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.

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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)

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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

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“unity” of gender is the effect of regulatory practice that seeks to render gender

identity uniform through a compulsory heterosexuality. (41-2)

To her, language –heterosexuality, homosexuality, etc.—have purported to define something that already exists. However, if two women are in a lesbian relationship and one is called the “butch” or the “man” and the other is referred to as the “girl” then the use of those terms becomes suspicious. It does not answer why the application of heterosexist ideas of gender must be applied to homosexual relationships in order to understand them. It reveals the inability of society to readily accept something outside of

“normative heterosexuality”. Because of the way heterosexual labels like declaring on the “man” and the other a “woman” in a lesbian relationship are used, it expresses how suspect and those terms are. Two biologically females in a relationship must take on specific heterosexual roles in order to be better comprehended. It is a result of looking to find gender within a “regulatory practice” that looks for consistency in identifiers.

Furthermore, Butler postulates that when a stable gender identity cannot be found in a person and they do not fit within relation to “compulsory heterosexuality”; they lose a significant part of their identity and observers find it difficult to see them as a comprehensible person because gender, as Butler argues, is inextricable from personhood. Butler argues:

In as much as ‘identity’ is assured through the stabilizing concepts of sex,

gender, and sexuality, the very notion of ‘the person’ is called into question by

the cultural emergence of those ‘incoherent’ or ‘discontinuous’ gendered beings

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who appear to be persons but who fail to conform to the gendered norms of

cultural intelligibility by which persons are defined. (Butler 23)

One cannot be a genderless person but a “he” or “she”—a male or female person—in order to be intelligible and appear to be identifiable as people. The male is colloquially measured as a degree of strength and wholeness, whereas the female is measured by a degree of weakness and the lack of strength or manliness. If they fulfill neighter gender roles or even both gender roles, then they are ‘discontinuous’ gendered beings and “fail to conform to the gendered norms…by which persons are defined” (23). For example, if one sees a transgendered man who is evidently a man because of stubble on his face and bulk in his arms and crying in a pink dress, then that character’s gender is ‘incoherent’. This, as Butler argues, is the result of phallogocentricity (phallus logo)— a term coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida that has evolved from the idea of logocentrism. Logocentrism is defined as the determinateness of words, speech, and meaning and phallocentrism is the elevation of the masculine. Therefore, phallogocentricity is the elevation of the masculine within the determinateness of words, speech, and meaning, and as a consequence underlines the feminine lack of masculinity and thus expresses their inferiority through language. By thinking in this masculine frame, it is difficult to not find the masculinity or lack of masculinity in

“discontinuous” gendered characters rather than perceiving them as something outside of this framework entirely. One example of the treatment of the female (lack of maleness) within language is definition 3b of “woman” in the Oxford English Dictionary:

“Chiefly derogatory. A woman considered with reference to qualities traditionally attributed to the female sex, as weakness, fickleness, vanity, etc. Also with reference to

Williams 8 positive qualities, such as capacity to love, sensitivity, etc.” (“woman”). When referencing the definition of “man” in the same dictionary, definition 9a reads:

“A person (usually an adult male) regarded in terms of the qualities of courage, strength, or responsibility, etc., traditionally associated with adult males. Also (in extended use): manliness, courage” (“man”). Those examples provide clear evidence for the elevation of the masculine-man and diminution of feminine-female, favoring men who supposedly are known as strong.

Also, in many languages, pronouns are gendered to reflect the inability to separate gender from communication, and it is nearly impossible to have a fluid conversation without the use of pronouns when proper nouns are not known. For instance, how would one describe a stranger without using a pronoun (he, she, the boy, the girl, the lady, the woman, the guy, the man, etc. before listing other attributes like in blue, or with brown hair, etc.). It is unlikely that the observer would simply say the person with brown hair and blue eyes because gender is one of the most important attributes to differentiate human beings. In order to be recognized as a complete person, one must not be genderless because, as Butler implied, if one is exhibiting

‘discontinuous’ gender traits (androgynous, for example, without facial hair but also without a traditionally feminine body or style) would lead the observer to believe that they appear to be persons but are outside of the gendered norms of intelligibility (23).

People cannot “figure them out” so to speak, and they become people who are difficult to fathom or identify with.

Butler explains that it is language that calls into existence the certain expectations that it contains within its constructed meaning. That is, a “girl” is not just a

Williams 9 young female human but expected to be in some ways interested in “girlish” things such as Barbie dolls, princesses, the color pink, baking, etc. If the girl resists these things, and would prefer transformers, toy cars, and action figures, then she would be considered a “tomboy” because she exhibits traits that belong to a boy. Thus, to call someone by a name or title (girl, man, you, child) is to define and limit to a comparison of an observed behavior and expected behavior. Moreover, Butler engages Louis

Althusser’s philosophy on ideology and ideological state apparatuses in Gender

Trouble, showing Butler’s interest in his idea of “interpellation”. Butler consistently refers to language in a way that exposes it as constricting or repressive on our ability to understand sex and gender, and Althusser would agree that being “hailed” as a subject

(male or female) by the process of “interpellation” is to be implicitly repressed and will result in one of two productions: what is acceptable or not acceptable to ideology. In

Lenin and Other Philosophy, Althusser claimed argues that:

…ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way that it ‘recruits’ subjects among the

individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it

transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called

interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most

commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing…The existence of ideology and

the hailing or interpellation of individuals as subjects are one and the same thing.

I might add: what thus seems to take place outside ideology…in reality takes

place in ideology. What really takes place in ideology seems therefore to take

place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by

definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical

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denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never

says, ‘I am ideological’. (174-5)

Althusser and Butler are in agreement that ideology and language work together, and despite resisting ideology, cannot escape it. Whereas Judith Butler considers the

“doing” of gender to be separate from the “subject” that is thought to preexist, and

Althusser would say always are already a subject of something in a concrete way.

