BOOKMARKS: GIRLHOOD READING THAT MARKED US WOMEN © DEANNA LYNN ARELIS 1995 B.A.. University of Alberta. !974 Dip.Ed., University of Alberta. 1976 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Education of The University of Lcthbridgc in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF EDUCATION LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA November, 1995 For Carillon, Inta, Jacqui, Lisa, and Wendy, my BookMarks sisters. Our stories are bound together within. iii Abstract This thesis is contained within the frame of a plot diagram, since it is a story about telling stories about stories. The conflict was initiated when it struck me that I had been living unawares inside a contradiction: I called myself a feminist, yet I loved and promoted the "Great Works of Western Literature", a canon reflecting patriarchal metanarratives. This conflict shaped the question, "What does it mean to say that we are gendered by what and how we read as girls?" I looked for clues by re-searching my graduate coursework, amongst the discourses of critical pedagogy, postmodernism, interpretive inquiry, and feminist literary criticism. Translating theory into rising action, I adopted as my approach the memory-work techniques described in Female Sexualization (1987), an exemplary work of feminist research. I formed the BookMarks Collective, comprising an affinity group of six women, including me, who met and responded to the question for five months by writing, critiquing, and rewriting memory-stories about their girlhood reading. The experience of collectivity itself became the story's climax: together we opened the door to a world we would not have discovered alone or lived theoretically. Together we brought to life the belief that change in ourselves preceeds pedagogic change, our conversations having sparked insights about our beliefs and practice iv that none had come to on her own. Together, we re-read "gendering" as a process within a complex and contradictory constructed reality in which we both act and are acted upon. Together, we recognized the power of collective consciousness-raising to enable us to re-view the textual meanings of our lifestories, allowing us to become conscious agents in their ongoing construction. v Acknowledgements At every stage, this project has been a collective endeavor. It was my pleasure and honour to work and laugh with the women of the Bookmarks Collective, to whom I will always be indebted. I also owe much to my co-supervisors, Robert Runte and David Smith, for their collaborative wisdom, and their steadfast support of this work in its many, often odd, transformative stages. I was especially grateful for their support during those vegetative periods when there wasn't much evidence that anything was growing. To my committee members, Robin Bright and Jane O'Dea, I extend my appreciation for their thought-provoking feedback to various versions of the thesis. I want to thank Cynthia Chambers as well, for having time and again pointed me in the direction I needed to go. On the home front, I have been blessed with the friendship of Lori White, who so often cheered and encouraged me in the dark and wee hours. And for my lifelong and long-distance friend, Deborah Forbes, I thank my lucky stars for having brought such a deeply wise and loyal friend into my life. To my parents and sisters, Wendy and Cheryl, I wish to express my profound gratitude for their always supportive and encouraging words- Most of all, I thank with all my heart my husband, Tom McLeay, and our daughters, Devon and Cara, who had to live with me while I fussed and fumed my way through the writing of this thesis. You made all the difference. vi Preface The cover of this thesis is a visionary image created by Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), prophet, abbess, artist, writer, and teacher. "In this rich mandala," Matthew Fox (1985) explains, "all of creation is represented as interdependent and celebrative. Angel and human commingle, intermix, interrelate Truly, the entire cosmos is invited into this living mandala, this song" (p. 77). With Hildegard's vision, I welcome you into this collective work of memory. I decided to take up Hildegard's invitation as my own after she "spoke" to me through the voice of my friend, reading Hildegard's words long-distance over the phone. At the time, I was lying in bed, incapacitated by trigeminal neuralgia, characterized by episodes of excruciating pain radiating through the sides of the face. This condition, its cause unknown, had struck me down at age forty-two and seven months, just as I had begun to write my thesis, effectively silencing me. In blinding pain and furious self-pity, I heard: 'When I was forty-two and seven months old, a burning light of