very good, [Aunt Lupe] said in her tired voice. You just remember to keep writing, Esperanza. You must keep writing. It will keep you free, and I said yes, but at that time I didn’t know what she meant. (2009, p. 61) Writing grants Esperanza the voice to express feelings of shame and inadequacy, and she learns from a community seer about the power of writing. The search and need for feminist-led communities of their own with creative energies and without the shadow of a dominating, overpowering being appear in the novel (Cisneros, 2015). For example, in a complementary vignette that juxtaposes the social stigma of a “witch woman,” another character named with endearment, Elenita, reads cards with magic. She reveals to Esperanza that her inner strength holds a future “home in the heart.” In exploring further the “Cisnerian” voice, Cisneros employs literary techniques such as local color, the vernacular, and synesthesia to give life to urban realities; furthermore, she articulates the linguistic component shaped by cultural values, patriarchal domination, and social norms. For

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instance, in the vignette titled “Alicia Who Sees Mice,” Alicia faces not only her father’s patriarchal violence, but she must also succumb to poverty and domestic duties. Cisneros (2009) writes, “Alicia, whose mama died, is sorry there is no one older to rise and make the lunchbox tortillas[.] [S]he doesn’t want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin” (pp. 31–32). An “anti-academic voice” of an “American-Mexican” female, as Cisneros (1994) explained, Esperanza’s voice offers language arts all of its possibilities—both spoken and written (p. xv). These possibilities through languaging occur within and beyond the house, a space in which females experience oppression and victimization from the Mexican patriarchal system and the broader mainstream society. Although the metaphor of the house informs the novel, outside her parents’ house is where Esperanza meets a sisterhood community of seers. Titled “The Three Sisters,” the vignette includes a sister “with marble hands” who hears Esperanza’s secret wish (2009, p. 105). Esperanza learns the following: When you leave you must remember always to come back, she said. What? When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You cannot forget who you are. Then I didn’t know what to say. It was as if she could read my mind, as if she knew what I had wished for, and I felt ashamed for having made such a selfish wish. (2009, p. 105) The sisters present a sense of mystery with a community conscience and awareness. In fact, they communicate a wider interest and need about community and responsibility to the adolescent Esperanza trying to find her way, name herself, and determine her destiny. Overall, community seers provide guidance and intervention as needed or requested. These actions allow the young protagonists Antonio and Esperanza to consider and even reconsider difficult choices that appear in their life journeys. Ultimately, choice and even a sense of self and community rest upon them as they shape their identities and come of age. Furthermore, divine inspiration and forms of divination, spirituality, and community seercraft appear as vehicles to reach an informed decision. Bless Me, Última As a curandera and community seer, Última flanks Antonio through the significant stages of his coming of age and guides him toward solving the conflicts he must face to gain his own selfhood. The initial conflict for Antonio begins with the root of his two family names: his father’s which

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is Márez (seas) and “wandering across the ocean of the plain” and his mother’s, Luna (moon) (p. 6). His father Gabriel is a vaquero (a cowboy), while his mother is from a family of farmers. Antonio possesses keen insights as he comes of age to make meaning of his life and choices as a young boy. In fact, he is becoming a man in a world of binary opposites as well as contradictions. Moreover, Anaya presents the familiar scene and tension in the New Mexican landscape about the fate of Antonio: This one will be a Luna, the old man said, he will be a farmer and keep our customs and traditions. Perhaps God will bless our family and make the baby a priest. And to show their hope they rubbed the dark earth of the river valley on the baby’s forehead, and they surrounded the bed with the fruits of their harvests so the small room smelled of fresh green chile and corn[.] [. . .] He is a Márez, the vaqueros shouted. His forefathers were conquistadores, men as restless as the seas they sailed and as free as the land they conquered. He is his father’s blood. (p. 6) Última intervenes as intermediary and resolves the matter by caring for Antonio and becoming his mentor as he comes of age and toward “becoming a man” (p. 53). Together, they mediate the opposing beliefs and forces. Antonio’s dreams and how he experiences and notices the natural world are guided by his apprenticeship with Última. He explains to the reader his awakening: She took my hand, and I felt the power of the whirlwind sweep around me. [. . .] The four directions of the llano met in me, and the white sun shone on my soul. The granules of sand at my feet and the sun and the sky above me seemed to dissolve into one strange, complete being. [. . .] I saw in her eyes my dream. I saw the old woman who had delivered me from my mother’s womb. I knew she held the secret of my destiny. (pp. 11–12) Última’s abilities as a community seer guide Antonio through the difficulties of coming of age and also the world that is filled with hate, turmoil, violence, and uncertainty. There is possibility of another form of authoring one’s life through the community seercraft that Última believes and espouses to those who seek her assistance and guidance. Set in the village of Guadalupe, New Mexico, Anaya launches the discussion about community, cultural, and faith-based traditions and gender relations and what defines “the masculine” and “the feminine” in Antonio’s full name and his future of becoming a priest of a Roman Catholic, agrarian community or

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becoming a “vaquero.” Antonio faces a dilemma in his journey towards self-discovery as presented through his everyday experiences, prophetic dreams, and ancestral history. Anaya’s created world is mostly well-protected by family and community members as shown in their actions and belief systems. Even Última is protected by those she helped as Antonio’s mother explains, “Gabriel, we cannot let her live her last days in loneliness[.]” “‘No,’ my father agreed. ‘It is not the way of our people’” (p. 3). The importance of family ties and community care as a value appears early on in the novel. Inherent in his name, the dualism of Antonio’s life creates a duel in becoming human and facing society’s norms and scripted roles. Both femininity and masculinity are complementary and interdependent and a dismantling and cultivation of these labels is possible since “the waters are one” (p. 113). Gender can be negotiated and provide the opportunity to change a community’s practices in becoming both modern and egalitarian. Gabriel, Antonio’s father observed, “Ay, every generation, every man is a part of his past. He cannot escape it, but he may reform the old materials, make something new—” (p. 247). Through Última’s guidance and Antonio’s self-questioning, a new way of being and coming of age as a man are possible upon the realization, “I was growing up and becoming a man and suddenly I realized that I could make decisions” (p. 72). Toward the end of the novel, Antonio commands his own mother to take her sisters indoors after Última’s death and states, “‘Take them to their room,’ I said to my mother. It was the first time I had ever spoken to my mother as a man; she nodded and obeyed” (p. 246). This declaration informs the novel in many ways and presents a complementary challenge to the characters presented by Esperanza in Cisneros’ novel to defy patriarchal domination and norms that silence females into obedience and to succumb to male authority and decision-making. The House on Mango Street In the presence of family and community members, Esperanza grieves in the house located at 4006 Mango Street because of what she observes, experiences, and comes to understand as signaling her future of limited choices and scarce opportunities. Her name, Esperanza, offers “hope,” yet represents “sadness” from personal confinement and “waiting” for the rage and indifference to be overcome by a nonviolent anger. She wishes to “baptize [herself] under a new name, a name more like [her] real being, the one nobody sees,” rather than succumbing to the name (and its signifiers) she was born to accept (2009, p. 11). Moreover, in the vignette titled “My Name,” Esperanza desires a name that will assert her power to avoid her great-grandmother’s fate. Esperanza shares a similar plight with other girls and young women such as Sally, Rachel, Marín, and Minerva who appear in separate vignettes. A first-generation student named Alicia also

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appears in a few vignettes and acts as a model who Esperanza can emulate in her own journey with “her bag of books and paper” to become her own person (p. 108). In fact, Alicia serves as an indirect community seer when Esperanza reveals to the reader, “Alicia, who inherited her mama’s [tortilla] rolling pin and sleepiness, is young and smart and studies for the first time at the university” (p. 31). Alicia possesses resilience in the face of adversity created by patriarchal norms and as a first-generation student pursuing higher education. Esperanza’s given name offers possibilities for transgression to attain self-actualization within and beyond her community. As she explains in the vignette titled “My Name,” Esperanza comes from a family of women who transgress norms and endure family struggles when we read about her name, which comes from her great-grandmother. Like her great-grandmother, Esperanza yearns for escape from the life within the interiors of the house and community that lead to only looking out the window, limiting her maximum potential. In the vignette “Beautiful & Cruel,” Esperanza characterizes her current and future self as follows: “I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate” (p. 89). Like many other women connected to her family’s lineage—past and present, Esperanza yearns to become a full human being and woman in her own terms that are independent of community and social norms. She describes the Mango Street community as a place where women are locked in by limitations imposed by others. Esperanza yearns for a particular house: “[n]ot a flat. Not an apartment at back. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own” (2009, p. 108). The struggle Esperanza undergoes is against her confinement to the urban setting, which is controlled by mainstream and Mexican-origin patriarchy. The silences of women are articulated through the paraphrasing and dialogue of Esperanza in the hopes of subverting the domestic formula toward a feminist liberation. Like her great-grandmother, Esperanza was born in the “Chinese year of the horse—which is supposed to be bad luck if you’re born female—but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don’t like their women strong” (2009, p. 10). As both systems position her inside the house as the sole space for women, Esperanza rejects the domestic space because it has become an extension of herself, and she fears subjugation in the house. As a final example via the vignette titled “Edna’s Ruthie,” readers meet Ruthie who cannot make any decisions on her own, asking for permission from her mother even as an adult. Esperanza explains, “Sometimes we [children] go shopping and take [Ruthie] with us, but she never comes inside the stores and if she does she keeps looking around her like a wild animal in a house for the first time” (2009, p. 68). Ruthie is not familiar with the public space, and she fears the decisions and choices that life

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brings; thus, she remains entrapped in Mango Street communities, full of dreams and hopes, which are unfulfilled. The vignette does not inform the reader what exactly happened to Ruthie, since she “got married and moved away to a pretty house outside the city” (2009, p. 69). The title reflects her status as that of still belonging to her mother, Edna, even though she has come of age. Thus, Ruthie finds herself confined to a matriarchal space and her sufferings of agoraphobia. Nonetheless, Ruthie functions as a community seer for Esperanza. In fact, Esperanza gains literacies for authorship, meaning, and survival while coming of age in the Mango Street community. We learn from Esperanza: I like showing Ruthie books I take out of the library. Books are wonderful, Ruthie says, and then she runs her hand over them as if she could read them in braille. They’re wonderful, wonderful, but I can’t read anymore. I get headaches. I need to go to the eye doctor next week. I used to write children’s books once, did I tell you? (2009, p. 69) As these two vignettes suggest, the world is set in motion by social constructions, and each of these is indifferent to human beings, particularly to confined, silenced women. Community seers appear with messages to heed and beacons of hope. Mango Street is a place where Esperanza Cordero may have, at times, felt joy and a sense of belonging; however, it is also a place where she meets community seers and realizes that women and their communities face limitations. By denouncing this subjugation and resisting auto-marginalization, Esperanza gains control of her past and creates a present that will allow her to go “away to come back. For the ones [she] left behind. For the ones who cannot get out” (2009, p. 110).

Shared Perspectives in the Novels The drive to challenge social norms and even to dispel myths about adolescent and cultural knowledge applies to Bless Me, Última (1973) and The House on Mango Street (1984). Both Anaya and Cisneros present protagonists searching for cultural and individual meanings about themselves in civic communities, schooling experiences, and socially constructed norms. The essential questions the protagonists Antonio Juan Márez y Luna and Esperanza Cordero face in the greater world of the bildungsroman novel can be posed in a series of seven questions by the reader: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Who am I? How can I belong to be me? Who decides who I am to become? When does change happen?

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(5) Why did this happen to me or us? (6) What’s next? (7) Where am I meant to be? The sense of safekeeping and even community stewardship that Anaya and Cisneros provide as authors speaks to the cultural affirmation they seek to communicate and also to question cultural knowledge and social struggles through the characters they created. Klein’s (1992) perspectives are significant to note, especially from her teacher action researcher perspective, when she adds that the author and reader struggles—much like that of an ancient Mesoamerican scribe—are “no mean feat, considering that Anglos did not teach them to value their cultural heritage and experiences, that they were shown no Chicano/a role models, that, in fact, they were discouraged from writing” (p. 21). The absence of valuing one’s cultural knowledge and the authors’ own determination to write novels to affirm an ethnic group’s rhetorical literacies is an additional feat to reinterpret culture and challenge bias and stereotypes. Klein’s observation also reflects the legislation and school policies enacted for the control, and even erasure, of Mexican-origin and indigenous people’s cultures and languages in the greater U.S. Southwest borderlands. Both Bless Me, Última and The House on Mango Street can be described as bildungsroman fiction, or coming-of-age works, with autofictive features partially based on the authors’ lives in rural New Mexico (Anaya) and urban Chicago, Illinois (Cisneros). The novels present narratology elements to literary studies and the American literary canon, but also the narratology forms of “restorying,” which Thomas and Stornaiuolo (2016) identified and examined in the article “Restorying the Self: Bending Toward Textual Justice.” As a reader-response process, “restorying” permits authors and readers to give their lives form on the digital and nondigital page, reinterpret narratives to reflect more diverse perspectives, and embed their own experiences that are absent in mass-consumed texts, media, and popular culture for the meaning-making. Such a process allows a more nuanced interrogation of texts and even multimedia approaches and applications to advance the narrative with questions about identity and representations. More specifically, Thomas and Stornaiuolo (2016) noted, “Canonical texts historically assumed a White male readership as their imagined audience, and, in turn, people from other groups had to read those narratives to attain print literacies and acquire the codes of power” (p. 317). Their argument is relevant to reinterpret the canonical novels by Anaya and Cisneros in the twenty-first century. The form and process of “restorying” they identified also confirms the literary criticism on race and identity advanced by Toni Morrison (1992a, 2017) in two separate works to further examine racial tropes and actions for literary erasure. Thus, the two novels and the literary criticism produced provide significant lenses and

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even diverse approaches to teaching the two novels in the high school classroom. In With a Book in Their Hands: Chicano/a Readers and Readerships across the Centuries (2014), Martín-Rodríguez argued against generalizations, but noted the characterization of Chicanas as having a “strong feminist content, a direct tone (often using irony and sarcasm), an interest in debunking myths and images of women perpetuated in early literature by men, [. . .] and the need to articulate and denounce multiple oppressions” (p. xvii). On the other hand, in A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000–2010 (2011), Moraga acknowledged the role of narratology as practiced by Mexican-origin people and against the “unjust Western literary canon,” which highly values the “privately read, soundless word and abstract thought” (p. xvi). Moraga added that Mexican-origin people tell “stories aloud: as weapons against traíciones [betrayals], as historical account and prophetic warnings” (p. xvi). Both Martín-Rodríguez and Moraga’s positions on interpreting the readership and narratives of Mexican-origin peoples in the United States apply to reading the two novels by Anaya and Cisneros and encompass the work of community seers.