Those who define the subject of the woman and man—but are resistant to prescribed gender roles—are still marked by the same restrictive ideologies that name the woman and man in the first place. They think they are outside of ideology when they challenge their gender, but are still marked by the same ideological framework. Althusser also points out that this process of interpellation is as early as in childhood education1:

What do children learn at school? They go varying distances in their studies, but

at any rate they learn to write and to add….But besides these techniques and

knowledges, and in learning them, children at school also learn the ‘rules’ of

good behavior…rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which

actually means the rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour and

ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination. (Althusser 132)

In other words, children are born into a system of language and social expectation which indoctrinates the incumbent laws of social order including religion, marriage, sexuality, and government leadership, leaving gender as just one of many things to be decided by society. These conditions influence children so early on that they will accept

1 Although, to Butler, this process actually begins as early as the womb when we are identified as a “girl” or “boy” and prescribed with the title of “daughter” or “son” before we have even been born. Our first identity, besides human child, is our gender.

Williams 11 these systems as universal, pre-linguistic, and “proper.” If they were never introduced to the binary of gender and sexuality, then perhaps it wouldn’t have been of any consequence to see a woman wearing a suit, a homosexual couple holding hands, etc.

However, since gender is represented in this way early on, the binary is set up and defined by a series of attributes.

Althusser refers to ideology as “[representative of] the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (Althusser 162). Rather than strictly defining ideology as a “conceptualizing world view” he defines ideology as imaginary— i.e. something that exists in the mind rather than in the concrete world. However, ideology constitutes an illusion that is seductive, and as a result of that illusion the ideology becomes material (166). In other words, the ideology becomes practiced and manifests in the “real” world as something perceived to be “real”—real being defined as something that is not imaginary or supposed. Since Butler argues that gender is performative and does not exist outside of that performance, then it is the result of an idea—a social construct. As such, it behaves like—and is—an ideology. It is a

Butler argues that there “is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender;

... identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.” (Butler 25). She is returning to the idea gender is an ideology and ideology is imaginary, manifesting only in performing what it is expected of prescribed and predetermined identity—specifically gender identity. Butler goes on to explain that

“identity sees or rather does not see ‘identity’ at all, but produces the subject as a fictive accomplishment of ‘identifications’ made in and against the law of the ‘heterosexual matrix” (Butler 35). The “heterosexual matrix” is a system that is composed of

Williams 12 heterosexuality (or, literally, “different sexes”) and that matrix confines the understanding of one’s behavior to be either in line with or against a prescribed identity

(male-female), making it impossible to exist entirely out of that framework. In other words, the ideological system that is in place and constitutes gender and sex expectations is a heterosexual one, in which heterosexuality is the normative behavior belonging to a man or a woman. Homosexuality and transgenderedness are removed from normative within this matrix.

However, what Butler has done with Gender Trouble is deconstruct ideas of gender and even the body, explaining that all previous discourse about gender has been determined and contained within ideology. With language, ideology has created our men and women, boys and girls, rather than nature itself. Butler explains

…gender is not a noun, but neither is it a set of free-floating attributes, for we

have seen that the substantive effect of gender [pronouns] is performatively

produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence.

Hence, within the inherited discourse of metaphysics of substance, gender

proves to be performative—that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In

this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might

be said to preexist the deed. (Butler 33)

In other words, people are not a gender: that is, gender is not an essential category that defines individuals. Rather, individuals perform a gender. Performance of gender refers to acting that is learned by the social world and is repeated to a degree that it marks the performer by the performance. A man who dresses as a woman is ostensibly a

Williams 13 performer of gender, but Butler argues that any person, heterosexual or not, behaves like a man or a woman as a result of experience in the social world; the performance does not reflect innateness.

Butler’s work is especially important to this thesis as a tool for evaluating the use of masculinity and femininity in children’s literature. Although her complex theoretical arguments are difficult to implement in specific cases rather than abstract discourse, this thesis is an attempt to consolidate Butler’s notions of performativity with two canonical children’s works in America today. I have chosen Mark Twain and Louisa May

Alcott because they are both instrumental authors in a critical time in the history of gender ideology. For instance, the late 19th century saw a rise in the feminist ideal, known as the “New Woman” who resisted male-dominated society, as well as women’s suffrage. It was also a time that saw men like Oscar Wilde on trial for homosexuality; he was already a famous playwright and as a result of his status, his relationship was used as an example of the immorality and indecency of homosexuality. Contemporaneously,

Little Women and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer were breakthrough novels for their authors, and they both attempt to subvert ideology by turning over expected gender performance before ultimately submitting to normativity. I will discuss these texts, as well as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in order to express their conflicts with ideology. These texts, as opposed to adult texts, are so significant to the consideration of gender ideals in children’s literature because children’s literature was “originally written specifically for the religious, moral, behavioral, and social instruction of children, rather than just for their entertainment” (Chew iv). Children’s literature provides one of the earliest exposures to society and ideology, and these books were particularly well-

Williams 14 received by readers. It is because of these complicated dynamics between the authors, gendered ideology, and reception that Twain and Alcott prove to be useful examples of the effects of “interpellation” and gendered “performativity.”

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Chapter II:

Little Women was written in the late 1860s and remains in popular consciousness today. Roberta Seelinger Trites, a scholar who has addressed the works of Alcott and Twain in considerable detail, argues for the presence of feminist and subversive elements among Alcott’s characters (most notably Jo) in works such as

“Queer Performances”, an article published Little Women and the Feminist Imagination, which discusses the subtext in Little Women that both destabilizes received Victorian notions of sexuality and explores the nuances of lesbian community” (Alberghene 140).

However, this thesis is a project which tries to unravel the problems with Alcott’s employment of destabilization. Alcott’s characterization of her “little women” attempts to challenge but ultimately submits to the typical gender identities despite making attempts to complicate them. One reason is that Alcott’s progress is circumscribed by ideology, and, consequently, phallogocentricity and traditionally held gender expectations.

