Racial Politics and the Construction of Identity in White American

Children’s Literature: The Case of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

and To Kill a Mockingbird

By

Ekaterini Koutsimani

A dissertation submitted to the Department of American Literature and Culture,

School of English, Faculty of Philosophy of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in

partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

September 2008

Racial Politics and the Construction of Identity in White American

Children’s Literature: The Case of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

and To Kill a Mockingbird

By

Ekaterini Koutsimani

Has been approved

September 2008

APPROVED:

Supervisory Committee

ACCEPTED:

Department Chairperson

To My Family

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………iv

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………v

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter One:

British and White American Children’s Literature: An Overview…………………..17

Chapter Two:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The Ideology of White Supremacy…………..39

Chapter Three:

To Kill a Mockingbird: The Ideology of White Supremacy vs Racial Liberalism…..93

Epilogue……………………………………………………………………………...141

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………..148

Biographical Note……………………………………………………………………..154

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Zoe Detsi-Diamanti, the supervisor of my MA thesis. Her undergraduate courses have broadened my horizons and her graduate course on race and ideology has served as a source of inspiration for the subject of my MA thesis. Her sincere enthusiasm for the project and faith in my abilities have boosted my self-confidence and made me work hard to achieve the best possible result. I really appreciate her patience, support and helpful guidance during the whole process of writing my MA thesis. I would like to thank her for making me think critically and become a more competent student. I would also like to thank the second reader of my MA thesis, Dr. Savas Patsalidis, who has been an inspiring example to me during the graduate studies program. He has shown genuine interest in my MA thesis and willingly gave me useful advice on how to revise it. I am grateful to him for his encouragement and cooperation. Had it not been for my parents’ and sister’s patience and understanding, I could not have managed to commit myself to writing my MA thesis. I really thank them for their endless love and support in every stage of this process. Finally, I would like to thank all the professors of the Department of American Literature and Culture who have enriched my knowledge so far. They are always willing to offer their help and challenge students to higher accomplishments. v

ABSTRACT

Race relations is an important social issue which has been reflected in children’s literature thus posing the question of whether the latter can be used as a medium for propaganda in favor of a particular racial ideology. More specifically, in white American children’s fiction, the relationship between whites and blacks has been explored by nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers who have provided

American readership with classics presented from the point of view of white children narrators. This thesis will focus on two white American children’s classics, Mark

Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884, and Harper Lee’s To

Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, which remain popular among young American readers in the twenty-first century and are both first-person children’s narrations.

Based on Peter Hollindale’s, Jacques Ellul’s and Raymond Williams’s theoretical material regarding ideology, propaganda and cultural hegemony as well as Fredric

Jameson’s doctrine of the political unconscious and Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse, it will try to examine whether white American children’s literature as it has evolved in the last two centuries serves as the ground for promoting a certain racial ideology against African Americans, thus affecting the shaping of the readers’ sense of national identity.

In particular, the thesis will attempt to offer a comparative analysis of the two classics locating each one in its own context with a view to revealing instances of propaganda, racial prejudice or stereotypes against blacks perpetuated by the white children first-person narrators. Through the use of Andrea Schwenke Wyile’s narrative theory and theory of narrative engagement, emphasis will be placed on the choice of white children as both narrators and protagonists, the extent to which they vi contribute to the dissemination of propaganda and the potential impact on young

American readers’ self-development and construction of identity. The thesis will concentrate on the way racial ideology can be produced and instilled in the minds of children readers to expose the continuity of the issue of white racism against blacks in white American children’s fiction nowadays. Finally, by drawing attention to contemporary American racial ideology, it will critically assess the effectiveness of white American children’s fiction as a medium for racist propaganda against blacks and suggest possible ways of protecting young American children readers from being influenced by American racial politics toward African Americans.

Koutsimani Ekaterini 1

Introduction

A systematic attempt to examine the function of political ideologies in

literature written for children has not been made by scholars in the early twenty-first

century. The choice of children’s literature as a focus of this thesis is due to the fact

that young children readers are still in the process of formulating their personal and

national identity and therefore incapable of discerning hidden ideologies in children’s

books. In particular, the thesis will concentrate on white American children’s

literature because it constitutes the mainstream of American children’s literature and

is more likely to be permeated by the dominant American political ideology.

Furthermore, in contemporary multicultural American society, the notion of a

coherent, shared, and representable American national identity is greatly challenged.

In this respect, the thesis is mostly intended to reveal the impact of white American

children’s books shaped by their authors’ ideology on the formation of twenty-first-

century American children’s national identity.

More specifically, this thesis will focus on Mark Twain’s The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird aiming at arguing that white American children’s fiction serves as the ground for promoting a certain political ideology, in this case racial ideology, that affects young American readers’ national consciousness and contributes to the shaping of an American national identity.1 Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884, and

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, are two typical examples of

white American children’s books which concentrate on the relationship between

whites and blacks in different sociopolitical contexts. Although these texts were not

1 Throughout the thesis, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will be referred to as Mark Twain, which is the pen name that Clemens used during his early career as a journalist. Koutsimani Ekaterini 2 initially written especially for children, they were categorized as children’s books because at the time of their publication children’s literature had already emerged as a distinct field and, due to several sociopolitical changes, children were separated from adults and became a prime consumer market. What also favored their classification as white American children’s books is the fact that they deal with the life of white