Toward a Conclusion In these bildungsroman novels by Anaya and Cisneros, the authors themselves possess qualities of revered community seers. In fact, significant communities are restored as these two authors raise their collective voice by recovering, redefining, and “restorying” literary traditions once silenced and marginalized across much of U.S. literary history with limited access to authorship, marketing, and publishing. Through the initiative Big Read of the National Endowment for the Arts (2008a, 2008b, 2008c), Anaya explained, “A novel is not written to explain a culture; it creates its own” (p. 2). Such cultural authorship through literary work speaks to the imagination and contributions of Anaya and Cisneros. In fact, the immediate reality of the author becomes a source for expression and hope to articulate the struggles of a culturally and linguistically diverse community for survival against numerous borders, challenges, and limitations (Cisneros, 2015). Nevertheless, the authors’ resilience through carrying diverse storytelling forward and their commitment to native U.S. cultures enlarges the American literary canon. Through Anaya and Cisneros’ narratology, readers can question the coming of age of characters and interpret the limitations or even subversion of social and assimilationist norms in becoming adults who can think and act for themselves. A character’s sense of self and community can be altered and even revised to challenge ideals, misrepresentations, and representations. By extension, Cutler (2015) argued: “Chicano/a literary works are also attuned to the thoroughly gendered character of ideals of

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individualism and self-making. [. . .] Chicano/a literature centers representations of cultural change on dramas of familial power, sex, desire, and the threat of masculine domination” (p. 12). Ultimately, Anaya and Cisneros give voice to children, adolescents, and women via literary characters and community seers they create to resist ideals, norms, and oppression in the effort to chronicle lives once ignored, missing, or threatened in literary authorship and scholarship. Texts with literary characters of Latinx descent were once relegated to the margin, yet continue to be acknowledged beyond Western canonical standards of exclusion and misrepresentation (Jago, 2002). Thus, the access to literature is influenced by the ideology—economic, political, and social circumstances—in which it is born and produced for the masses and its communities. In the essay titled “The Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature” (1989), Toni Morrison declared, “Canon building is Empire building. Canon defense is national defense” (p. 8). Such building and defense of a select and privileged literature confirms a larger project that faced dismantling through multicultural literature movements and most recently through culturally sustaining and inclusive pedagogies in literary studies (Rodríguez, 2019). To advance comparative literary studies that include Latinx literature, the Africanist presence in American literature is relevant and was explored by Morrison (1992b) with a focus on the cultural and historical realities that shape racial ideology in literature. That is, hierarchies of class, color, and sexism surface and require interrogation in the unsettling of norms in U.S. literary studies. Morrison questioned symbols that contribute to the “fabrication of racism” and other means of oppression and silencing (p. 16). In the recent book titled The Origin of Others (2017), Morrison explained, “Race has been a constant arbiter of difference, as have wealth, class, and gender—each of which is about power and the necessity of control” (p. 3). Moreover, in the chapter titled “The Color Fetish,” Morrison added, “Of constant fascination for me are the ways in which literature employs skin color to reveal character or drive narrative—especially if the fictional main character is [W]hite (which is almost always the case)” (2017, p. 41). The cultural and historical realities remain relevant and require reinterpretation for literary authorship and understanding. Through the literary contributions by Anaya and Cisneros, the reader observes that the Mexican or Latinx-origin characters who are children and adolescents are humanized through literary authorship and community seers. Anaya’s novel opens in the guise of a genesis with the arrival of Última, whose name translates literally to “the last one” as a female, while Cisneros’ novel opens with a telling of what occurred before: where the family lived far before the present time. Similarly, the beginnings of American literatures call for recovering overlooked texts and including the voices of those not provided a page for study across centuries, communities, and scholarly work. While actively engaging in the labor of

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recovering and naming the literary voices that merit study as well as an audience for readership and understanding, the bildungsroman novels by Anaya and Cisneros continue to expand, reinterpret, and remap our literary imagination and narratology in the high school classroom.

Works Cited Anaya, R. A. (1972/1994). Bless me, Última. New York, NY: Grant Central Publishing. Anaya, R. A. (1994). Bendíceme, Última (A. Smithers, Trans.). New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing. Bennett, W. J. (1989). Our children and our country: Improving America’s schools and affirming the common culture. New York, NY: Touchstone Books. Bloom, H. (1995). The Western canon: The books and school of the ages. New York, NY: Riverhead-Putnam Books. Bruce-Novoa, J. (1990). RetroSpace: Collected essays on Chicano literature, theory, and history. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press. Cisneros, S. (1984/1994). The house on Mango Street. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Cisneros, S. (1984/2009). The house on Mango Street. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Cisneros, S. (1994). La casa en Mango Street (E. Poniatowska, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books. Cisneros, S. (1996). Guadalupe the sex goddess. In A. Castillo (Ed.), Goddess of the Americas, La Diosa de las Américas: Writings on the virgin of Guadalupe (pp. 46–51). New York, NY: Riverhead-Putnam Books. Cisneros, S. (2015). A house of my own: Stories from my life. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Cruz, M. (2011). Engaging students on the journey of Bless me, Última. In J. O. Milner & C. A. Pope (Eds.), Engaging American novels: Lessons from the classroom (pp. 333–334). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Cutler, J. A. (2015). Ends of assimilation: The formation of Chicano literature. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. de la Peña, M. (2016, June 26). Newbery medal acceptance speech. Chicago, IL: Association for Library Service to Children. Flower, M. A. (2008). The seer in ancient Greece. Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Franco, D. J. (2009). Ethnic American literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American writing. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Ganz, R. (1994). Sandra Cisneros: Border crossings and beyond. MELUS, 19(1), 19–29. Gates, H. L., Jr. (1992). Loose canons: Notes on the culture wars. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. González, R. (2017). Pivotal voices, era of transition: Toward a 21st century poetics (Poets on poetry). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Houtchens, B. C. (2011). Finding ourselves in Antonio: Teaching Bless me, Última. In J. O. Milner & C. A. Pope (Eds.), Engaging American novels:

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Lessons from the classroom (pp. 335–343). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Jago, C. (2002). Sandra Cisneros in the classroom: “Do not forget to reach.” Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Jago, C. (2011). With rigor for all: Meeting common core standards for reading literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Klein, D. (1992). Coming of age in novels by Rudolfo Anaya and Sandra Cisneros. English Journal, 81(5), 21–26. Kolbas, E. D. (2001). Critical theory and the literary canon. New York, NY: Routledge. Luján, A. C. (2011). Beginning with Última. In J. O. Milner & C. A. Pope (Eds.), Engaging American novels: Lessons from the classroom (pp. 363–371). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Martínez, R. (1998). Interview with Rudolfo Anaya. In B. Dick & S. Sirias (Eds.), Conversations with Rudolfo Anaya (pp. 116–130). Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Martín-Rodríguez, M. M. (2003). Life in search of readers: Reading (in) Chicano/a literature. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Martín-Rodríguez, M. M. (2014). Introduction. In M. M. Martín-Rodríguez (Ed.), With a book in their hands: Chicano/a readers and readerships across the centuries (pp. xiii–xxx). Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. McInturff, K. (2003). The uses and abuses of world literature. The Journal of American Culture, 26(2), 224–236. Moraga, C. L. (2011). A Xicana codex of changing consciousness: Writings, 2000–2010. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Morrison, T. (1989). Unspeakable things unspoken: The Afro-American presence in American literature. Michigan Quarterly Review, 28(1), 1–34. Morrison, T. (1992a). Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Morrison, T. (1992b, January 29). Quote. The Guardian. Retrieved from www. theguardian.com/info/2017/jun/26/how-to-access-guardian-and-observerdigital-archive Morrison, T. (2017). The origin of others. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. National Endowment for the Arts. (2008a). NEA Big Read: Bendíceme, Última: Guía de lector. Retrieved from www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/Guia-delLector-BendicemeUltima.pdf National Endowment for the Arts. (2008b). NEA Big Read: Bless Me, Ultima: Reader’s guide. Retrieved from www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/Readers-GuideBlessMeUltima.pdf National Endowment for the Arts. (2008c). NEA Big Read: Bless Me, Ultima: Teacher’s guide. Retrieved from www.neabigread.org/books/blessmeultima/ teachers-guide/ Pérez, D. E. (2009). Rethinking Chicana/o and Latina/o popular culture. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Ríos, A. A. (2015). The border: A double sonnet. Retrieved from www.poets.org/ poetsorg/poem/border-double-sonnet Rivera, C. H. (2009). Border crossings and beyond: The life and works of Sandra Cisneros. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, ABC-CLIO.

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Rodríguez, R. J. (2019). Teaching culturally sustaining and inclusive young adult literature: Critical perspectives and conversations. New York, NY: Routledge. Sagel, J. (1991, March 29). Sandra Cisneros: Interview. Publishers Weekly, 74–75. Stavans, I. (2000). The essential Ilan Stavans. New York, NY: Routledge. Thomas, E. E., & Stornaiuolo, A. (2016). Restorying the self: Bending toward textual justice. Harvard Educational Review, 83(3), 313–338. We Need Diverse Books. (2018). Media kit. Retrieved from https://diversebooks. org/media-kit/

12 “We Got to Be Smart to Git Away” Revisiting African American Language and Emancipatory Literacy in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Sapphire’s PUSH Raquel Kennon No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. —Zora Neale Hurston, “How it Feels to Be Colored Me”

Both Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple (1982) and Sapphire’s PUSH (1996) represent a flourishing tradition that underscores the significance of black girls and women narrating their own life experiences on their own terms. Although both novels resist facile tracing of linear literary influence, I argue that these works of fiction exist as sister texts embodying the practice of reading and revising characteristic of the African American literary tradition. Prominent critical voices including the groundbreaking scholarship of Christian (1980, 1994), Smith (1982), Walker (1983), Washington (1987), and Carby (1987) have theorized the vital importance of establishing a literary tradition for black women writers, one that situates the nineteenth-century slave narratives and early autobiographies as the literary foundation of a tradition which gives account of the most harrowing experiences of black women’s lives. Walker’s celebration and recuperation of Zora Neale Hurston into the nascent black women’s canon of the 1970s as documented in her classic 1975 essay, “Looking for Zora,” exemplifies the necessity of being able to locate oneself as an author within a tradition of foundational poetic forbearers. Walker employs the epistolary—“the form used in the first English novels,” as Christian (1990) outlines, “a form associated with women’s history, and uses both the slave narrative and the sentimental romance in its structure”—and transforms it into her own creative voicing of her main protagonist, Celie. Celie and the surrounding cast of black women characters’ lived experiences animate Walker’s searing novel which brilliantly

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narrates the journey from dispossessed brutalization to embodied subjectivity. Sapphire’s central protagonist, Precious, similarly finds liberation through acts of critical reading and writing in formal and informal learning environments which affirm the power of self-expression, written correspondence, discursive exchange, and literacy attainment as instrumental emancipatory acts. As Collins (2009) astutely contends, “some women write themselves free” (p. 130). Celie and Precious, in varying ways, carve out freedom for themselves by cultivating oral and written language practices. Several salient features distinguish each novel’s specific cultural and sociopolitical contexts, including the more than half a century separating their historical periods (early to mid-twentieth century versus 1987), vast regional differences (rural South versus urban North), and passage of narrative time (multiple generations versus two years). I argue that a comparative analysis of the ruptures, disjunctures, and convergences in the main characters’ evolving writing practices, literacy development, and general education in these two texts provide an instructive methodology for considering these poignant and often excruciating textual portrayals of two adolescent black girls. As these protagonists transition from adolescence to womanhood—triangulated by racism, classism, and sexism while suffering monstrous sexual abuse within patriarchal systems—they manage to navigate and ultimately overcome the brutality, abjection, and destitution of their daily lives through language and writing. Yet, the longsuffering protagonists emerge whole at the conclusion of each novel, and “do not weep at the world,” as Hurston famously announces, but instead remain “too busy sharpening” their “oyster knife” (Hurston, 1928). Celie, spurred by Nettie’s academic prowess, and later driven by her own autodidactic impulses, develops literacy and authorial voice as Walker’s novel unfolds and her letter writing becomes critical to her physical and existential survival in the interwar period in Georgia while Sapphire’s Precious, through formal adult literacy programs in late 1980s Harlem, gradually gains increasing fluency with written and verbal language expression. Precious’ will to survive each day is a living resistance. Linguistic fluency enables Celie and Precious to translate agonizing years of sexual assault, incest, physical violence, and psychological abuse into their own writing as these black women attempt to arrive at a more profound comprehension of the horrors of their early childhood and adolescence by affirming themselves as thinking and writing subjects who are able to derive meaning and assert agency in a world that has seemingly abandoned them.