For instance, Jo is a “tomboy” which was described by the Oxford English

Dictionary first as a “rude, boisterous, or forward boy” in the 1500s, and then as “a girl who behaves like a spirited or boisterous boy; a wild romping girl; a hoyden” from the

1800s to present. Both definitions use language and history to limit what a girl can be if she behaves in manners that are expected of boys: an imitation of the male. As we will see soon, the term, “tomboy” was first associated with young male figures named Tom who were rowdy, rude, and mischievous, originating from the first boy book: Tom

Brown’s School Days (1857). Tom Brown’s story was written by Thomas Hughes, which influenced not only just the boy-book, but the British school novel. In Hughes’ text, readers follow the development of boys in a clearly didactic way. Though Mark Twain

Williams 16 followed in the tradition by creating something that resembles a “boy-book”, it is ostensible that he also deconstructed the previous novels, specifically turning over the didacticism and writing for entertainment. After, Tom repeatedly misbehaves and doesn’t develop morally at all, yet he still wins a large treasure at the end of his book.

Regarding the didacticism in Little Women frequently alludes to the moralizing,

Christian allegory Pilgrim’s Progress, written by John Bunyan, which follows its main character’s journey to “The Celestial City”—or the term Bunyan uses to represent heaven. The March girls respect the book’s odyssey to perfection, literally performing scenes from the allegory in an expression of their own journeys. Mrs. March reminds the girls nostalgically:

Do you remember how you used to play Pilgrim’s Progress when you were little

things? Nothing delighted you more than to have me tie my piece bags on your

backs for burdens…and let you travel through the house from the cellar, which

was the City of Destruction, up, up, to the housetop, where you had all the lovely

things you could collect to make a Celestial City. (17)

After Amy renounced the game as a childish thing, Mrs. March explains:

‘We are never too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are playing all the

time in one way or another…Now, my little pilgrims, suppose you begin again,

not in play, but in earnest, and see how far you can get before Father comes

home.’ (17)

Here it is evident that not only have the girls performed the play literally, but they are meant to internalize it—learn from it. In this case, the girls are playing their roles as

Williams 17 dutiful Christians on the moral path, but it isn’t supposed to only be imaginary but “in earnest”. Little Women, like Althusser says of other children’s texts, is a supposed instrument for fostering appropriate, religious behavior, and shaping upstanding citizens. Pilgrim’s Progress is not just for the March girls; the readers, through the experience of reading, are exposed to the ideology behind the allegory, understanding that the girls are encouraged to act it out by Mrs. March because it is the appropriate thing to do. Whether or not the author or reader does that shaping consciously or unconsciously isn’t important; Children’s literature scholar Susan Lehr explains “reading and writing are always transactional experiences” (Lehr 186). Children’s books are therefore not ideologically impartial and can continue to reflect serious gender bias, imposing those ideas on young readers; the author is giving a message and the reader—the child in this case—is taking it away.

To give a more specific example of the transaction of reading this didactic tale, the young girls in Little Women learn explicitly what suitable behaviors are and are punished by society and fortune if they do not act accordingly. When Amy asked Jo to join her on formal calls to the neighbors, Jo initially refused before finally submitting.

Amy promised:

Now put on all your best things, and I’ll tell you how to behave at each place, so

that you will make a good impression. I want people to like you, and they would if

you’d only try to be a little more agreeable. Do your hair the pretty way, and put

the pink rose in your bonnet; it’s becoming, and you look too sober in your plain

suit. Take your light gloves and the embroidered handkerchief. We’ll stop at

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Meg’s, and borrow her white sunshade, and then you can have my dove-colored

one. (Alcott 309)

After explicitly directing Jo in how to act and assimilate the character of a proper, well- bred, normative girl, Jo declares “I’m perfectly miserable; but if you consider me presentable, I die happy” (309). Amy is indeed satisfied. Though Jo has the aptitude to act out the feminine role, she does not like it. Instead, she says that if she has the approval of her sister, Amy, declaring her as “presentable” in her role, then she will “die happy” by fulfilling her performance to the expectations of her sister and society. Also,

Jo refers to her ability to act like a proper lady in plays when she reassures Amy “I’ve played the part of a prim young lady on the stage, and I’ll try it off. My powers are great, as you shall see, so be easy in your mind, my child” (Alcott 311). Again, Jo knows that her powers of performance to assimilate a “prim young lady” in an actual play, she knows that it is that same form of acting—theatrical acting—that she must do for the social world. Jo equates acting like a “prim young lady”—something she is supposed to be—with acting like a fictional character in a play for entertainment. By comparing the stage to reality, she trivializes the realness or integrity of gender performance in the non-fictional world. Jo reveals her knowledge of ideology, her resistance to it, and her willingness to perform it.

Still, “tomboy” Jo defiantly resists the pleas of her sister, Amy, who asks her to

“gossip as other girls do, and be interested in dress and flirtations, and whatever ever nonsense comes up” (311). When she instead behaves in an overdramatic, uncouth manner, she disappoints Amy’s request that she act like a “proper” girl. In fact, it is plausible that this behavior was rejected because it was too performed, making Jo’s

Williams 19 assimilation of the feminine insincere. Jo sardonically says “I’ll be agreeable, I’ll gossip and giggle, and have horrors and raptures over any trifle you like. I rather enjoy this, and now I’ll imitate what is called ‘a charming girl’…” (311). Instead, Jo said exactly what was on her mind without the well-bred, feminine filter and quickly convinced her

Aunt to dismiss her and consider Amy for a trip to France. Jo’s punishment for not performing her role was that her normative, obedient sister would go to Europe in her place. In the end of the novel, Jo’s cumulative behavior has not resembled the “ladylike” performance of her gracefully feminine sister, Amy.