tremendous brightness coming from heaven poured into my entire mind All of a sudden, I was able to taste of the understanding of the narration of books.' Hildegard was overcome by this experience of intuition, connection-making, and insight and vii went to her bed sick. It was when she 'placed my hand to writing' that she received new strength, got out of bed, and spent the following ten years writing her first book called Scivias. (p. 9) I began to understand my pain as a message that could be interpreted as disabling or illuminating. I have chosen to let it light my way as I inscribe a path I hope will meet at some point with yours- viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication iii Abstract iv Acknowledgements vi Preface vii I. INITIAL INCIDENT: IN CONVERSATION 1 II. INTERNAL CONFLICT: THE QUESTION 7 A. STATING THE QUESTION 8 B. ANTECEDENT ACTION: Coursework Informing the Question 8 1. Dualism 11 Clues in Critical Pedagogy 19 2. Multiple "Selves" 31 Clues in Postmodernism & Poststructuralism 33 3. BookWound 44 Clues in Interpretive Inquiry 44 4. Hoary Stories 50 Clues in Feminist Literary Criticism 69 III. RISING ACTION: THE APPROACH 80 A. FLASHBACKS: Informing the Approach Description of the Original Research from Female Sexualization 81 B. SETTING THE SCENE: Describing the Approach Adapting the Memory-Work Approach to the BookMarks Project 87 IV. CLIMAX: THE RESEARCH 97 Memory-Work of the BookMarks Collective A. OUR TRAITS 98 B. OUR TECHNIQUES Ill 1. Detail a. Sensory Detail 113 b. Specific People, Places, and Things 116 2. Shift in Perspective a. Third Person Point of View 119 b. First Person Child's Point of View 120 3- Using Images and Metaphors 120 C. OUR TALK 123 1. Example 1 127 2. Example 2 129 3. Example 3 131 D. OUR TEXTS 136 1. Three to Seven a. Daddy Stories 138 b- Mommy Stories 144 c. Sister Stories 157 d- Moral Tales 161 e. Grade One 164 2. Eight to Twelve a. Horse Stories 169 b. Girl Stories: Hero(ines) 171 i. Serials 172 ii. Comics 172 iii. Novels 174 iv. Movies Stars and Public Figures...175 c. Upper Elementary 178 3. Thirteen to Fifteen a. T.V. Heroines 181 b. Bulk Reading 181 c. Pulp Romance 182 d. Medical and Reference Texts 184 e. Men's Mags 186 V. DENOUEMENT: UNRAVELLING PLOT COMPLICATIONS 194 VI. OUTCOME: RESOLVING THE CONFLICT 201 A. RESEARCH AS PRAXIS: Exemplary Feminist Work 202 B. WRITING AND REMEMBERING 208 C . COLLECTIVITY 215 VII. REFERENCES 222 I. INITIAL INCIDENT: IN CONVERSATION Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface: a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events. -Margaret Atwood The Robber Bride - 1 - Not long ago, during her last visit to Lethbridge, my friend Deborah and I were sitting at my kitchen table, drinking strong, honeyed coffee and reminiscing about books we'd loved when we were girls. Deborah recalled that when she was eleven, she'd read and reread The Scarlet Pimpernel, and any of Douglas Bader's accounts of World War Two R.A.F. adventures that she could get her hands on. She nodded when I asked if she remembered the Friday afternoons we'd spent in grade six, listening with shivery pleasure to the Greek myths Mr. Palmer read aloud to us in his deep, resonant, very British voice. He'd also read most of Rudyard Kipling's stories, poems, and novels to us, my favorite of which had been Kim. Recalling her keen interest at that age in the works of Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott, Deborah noted that our teacher had possessed an uncanny knack for choosing just the sort of action-packed, chivalric, daring-do novels that she'd been reading herself. "Of course," she remarked offhandedly, "as I read or listened to any of these novels, I always identified with the male central character." The girlhood "favorites" either of us thought to mention are historical adventure stories featuring male protagonists, all of whom could be classified as romantic heros. While the novels include female characters as well, they were not the figures with whom we'd aligned ourselves. While Deborah and I had read countless other - 2 - books when we were eleven and twelve, many of which we could recommend as being very good stories by and about females, these were not the books that came to us in the first passion of remembering. These aspects of our girlhood reading were striking, but what hit full force that night was the casual, taken-for-granted way in which Deborah mentioned that "Of course" she'd identified with male protagonists. I'd heard and said the same thing myself on any number of occasions, but the impact of the "Of course" as an indication of the degree to which we two had come to accept this reading pattern as natural, normal, to-be-expected, and inevitable, hadn't struck me until this incident occurred.