Exploring the Critical Archive As the resounding words of the Combahee River Collective Black Feminist statement delineate, “we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for survival

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and liberation” (Smith, 1982, pp. 13–14). Both The Color Purple and PUSH dramatize black girls’ and women’s struggle for “survival and liberation” while reworking tropes of the African American literary tradition. Bowles, Fabi, and Keizer (2007) further assert that Barbara Christian’s pathbreaking Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition “established authoritatively the idea of an African American women’s novelistic tradition stretching from the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century” (Bowles et al., 2007, p. x). Christian’s foundational work valorizes and establishes a literary tradition that highlights black women’s survival and liberation while using what hooks (2000) refers to as “the special vantage point” of “marginality” to “criticize the dominant racist, classist, sexist hegemony as well as to envision and create a counter-hegemony” (p. 16). The foregrounding of black women’s perspective has prompted critics to situate the thematic concerns in Walker’s and Sapphire’s fiction within the larger tradition of African American autobiography, and specifically the classic slave narratives exposing the dangerous trails and unbearable abuses of enslaved women’s experiences. Richardson (2012), for example, convincingly argues that Precious’ narrative features—“neglect and fatherlessness; horrific physical and psychic abuses, including the trauma of sexual abuse and rape; the struggle for literacy; the instability and shifting in naming; the quest for freedom; and ultimately, the claiming of voice and selfhood through processes of oral and written narration”—recall the slave narrative and neoslave narrative, employing similar literary conventions (p. 162). As such, a traceable genealogy between Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, The Color Purple, and PUSH crystallizes. Yet, there is a relative dearth of PUSH scholarship and, as Fulton (2012) notes, “a marked lack of attention to Sapphire’s work by scholars in academe,” resulting in the novel “not garner[ing] the attention it deserves, particularly in scholarship on African American literature” (p. 161). David (2016) describes this as “critical isolation” due to “disturbing language and imagery” which render Precious as mother figure “incompatible with dominant (white) domestic ideologies or black communities’ expectations of respectability” (p. 174). Lester (2012) further elaborates, the novel is “hard to read” and “equally hard to talk about, yet impossible to ignore” (p. 184). Yet, Highberg (2010) points out that Precious fills in the gap in mainstream media to offer “complete, nuanced images of the African American girl with AIDS” (p. 10). Reading PUSH alongside The Color Purple, then, affirms the literariness of this startlingly realist novel and positions it within a canon of texts deserving serious critical engagement. McDowell (1987) underscores the importance of the African American literary tradition and finds in the genre of the novel “a new literary space for a black and female idiom” (p. 298). A major branch of critical discourse locates the source of Celie’s liberation outside of herself. Davis (2015) powerfully suggests that Walker’s “Black South” emerges as a vital space to analyze the intersection of

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race, class, gender, and sexuality (p. 169). Marvin (1994) further argues that Shug, a powerful Blues woman like Bessie Smith, catalyzes Celie’s liberation through what he calls a “blues conversion” in which the singer “promised her followers a new relationship between the individual and the world, one based on the holiness of all living things and the spiritual power of the spoken word” (p. 411). Collins (2009) observes that the relationship between Shug and Celie typifies “cases where Black women helped one another grow in some fashion” (p. 115). Shug certainly introduces new ways of thinking about religion that might resonate with Wall’s (2005) postulation that Walker draws from “heterodox spirituality” (p. 155). Thus, Walker represents the bonds of black spiritual sisterhood that extend beyond Christian practices with Blues woman Shug prompting Celie to imagine herself as an active agent in the world. Other dominant critical approaches focus on the narrative strategies of Walker’s novel. Gates (1988) theorizes that Walker revises Their Eyes Were Watching God using “the written yet never uttered voice of free indirect discourse which is the predominant vehicle of narrative commentary in Hurston’s novel” (Gates, 1988, p. 243). A number of other scholars chart the relationship between Walker and Hurston’s most famous novel, often obliquely, and also explicate the literary origins of Walker’s epistolary form (Katz, 1988; Hite, 1989; Johnson, 1998). Furthermore, Gates (1988) suggests that Celie’s diction mimics Janie’s of Their Eyes Were Watching God with one crucial caveat: Celie rarely speaks and instead “writes her speaking voice and that of everyone who speaks to her,” that is, she “writes herself into being” (Gates, 1988, p. 243). In contrast, Warhol (2001) focuses on what she calls the “good cry” in narrative fiction and argues that “the novel’s affective impact” stems from its “narrative technique, particularly the ways it uses focalization and address to underscore the novel’s affirmation of [. . .] feminine mythologies” (p. 182). Walker’s narrative strategies operate on several levels to recall these earlier literary traditions and conventions. Several scholars elaborate on the specific uses of language and the epistolary form in The Color Purple. Kaplan (1996) states that “the intersubjective exchange created when we speak to one another” operates in Walker’s text to become “a model for the way things finally are in Celie’s transfigured, ideal, familiar, feminist world” (p. 124). Yet, Kaplan (1996) also points out the contradictions within the text when Celie, within a matter of pages, evolves from profound distrust of God, to a final proclamation of happiness addressed to God and “everyone” once reunited with her sister and children. This skepticism about the perfectly neat resolution in a text heralded as a feminist model echoes hooks’ (1992) own reservations. One of the critical disagreements centers on the degree to which Celie truly finds liberation. While acknowledging certain transformations in

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Celie’s consciousness, hooks (1992) denies her arrival at any measure of feminist liberation: Despite all the “radical” shifts in thought, location, class position, etc., that Celie undergoes in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple from her movement from object to subject to her success as a capitalist entrepreneur, Celie is reinscribed within the context of family and domestic relations by the novel’s end. The primary change is that those relations are no longer abusive. (p. 47) Although Celie undergoes this shift in positioning, hooks (1992) asserts that she “has not become a ‘feminist,’ a civil rights activist, or a political being in any way” (p. 47). Unlike Kaplan’s interpretation, there is a limit to Celie’s liberation in hooks’ (1992) reading such that she has escaped “the patriarchal prison that is her ‘home’ when the novel begins” and forms “her own household, yet radical politics of collective struggle against racism or sexism do not inform her struggle for self-actualization” (p. 47). In other words, Celie’s resistance does not move far beyond her own escape and the protection of her sister, Nettie. Although relatively marginalized in academic studies, Sapphire’s PUSH has produced a limited yet rich body of scholarship. An anthology of critical essays—the first full-length book on the subject—examines the novel from four thematic perspectives: “transformational representations,” “body and place,” “pedagogy and the academy,” and “engaging the work, engaging the writer” (McNeil, Lester, Fulton, & Myles, 2012). This critical study elucidates how PUSH distinctly portrays Precious’ journey into “selfhood,” but how it is also “a work in the African Americanist, womanist narrative, and aesthetic traditions of such writers as Hattie Gossett, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Jamaica Kincaid, and Ntozake Shange” (McNeil et al., 2012, p. 3). Additionally, Wall (2012) introduces an important collection of critical essays published in a 2012 special edition of Black Camera which focus on the release of Lee Daniel’s 2009 film Precious and advance a variety of persuasive interpretative frameworks rooted in a literary tradition. McNeil (2012), for example, offers an ecofeminist critique of Precious’ life which she posits allows the protagonist “grotesque-erotic agency” through her participation in “a community of survivors” (McNeil, Un-“Freak”ing black female selfhood: Grotesque-erotic agency and ecofeminist unity in Sapphire’s PUSH, 2012, p. 12). Griffin (1996) discusses “the way difference is inscribed on the bodies of black women,” an observation particularly relevant to Precious’ hypervisible, overweight body. Dagbovie-Mullins (2011) maintains that her “relationship with her body and her multiple diseases—social, emotional, and physical—all result from the brutality of patriarchal and matriarchal control over her body in her home, community, and society” (p. 435–436). Similar to the nefarious (step)

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father-daughter incest theme in its literary progenitor, PUSH reveals how both Precious’ biological father and mother sexually prey upon her from infancy to young adulthood, reinscribing acts of violence on her body. Considering the representation of incest and rape, Abdur-Rahman (2012) argues that Sapphire “deploys the incest motif to propel a narrative of social, economic, and heterosexist critique” (p. 133). Abdur-Rahman (2012) continues to argue that PUSH functions more as a “cautionary tale” with the central protagonist registering as “an almost absurd composite character” (p. 133). Jean-Charles (2012) furthers this analysis by exploring the differences in the representation of rape from novel to film, the role of the audience in the optics of sexual violence, and the position of both the novel and film within the large tradition of “African American incest narratives” (p. 144). Similar to the implausible final scene in The Color Purple, PUSH also stretches the limits of the imagination through its imposition of an inconceivable “tangle of pathologies,” to use Moynihan’s (1965) infamous phrase, on one young girl. Many black feminist scholarly interpretations cite the moment of Celie “coming to voice” in her direct confrontation with Mr. ___ as an emancipatory speech act and turning point in her blossoming agency. Celie must come to a moment of crisis when she is finally able to assert her subjectivity and exercise agency. Noteworthy is one of the earlier troubling instances of Celie’s expression when she instructs her stepson, Harpo, to “beat” Sofia in order to “make her mind” (Walker, 1992, p. 36). Floyd-Thomas and Gillman (2002) read this moment as an instance of Celie, “the most powerless of figures” in the novel “enacting horizontal violence” because she “takes solace in her suffering and that of other women” (p. 536). Thus, Celie uses her voice here to disempower Sofia to join in her subjugation. Whereas Celie learns to wield her voice for empowerment instead of implicating other women in a cycle of oppression, Precious increasingly develops agency over the course of the novel via formal instruction in reading, creative writing, and composition she receives in Ms. Rain’s Each One Teach One Alternative school where she has discovered what Myles (2012) calls “a safe space for healing” outside the official public school system that failed her (p. 14). As we will see in the following section, the discovery of voice for these characters, rooted in the black feminist approach, contrasts sharply with the Africana womanist theoretical approach that argues black women have always had voice and worked in concert with men.

“As Purple Is to Lavender”: Theorizing Black Womanhood and Personhood As explicated in the previous section, the Black feminist tradition has provided the prevailing critical readings of both novels even as scholars such as Carby (1987) assert that one must not consider this a reified category, but rather an unstable “sign that should be interrogated, a locus

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of contradictions” (p. 15). While black feminists and other feminists of color worked to differentiate their concerns from those of the mainstream feminist movement which often privileged middle-class, white women’s experiences, Africana womanists articulated a differing theoretical vision. Outlining a different analytic mode, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose introduces Walker’s critical concept of womanism and formulates that “womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender” (1983, p. xi). This methodological framing is useful here as it draws upon Walker’s own theorization which she defines in two parts. The first significance derives the term womanism from “womanish,” that is, the opposite of “‘girlish,’ i.e. frivolous, irresponsible, not serious,” and also “a black feminist or feminist of color” (p. xi). The next distinction resonates with Celie’s marshaling of literacy to gain emancipation: “Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered ‘good’ for one” (p. xi). Ogunyemi (1985) delineates the predicament of the black female novelist in her classic essay when she asserts that Anglophone black women writers have “produced an exciting, fluid corpus that defies rigid categorization,” and is therefore “likely to be a ‘womanist’” rather than align themselves with “radical white feminists” (pp. 63–4). Ogunyemi (1985) elaborates that the black woman novelist, “along with her consciousness of sexual issues,” must also “incorporate racial, cultural, national, economic, and political considerations into her philosophy” (p. 64). Simply put, “Black women are disadvantaged in several ways” that preclude simply privileging gender over race or class concerns. A comparative study of the two novels in question provides a pedagogical opportunity to untangle the complex divergences between these three interrelated, yet distinct theoretical modes: black feminism, womanism, and Africana womanism and consider various critical approaches in an exploration of both novels. In contradistinction to Walker’s definition of womanism, but closely related to Ogunyemi’s (1985) gloss on womanism, Hudson-Weems (1993) posits the notion of Africana womanism as a distinct conceptualization or “ideology created and designed for all women of African descent” (p. 24). Furthermore, this critical approach “is grounded in African culture,” and “therefore, necessarily focuses on the unique experiences, struggles, needs, and desires of Africana women” to “critically address the dynamics of the conflict between the mainstream feminist, the Black feminist, the African feminist, and the Africana womanist” (p. 24). In her literary analyses, Hudson-Weems (2004) rejects both the black feminist notion that black women must “come to voice” as she argues that “the voice of Africana womanism will not and cannot be silenced, and like the true Africana womanist, who has never really needed to ‘break silence’ or to ‘find voice,’ the expressed sentiments of many feminists” and conversely upholds the notion that the “ongoing struggle for the human rights of our entire family—men, women, and children” is the central thrust of

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Africana womanism (p. 8). It is this larger commitment to social activism and its “global reach” that Layli Phillips (2012) elucidates in her Introduction to The Womanist Reader in which she recognizes Alice Walker, Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, and Clenora Hudson-Weems as the three “key progenitors” of a broader conceptual understanding of womanism (p. xxiii). Furthermore, Phillips (2012) critiques earlier attempts to conflate womanism and Black feminism or suggestions that the former is a “version” or synonym of the latter (p. xxii). According to Phillips (2012), the following five characteristics define womanism: (1) antioppressionist, (2) vernacular, (3) nonideological, (4) communitarian, and (5) spiritualized (p. xxiv). The second characteristic, vernacular, is particularly germane to this study because it focuses on the everyday lives and common concerns of humanity. The contestations between these three prominent theoretical frameworks—Black feminist, womanist, and Africana womanist—for analyzing the narrative and societal complexities of the condition of black womanhood leave room for the possibility of another, more expansive approach which resonates with Walker and Sapphire’s novels: the notions of bumuntu, or “the quintessence of personhood, that fundamental authentic mode of being humane” (Asante & Mazama, 2009, p. 143); this concept explains how notions of genuine humanity are inextricably tied to the community rather than the individual which connects to the relatively hopeful endings of both novels. In the section that follows, I provide a reading of The Color Purple as an urtext and its intertextual relationship to PUSH to explore how these critical approaches illuminate the emancipatory literacy in each text.