Though Jo is at first resistant to performing to expectations, she nevertheless ends up marrying and becoming a more submissive “feminine” figure. As R.D.

Sutherland explains:

Since neither author nor readers can conceive the world as being otherwise than

what the ideology claims, the ideology—when expressed in a published literary

work—is persuasive because it tends to support and reinforce the status quo. As

such, its expression is political: the book promulgates and promotes a particular

ideology (to the exclusion of others); but its reinforcement of widely held views

inhibits change. (qtd. In Chew 11)

In other words, the literature is limited to the ideology that readers and authors are already positioned within so entirely that they cannot fully recognize it, and move beyond all known ideological structures to employ something new, something outside of ideology if that is indeed possible. Literature only exists in relation to already held ideas

(the status quo), and therefore cannot be apolitical or neutral.

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Alcott didn’t originally intend to reinforce the status quo. Her character, Jo, was a

Tomboy—a relatively acceptable trait in a young woman before puberty—but she continued to act in a rebelliously masculine manner throughout her late teens. As a result, Alcott faced immense pressure from publishers and readers alike to tone down her subversion and exploitation of taboos, eventually submitting Jo to the “proper” ending (i.e. proper ideology)—a marriage and a settled life (Alberghene 155) . Though

Alcott conceded, she still resisted the popular influence in the only other way she could: by marrying Jo to Professor Bhaer rather than the coveted Laurence (no longer called

Laurie). Trites even suggests that Alcott wished to parody the social construction of gender roles, quoting Alcott as saying in a letter to a friend, “Jo should have remained a literary spinster but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn’t dare to refuse & made a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect’” (qtd. In Alberghene 141).

Alcott acknowledges that Jo should be a literary spinster, but couldn’t because of pressure from the readers. Jo’s rebellious character is often regarded to be the semi- autobiographical projection of Alcott herself (who never married), and Anne Hollander discusses this character-author relationship in “Reflections on Little Women”, claiming that the “character of Jo is the one identified with Alcott, not only on the biographical evidence but through the more obvious interest the author takes and the keener liking she feels for this particular one of her four heroines” (192). Therefore, not only is there biographical evidence suggesting Alcott sympathizes with Jo, but also textual evidence that constantly returns to Jo as the focal point for the narrative. With that knowledge, we

Williams 21 can understand that Alcott—like Jo—is resistant to the expectations of those who judge her, but—like Jo—submits to those expectations and satisfies the performance. When

Jo marries Bhaer and refuses to be a literary spinster, both Alcott and Jo are submitting to the ideologies of Alcott’s readers and publishers.

Despite railing against expectations, Alcott often sets them up. In fact, by acknowledging them and even submitting to them, she is propagating them. In Little

Women, Alcott seems to realize that gender behavior is all a performance, i.e. not innate but learned. Using the case of Jo, she shows a rebellious performance transform into a proper performance, teaching young readers along the way how to be (or not be) a woman. Even if she began the task to subvert feminist ideals, at the most basic level she still acknowledges and traps the female in relation to the ruling definition of such and therefore all subscribed meaning and behavior either will or will not follow what is

“appropriate” or “normative.” Therein lies the issue that Judith Butler takes with feminism. According to her:

Without the compulsory expectation that feminist actions must be instituted from

some stable, unified, and agreed-upon identity, those actions [for progress] might

well get a quicker start and seem more congenital to a number of “women” for

whom the meaning of the category is permanently moot. (Butler 21)

If, according to Butler, feminist arguments are grounded in the contention that that women are equal to men, then feminists must stop defining what it is to be a woman or a man. By constructing the definition, they are imposing constrictions on what a woman can be which is only in relation to the label placed her; she is either like or unlike a

Williams 22 woman—for example, emotional like a woman or stoic unlike a woman. The effect of these limiting definitions both inhibit progress and reinforce the association of arbitrary qualities regarding the discursive parameters of a particular gender.

To return to the opening quote in this thesis for textual evidence of Jo’s complicated relationship to gender, Jo complains: “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! It’s bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boys’ games and work and manners I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy” (5). Because she wants the freedom of behavior denied to her but acceptable for the opposite gender, she wants to be a “boy”.

However, that’s not really what her complaint is about. She wants to act freely and without consequence but she knows that she’s “got to grow up” and fully assimilate the role of “woman” which would be an abandonment of her position as a “tomboy” or

“hoyden” which includes young “girl” in the definition. Jo knows that her tomboyish behavior is only allowed as a young girl, but shunned in adults who are expected to perform properly. She recognizes the little freedom she has as a young person will eventually come to an end when she “grows up”

Still, Jo explicitly states that she rejects the idea of marriage, desiring to be a spinster—or old, childless maid who is not directly under the thumb of the dominate male figure of husband. When it seems that her sister, Meg March, and John Brooke may begin a courtly relationship, Jo expresses how disturbed she is by heterosexual marriage, especially with one of her beloved sisters. She confesses “I knew there was mischief brewing, I felt it, and now it’s worse than I imagined. I just wish I could marry

Meg myself, and keep her safe in the family” (216). Indeed, as Roberta Seelinger Trites

Williams 23 argues the “queerness” of that line in “Queer Performances” discussing the conditions of Jo’s—and by extension, Alcott’s—sexual orientation, Jo holds a homosocial bond with her sister and wants to keep her close as well as protect her from a male- dominated marriage. In fact, the word “queer” is consistently written within Little

Women, bringing a multitude of connotations with it. According to the Oxford English

Dictionary, “queer” was originally defined in the 16th century as “Bad; contemptible, worthless; untrustworthy; disreputable” and in the 20th century as “Of a person: homosexual. Hence: of or relating to homosexuals or homosexuality.” Additionally,

“queer also meant “strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character; suspicious, dubious” throughout the 16th to 21st centuries. It is evident that the term

