Author Archives: oa150272

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“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and Gendered Mischievousness

In Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” little Tom is conniving and sinful, but is ultimately characterized as harmless and far from the trope of the evil or demonic child. Tom uses his cunning to avoid punishment from Aunt Polly and avoid doing work such as when he conned boys from St. Petersburg to whitewash his fence. Because Tom is just a mischievous child and not evil, his schemes are seen as playful, rambunctious and prompts the reader to shrug and say “boys will be boys.” This saying has and still does act as an excuse for boys to act rowdy and sometimes violent in accordance to how contemporary American society genders males. The classic adventure story for a boy requires physicality often in the forms of destructiveness, violence, and dominion over his environment. The classic adventure story for a girl could not be more different which means even from a young age, children are given expectations of what kind of adventures they should have and what is appropriate for the gender from literature.

Boys are allowed to be mischievous and troublesome and it is seen as an integral part of their character. Boys learn how to control their environment from an early age when they’re encouraged to go out and play outside. Since gender roles characterize men as dominant, industrious, and in control, literature fosters these ideas when they portray young boys like Tom Sawyer being dirty, active, and rowdy. However, young girls are given a PLETHORA of love stories and tales revolving around the home. This teaches girls from a young age that the most important thing in life is to find someone to love us so we can stay at home and be obedient and pleasant. Usually in literature, young girls are not portrayed as mischievous or at least, certainly not in the way that boys are. Male mischievous is healthy and good for them; female mischievous suggests sexual deviancy.

 

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“The Truant” & “The Truant Boy’s End”

It can be argued that all facets of our culture are tools of propaganda. Much like advertising, literature, music, fashion, etc. not only reflects the current cultural values and beliefs, but simultaneously shapes it as well. If children are seen as citizens of the future and also small people that must undergo conformation to become “normal” members of society, children’s literature is a perfect place to start implementing a set of values that are synonymous with the mainstream’s. In “The Truant” and “The Truant Boy’s End”, The Messrs. Abbott clearly implies that a child’s obedience directly correlates to his/her worthiness of love.

In “The Truant”, a young boy named Henry gets distracted on the way to school by a boat. God forbid children develop and cultivate their sense of adventure and curiosity! No, children must go to school, bury their heads in books, and conform! However, Henry’s little escapade costs him and sends him in a spiral of guilt and causes him to commit more sins. In “The Truant Boy’s End”, children are taught that should they wander from the defined path set before them of obedience, they will surely die alone and sad out in the cold. Children are information sponges and would understand from these pieces that should they be disobedient or tell a lie even once that they will be unworthy of love and will be alienated from society. A great tool used in propaganda is fear and what better way to create a society with an anxiety of fitting in and being normal than to scare children in seemingly harmless pieces of literature.

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“How to Read Children’s Literature”

Children’s Literature is a peculiar genre in that its intended audience is imagined and its writers are far removed from the readers. When writing/creating a character, it’s easiest to draw from one’s own life to shape his/her experiences. I would imagine that there would be a lot of backlash if the entirety or great majority of African American literature was written by upper/middle class white men. Sure, there’s a great deal of imagination that goes into writing a story, but when the voice of an entire minority is being represented in literature by those in power, erasure happens. Children’s Literature is characterized by a lack of proper representation of those it portrays. Adults write for children and thus, assume this abstract reader. In Jonathan Klassen’s “How to Read Children’s Literature,” the reader adult writers imagine is called the “implied reader.” Klassen explains that the implied reader is “a role the text implies,” but what happens when the child isn’t the reader we assumed him/her to be?

What happens when adults imagine this nonexistent child and it doesn’t match up to the actual children who are reading? If children are seen as “other” and yet are seen as lacking sovereignty over themselves, completely dependent, and inferior to the adults they will one day become, this “implied reader” does no justice to the real child reader whose mind and imaginary worlds are viewed upon with condescension. What would it mean for our society to fully accept children as conscious citizens rather than wild animals that need to be tamed and how would that reflect in children’s literature and how it’s viewed?