“But I’m Here”: Survival, Resilience, and Agency Walker’s The Color Purple reconfigures and significantly expands the epistolary genre. Radically transforming this English form of letters into a literary mode capacious enough to tell at once the story of Celie’s corporeal and psychological degradation and near ruin as a black girl and young woman, Walker reveals how her recovery and survival hinge upon her insistence on giving voice to her innermost thoughts through sustained textual meditations. First addressed to the monotheistic deity of the Protestant tradition whom she refers to as God, and later, after a spiritual, physical, and sexual conversion of sorts, Celie’s literary address shifts to her sister, Nettie, when she confirms, “I don’t write to God no more. I write to you” (p. 192). In both cases, Celie closes each letter with the word, “Amen,” suggesting the prayer quality of the text and also her agreement or affirmation of the veracity of the incidents retold therein. The construction of a novel around these letters, furthermore, subtly insinuates a lineage with African oral traditions, circulating storytelling (as evidenced by Tashi’s people’s stories and the Uncle Remus stories) and

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the intermediary literary practice of reading letters aloud to invoke the absent sender’s presence in one’s life which Walker enlivens with Nettie’s parallel journey to Africa (p. 165). Arguably the most intriguing aspect of Celie’s introduction to the reader in her first letter is her scriptural self-obliteration. The novel is replete with omissions, secrets, erasures, and withholdings, mostly of surnames or family names, a feature which mirrors the shifting familial bonds, informal kinship alliances, surrogacy, and frequent exchanges of mothers raising other women’s children, consonant with the destabilization of black families common during the slavery era and Reconstruction. However, in her initial letter addressed to God, our first-person protagonist and primary narrator elides her existence, “I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl” (p. 1). While Froula (1986) posits that “Celie’s rape leaves her with guilt that blocks her words,” I would argue that this ontological elision lays the semiotic groundwork in a novel that predominantly tussles with the very nature of human existence, of being, of recognition, and acknowledgment (p. 638). The redaction in the second sentence, the only one that appears in the text, seems to indicate Celie’s attempts at self-negation; “I am” therefore serves as a fascinating interpretive fulcrum of the text, or what Gates 1988 calls “an erased presence, an empty set” (Gates, 1988, p. 243). Juxtaposed with Pa’s injunction, “You better not tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy,” an initial close reading interprets this graphic elision as Celie’s endeavor to erase herself in text, striking out her own personhood in a startling signal of self-effacement, a denial of her existence, even if she only knows how to survive in her daily life (p. 1). However, the self-abdication is incomplete. As she recounts the horrific events of her adolescence and continual sexual violations by Pa, the man she believed at the time to be her biological father—“You better shut up and git used to it”—Celie reveals her fighting spirit, even before she realizes she possesses it (p. 1). A fourteen-year-old Celie pens the letters to narrate, and by extension, attempts to make meaning of the unspeakable, a relentless series of atrocities that continue to befall her. An alternate reading of the poignant second sentence, “I am,” emerges. By replacing the basic grammatical structure of the “to be” verb in “I am” with “I have always been a good girl” (p. 1), the difference between negation of being in the simple present tense (“I am”) and the present perfect tense (“I have been”), indexes a crucial linguistic difference. Read alternately, “I have been” registers a self-defense. It is a statement in defense of her record of good comportment expected of a young black girl living in the South. In subsequent letters, Celie omits the “have” in the present perfect constructions, instead deploying the habitual “to be” of black vernacular English language. Notably, Celie does not write “I been a good girl” here and instead writes a sentence which perfectly adheres to what is often labeled “standard American English.” This fact

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raises complex questions about Celie’s deployment of African American language and how her “correct” usage of the present perfect tense here either encodes her letters to God on a note of formality, perhaps indicating a greater spiritual distance she feels, becoming more comfortable in writing as she speaks as she becomes more familiar with these textual appeals and meditations. This interpretation resonates with Celie’s refusal to allow Darlene, one of the women she employs to sew pants for her thriving business, “to teach [her] how to talk” (p. 215). Even though Darlene appeals to the idea that improved, “correct” communication skills will encourage Shug to take her places because “she won’t be shame,” Celie allows her mind to wander and we learn from her interiority, “Look like to me only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel peculiar to your mind. But she sweet and she sew good and us need something to haggle over while us work” (p. 216). At this moment in the text, Celie has reached a level of self-acceptance and notes that learning how to “talk proper” would be disingenuous and foolish because it would feel “peculiar” to her mind. Just as she understands as a teenage girl the significance of literacy and learning as a path to liberation—“cause us know we got to be smart to git away”—Celie also decides the terms and focus of her autodidactic education (p. 9). In her interaction with Darlene, she has learned to listen to her own mind. This effacement and familial love prompts Celie to offer herself in place of her younger sister, Nettie, for Mr. ___’s pleasure: “I ast him to take me instead of Nettie while our new mammy sick” (p. 7). Nevertheless, Celie appeals to God about her sorrows in her letters, and in following her sexually abusive stepfather’s orders, ironically initiates her literacy development and her eventual path from victimhood to personhood. The roadbuilders in Walker’s fictionalized village of Olinka demolish the center of the village to create a path, razing family dwellings, and the school and church constructed by the Christian missionaries, to whom Nettie belongs, without any acknowledgment of the Olinka people’s history or rights to the land (effectively reducing them to sharecroppers). Similarly, Celie faces the psychic soul-wrenching attempt at annihilation of her personhood through the emotional, sexual, and physical assaults endured at the hands of her “husband” and his children. Walker establishes narrative symmetry between Celie and Tashi, raising the issue of girls’ education in Africa. Like Nettie teaches Celie years before, Olivia, Celie’s daughter, teaches Tashi because her father forbids her from attending school. In their close friendship a transatlantic conversation emerges, albeit romanticized, in which Walker ambitiously broadens the scope and geographic boundaries of her novel to tackle the ways in which the ability of young black girls to attend school in the U.S. mirrors or differs from African girls’ rights to education in West Africa.

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However, Walker’s vision of Africa is not unproblematic. George (2001) insightfully reads Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), a novel which advances a forthright attack on female genital mutilation in Africa. He argues that the representation of the fictional Olinka people and the forceful critique of human rights violations of the practice of excision is rooted in an “overt rhetoric of global womanhood” and “FirstWorld normativity” (p. 370). So, too, in The Color Purple does Walker, through Nettie’s letters to Celie recounting her experiences in Africa— Dakar, Senegal briefly and then the village of Olinka, Liberia—repudiate Tashi’s scarification and female genital mutilation without providing the specific contexts of these Olinkan cultural practices. The narrative vacillates between an awareness of the cultural oversights or simplifications as voiced through Nettie who admits the paucity of her knowledge about African history and cultures, “I hadn’t realized I was so ignorant, Celie” and a proclamation of transnational black identity (p. 132). Nettie’s transatlantic journey and missionary work in Liberia, a subplot in the novel, uncovers this Pan-African literary trajectory and identifies cultural analogies. Of the “African from the village” who greets them at the ship, she writes: “He speaks a little English, what they call pidgin English. It is very different from the way we speak English, but somehow familiar” (p. 148). Perhaps this vision of global African unity emerges clearly when Nettie repeats Samuel’s words, “We are not white. We are not Europeans. We are black like the Africans themselves. And that we and the Africans will be working for a common goal: the uplift of black people everywhere” (p. 137). This prominent narrative thread envisions an advancement of universal black concerns. Employing an animalistic metaphor, Mr. ___ later acknowledges he treated Celie like a mule, echoing Nanny’s poignant declaration in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, “de nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!” (2006, p. 14). Nanny’s inability to protect the body of her granddaughter, Janie, from sexual exploitation and violence, foreshadows Walker’s depiction of the vulnerability of black girls and women. This foreshadowing highlights Christian’s notion of black women’s literary tradition; by repeating this metaphor, Walker seems to nod to her southern black literary foremother. The epistolary form as narrative strategy allows the reader to follow the parallel journey of Nettie in Africa and explore how patriarchy and the challenge to girls’ education operate in global contexts. As Selzer (1995) points out, the bittersweet discovery of Nettie’s letters “begins the transformation of Celie from writer to reader” (p. 67). Nettie’s transatlantic journey and missionary work in Liberia occupies one-third of the novel and registers the symmetry of these black girls’ and women’s lives in terms of limited access to educational opportunities in patriarchal settings. As readers, we must suspend disbelief at the improbability of Nettie’s escape

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to the missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine, who kindly welcome her into their family and invite her to travel to Africa with them and their children, who happen to be Celie’s biological children, the product of the repeated rape by her stepfather, Pa/Alfonso. More than any other scene, the most notorious and widely remembered bitter verbal exchange in the novel, equally as astonishing in the film version, occurs in the explosive confrontation between Celie and Mr. ___ at the family dinner scene which foregrounds Celie’s intersectional identity and her first public assertion of her subjectivity. Wallace (1989) emphasizes the “intricate relationship” between African American literature and film (p. 54). In this famous scene, upon hearing Shug’s announcement after dinner that she and her husband Grady are leaving and Celie is “coming to Memphis with me,” Mr. ___ attempts to exert control, stating they would leave over his “dead body,” and then questioning: “I thought you was finally happy, he say. What wrong now?” (p. 199). At this moment, Celie harnesses her inner strength, supported by Shug’s love, and unleashes a long overdue tirade: “You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say. It’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need” (p. 199). When Mr. ___ sputters his disapproval, “ButButButButBut,” there is a role reversal. Now, Mr. ___ is unable to articulate his thoughts, left speechless, emitting “sound like some kind of motor” (p. 200). In Celie’s retelling of the climactic moment when she asserts her voice and curses her abuser, Mr. ___ transforms into a broken machine, no longer a verbally commanding man. His notorious final verbal attack: “Who you think you is? he say. You can’t curse nobody. Look at you. You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman. Goddam, he say, you nothing at all” (p. 206). Mr. ___’s vicious outburst succinctly encapsulates what Crenshaw (1991) popularizes as intersectionality and Collins (2009) terms “intersecting oppressions” (p. 138). With the emphatic enunciation of her indomitable presence, “But I’m here,” Celie stuns Mr. ___ with her assurance that his words cannot annihilate her (p. 207). A stunning progression from the elided “I am” of her first letter to God, here Celie courageously proclaims her existence through the contraction “I’m” and her right to take up room and be present in that space, “here.” Although Celie’s curse to Mr. ___ might be read as a minor victory, a mere example of her survival tactics, I would argue that her emboldened speech act marks the beginning of her rhetorical revolt. The subsequent letters and ensuing incidents construct an identity and subjectivity through her inchoate literacy. Her subjectivity, existence, and personhood solidify concurrently with the development of her education and literacy. As Celie writes letters, first to God and later to her sister Nettie, once Mr. ___’s deception of absconding the letters has been exposed, her confidence in both her writerly persona and rights to an earthly presence grow. In a letter to Nettie after the climactic dinner scene, Celie relishes

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in her emancipated state at Shug’s house in Memphis, where she enjoys a sunlit room of her own, away from Mr. ___’s despotic rule: “I am so happy. I got love, I got work, I got money, friends and time. And you alive and be home soon. With our children” (p. 215). Celie experiences the full spectrum of emotions and achieves self-actualization, finally free from an outside abuser and no longer in need of a savior figure; she finds personal fulfillment (interestingly, through work and the creative outlet of sewing pants) and home ownership as her biological father, a successful businessman and landowner who was lynched by jealous white men, passed this property to her deceased mother who passed it on to her daughters. Quite literally, Celie gains currency to reroute her life chances and choices. Each novel simultaneously advances the question of regional United States American English varieties and assumptions about education level and intelligence based on literacy, diction, and communication. This theme relates to enduring questions in the African American literary canon and disparaging evaluations of the so-called “dialect poetry” of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the vernacular prose style of Hurston and her use of “Negro expressions,” and the institutional debates around the role of what has been referred to alternately—within nuanced distinctions—as Black English, Ebonics, African American Vernacular English, or African American Language. Walker and Sapphire’s novels problematize the “broken English” versus “standard American English” debate, and in so doing, expose how power, institutions, and explicit and implicit hierarchies of varieties of English inform dominant conceptions of what literacy, education, and knowledge signify. As Walker explains, she writes “deliberately” in “a way that would not intimidate her [mother], and other readers like her, with only a grade school education and a lifetime of reading the Bible, newspapers and magazine articles” (Walker, 1998, p. 24). On a larger scale, both novels pose questions about the location of a work written in Southern African American vernacular English within the “great works” of American literature. The Color Purple functions to destabilize standard categorizations of “highbrow” literary language and constitutes literariness while Sapphire’s PUSH further complicates these questions with its categorization as “urban” or “street” literature.