“queer” is loaded with a nuance of meaning that associates it with strangeness or untrustworthiness. Since it is also a synonym of “homosexual”, it has been frequently addressed in modern criticism during the argument for Jo’s lesbian-ness. The

“queerness” is not just the homosexuality, but also the “strangeness”—or even

“badness”--of behaving in a manner that is “Other.” Because heterosexuality is the normal, accepted sexuality, any implications of lesbianism lend mark the book with non- normativity. As Trites explains:

Alcott often uses the word queer to describe Jo’s (and her own) noncomformist

behavior, but the adjective provides the twentieth century reader with a punning

metaphor that aptly sums up one of the most subversive elements of the novel,

and the noun prefigures Judith Butler’s arguments about the performative nature

of gender. (Alberghene134)

Williams 24

Therefore, in a 21st century reading, readers see more into the word than was originally intended. “Queer” was meant to refer to “bad” and/or “peculiar” performances, but now also implies “homosexual” performance. Either way, the term isn’t neutral but pejorative.

Jo’s behavior has become evidence for non-normativity. Trites also explains that expectations of gender performance are inextricable from sexuality. In other words, if one is not behaving properly as his or her prescribed gender, then his or her sexuality is also suspect . One cannot fulfill the gender role without behaving as a proper heterosexual.

Trites also describes Jo as a creature of homosociality—i.e. she is a participant in relationships that are not necessarily romantic but nevertheless are paramount to her.

Also, Trites argues that Beth, like Jo, longs for the homosocial safety of her home life and never imagines growing up. Trites does also see homoeroticism among Jo and her sisters, going as far as to say Beth and Jo’s relationship “implies a degree of homoeroticism”(150). Additionally, Jo confesses that “[Meg] gets prettier every day and

I’m in love with her sometimes”, providing a very substantial declaration of her sororal relationship (Alcott 181-2). Since Jo focuses on the physical attractiveness of her sister and declares that she is “in love” with her—a term reserved usually for romantic love— she brings up even more homoerotic suggestions. When Jo’s homosocial-homoerotic bond is disrupted by Beth’s death and Meg and Amy’s marriage, Jo repositions her sexuality on a traditionally heterosexual path by marrying Professor Bhaer, an action which Trites describes as an act of “desperate loneliness” (Alberghene 153). Trites even goes on to suggest that Jo’s entrance into “compulsory heterosexuality” is a result of

Beth’s death, the sister whom she loved most dearly and passionately—like a lover

Williams 25

(150). Jo’s homosocial behavior, relationships, and ultimate submission into normativity express the complication that Alcott had with gender and Little Women. If Jo is indeed a fictional version of Alcott, then perhaps Alcott battled with feminine relationships, lesbianism, and societal constraint. Regardless, Jo’s sexual conflicts present further

“gender trouble” within the text.

Williams 26

Chapter III

Louisa May Alcott is not the only Victorian age American author to employ gender play. Mark Twain, another subversive and successful author of children’s stories, wrote on the subject of gender. His “tomboy” figure (one of many “Tom”-boy figures in coming-to-age and school literature that originated with Tom Brown’s School

Days) is Tom Sawyer, one of Twain’s many characters who behaves like a “normative” boy—i.e. a rough trickster who is clever, manipulative, aggressive, and adventurous.

This figure is readily apparent through the imitation of the “tomboy” that is present in

Alcott’s Jo. In this way, Twain created a particular brand of the American boy who charms and entertains, aiming to inspire imitation and nostalgia in men who have experienced boyhood. Though the boy figure provides the parameters for a “normative” boy, Twain goes on to subvert normativity in Tom Sawyer by pointing out obvious performativity through an entertaining story. By drawing attention to performance as acting, Twain draws attention to the legitimacy—or illegitimacy—of gender with his characters, begging the question: were Twain’s characters “born” with these sex characteristics or were they fostered by years of social influence? One might be surprised to find out that “girl”, a term so widely accepted to refer to a young female, originated as a term to include both young males and females (“girl” OED). Therefore, it is ironic when Tom speaks pejoratively of “girls” like Becky when he could have been hailed as such many years previous. With such arbitrariness of semantics, the limiting power of language becomes even more egregious. Is there really an essence of a

“girl”—the word or the idea (now a young female), or is language the symptom of an attempt to categorize the uncategorizable? Twain’s work is another prime example of

Williams 27 the complication of sex and gender, especially when considering Judith Butlers theoretical work.

Linda A. Morris begins her book Gender Play in Mark Twain, a study of Twain’s interest and expression of complications in gender performance, with a quote from

Judith Butler: “ [Mark Twain] “troubled gender” in much of his fiction (even while at other times remaining remarkably traditional).” He, like Alcott, has the ability to blur the lines of gender while not actually straying from the constraints of gender ideology as it exists.

Though The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the primary text that I will be discussing,

Twain’s other works do demand to be in the conversation of Twain’s gender play, especially Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. These books are some of the most popular, canonical texts in American literature, following the rise of the “boy book” tradition.

These books feature homosocial relationships and the boys’ youthful, rough-and-tumble adventures without following them into adulthood. Since Twain doesn’t show the boys’ as adults, they are preserved and immortalized in their “boyness”, contributing to the nostalgia of men who look back on their boyhood. The March girls, however, are constantly reminded of their adulthood, including by each other. In Little Women, after

Jo learned of Meg’s imminent marriage, Laurie tried to comfort her by suggesting a run to clear her mind. Gladly, she accepted, and after darting away and “scattering hairpins as she ran”, Meg caught her (271). Meg confronted Jo: “You have been running, Jo.

How could you? When will you stop such romping ways?” to which Jo retorted “Never till

I’m stiff and old and have to use a crutch. Don’t try to make me grow up before my time,

Meg. It’s hard enough to have you change all of a sudden. Let me be a little girl as long as I can” (Alcott 163). Jo resents being reminded by her most matured sister that she

Williams 28 too must move on from girlhood. She recognizes that they were never in a world distinctly apart from adulthood but instead on the verge of it. We do, in fact, follow them into their adult lives of marriage, child-bearing, and home-making.

