This Thesis Has Been Approved by the Honors Tutorial College and the Department of English
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This thesis has been approved by The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of English __________________________ Dr. Josephine Bloomfield Associate Professor, English Thesis Advisor ___________________________ Dr. Carey Snyder Honors Tutorial College, Director of Studies English ___________________________ Dr. Jeremy Webster Dean, Honors Tutorial College WITHDRAWN FROM CURRICULM: FEMINISM AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE ____________________________________ A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University _______________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English ______________________________________ by Kathryn M. Young June 2011 To JLY and JHB with love and thanks Table of Contents “Withdrawn from Curriculum”............................................................................................... 5 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6 Young Adult Literary Terminology ...................................................................................6x Common Tropes of Young Adult Literature ......................................................................8x Feminist Theory: The Waves ........................................................................................... 11x Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................ 20x Louisa May Alcott‟s Radical Little Women ...................................................................... 22x Career Stories for Early 20th Century Girls ...................................................................... 28x Nancy Drew‟s Enduring Image ....................................................................................... 46x Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................................ 61x Judy Blume: Knowing the Female Body .......................................................................... 62x Teen Pregnancy Novels Before and After Roe v. Wade .................................................... 79x Chapter 3 ............................................................................................................................ 93x Harry Potter and Third Wave Progress............................................................................ 94x Twilight and Third Wave Backlash ................................................................................ 109x But Why Young Adult Literature? ................................................................................... 126x Works Cited ..................................................................................................................... 128x Front page of Too Bad About the Haines Girl by Zoa Sherburne; removed from the library of Reed Junior High School in Loveland, Colorado. 6 Introduction From their first consciousness, individuals are influenced by the media they experience. While few young adult novels enjoy the “classic” status of other works of literature, many have the potential to influence large numbers of readers. What these novels may lack in literary merit, they overcome in their sheer popularity. Such popularity ensures that their themes and gender representations reach many adolescents. Though h young readers may not seek the ideas that they glean, as Elizabeth Heilman explains, they cannot ignore them: “When I read as a young person, I looked for ideas about how and who to be. Even if young readers are not actively seeking lessons in gender identity, they can be learned” (237). Furthermore, because young adults have chosen to read these novels, they are far more willing to accept the gender cues that they read. Through the application of feminist and young adult literary theories, I have sought to identify the pro- and anti-feminist lessons to be found in popular young adult literature. When examined alongside the history of the feminist movement, it becomes evident that the development of feminist themes in young adult literature has crested and ebbed according to the political climate of the day. Thus, despite eras of backlash against feminism, young adult literature has ultimately grown more progressive since its nineteenth century introduction. Young Adult Literary Terminology In order to understand the scope of this argument constructed about “young adult literature,” one must first confront and clarify the nebulous definition of the term. In common usage, young adult literature is a term applied to the broad spectrum 7 of books written for adolescents throughout history. Within circles of literary criticism, however, young adult literature refers to books written far more recently; S.E. Hinton‟s 1967 novel The Outsiders is considered the first official young adult book (Rice). Before The Outsiders, books for adolescents were grouped under a variety of ambiguous labels and indeed come from many disparate sources. Many of the first books for children were written in the wake of the American Sunday School Union‟s movement. Beginning in 1817, the movement, which promoted morality and vocational skills, brought literacy to children throughout America, and. Iin the following years of the nineteenth century, psychological theorists began to recognize a transitory period between childhood and adulthood that would call for a reconsideration of reading materials for young people. Sarah Bilston writes, “„the awkward age‟ was tentatively used to describe the „interval‟ between childhood and womanhood” (1). Children‟s literature— particularly girls‟ literature— adapted to reflect the changing understanding of adolescence. Authors and critics of the 1930s early twentieth century began to differentiate between books for children and adolescents: “Although for years countless books had been published and widely read by young adults the term junior and juvenile was first applied to young adult literature during the early 1930s” (Donelson and Nilsen 67). Stylistically and thematically, however, junior literature stagnated until 1967 when Hinton published The Outsiders. Authors and critics of the mid-1960s noted that books for adolescents were becoming less and less successful, and many, including Hinton, blamed the stalled development of the genre: “„The world is changing,‟ [Hinton] wrote in an impassioned New York 8 Times article, „yet the authors of books for teen-agers are still 15 years behind the times‟” (Cart From Romance to Realism 45). In The Outsiders, Hinton sought to realistically capture realistically the people and problems she had encountered as teen. Her novel was an overnight success, as well as a catalyst in the young adult literary revolution. The Outsiders represents such a departure from juvenile literature that critics cite it as the official beginning of modern young adult literature: “Because of her own youth, Hinton came to symbolize that rejection [of juvenile literature] and its replacement by a new kind of literature. Richard Peck…whose writing would follow hers, has said she „may be the mother of us all‟” (Cart Romance to Realism 48). Critics today understand “young adult literature” as material which readers aged twelve to eighteen choose to read (Donelson and Nilsen 1). This element of choice binds the novels of the post-Outsiders era to earlier works. Regardless of terminology or classification, the overarching purpose of these books was simple pleasure and entertainment. These books were rarely, if ever, a part of the classroom canon, and were most often read because adolescents chose to do so. Thus, for the purposes of this research, the term “young adult literature” is applied retroactively to books of the “awkward age” through junior or juvenile fiction. For the sake of consistency, this term will embody all previous descriptions of literature written for adolescents. Common Tropes of Young Adult Literature As with any literary subgenre, young adult literature has a set of distinct characteristics and tropes. To those unfamiliar with the genre, some of these tropes can 9 potentially muddy the understanding of the work as a whole. First, young adult literature almost always employs an adolescent narrator. Though most clearly observed through the first-person, third-person narrators can be just as effective, provided that they focus upon the adolescent perspective for the majority of the work. Also, books for young adults tend to be quite short; most popular young adult novels are under 250 pages. Gary Paulsen‟s Hatchet (1987) spans 192 pages, while Natalie Babbitt‟s Tuck Everlasting is a mere 139. Even Hinton‟s The Outsiders is only 208 pages in its current edition. In recent years, authors including J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer have released longer novels with great success, but the short young adult novel remains the norm:; Jerry Spinelli‟s bestselling Stargirl (2004) is 208 pages. The authors of these shorter novels opt for quality over quantity of characters and narrative events. Often, such novels have a few well-defined characters and a shorter series of powerful events. This narrow focus allows young adult authors to maintain the swift, steady pace preferred by many young adult readers: “If a book is to be meaningful to them, it must be clearly focused. When it is based on complex ideas…the discussion of those ideas must be to some