“Writing Could Be the Boat Carry You to the Other Side” The intertextual relationship between The Color Purple and Sapphire’s PUSH, which I turn to now, encodes questions of African American language and black vernacular English syntax, the significance of writing within a black women writers’ tradition, and how these characters confront endless assaults to their personhood without being ground to dust. Sapphire’s Precious poses this question after her devastating HIV+ diagnosis: “Is life a hammer to beat me down?” (p. 96). Although PUSH engages

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with a wide range of themes as previously noted, I am most interested here in its discursive dialogue with Walker’s most famous novel and how each main character copes with life’s hammers. Although hooks (1992) finds the feminist impulse lacking in Walker’s protagonist, her boundary setting and refusal of Mr. ___’s second marriage proposal register her newfound agency and insistence on crafting and making meaning of her life. Similar to Celie, the catalyst for Precious’ liberation is the removal from the toxic, devastatingly abusive home environment and the commencement of her personal writing. If Celie learns from a number of informal women as teachers, then Precious interacts with a teacher outside the confines of official educational institutions in the alternative classroom setting of the Higher Education Alternative/Each One Teach One adult literacy program to achieve her liberation and assert her agency. In the “woman-centered space of Ms. Rain’s classroom” where she finds sisterhood and community with other young women who are growing, learning, and overcoming intersecting oppressions, Precious decisively takes a seat at the front of the room in contrast to her perpetual station in the far back of the classroom in the traditional school environment (Myles, 2012, p. 21). Within the security of this edifying educational setting, Precious remarks, “These girlz is my friends [. . .] They and Ms Rain is my friends and family” (p. 95). This supportive network of women visits her in the hospital after the birth of her second child, Abdul—also the product of rape by her father like her first baby girl whom she gives birth to at age twelve—and bring her food, clothing, and music when she transitions to a halfway house. What both women lack in formal education, they possess in mother wit, or their innate discernment and common sense, which cannot be taught. When Claireece “Precious” Jones breaks away from the unrelenting physical, emotional, and incestuous abuse of her home, the first items she records in her notebook are her books. Finally occupying her own space at the halfway house, a single room containing a personal library, Precious itemizes her belongings: “bed for me, crib for Abdul. Dresser drawers, desk, chair, bookcase for my books and Abdul’s books” (p. 80). The seventh book on her list of “some” of her books, mostly donated by her instructor, Ms. Blue Rain, is The Color Purple. Indeed, Ms. Rain, wearing a purple dress, running shoes, with “long dreadlocky hair” and whose favorite color is purple, subtly embodies this intertextual relationship through the purple color-coding (p. 39, p. 40, p. 43). Precious describes her first effort at textual analysis, “We reading The Color Purple in school. Which is really hard for me,” but she notes “Ms Rain try to break it down but most of it I can’t read myself” (p. 81). As Ms. Rain interprets the text for Precious by “break[ing] it down,” Precious admits she “can’t read” it by herself. Guided by Ms. Rain’s textual analysis and the way she “hook[s] it up” so she is “getting something out of the story,” Precious comes to identify with Celie, albeit with a difference: “I cry

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cry cry you hear me, it sound in a way so much like myself except I ain’ no butch like Celie” (p. 81). After Ms. Rain challenges Precious’ homophobic views, repeated from “what Five Percenters ’n Farrakhan got to say about butches” and broadens her understanding of same-sex relationships—“Ms Rain say homos not who rape me, not homos who let me sit up not learn for sixteen years, not homos who sell crack fuck Harlem. It’s true”—she urges Precious to become a critical thinker and challenge information she receives about queer communities of color as Shug challenges Celie’s notions of sensuality between women (p. 81). As Precious realizes her vilification of lesbians is unfounded, she also notes the emotional thrust of Celie’s story moves her to tears because her story “sound in a way so much like myself” (p. 81). The parallelism between their stories eventually develops into Precious’ praise of gynocentric kinship and same-sex erotic love as a vehicle for happiness: “I never be butch like Celie but it don’t make me happy—make me sad. Maybe I never find no love, nobody. At least when I look at the girls I see them and when they look they see ME, not what I looks like” (p. 95). This ability to see and be seen contrasts sharply with Precious’ previously proclaimed invisibility; “Why can’t I see myself, feel where I end and begin,” she laments (p. 31). Her physically and sexually abusive parents do not see her either. If her father could see her, “he would know I was like a white girl, a real person, inside,” and her mother would see her as more than a “heifer” who stole her husband—Precious’ biological father—in this criminally exploitative household (p. 32). One hears echoes of Pecola Breedlove in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (2002) when Precious’ ascribes personhood, beauty, and goodness to little white girls. Like Celie’s stepfather, Precious’ father brutally robs her of her childhood innocence in one of the most repulsive acts of sexual assault and child abuse in literature, as recounted by her mother in counseling who confesses that she witnessed her husband “take off her Pampers and try to stick his thing in Precious,” as he argued that the rape “is good for her” (p. 135). Alluding to the first line of Walker’s novel, Sapphire’s text shocks the reader with a simple declaration: “I was left back when I was twelve because I had a baby for my fahver” (p. 4). The infernal conditions and moral depravity Precious faced even in infancy renders her survival and determination to live a quality life that much more astonishing. This explicit intertextuality between PUSH and The Color Purple and doubling of their main protagonists, Celie and Precious, suggest not only a conscious literary genealogy between Walker’s most well-known novel and Sapphire’s work, but the continuation of a tradition of black women’s development vis-à-vis narratives of writing, literacy, and empowerment, but also a narrative modeling of how the tradition makes room for new voices, and, most importantly, how black women writers beget black women writers. Strikingly, Precious reclaims her identity as poet of her own life towards the end of the novel when she rescues her psychiatric file from a “big

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beige file cabinet” in the office of her counselor, Ms. Weiss (p. 116). The early lessons on alphabetical order from Ms. Rain’s reading and writing class are newly important as she searches for her name under “P Jones,” but instead finds her file under the first name she refuses to use: “Got me under Claireece Jones. Yup, here it is, JONES, CLAIREECE P. n’ underneef my name, social security number, 015–11–9153. I fly back to big green chair, stuff file in my backpack” (author’s emphasis, p. 116). In this scene, Precious retrieves an official file symbolic of all those institutional files she could neither read nor interpret for so many years, including the school record foregrounded in the contentious moment in Mrs. Lichenstein’s office early in the novel. The first-person narrator, then illiterate, could only speculate: “I wonder what else it say in that file with my name on it. I hate her” (p. 8). Precious rejects this reduction of her life to a file recording her misdeeds, punishments, and pregnancies. After Mrs. Lichenstein suspends her from junior high school and directs her to the alternative school, the inscrutable file haunts her at the Each One Teach One school location: I wonder what exactly do file say. I know it say I got a baby. Do it say who Daddy? What kinda baby? Do it say how pages the same for me, how much I weigh, fights I done had? I don’t know what file say. I do know every time they wants to fuck wif me or decide something in my life, here they come wif the mutherfucking file. Well, OK, they got file, know every mutherfucking thing. So what’s the big deal, let’s get it on. (p. 28) Here, Precious’ illiteracy renders her powerless against institutional systems that seek to reinscribe her in these matrices of domination (Collins, 2009). After a year of study in Ms. Rain’s class, she is now able to read and comprehend the seized file with assistance from her classmate, Jermaine. She learns how Ms. Weiss has documented her life, referring to her with the highly impersonal “the client,” while remarking that “Precious is capable of going to work now” (p. 119). As Ms. Weiss recommends Precious begin to transition from welfare to work, her “client,” in turn, acquits herself of their relationship: “Well, I just write in my notebook till I git wif some kinda therapist I can trust. Actually that help me more than talking to her” (p. 123). Through writing her own personal narrative, dialogic journaling with Ms. Rain, creating poetry, and teaching other young women at Each One Teach One school, Precious assumes the authority and power of her authorship. The first-person narrator does so tentatively in the opening of the novel on September 24, 1987 when she declares, “My name is Claireece Precious Jones. I don’t know why I’m telling you that. Guess ’cause I don’t know how far I’m gonna go with this story, or whether it’s even a story or why I’m talkin’” (p. 3). However, by the end of the first

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meeting at the alternative school on October 19, 1987, when she speaks publically in class for the first time and introduces herself, Precious is already beginning to gain clarity of her rhetorical purpose as a writer. “I got self, pencil, and notebook,” she proudly announces of her preparation for class (p. 36). David (2016) posits that “motifs of motherhood are analogous to acts of literacy”; motherhood is the force propelling Precious towards becoming a literate subject. Indeed, the birth her second child, Abdul Jamal Louis Jones, on January 15, 1988, sharpens her academic focus and clarifies her vision for the future: “I was raped by my fahver. Now instead of life for me I got Abdul. But I love Abdul. I want go school love abdul schoolabdulschoolabdul” (p. 69). The simple rhyme of these contracted words present the two major poles pushing Precious to continue on her educational journey. Even as Ms. Rain nudges her to return to school and questions her ability to raise Abdul simultaneously, Precious resolves: “And I ain’ giving Abdul away. And I ain’ gonna stop school” (p. 76). Notably, it is only after the birth of her son that she is able to acknowledge the incestuous circumstances of his conception and repeatedly report the full name of her rapist, just as Celie does in The Color Purple. The interweaving narrative strands between Sapphire’s PUSH and Walker’s The Color Purple function on two levels to exhibit the expansive creative possibilities of black women’s literary tradition, on the one hand, and also signal the importance of reader identification and finding one’s story in the text as Precious does with Celie. Although a cadre of scholars dispute the significance of “identifying with” the characters as critical to the reading experience (Bernard, 2016), others promote the importance of students reading stories that resonate with their experiences. PUSH clearly instructs us that seeing oneself in the text is crucial to Precious’ liberation: Things going good in my life, almost like The Color Purple. Abdul nine months old, walking! Smart smart. He smart. I been reading to him since day he was born damn near. I love The Color Purple, that book give me so much strength. (pp. 82–83) Precious experiences learning in the formal space of the classroom and the informal spaces of her Harlem community where Ms. Rain encourages her to write after years of neglect from teachers in institutions that left her academically abandoned. Now in the classroom of an instructor who deeply cares, Precious records her thoughtful discussions with Ms. Rain about the reception of Walker’s novel, and specifically the criticism about the film and its “fairy tale ending” (p. 83). Precious, now an astute reader herself argues, “well shit like that can be true. Life can work out for the best sometimes” (p. 83). Perhaps predicting her own commitment to a

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positive outlook in the midst of trauma, she voices optimism in a situation most would find inexorably bleak. Now a confident and assured reader of texts and contexts, Precious recounts how she challenges Ms. Rain’s interpretation: Ms Rain love Color Purple too but say realism has its virtues too. Izm, smizm! Sometimes I wanna tell Ms Rain shut up with all the IZM stuff. But she my teacher so I don’t tell her shut up. I don’t know what “realism” mean but I do know what REALITY is and it’s a mutherfucker, lemme tell you. (p. 83) Here, Precious distinguishes between critical jargon and lived experience. Although she does not understand the term “realism,” she is certain about the definition of “reality”—“it’s a mutherfucker”—because she has lived it and can tell her story. This recalls the definition of womanism as anchored in “‘the everyday’—everyday people and everyday life” (Phillips, 2012, p. xxiv). After her HIV+ diagnosis, when Precious feels she may never write again and has a “hammer in [her] heart” with her “blood a giant river swell[ing] up inside” her, Ms. Rain bolsters her spirit, “Writing could be the boat carry you to the other side. One time in your journal you told me you had never really told your story. I think telling your story git you over that river Precious” (p. 97). Gathering inner strength throughout the narrative as her literacy and confidence develops, she reaffirms her earlier proclamation of full subjectivity, “I I somb (somebody)” and “I know I got a purpose, a reason” (p. 65, p. 75). She writes “poet” after her name, reads stories to Abdul, and knows, like Shug in The Color Purple, that there is a God because her son tested negative (p. 138).