In contrast to the inevitable adulthood in Little Women, Twain’s boys are immortalized in a pre-social, savage boy-ness before they are grown and permanently changed. Their world is in many ways unlike the adult world as well as troublesome to it; in other words, Tom and Huck are in a stage that precedes it but is still very separate from it. Little Women, however, imposes another expectation on girls: it implies they are not exactly girls—separate from women—but instead little women who live in a

“woman’s sphere” and are “governed by its civilizing codes” (Crowley 388). The March sisters are not entirely separate from the world of women because they are consistently planning for their futures (or resisting them like Jo) and we do ultimately follow them into adulthood, motherhood, and marriage. Their youthfulness and girlish innocence is not rewarded—as heavily marked with Beth’s death—but their ability to become properly socialized women like Mrs. March is.

.Also, unlike story of March girls in Little Women, Tom Sawyer is more easily received by both genders—boy and girl—according to teachers and readers. In a pointed scene in Jane Martin’s The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing

Families, a coed classroom of young students are discussing the books Little Women and Huckleberry Finn. Some of the boys complain Little Women is “stupid”. When she asks what is wrong with the novel, several boys yell out “’It’s about girls’” (71). In protest, a girl says “’Well, Huck is a boy and the girls are going to read about him.’

‘That’s different,’ [a boy] responds. ‘Everyone reads about boys. Only girls read about

Williams 29 girls’” (71). The teacher goes on to relate the March girls to the boy’s sisters in an attempt to interest them. Still, the boys’ sentiment that girl’s books are stupid and that everyone reads about – and is interested in—boys’ books raises the question: what makes boy-books more accessible to all genders whereas girl-books resist male readers?

One reason may be that the characters in Little Women are not afforded the freedom of adventure and experience that the boys in boy books are granted— particularly Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. The March girls and Laurie are trapped very much within the order of society in a way that only the masculinized Tom and Huck can upset. After all, in Tom Sawyer, when Tom and his friends Huck and Jo feel disaffected by authority, they escape to be an uninhabited island and inadvertently convince the village that they have drowned. Fooling an entire town of their deaths is not in the cards for the March girls nor is escaping to another liberating place. When Laurie informs Jo that he plans to visit Washington, he encourages Jo to come. However, Jo explains that “If I was a boy we’d run away together…but as I’m a miserable girl, I must be proper and stop at home” (262). She knows that she does not have the liberty that

Laurie does as a young boy, and laments that she is a girl who must be “proper” and remain at home—in the domestic sphere. The only “escape” found within the book was

Amy and Laurie’s venture to Europe, and they were still highly restricted by propriety—a very large contrast to the pirate escapade in Tom Sawyer where the boys smoked tobacco without interference. Furthermore, if Butler is right in that we consider the masculine to be the whole person and the feminine to be the lack, then perhaps a story about girls will not satisfy the fullness that a boy expects to see in a story about

Williams 30

“masculine adventures.” As Jane Martin’s classroom anecdote suggests, boy’s want to read about the exploits of socially unrestrained boys—not the conflict of a girl who is restricted by socially contingent notions of gender to behave like a “proper lady” should.

In fact, there are many points in which Tom Sawyer provides an example of the glorification of the “masculine” as well as diminution of and resistance to the “feminine.”

Mark Twain’s great gift is satire, and he consistently pokes at the ideological expectations of sex with his characters. Becky, a love interest of Tom’s, reveals an inability to hold back tears—a quality of her “weaker sex”—which is juxtaposed with

Tom’s seemingly more valiant, manly behavior of holding back his stubborn tears and converting his emotional catharsis to violence. Both Becky and Tom try to make one another jealous by expressing “forced gayety” and acting coolly uninterested in the other. The resulting tension compels an outburst of tears for Becky and anger for

Tom. His behavior is neither directly rewarded nor punished by any force in the book— fate, authority, etc-. Indeed, his behavior reflects what is acceptable and even expected of in a boy in mid-nineteenth-century American society. When Becky accidentally tore her teacher’s book, she complains to Tom: “I’ll be whipped, and I never was whipped in school” (207). In another example of Tom’s adherence to gender stereotypes, he mutters to himself: “What a curious kind of fool a girl is! Never been licked in

School!...That’s just like a girl—they’re so thin-skinned and chicken-hearted” (207).

Tom’s explicit criticism of the weakness of girls exposes his ideological binary: if girls are weak then boys are—by contrast—strong, thick-skinned, and, perhaps, lion-hearted.

In the preface to Tom Sawyer, Twain states thats “Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and

Williams 31 women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves” (253). In other words, Twain hopes that his story is universal enough to hit home with adults by reminding them of their gendered antics as if they are natural and ubiquitous. Though his focus is on the masculine Tom, Twain seems to insist that women will see what they “once were themselves” in the female characters and/or Tom himself, engaging readers to relate with Becky, Tom, or both.

Like the young boys in Martin’s class suggest, both men and women can both relate with the masculine-whole, but not always with the feminine-lack. One is either a superior boy (Tom), a girl imitating the superior boy (Jo), or a girl who is inherently weak and lacking of male attributes (Becky). They can all read about Tom Sawyer and his exploits, but Tom would refuse Little Women with disgust because it is about the

“chicken-hearted”. In general, boys can hardly associate with the March girls unless they are fetishizing the motherliness of Marmee2 like orphaned Laurie did in the text.

Instead, they overwhelmingly read “about boys.”

