Gender Subversion and the Status Quo in Tom Sawyer and Little Women

Gender Subversion and the Status Quo in Tom Sawyer and Little Women An Analysis of Butler’s Gender Theory in Louisa May Alcott’s and Mark Twain’s Popular Children’s Tales De-Lyn Marie Williams “Except for their genitals, I don’t know what immutable differences exist between men and women. Perhaps there are some other unchangeable differences; probably there are a number of irrelevant differences. But it is clear that until social expectations for men and women are equal, until we provide equal respect for both sexes, answers to this question will simply reflect our prejudices. – Naomi Weisstein Introduction: In the beginning of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868), one of Alcott’s four protagonists, Meg March, chastises her sister Jo for her habit of putting her hands in her pockets and whistling. “You are old enough to leave off boyish tricks and to behave better, Josephine,” Meg tells her sister. “It didn’t matter so much when you were a little girl, but now you are so tall, and turn up your hair, you should remember that you are a young lady.” (5). Jo responds to her sister’s admonishment by stubbornly insisting that she is not the “young lady” Meg believes she should be. “I hate to think I’ve got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China Aster!” she proclaims, adding that she believes it is “bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy’s games and work and manners! I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy. And it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to go and fight with Papa. And I can only stay home and knit, like a poky old woman!” (5). This scene in Little Women exemplifies culturally-contingent notions of gender in 19th century America that still resonates in contemporary, twenty-first century discourse. This moment demonstrates, through its depiction of Meg’s insistence upon behaviors becoming of a “young lady,” the rigidness of nineteenth-century gender roles. Simultaneously, however, it suggests that such roles are not natural but rather constructed, and therefore capable of being challenged and subverted. After all, Jo – who is widely acknowledged by readers as the novel’s heroine – resists those roles by Williams 1 taking on a boyish name, turning up her hair, and stomping about in an exceedingly unladylike fashion. Indeed, Jo defiantly signals her refusal to act like a lady by throwing her knitting needles and fabric – talismans of the feminine sphere – across the room in protest. Jo’s act of defiance – which might be read as an instance of “acting out” – places into relief not only her resistance to conventional gender norms, but her recognition that gender is ultimately a performative category rather than an essential trait. After all, she would like to be playing games that “boys” are supposed to play. She realizes, that is, that gender is acted or “played” rather than – as Meg believes – an ingrained identity. Moreover, she recognizes, in a way that Meg does not, that gender expectations are a function of language. For example, by taking up the more masculine nickname “Jo” instead of her more feminine given name, “Josephine,” Alcott’s heroine simultaneously respects and subverts conventions of gender that are communicated through and reaffirmed by naming, specifically, and language, more generally. In this thesis, I will examine the constrictive power of social constructions of gender, even -- or perhaps especially – in those contexts when individuals attempt to resist them. I will look at gender theorist Judith Butler’s ideas of performativity, normativity, and language as the means through which gender is constructed as well as briefly introduce Louis Althusser’s definitions of “interpellation”—a process which hails a subject who then becomes that subject—and ideological state apparatuses. .After engaging some of their ideas and discussing what makes up “personhood” in regards to gender, I will then consider them in relation to Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott’s popular children’s books, Tom Sawyer and Little Women. I have chosen these primary texts because they are representative of texts traditionally considered as “boy books” Williams 2 and “girl books,” respectively. Since these two novels are—to a degree—a reflection of conventional American assumptions about childhood and gender in the Victorian era, they demonstrate radical differences of gender play and role resistance between the texts while noting their similarity in reverting to comfortable stereotypes and appeasing expectations. Williams 3 Chapter I: In this thesis, I will be heavily referring to Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990), an investigation of the construction of gender and identity. Her project finds that gender is not “normative”—that is innate and standard—but instead a self-fulfilling prophecy that is created by society and results in the “performance” of gender to fulfill given roles. By discussing the “performativity” of gender, Butler argues that gender is a deception— an act—and not based on fact or reality; instead, she explains, it is both taught and expected by society. Her method of offering convincing arguments and then deconstructing them reinforces one of the most important ideas to both her work and this thesis: language is a powerful tool which may lead and mislead. To further express this relationship of language to ideology, linguist Roy Harris summarizes Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s study of language with this conclusion: Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to our grasp of the world we live in, but as central to it. Words are not mere vocal labels or communicational adjuncts superimposed upon an already given order of things. They are collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world. (ix) In other words, we do not define our world before and independently of language, but with language as a vehicle of social interactions. For instance, the word “gay” evokes a certain meaning in context while also carrying its semantic transformation—a birth and metamorphosis that describes something beautiful (like a woman), the state of being merry or joyful, wanton or lewd, a prostitute woman, homosexual, or, colloquially, Williams 4 something stupid, foolish, etc. (“gay”). When, for example, someone says “the musical was gay,” the listener relies on a number of nuances in speech and context such as the content of the play, the speaker’s age and class, voice tone, etc., in order to draw a precise meaning intended. Still, every use carries the shadow of the other meanings, and while the speaker might have intended to describe the play as “foolish”, the listener may have derived that it was instead “homosexual”. Additionally, the listener may have associated both definitions at once—that it was both a foolish and homosexual—linking the two definitions into one: homosexual foolishness. Language as a means for clarity in communication is imperfect and messy, acting as a signifier for not one idea but many, and it is readers and listeners who construct and follow this inadequate form— language—in attempt to convey abstract and concrete ideas in a comprehensible way. Butler recognizes the imperfection in language, and refuses it by challenging the ontology of language—claims of essence and existence of the word and its meaning— that thrive in popular cultural-social thought. She then diminishes the validity of what is considered “normative” gender—expected, appropriate— behavior by postulating that it is only “performative” behavior—an act or literally performance which she defines as the: :“…performativity of gender [which] revolves around [a] metalepsis, the way in which the anticipation of a gendered essence produces that which it posits as outside itself. Secondly, performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual, which achieves its effects through its naturalization in the context of a body, understood, in part, as a culturally sustained temporal duration. (xv) Williams 5 In other words, gender is a self-fulfilling prophecy that is at first taught and then acted act repetitively before it is finally considered the natural behavior of the sex. It is no more real than it is created. A young girl is raised by women to behave like a proper lady, and if she obeys tradition, then she is a proper or “normative” girl. If she doesn’t, she is a butch, a rebel, a feminist, a tomboy, a lesbian, or some other title that projects resistance to that “normative” type. All of which can be observed through her continual behaviors and performances. Additionally, Butler proposes we have become a largely heterosexist race which finds security in personal or group identity only by recognizing the “Other” or opposite of that identity. As hetero (different) sexes make up the dominating separating categories of humanity, it is radical to think outside of those differences as Butler does when she explains: The presence of so-called heterosexual conventions within homosexual contexts as well as the proliferation of specifically gay discourses of sexual difference, as in the case of “butch” and “femme” as historical identities of sexual difference, cannot be explained as chimerical representations of originally heterosexual identities. And neither can they be understood as the pernicious insistence of heterosexist constructs within gay sexuality and identity. The repetition of heterosexual constructs within sexual cultures both gay and straight may well be the inevitable site of the denaturalization and mobilization of gender categories. The replication of heterosexual constructs in non-heterosexual frames brings into relief the utterly constructed status of the so-called heterosexual original….The Williams 6 “unity” of gender is the effect of regulatory practice that seeks to render gender identity uniform through a compulsory heterosexuality.

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