“No Matter What I’m Doing, I’m Writing to You” The title of this concluding section originates from the affecting words that Nettie writes to Celie while living abroad during times of uncertainty and colonialism in Olinka. Precious ends her narrative as a poet. As she transitions from private to public writer, she gains confidence: “Everybody know I write poems. People respect me” (p. 128). The act of writing and reading, for the protagonists in both novels, is a balm for the threatened physical and sexual violence of their daily existence, a prayer, and the vehicle of their emancipation. Literacy and the ability to interpret their environments ultimately preserves their lives. Writing is the bonding between two sisters, a familial connection, a reason to continue living, the prayer for a reunited family, and the promise of an HIV+ mother that she will leave a living legacy for her children, and even hope for a cure. However flawed or implausible her novel’s ending, Sapphire shows us how Precious harnesses her budding literacy to

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identify contradictions and cultivate her own knowledge (by recognizing her mother’s ignorance and abuse). Walker’s denouement advocates for Pan-African identity and cohesiveness; Celie’s children are most fully realized and free, “brought up in Africa. Good schools, lots of fresh air and exercise” (p. 200). For Precious, it is the peace of mind knowing her son, Abdul is HIV-free. Ultimately, these two heart-wrenching novels—through varied narrative strategies—transform their protagonists through critical writing and reading. At last, they are seen and part of a community.

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McNeil, E., Lester, N. A., Fulton, D. S., & Myles, L. D. (Eds.). (2012). Sapphire’s literary breakthrough: Erotic literacies, feminist pedagogies, environmental justice perspectives. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Morrison, T. (2002). The bluest eye. New York, NY: Knopf. Moynihan, D. P. (1965). The Negro family: The case for national action. Washington, DC: United States Department of Labor. Myles, L. D. (2012). Sapphire’s PUSH: Locating safe sites for writing and personal transformation. In E. McNeil, N. A. Lester, D. S. Fulton, & L. Myles (Eds.), Sapphire’s literary breakthrough: Erotic literacies, feminist pedagogies, environmental justice perspectives (pp. 13–28). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Ogunyemi, C. O. (1985). The dynamics of the contemporary black female novel in English. Signs, 11(1), 63–80. Phillips, L. (2012). Introduction. In L. Phillips (Ed.), The womanist reader (pp. xix–xlix). New York, NY: Routledge. Richardson, R. (2012, Winter). Push, precious, and new narratives of slavery in Harlem. Black Camera, 4(1), 161–180. Sapphire. (1997). PUSH: A novel. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Selzer, L. (1995, Spring). Race and domesticity in The Color Purple. African American Review, 29(1), 67–82. Smith, B. (1982). All the women are white, all the blacks are men, but some of us are brave: Black women’s studies. New York, NY: Feminist Press. Walker, A. (1983). In search of our mothers’ gardens: Womanist prose. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books. Walker, A. (1992). The color purple. Boston, MA: Mariner Books. Walker, A. (1998). The same river twice: Honoring the difficult: A meditation on life, spirit, art, and the making of the film The Color Purple ten years later. London: The Women’s Press. Wall, C. A. (2005). Worrying the line: Black women writers, lineage, and literary tradition. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Wall, D. C. (2012, Winter). Close-up Gallery: Precious. Black Camera, 4(1). Wallace, M. (1989). The politics of location: Cinema/theory/literature/ethnicity/ sexuality/me. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 36, 42–55. Warhol, R. (2001, May). How narration produces gender: Femininity as affect and effect in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Narrative, 9(2). Washington, M. H. (1987). Invented lives: Narratives of black women 1860– 1960. New York, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday & Company.

Contributors

Jonathan B. Allred, University of Arkansas Angela Broderick, Stony Brook University Sean P. Connors, University of Arkansas Autumn M. Dodge, St. John’s University Patricia A. Dunn, Stony Brook University Seth D. French, University of Arkansas Christian Z. Goering, University of Arkansas Susan Groenke, University of Tennessee-Knoxville Judith A. Hayn, University of Arkansas at Little Rock Crag Hill, University of Oklahoma Sharon Kane, SUNY-Oswego Raquel Kennon, California State University-Northridge Mark A. Lewis, Loyola University Maryland Kati Macaluso, University of Notre Dame Michael Macaluso, University of Notre Dame Victor Malo-Juvera, University of North Carolina Wilmington Katherine Montwieler, University of North Carolina Wilmington R. Joseph Rodríguez, California State University-Fresno Lara Searcy, University of Arkansas

Index

Page numbers in bold indicate tables. Notes are indicated by page numbers followed by n. “13 Emotional Reactions to Reading ‘The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,’ Which Is Such a Brilliant Masterpiece, It’s Almost Bewildering” (Masad) 91 1984 (Orwell) 147 Abdur-Rahman, A. I. 201 ableism: defining 122–123; Glass Menagerie and 128–129, 132, 135–136, 140; impact of 128–129, 141 Absurd 105, 109, 111, 116–117 Accidents of Nature (Johnson) 123 Adams, James Truslow 71 adolescence: adult-gaze and 22–23; asset-based analysis of 22–23, 31; femininity and 21; perspectives on 18–19; reading and 97; relationships with parents in 24; as a social construction 22–23; Western understandings of 19, 21–22; see also youth adolescent literature see young adult literature Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The (Twain): African American objections to 55, 59–60, 65; African American portrayals in 56–57; approaches to teaching 65–67; censorship of 56; classroom conflict and 65; controversy over 55–60, 66; critical race theory and 60–64, 67; historical criticism and 59; racial epithets in 55–56, 63–64, 121; rationale for teaching 58;

regional context of 59; relevance of 65; in secondary school canon 57–58, 60; teaching level for 65–66; White students and 61 aesthetic reading 92–93, 99 African American literary tradition: aesthetics of 200; African oral traditions in 203; Black women’s narrative in 196, 198–203; relationship with film in 207; slave/neoslave narratives in 198; survival and liberation in 198, 200; vernacular English and 208 African Americans 59; impact of To Kill a Mockingbird on 163; portrayal in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 56–57; portrayal in Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 88–89; resistance by 166, 168; White Messiah trope and 167–168; see also Black women’s narratives Africana womanism 201–203 Alldritt, K. 147 American Dream: capitalism and 72; Great Gatsby and 71–72; hegemonic masculinity and 72, 74, 76, 84; unattainability of 73 American English/language arts (ELA) classrooms: approaches to teaching in 161–162, 164, 171–172; issues of race and 65–66, 162–163; reading “against” texts 164, 171–172; student assessment 171; see also English curricula American literary canon: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and 57, 63;

Index Bless Me, Última and 180; inclusive works in 177; McCullers in 89; racial ideology and 192; reinterpretation of 178–179; see also literary canon; secondary literary canon Anaya, Rudolfo: Bless Me, Última 178–181; as community seer 191; critique of 177; diverse youth characters of 178; Heart of Aztlán 180; Tortuga 180 Anderson, Laurie Halse 12, 14 Anderson, M. L. 168–169 Angelou, Maya 200 Animal Farm (Orwell): adaptations of 146–147; allegory of 145–149, 152–155; approaches to teaching 152–155; critique of 147–148; dominant-hegemonic reading of 156; encoding/decoding in 153–158; feminist criticism and 148–149; global codes in 157–158; influence of 146; interpretations of 145–149; in the literary canon 145; literary criticism of 147–149; mass communications theory and 145; metaphorical readings of 148–149; negotiated reading of 156; popularity of 146; power and oppression in 149; purpose for writing 145–146; relevance of 145, 158; Russian Revolution and 145–147, 149; Trump era reading of 145, 156–158 Applebee, A. N. 57 Applebee, R. K. 9, 11 Appleman, D. 71 Appleyard, J. A. 108 Arac, J. 59 “‘Archaeology of [Narrative Silence],’ An” (Rountree) 96 Armstrong, I. 40–41 Atwood, Margaret 108 Austen, Jane: biographies of 36, 39; conservative qualities in 39–40; critique by 38; expertise and 35; femininity and 35–38; on hierarchy 50; popularity of 44–46, 48; Pride and Prejudice 34–52; Sense and Sensibility 35, 52n1; on women’s education 40 Austen-Leigh, James Edward 36–37 Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions (Heydt-Stevenson) 40 autofictive features 190

219

Baecker, D. L. 162, 170 Baker, W. 37 Baldwin, James 200 Barker, C. 126 Barrett, J. L. 162 Barrish, P. 63–64 Barry, P. 152 Barthes, R. 150 Beaurline, L. A. 127 Beckett, Samuel 119 Becoming a Reader (Appleyard) 108 Beginning Theory (Barry) 152 Bell, C. W. 162 Bell, Derrick 61 Bellow, Saul 108 Bennett, William 10 Bennett, W. J. 177 Beowulf 3 Berliner, D. C. 10 Biddle, B. 10 bildungsroman fiction 190–191, 193; see also coming-of-age works Bin, L. 98–99 Birmingham School of Cultural Studies 41 Black feminism 201–203 Black Lives Matter movement 163 Black Women Novelists (Christian) 198 Black women’s narratives: Africana womanism and 201–203; autobiography and 196; Black feminism and 202–203; Black women’s development and 210; bumuntu and 203; literary tradition of 196, 198; neoslave narratives and 198; slave narratives and 196, 198; womanism and 202–203 Bless Me, Última (Anaya): approaches to teaching 190–191; autofictive features of 190; banning of 180; collective memory and 180–181; as coming-of-age work 190–191; community seers in 181, 183–187, 192; critique of 181; cultural knowledge and 189–190; gender in 187; literary authorship of 181; social norms and 189–190; teaching of 178, 180 Bloom, A. 10, 11 Bloom, H. 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 177 Bloom, L. 4 Blount, M. 147 “Blue Rose of St. Louis, The” (Cardullo) 127

220

Index

Bluest Eye, The (Morrison) 210 bookrooms 13–14 “Border, The” (Ríos) 176 Borsheim-Black, C. 162, 164, 167, 171–172 Bose, D. 125 Bourdieu, P. 169 Bowles, G. 198 Bride and Prejudice 51 British Empire 42–43 British literature: Austen and 37–39; literary canon and 3, 7, 37, 42 Bromberg, P. 48 Brombert, V. 105 Brooks, Cleanth 9 Bruce, H. 58 Brunsdon, C. 150 bumuntu 203 Burke, Tarana 35, 43, 51 Butler, M. 39 Byron, George G. 3 Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability, The (Barker and Murray) 126 Camus, Albert: on the absurd 105, 109, 111, 116–117; Myth of Sisyphus, The 105, 111–112; Plague, The 119; Stranger, The 104–119 Camus’ L’Etranger (King) 105 “Camus’ The Outsider” (Sartre) 105 capitalism 72–73 Carby, H. V. 196, 201 Cardullo, B. 127, 128, 135, 138 Carey-Webb, A. 57, 65–66 Carroll, P. S. 126 “Case for Conflict, The” (Dakin) 65 Catcher in the Rye (Salinger) 119 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) 150 Chadwick, J. A. 59, 65, 67 Champion, L. 99 Chandler, D. 153 Changizi, P. 20 Chapman, R. 39 Cherian, A. 47, 51 Chicanx Civil Rights Movement 181 Chicanx literature: boundary-crossing and 176–177; characteristics of 191–192; community seers in 183–184, 191; literary studies and 192; reinterpretation of 191

Chocolate War, The (Cormier) 118 Christian, B. T. 196, 198 Cintorino, M. A. 162 Cisneros, Sandra: as community seer 191; critique of 177; diverse youth characters of 178; female characters of 182–183; on House on Mango Street 179; literary techniques 184–185 Claiming Disability (Linton) 124 class: Great Gatsby and 71–73; hegemonic masculinity and 81–82; performance of 75 Clinton, Hillary 156, 158 Coleman, David 10 collective memory 180–181 Collins, P. H. 197, 199, 207 Color Purple, The (Walker): Africa in 205–206; Black feminist interpretations 201; “Black South” in 198; Black vernacular English in 208; Black women’s narratives in 196, 198–200; bumuntu and 203; critical discourse and 198; development of agency in 201; emancipatory literacy in 197, 202, 208, 213–214; epistolary form in 196, 199, 203–208; intersecting oppressions in 207; liberation in 200; narrative strategies of 199; PUSH and intertextuality 208–210, 212–213; scholarship on 198–201; scriptural self-obliteration in 204; self-affirmation in 197; universal Black concerns in 206 Colson, D. 21 Combahee River Collective 197 “Coming of Age in Novels by Rudolfo Anaya and Sandra Cisneros” (Klein) 179 “Coming of Age in the Queer South” (Proehl) 97 coming-of-age works 163, 178, 190–191 Committee of Ten 5 Common Core State Standards (CCSS) 10 community seers: biases and 179; Bless Me, Última 181, 183–187, 192; communal wisdom and 183; House on Mango Street 182–185, 187–189, 192; Western literary canon and 183

Index composition canon 4 Cooper, E. 150–151 Cormier, Robert 118 Corrigan, M. 70, 71, 72, 73 counter storytelling 62 Cox, M. K. 19 Crenshaw, K. 61–62, 207 critical legal studies (CLS) 61, 63 critical literacy pedagogy (CLP) 162, 164 critical race theory (CRT): activism of 61; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and 60–64, 67; in education 63; legal indeterminacy in 63; origins of 61; tenets of 61–62 “Critical Race Theory, Hip Hop, and Huck Finn” (Martin) 64 Critical Theory Today (Tyson) 73 critical thinking 122 critical whiteness studies (CWS): systemic racism and 169–170; To Kill a Mockingbird and 161, 164–170, 172 Crowley, S. 121 Cuddon, J. A. 3 Culturally Responsive Teaching (Gay) 64 cultural studies: Austen and 41–44, 51; cultural work and 42; defining 41; media use and 150, 152; Twain and 58 cultural work: cultural studies and 42; novels and 42–43 culture 169 Culture and Society (Williams) 41 culture wars 10–11 Cutler, J. A. 177, 191 Dagbovie-Mullins, S. A. 200 Dakin, M. E. 65 Danes, Claire 21 Daniel, Lee 200 David, M. D. 198, 212 Davis, L. J. 124 Davis, T. M. 198 de Certeau, M. 41, 108 DeCuir, J. T. 62 de la Peña, Matt 179 Delgado, R. 61–62 Dempsey, D. 147 Deresiewicz, W. 40 DiAngelo, R. 56 DiCaprio, Leonardo 71