It is of interest, then, when Mark Twain describes cross dressing as one the shenanigans of another of his boy book characters, Huck, in Huckleberry Finn, because it seems to undermine his male gender with a performance of the feminine. Morris points to the abundance in Twain’s work of similarly disruptive gender scenes such as “the king playing the role of Juliet in a Shakespearean parody, or Jim escaping from the Phelps farm at the end of the novel dressed as Aunt Sally” (2). In fact, Twain became interested in more than just the physical assimilation of gender, but also: “girls raised as boys; “tomboys” (his term); a young woman passing as a man

2 Mrs. March

Williams 32 married to another woman; two men, one a male-to-female transvestite, married to each other; and a male French painter who impersonates his own sister and becomes engaged to another man” (3). Twain’s interests are observable in his publications and musings, showing that he was particularly curious about the complication of gender as a concrete identity.

In response to cross-dressing, Butler explains that “In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as its contingency”

(175). In other words, the cross-dressing performance very loudly calls attention to the superficiality and unreliability of gender distinctions. Cross-dressing is often the most noted behavior of Twain’s characters that disrupts gender performativity expectations. If we consider Judith Butler’s ideas that gender and sex are key to our identification of other people, then it is easy to see that these “performances” of the “other” both confuse the characters’ identities as people and our perception of gender. One might consider the performed gender (if it is other than the “natural sex”) is an unreal act or illusion, whereas one might not be as suspicious if the performed gender is to be expected of their “natural sex”. If ideological expectations are met, then the behavior appears as

“real” or “right”, facilitating the ability to move on and understand the person as a person—separate from gendered attributes—if it is indeed possible to. Twain has expressed his interest in upsetting gender with cross-dressing in works such as

Huckleberry Finn, Pudd’nhead Wilson, Those Extraordinary Twins, and The Prince and the Pauper, flipping standard gendered pronouns to match the ostensible sex rather than the born sex (Morris 29). Leading to one of the most famous scenes of Twain’s works is the light-hearted scene with Mrs. Judith Loftus , a woman whom Huck visits in

Williams 33 the guise of a girl to gather news about Jim. Huck, who was dressed by Jim himself, was portrayed in an illustration in which Jim is tightening Huck’s dress; in the image, both Jim and Huck reveal expressive pleasure in addition to the “queerness” of Huck’s limp hands which, Morris described, are “limp in imitation of a girl, or more accurately, in a classic exaggerated imitation of a boy impersonating a girl” (35). Still, when Huck imitates the feminine and fails to appropriate the performance to the expectations of

Judith is suspicious of his deceit.

When Judith tests Huck, his responses are unconvincing. Once she is certain of his false performance because he cannot use a knitting needle, she directs his performance—an action which reinforces that gendered behaviors are both a theatricality and concrete. When Judith is in the midst of training Huck, she says “And don’t go about women in that old calico. You do a girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe” (Huckleberry Finn 105). Here, she recognizes the falsity of Huck’s performance, assuming that other women will know because they are privy to the gender’s idiosyncrasies whereas men are more likely to be unable to discriminate between a “fake” or “real” girl. For instance, it is more likely that a woman would notice a child holding a knitting needle incorrectly, but a man is less likely to notice since he has no social expectation to learn how to use it in the first place. Judith explains that the needle is indeed how she figured Huck’s “natural” identity: “Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived the other [tests] just to make certain” (105). In Twain’s text, Judith is the arbiter of gender—a position afforded to her for living in the women’s sphere and recognizing what is a “feminine” or “masculine” trait or ability; when Huck throws lead at a mouse, his aim is good—as good as a male’s

Williams 34 should be--but when he knits, his skill is poor—expected for a male and not a female.

This scene insists that one gender is privy to recognizing the “counterfeit” performance while suggesting there is, indeed, a “real” or “genuine” one—i.e. Tom was not good at performing the role of the female, but his physical talent—hand-eye coordination in throwing lead at a rat—suggests that he was born with his maleness. Moreover, his lack of fine-motor skills in knitting suggests that those skills are innate for women, but mens’ hands to not need to be so precise but handle feats of strength like throwing. This scene plays with gender, but ends up suggesting that gender is in fact natural and the only performance is the false one which can be easily revealed. Like in Alcott’s work,

Twain’s story complicates gender while still supporting its traditional traits and integrity.

Tom Sawyer employs other, more subtle and uncontroversial displays of gender, marking the differences (or more often, similarities) in expected and enacted behavior.

Tom forgets about Amy Lawrence, and falls for the “angel” Becky Thatcher.

He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had

discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and began

to ‘show off’ in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win her admiration. He

kept up his grotesque foolishness for some time; but by-and-by, while he was in

the midst of some dangerous gymnastic performances, he glanced aside and

saw that the little girl was wending her way toward the house. (Tom Sawyer 29)

As she went into her house, she threw a flower to Tom who collected it with swollen pride. Like a peacock displaying its colors as a presentation of its gender, Tom is performing physically to use showy masculinity—dangerous gymnastic performances—

Williams 35 for Becky’s benefit, and she responds with interest in the form of a flower, also known as “heartsease” and “kiss-me-at-the-garden-gate” which associates it with love and therefore the victory of Tom’s sexual performance (“pansy” OED)3. It is not the only instance of showing off in the text. When Becky was in sight at school, he cuff[s] boys, pull[s] hair, ma[kes] faces” and uses “every art that seem[s] likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause” (Tom Sawyer 45). It is paramount that Tom is over-performing his gender consciously to win the affections of the opposite gender—the gender he is attracted to. He expects her gender to perform interest in such displays, and in this case, Twain rewards his efforts with Becky’s positive response. Twain does not only restrict this “showing off” to young boys or girls, but also adult women, emphasizing that such performance is not childhood trait so much as it is a culturally-sanctioned trait.. For instance, church full of adults who also “show off” to each other. In a catalog of describing adults (and children) who are showing off, Twain writes:

Mr. Walters fell to ‘showing off,’ with all sorts of official bustlings and activities,

giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging directions here, there,

everywhere he could find a target…The young lady teachers ‘showed off’—

bending sweetly over their pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty

warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly. (Tom Sawyer

47)

Here it is evident that men, like Mr. Walters, are showing off their power of authority over others—as in a male-dominated society—and that women, like the young

3 It is an interesting idea that this flower, associated with love, has evolved from heartsease to a derogatory definition for a man who is effeminate or homosexual. Its first pejorative use is dated after Twain, sometime in 1926, shortly after it was colloquially used for “A remarkable or outstanding person.”