221

Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, A (Cuddon) 3 differential radicalization 62 disability discrimination: resistance against 127, 133; subliminal effects and 126, 130–131 Disability Rhetoric (Dolmage) 125 disability rights movement 123–124 disability studies: ableism and 122–123; defining 122; Glass Menagerie and 121, 129–140; literary criticism and 123–124; literature and 124, 126; narrative prothesis in 124, 138; questioning and 124; resistance against discrimination in 123, 133; symbolism and 127–128 Disability Studies Reader, The (Davis) 124 Disability Theatre and Modern Drama (Johnston) 130 disability theatre movement 130 disabled: ableism and 122–123, 128; activism of 123; discrimination against 126–127; images of 124, 126–129, 133, 140; material conditions for 124; myths and stereotypes 125–127, 130, 132, 135, 138–140 Dixson, A. D. 62 Doane, A. W. 166 Doctorow, Cory 23 Doing Literary Criticism (Gillespie) 107 Dolmage, J. 125 dominant-hegemonic position 153 Dreiser, Theodore 108 Dryden, John 3 Duckworth, A. 39 Duffett, A. 11 Dunbar, Paul Laurence 208 Dunn, P. A. 126 Eckert, L. S. 107 Eckstein, A. 148 Edwards, Jonathan 3 efferent reading 92–93 Eligible (Sittenfeld) 47, 51 Eliot, T. S. 9, 55, 118 Elliott, G. P. 147 emancipatory literacy: Color Purple, The (Walker) 197, 202, 208, 213–214; PUSH (Sapphire) 197, 201, 209, 211–214

222

Index

“Emergence of Mark Twain’s Missouri, The” (Jackson) 59 Empson, William 9 Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse (Hall) 150 encoding/decoding: in Animal Farm 153–154; dominant-hegemonic position 153; in education 151; global understanding 154–155; in literature 151–152; negotiated codes 154; readers and 151–153; in teaching 152 “Encoding/Decoding” (Hall) 145, 149–153, 155–156 Ends of Assimilation (Cutler) 177 English curricula: Austen and 37, 44–45; Bless Me, Última in 193; class sets of texts in 12–14; empathy in 57; House on Mango Street in 193; inclusive works in 177; literary anthologies in 12; literary canon in 11; negative consequences of 121; race and racism in 65–66; race in 58–59; Romeo and Juliet in 21–22; sexuality in 21–22; text selection in 10; see also secondary literary canon Epic of Gilgamesh 3 epistolary form 196, 199, 203–208 existentialism: approaches to teaching 110–112, 118; critique of 109; in literary canon 104–105, 109; Sartre and 105, 109–111; Stranger and 106–107, 113–117; tenets of 109–112, 112 Existentialism and Human Emotions (Sartre) 109 Fabi, M. G. 198 Farrow, Mia 71 Faulkner, William 126 Fawcett, Millicent 37 Feagin, J. R. 169 feminist criticism 10 feminist literary theory 106 Ferreira, P. T. 148 Fetterley, J. 133 Finn, C. E. 11 Firth, Colin 44 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 70–84 Flower, M. A. 183 Floyd-Thomas, S. M. 201 Foucault, M. 108 Fox, A. 130

Fragility of Goodness, The (Nussbaum) 107 Frankenstein (Shelley) 108 Freedman, M. H. 170–171 Freeman, Alan 61 Froula, C. 204 Fulton, D. S. 198 Galloway, T. 130 Gardner, D. P. 10 Garland-Thompson, R. 123 Gates, H. L. 11, 199, 204 Gay, G. 64 Gee, J. P. 167 gender performance 75 George, O. 206 Gibbons, L. 12 Gibbons, L. C. 163 Gilbert, S. 39 Gillespie, T. 107–108 Gillman, L. 201 Gladwell, Malcolm 168, 170 “Glass Menagerie, The” (Tischler) 128 Glass Menagerie, The (Williams): ableism and 128–129, 132, 135–136, 140; ableist assumptions and 131–132; character of Jim in 131–136; character of Laura in 127–136; disability as symbol in 127–129; disability studies lens and 121, 129–141; discussion questions for 121–122, 132–140; images of disability in 133; interpretations of 127–129; literary criticism of 127–129, 134–135, 140; myths and stereotypes in 132, 135, 138–140; Otherness in 127, 137, 141; racist remarks in 131; subliminal effects of 130–132; symbolism and 127–128, 131, 137–138 global understanding 154–155 Goering, C. 14 Goffman, E. 70, 72, 74–75, 78, 80, 81 González, R. 179 Good Indian Wife, A (Cherian) 47, 51 Gordon, A. M. 167–168 Gorer, G. 39 Gossett, Hattie 200 Grahame-Smith, S. 44, 51 Grant, M. S. 130 Great Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald): adaptations of 70–71; American Dream in 71; approaches to

Index teaching 71–72; class in 71, 73; Gatsby’s performance in 77–83; hegemonic masculinity and 72, 74, 76–78, 81–82, 84; Marxist reading of 71–74; minor characters in 82; narrative structure in 81–82; performance theory and 72, 74–83, 83, 84; plot structure 83; popularity of 70–71; in secondary school canon 70–71; theoretical interpretations of 72–73; Tom’s performance in 76–84 Greenbaum, V. 1 Greenblatt, S. J. 148 Greenfield, S. 40 Gribben, A. 56 Griffin, F. J. 200 Grimaud, M. 106 Groba, C. G. 89 “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess” (Cisneros) 182 Gubar, S. 39 Gunter, B. 130 Gymnich, M. 45, 50 Hall, A. 126 Hall, S. 18 Hall, Stuart: on communicative exchange 153, 155, 158; cultural studies and 41; “Encoding/ Decoding” 149–153; mass communications theory and 145; on meaning and consumption 151; production process and 152; three positions of 153–156 Hamilton, Virginia 177 Handmaid’s Tale, The (Atwood) 108 Hansen, A. L. 13 Hanzo, T. A. 72 Harman, C. 36, 38, 40 Harris, Cheryl 61 Hawhee, D. 121 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 108 Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The (McCullers): aesthetics of 91; African American portrayals in 88–89; approaches to teaching 100; interpretations of 87–90; intersectional theory and 90–91; literary criticism of 88–100; loneliness in 98; queer friendship in 98; relevance of 100–101; transactional theory and 92, 96–102

223

Heart of Aztlán (Anaya) 180 Hebdige, D. 41 Heffernan, G. 105 hegemonic masculinity: American Dream and 72, 74, 76, 84; class and 81–82; Great Gatsby and 76–78, 81–82, 84; performance of 76–78, 81–83 Heimberg, R. 131 Hemingway, E. 55 Henderson the Rain King (Bellow) 108 Henry, P. 58, 60, 65 Heydt-Stevenson, J. 40 Highberg, N. P. 198 Hill, C. 101 Hinton, S. E. 12 Hirsch, E. D. 93 Holland, B. R. 162 Hollis, C. 147 Homage to Catalonia (Orwell) 146 Homer 3 hooks, b. 198, 199–200, 209 Horowitz, L. 106 Hosey, S. 129–130 House on Mango Street, The (Cisneros): adaptations of 182; approaches to teaching 190–191; autofictive features of 190; as coming-of-age work 190–191; community seers in 182–185, 187–189, 192; cultural knowledge and 189–190; female characters in 182–183; feminist-led communities in 184–185; limitations on women in 187–189; literary authorship of 182–183; literary techniques in 184–185; publication of 181–182; sense of community in 179; social norms and 189–190; teaching of 178 “Huck at 100” (Marx) 66 Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target (Arac) 59 Hudon, L. 105 Hudson-Weems, Clenora 202–203 Hurst, James 126 Hurston, Zora Neal 196–197, 199, 206, 208 Ibrahim, A. 31 “Image of the String Quartet Lurking in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (Magome) 92

224

Index

Improvement of the Estate, The (Duckworth) 39 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs) 198 independent reading 5–8 Innis, R. E. 94–95 In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (Walker) 202 intersectional theory 62, 90–91 Irwin, J. T. 75 “Is Huck Finn Still Relevant?” (Thomas) 56 Jackson, R. 59 Jacobs, Harriet A. 198 Jane Austen (Jenkins) 39 Jane Austen (Johnson) 40 Jane Austen, Feminism, and Fiction (Kirkham) 39–40 Jane Austen and the Navy (Southam) 40 Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets (Deresiewicz) 40 Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Butler) 39 Jane Austen in Hollywood (Troost and Greenfield) 40 Jane Austen in the Context of Abolition (White) 40 Jane’s Fame (Harman) 40 Jasinski, J. 162 Jean-Charles, R. M. 201 Jenkins, E. 39 Johnson, C. 40 Johnson, Harriet McBryde 123, 125 Johnston, K. 130 Jolley, S. A. 162 Jolliffe, D. 14 Juris, C. 145 Justman, S. 94 Kaplan, C. 199–200 Katz, E. 149–150 Keam, A. 21–22 Keizer, A. R. 198 Kelley, J. B. 162 Kierkegaard, S. 109 Kincaid, Jamaica 200 King, A. 105 Kirkham, M. 39–40 Kirschner, P. 148 Kittle, P. 8 Klein, D. 179, 190

Klor de Alva, J. 170 Knightley, Keira 44 Konigsburg, Bill 23 Kropp, E. L. 150–151 Kuhn, M. 43 LaBrant, L. 7 Ladson-Billings, G. 63 Latifian, M. 20 Lawrence, C. 61–62 Leavis, F. R. 39 Lee, Harper 121, 161–172 legal system: in The Stranger 113; systemic racism and 169–170, 172 Lesesne, T. S. 8 Lesko, N. 22, 31 Lester, N. A. 198 Letemendia, V. C. 148 Levi-Strauss, C. 150 Levy, L. B. 60 Lewis, R. W. B. 72 Liao, Y.-C. 51 Liebes, T. 150 Life of Pi (Martel) 119 Linton, S. 124, 129 literary anthologies 13 literary authorship: biases and 179; “coming of age” theme 178; outsidership and 179; personal narratives in 182–183; sense of community in 178–179 literary canon: Austen and 39; culture wars and 10–11; defining 1, 3, 177; exclusion of diverse authors in 183, 192; existentialism in 104–105; ideology and 192; New Criticism and 9; omissions and misrepresentations in 177; philosophical criticism and 108, 119; race and racism in 63; secondary schools 4–5; Western 1, 3, 177, 183; White male readership assumptions 190; see also American literary canon; secondary literary canon; university literary canon literary criticism: Austen and 39; disability studies lens and 123–124, 135, 141; philosophy and 104, 107–108; transactional theory 92–96; worthiness of texts for 97 literary theory: critical thinking and 122; disability studies 141; feminist criticism 10; Marxist criticism 10;

Index mass communications theory and 145; New Criticism and 8–10, 93–94; New Historicism 152; poststructuralism 10; questioning and 121–122; reader response theory 10; structuralism 10 literature: colleges and universities 4; coming-of-age works 163, 178, 190–191; cultural work and 42–43; disability studies lens and 124, 126; empathy in 163; encoding/ decoding in 151–152; images of disability in 124–129; as mode of communication 44; multicultural 10; narrative prothesis in 124; Other in 141; philosophical criticism and 104, 107–109, 119; production process and 152; see also British literature; young adult literature Literature and Lives (Carey-Webb) 57–58 Literature as Exploration (Rosenblatt) 92, 94 Longmore, Paul 123 “Looking for Zora” (Hurston) 196 Looser, D. 34, 37, 40 “Lovesong of Alfred J. Prufrock, The” (Eliot) 118 Luhrmann, Baz 21–22, 71 Macaluso, M. 162, 172 Madwoman in the Attic, The (Gilbert and Gubar) 39 Magome, K. 92 Making of Jane Austen, The (Looser) 40 Mangiavellano, D. R. 49 Manufactured Crisis, The (Berliner & Biddle) 10 Margolis, H. 126 Markle, Meghan 52n2 Martel, Y. 119 Martin, C. 91 Martin, J. L. 64 Martínez, R. 180 Martín-Rodríguez, M. M. 183, 191 Marvin, T. F. 199 Marx, L. 55, 59, 66 Marxist criticism 10 Masad, I. 91 mass communications theory 145 Matsuda, M. 61–62 McCarthy, P. 106