Williams 36 teachers, highlight their ability to be nurturing and “sweet” while also “bending…over” and lifting “pretty” fingers to be sexualized or fetishized for their feminine “sweetness” and attractiveness. Despite being adults, the church members are still accentuating traits that are associated with their respective genders in order to ‘show off’ to society, especially the other sex. Twain, in Tom Sawyer, is successful at displaying the normative behavior of Victorian era men and women in America, calling attention to its performance but not really disrupting any ideologies. In fact, the men and women are acting in an expected manner.

Furthermore, homosocial behavior, which involves the privileging of same-sex relationships above others, is appears throughout the novel; rather than underlining feminine homosocial relationships as in Little Women, Tom Sawyer underlines those of the masculine. When Huck and Tom are discussing their future, and Huck says to Tom,

“Only if you get married I’ll be more lonesomer than ever.” Tom’s response is “No you won’t. You’ll come and live with me” (246). Here Tom prizes his male relationship on a level comparable to a domestic, heterosexual relationship—and it is reciprocated by his friend. Twain uses the means of a homosocial bond, something traditionally expected in a story of boyhood and manliness, undermining the subversion in other points in his texst such as the cross-dressing scene in Huckleberry Finn. Homosocial behavior and feminine weakness are primarily social constructions with the symptom of performance;

Twain readily provides an unexceptional reading of gender in Tom Sawyer.

Still, critics present aggressive arguments both for and against the feminine.

Weighing the superiority of one gender over the other, Peter Stoneley writes in his book

Williams 37

Mark Twain and the Feminine Aesthetic, an exploration of the practice of binary ideologies:

Rather than investigating the contending aesthetics of masculinity and

femininity as interdependent concepts in the context of broader social

struggles, [critics] have for the most part sided with male writers and the

values of masculinity, representing feminization as a vindictive crusade led

by troublesome and self-indulgent women. Their view of the feminine

aesthetic has equated ‘popularity with debasement, emotionality with

ineffectiveness, religiosity with fakery, domesticity with triviality, and all of

these, implicitly, with womanly inferiority.’ (Stoneley 5)

Evidently, Stoneley regards the criticism of gender to be limited—without consideration of the larger picture—finding feminization pejorative; thus, being emotional, physically weak, plumaged, etc. are all qualities to be avoided. This feminine aesthetic doesn’t just relate domesticity and emotionality with women—it equates them with “ineffectiveness” and “triviality.” Therefore, if a male expresses behaves with emotion or domesticity—i.e. crying or nurturing children--then he appears feminine and insufficiently male. That is why, for instance, Tom couldn’t cry. Crying is associated with a part of the feminine aesthetic, and by crying, Tom would destabilize his masculinity by performing something an action—crying—that is associated with “womanly inferiority.”

Like Alcott, Twain resists gender roles while simultaneously betraying his subversions by using a system that is inextricable from ideology—language. Twain can no more subvert the status quo than reinforce it within the prison of ideology. For

Williams 38 example, Twain explicitly detested the sentimental movement of literature in the 18th and 19th century, a genre that aimed to move the emotion of the readers and was subsequently associated with women and triviality. However, sentimentality is a genre that is concerned with the underdog or minority figures like slaves or women. By writing

Huckleberry Finn, a book that focused on the slavery of a black man named Jim and

Huck’s inner conflict regarding the morality of Jim’s escape, Twain contributes to the sentimental movement. Stoneley explains Twain’s work as “satirizing sentiment” without doing “away with it altogether.” Instead, he “establish[es] himself as an authoritative monitor of acceptable and unacceptable excursions within and between gendered behaviors. He creates a notionally anti-sentimental space in which to develop a discourse of male feeling” (“Reverting the Gold Rush” 201). In other words, despite the fact that Twain satirizes sentiment and subverts gender, he still encourages a brand of male sentimentality and gender stereotypes; he manipulates the largely feminine genre of sentimentality into a space that focuses on masculine emotions— such as Huck’s morality as the white male in a dominating position over a black slave— rather than female emotions like becoming a wife or bearing a child.4

Moreover, because Tom Sawyer is centered on a young boy whose actions are considered normative (e.g. mischievous, aggressive, and manipulative) we do not see him to suffer the limitations of his gender—a gender which Judith Butler considers to the

“whole” against the “feminine lack”. In contrast, Little Women almost entirely focused on the limitations placed on Jo who behaved as a “tom-boy”. It is not excusable to be

4 Something, for instance, that the March girls do in Little Women though the text isn’t a strict member of the sentimental genre.

Williams 39 aggressive or mischievous or even excessively creative in the writing sphere because she is a woman and the aforementioned behaviors are not appropriate. She must restrain herself and pick up womanly things like dress, heterosexual marriage, and house duty, etc.

As Little Women is the girls’ book and expresses limitation, Tom Sawyer expresses admiration of the masculine, both complicating and reinforcing the social constructs; however, they both end in an uncontroversial, nearly submissive manner to the status quo. With Alcott’s ultimate submission to the will of her publishers and

Twain’s employment of gender stereotypes, they have effectively complicated gender roles before ultimately reinstating them. It is important to look at these works with a lens that is critical to the conflicts within children’s literature in order to discover the ideologies that are being fostered in the text with or without the intent of the author.

Children’s literature always provides a transactional experience, and it is important to examine how these texts are working within the ideological framework in which they are born. As a result, we can discern the limitations that social constructs place on roles like gender, encouraging a more engaged and critical perspective as readers.

Williams 40

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W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. Print.

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