225

McCullers, Carson: Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The 87–102; popularity in China 98–99 McDowell, D. E. 198 McNeil, E. 200 Memoir of Jane Austen (AustenLeigh) 36 Menchetti, B. 126 #MeToo movement 34, 41, 43–45, 47 Meyer, C. A. 125 Milano, Alyssa 35, 43 Miller, D. 8 Millichap, J. R. 89–90 Mitchell, D. 124, 138 Modern Drama (Beaurline) 127 Mohr, Nicholasa 177 Moore, Wes 23 Moraga, C. L. 183, 191 Morley, D. 150 Morrison, Toni: on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 59–60; Bluest Eye, The 210; literary tradition of 200; Origin of Others, The 192; on race and identity 190; on racial ideology 192; “Unspeakable Thoughts Unspoken” 59, 192 Moynihan, D. P. 201 Mudrick, M. 39 multicultural education 9 multicultural literature 10 Murray, S. 126 My Body Politic (Linton) 124 Myers, Walter Dean 177 Myles, L. D. 201 Myth of Sisyphus, The (Camus) 105, 111–112 narrative prothesis 124, 138 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 55 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) 162 Nation at Risk, A 10 Native Son (Wright) 88 Naylor, Gloria 168 negotiated codes 154 neoslave narratives 198 New Criticism: defining 8–9; dissatisfaction with 9–10; literary canon and 9, 122; Rosenblatt on 93–94 New Historicism 152

226

Index

“‘Nigger’ or ‘Slave’” (Smith) 56 No Child Left Behind 10 novels see literature Nussbaum, M. 107 Nys, A. M. 22 O’Connor, W. V. 9 Odyssey (Homer) 3 Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck) 126 Ogunyemi, Okonjo 202–203 O’Neill, C. 162 Openly Straight (Konigsburg) 23 Origin of Others, The (Morrison) 192 Orwell, George: Animal Farm 145–158; Homage to Catalonia 146; 1984 147; purpose for writing Animal Farm 145–146; Russian Revolution and 149, 158; on totalitarianism 146, 157 Othering 127, 137, 141, 157 Outsiders, The (Hinton) 12 outsidership 179 Patai, D. 148–149 Pearce, R. 146 Pérez, D. E. 181 performance theory: gender and 75; Great Gatsby and 72, 74–84; identity and 84; self and 74–75 Petrone, R. 162, 172 Phillips, L. 203 philosophical criticism: approaches to teaching 107–108, 118–119; defining 107; literature and 104, 107–109, 119; Stranger and 105–107, 113–117 Plague, The (Camus) 119 Plattos, G. 126 Playing in the Dark (Morrison) 59 “poem” 92–93 Poniatowska, E. 182 Poovey, M. 41 Pope, Alexander 3 Possessing the Secret of Joy (Walker) 206 post-structuralism 10 Pourgiv, F. 20 Precious 200 Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, The (Goffman) 74 Pride and Prejudice (Austen): adaptations of 39, 44, 47–48, 51; authority in 46–49, 52; collective

analysis of 50; as a cultural phenomenon 34–35; cultural studies and 51; cultural work of 42–49; gender relationships in 41; historical reception of 35–37; hypocrisy and hierarchy in 50; identification with 49; power relations in 45–48, 50–51; relevance of 45–48; scholarship on 38–41; women negotiating boundaries in 41; women’s voices in 35, 43, 47, 51 Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Grahame-Smith) 44, 51 Probst, R. 94 Proehl, K. 97–98 Proper Lady and the Woman Writer, The (Poovey) 41 Prusko, R. 20 PUSH (Sapphire): Black feminist interpretations 201; Black women’s narrative in 196, 198; bumuntu and 203; Color Purple and intertextuality 208–210, 212–213; development of agency in 201; emancipatory literacy in 197, 201, 209, 211–214; intersecting oppressions in 209; scholarship on 198, 200–201; self-affirmation in 197; as urban/street literature 208; womanism and 213 questions 121–122, 141 race and racism: advantage/ disadvantage through 62; American life and 60–61; English curricula and 65–66, 162–163; historical positioning of 162; ideology and 192; social construction of 62; systemic racism and 169–171; White self-concept and 169; White society and 61 Race to the Top 10 racial epithets: in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 55–56, 63–64, 121; in Glass Menagerie 131; in To Kill a Mockingbird 121, 163 Radway, J. 41 Ransom, John Crowe 8–9 rape see sexual assault Ravitch, D. 10 Reader, the Text, the Poem, The (Rosenblatt) 92

Index reader response theory 9–10, 58 “Readers, Texts, Authors” (Rosenblatt) 94 reading: adolescence and 97; aesthetic 92–93, 99; author’s intention in 95, 99; critic and 93; as a democratic act 50; developing student understanding through 7–8; efferent 92–93; encoding/decoding in 151–153; literary criticism and 97; New Criticism and 9; reader purpose and 92; rhetorical situation framework and 149; Rosenblatt on 92–94, 96–98, 100–101; social discussions of 44, 49; as a solitary pursuit 43, 49; student choice in 8 Reading the Romance (Radway) 41 “Reclaiming the Ordinary Extraordinary Body” (Fox) 130 Redford, Robert 71 Rejan, A. 95 “(Re)Reading the Chicano Literary Canon” (Pérez) 181 restorying 190–191 Richards, I. A. 9 Richards, P. 123 Richardson, R. 198 Richardson, Samuel 35 Ríos, Alberto Álvaro 176 Rivera, C. H. 178 Roberts, Ed 123 Rodriguez, N. M. 165, 172 Rogers, T. 162 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare): adult punishment in 30; age-based interpretation of 18–21; approaches to teaching 21–23, 31; Friar Lawrence in 28–30; parents’ rage in 19; psychoanalytical perspectives on 19–21; relationship of Nurse in 27–28; role of adults in 23–31; in secondary school canon 71; “teening” of 21–22; youth lens for 22–23, 31 Romeo and Juliet effect 20 Rosenblatt, L. M.: criticism of 94–95; on inclusionary reading 7–8; on New Criticism 93–94; on reader evocations 93, 95–96, 101; on reading 92–94, 96–100; transactional theory and 92–95, 101–102 Roulston, R. 72

227

Rountree, S. 96–97 Rubin, L. D., Jr. 97 Rudd, Paul 71 Russian Revolution 145–147, 149, 158 Salinger, J. D. 119 Sandahl, C. 130 Sanders, Sarah Huckabee 156, 158 “Sandra Cisneros” (Stavans) 179 Saney, I. 162, 168 Sapphire 196–198, 200–201, 203, 208–214 Sartre, Jean Paul: on Camus 105; existentialism and 105, 109–111; Existentialism and Human Emotions 109 “Scarlet Ibis, The” (Hurst) 126 Scarlet Letter, The (Hawthorne) 108 Schaefer, B. V. 162 Scherr, A. 106 Schmidt, R. 23 School of Resentment 10 Schwaber, P. 20 Scott, F. N. 6–7 secondary literary canon: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 60, 65; Animal Farm in 145; approaches to teaching 161–162; Bless Me, Última in 180, 191, 193; exclusion of diverse authors in 183, 192; expansion of 12–14; Great Gatsby in 70–71; high/low culture tension in 6–7; history of 5–11; House on Mango Street in 191, 193; impact of 4–5; influences on 3, 12–13; negative consequences of 121; overview of texts in 11–12; perceptions of disability in 121; racial epithets in 121; reinterpretation of 177–178, 190–191; Romeo and Juliet in 71; student choice in 7–8; To Kill a Mockingbird in 161, 171; see also American literary canon; literary canon secondary schools 5, 10 “Seeking the Meaning of Loneliness” (Bin) 98 Seer in Ancient Greece, The (Flower) 183 self: agency and constraint in 75; performance of 74–75; social context and 74–75

228

Index

Selzer, L. 206 Sense and Sensibility (Austen) 35, 52n1 sexual assault: in Color Purple, The (Walker) 197, 204, 207; personal narratives of 34; in Pride and Prejudice (Austen) 46; in PUSH (Sapphire) 197–198, 201, 209–210, 212; in slave narratives 198; women’s voices and 51 Shakely, R. 90 Shakespeare, William: in the literary canon 11, 57; Romeo and Juliet 18–31 Shanahan, T. 11 Shange, Ntozake 200 Shapiro, A. 126 Shapiro, J. 125 Shaw-Thornburg, A. 162, 168 Shelley, Mary W. 108 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 36 Shorris, E. 170 Sieben, N. 23 Sims Bishop, R. 98 Sinclair, Upton 108 Singer, Peter 123 Single, L. L. 128–129, 134–135, 140 “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” (Edwards) 3 Sittenfeld, C. 47, 51 slave narratives 198 Sleasman, B. 107 Smagorinsky, P. 56 Smith, B. 196 Smith, C. L. 56 Smith, D. V. 8 Snyder, S. 124, 138 social construction thesis 62 Sorvino, Mira 71 Sound and the Fury, The (Faulkner) 126 Southam, B. 40 Speak (Anderson) 12, 14 “Speech, Silence and Female Adolescence in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop” (Martin) 91 Squire, J. R. 9, 11 Stallworth, J. B. 12 Stavans, I. 179 Stefancic, J. 61 Steinbeck, John 126 Steinberg, S. R. 31

Steiner, L. 150 Stornaiuolo, A. 190 storytelling 62 Stotsky, S. 12, 14 Stranger, The (Camus): character of Meursault in 114–117; existentialism in 106–107, 113–117; feminist literary theory and 106; in literary canon 112; literary criticism of 104–106; philosophical criticism and 105–107, 112–117; racial and gender politics of 106; summary of 113–114 structuralism 10 “Struggle for Tolerance, The” (Henry) 58 student assessment 171 Styslinger, M. E. 162 Sulzer, M. 23 symbolic violence 169 symbolism: disability and 137–138; Glass Menagerie and 127–128, 131, 137–138 systemic racism 169–171 Talburt, S. 31 Tally, R. T. 55–56 Tanner, G. W. 6, 11 Tate, W. 63 texts most frequently taught, 1907–2012 14 Thein, A. H. 23 Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston) 199, 206 theory: defining 121–122; questioning and 121; see also literary theory Thomas, E. E. 56, 65, 190 Thomas, P. 1 Thomas, P. L. 88 Thomson, Hugh 37, 39 Thoreau, Henry David 3, 108 Thurber, S. 5 Tischler, N. M. 127–128, 134–135, 140 To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee): African American students and 163; approaches to teaching 161–164, 171–172; Black characters in 166, 168, 171; as coming-of-age work 163; complacency of Atticus Finch in 168–172; critical approach to teaching 162–163; critical literacy pedagogy and 164; critical whiteness studies and 161, 164–170, 172; influence of 161; popularity of

Index 161; racial epithets in 121, 163; reading “against” 164, 171–172; White Messiah trope in 166–170; Whiteness and 162–172; White privilege in 164–166, 169, 171 “To Kill a Mockingbird” in the Classroom (Gibbons) 163 Tomaselli, K. 151 Too Late to Die Young (Johnson) 123 Tortuga (Anaya) 180 totalitarianism 146 Traffas, J. 12 transactional theory: Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and 92, 96–102; Rosenblatt on 92–95, 101–102 Trilling, L. 56, 59 Troost, L. 40 Trump, Donald 145, 155–158 Twain, Mark: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 55–67; African Americans and 65 Tyson, L. 71, 73 university literary canon 3–4 Unsicker-Durham, S. K. 157 “Unspeakable Thoughts Unspoken” (Morrison) 59, 192 urban/street literature 208 uses and gratifications theory 150 Validity of Interpretation (Hirsch) 93 Vera, H. 167–169 vernacular English 208 Vindication of the Rights of Women, A (Wollstonecraft) 40 Waiting for Godot (Beckett) 119 Walden (Thoreau) 3, 108 Walker, Alice: Color Purple, The 196–210, 212–214; heterodox spirituality and 199; Possessing the Secret of Joy 206; In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens 202; womanism and 202–203 Wall, C. A. 199 Wall, D. C. 200 Wallace, John 58 Wallace, M. 207 Ware, J. O. 162 Warhol, R. 199 Warren, Robert Penn 9 Washington, M. H. 196

229

Watt, I. 39 We Need Diverse Books 177–178 West, C. 170 Wharton, Edith 108 “What Good is Literature in Our Time?” (Anaya) 178 White, G. D. V. 40 White fragile identity 56, 166 White Messiah trope 166–168 Whiteness: critical whiteness studies and 164; as invisible norm 164–166; media depictions of 164; as racial discourse 167; self-concepts and 169; To Kill a Mockingbird in 162–164 White privilege 61, 164–166, 169, 171 White supremacy 169–171 White violence 170 “Whitewashing Race” (Anderson) 169 Williams, R. 39, 41 Williams, Tennessee: Glass Menagerie, The 121–142; symbolism and 131 Wilson, B. 122 Wimsatt, W. K., Jr. 9 With a Book in Their Hands (MartínRodríguez) 191 Wollstonecraft, Mary 40 womanism: Africana 201–203; defining 203, 213; PUSH and 213; Walker and 202–203 Womanist Reader, The (Phillips) 203 women’s education 37, 40 Wood, T. 125 Woodcock, G. 145 Woodworth, J. 12 Wright, Richard 88–89 Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness, A (Moraga) 191 Yep, Lawrence 177 young adult literature: adolescent characters in 30; being and becoming in 23; disability studies lens and 126; identification with narrator in 101; independent reading and 5–8; in literary canon 12, 14; technology-based 23; themes in 98 youth: agency and 22; critical literacy practices of 23; in cultural texts 22, 31; see also adolescence