American children characters and are enjoyed by children readers. In addition, since the second half of the twentieth century, after being labeled as American classics, The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird have appeared as standard required texts in American schools and colleges.2

The choice of Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird for a study of the promulgation of ideologies in white American children’s fiction can be attributed to a number of reasons. At first, both books were written in the midst of tumultuous events in American history as far as racial politics are concerned. Given that in the late- nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries racial segregation was a profound cultural problem which required a practical political and social solution, the depiction of American black-white relations in The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird shows that these texts are highly political. Not only the context of their publication but also their presentation of different kinds of racial injustice against African Americans suggests that they express their authors’ underlying racial ideology. In this way, the focus of the thesis is limited to the exploration of racial ideologies conveyed in white American children’s books that tackle the issue of American black-white relations. Moreover, the fact that

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird are both classics which have transcended their sociopolitical context and are still read and taught in

2 For further details, see American Library Association. Koutsimani Ekaterini 3

American schools nowadays raises questions about the influence they exert on contemporary American children readers. Finally, what differentiates The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird from other white American children’s books is their narrative style; they are both first-person children’s narrations where the white children narrators are also the main protagonists of the story. On the whole, the common elements that Twain’s and Lee’s books share and the time lapse that separates them offer the opportunity for a critical examination of American black- white relations in white American children’s fiction as it has evolved during the last two centuries.

The thesis will begin with a historical overview of British and white

American children’s literature aimed at familiarizing readers with the development of the field throughout the centuries. Before providing readers with a deeper insight into

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, it will give some socio-cultural information about late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America with a view to shedding light on the classics’ contexts. Based on Peter Hollindale’s,

Jacques Ellul’s and Raymond Williams’s theoretical material regarding ideology, propaganda and cultural hegemony as well as Fredric Jameson’s doctrine of the political unconscious and Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse, the thesis will present a comparative analysis of the two classics trying to detect instances of propaganda, racial prejudice and stereotypes against blacks in each context and examine how they are conveyed by the white children narrators. Through the use of

Andrea Schwenke Wyile’s narrative theory and theory of narrative engagement, it will emphasize the importance of the two classics’ white children first-person narrators and protagonists and draw attention to their point of view and attitude toward black characters. By explaining the role and function of white children first- Koutsimani Ekaterini 4 person narrators and protagonists, it will show that The Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird can instill certain values and ideas in young

American readers’ minds and affect their self-development. Therefore, the thesis will explore the continuity of the issue of white racism against blacks in white American children’s fiction and its impact on young American readers’ national identity nowadays.

A more detailed presentation of the theory and methodology that will be used in analyzing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird is needed so that readers are able to understand how it will prove the arguments of the thesis.

Theory and Methodology

A suspicious reader of children’s literature can easily detect that most of it is shaped by the authors’ personal values, beliefs and assumptions which may also reflect the cultural values and beliefs that inform and structure their society. Robert D.

Sutherland confirms that:

Authors of children’s books are inescapably influenced by their

views and assumptions when selecting what goes into the work (and

what does not). The books thus express their authors’ personal

ideologies (whether consciously or unconsciously, openly or

indirectly). To publish books which express one’s ideology is in

essence to promulgate one’s values. To promulgate one’s values […]

[through publication] is a political act. Seen in this light, the author’s

views are the author’s politics; and the books expressing these Koutsimani Ekaterini 5

views, when made accessible to the public, become purveyors of

these politics, and potentially persuasive. (143-44)

In this respect, children’s literature is inevitably filled with ideology, whether

implicitly or explicitly, which has the power of persuasion, of influencing the reader’s

system of beliefs and behavior. In particular, Peter Hollindale identifies three levels at

which ideology is present in a children’s book. The first is the level of “intended

surface ideology” where the writer’s social, political or moral beliefs are explicitly,

consciously and deliberately stated in the text. The second category is “passive

ideology” which consists of the writer’s implicit and unexamined assumptions and is

more powerful in effect given that passive and subconscious beliefs are

unquestioningly taken for granted by the writer’s society that consumes the text,

including children, unless the latter are properly trained in critical skills. Thirdly,

ideology emerges in the text as inherent within language and works in fixing the

limits of possible thought and expression, which implies that when a text is read, opposing views are silenced and only meanings reinforced by the dominant social forces are conveyed.3 The inherency of ideology in language attests to the fact that

language plays an important role in establishing and sustaining socio-historically

imposed power relations irrespective of the writer’s value system. More specifically,

although a writer may not wish to impose a particular socio-political attitude on

children readers, the representation of specific linguistic symbols and the meanings of

certain words used in a written text are most likely to reinforce the given ideological

and cultural hegemony. Given that language is the means through which children

learn about the social world, its institutions and hierarchies, the choice of words

which convey cultural meanings in a children’s text contributes to the promulgation of

3 For an examination of the three levels of ideology as identified by Peter Hollindale, see Hollindale (27-30) and John Stephens (9-11). Koutsimani Ekaterini 6

the dominant ideology. By the term dominant ideology, critical theorists generally

refer to a public set of ideas, world views, central beliefs, discourse, “one that is in

service to the empowered [as opposed to the subordinate groups in a society] and

which is supposed to serve as an ideological lingua franca” (Thomas 75). In this way,

children readers, who cannot make conscious choices about the ideology that

permeates a children’s book, are easily manipulated and patterns of domination are

perpetuated.

On the other hand, the dissemination or promotion of any kind of ideology is

closely associated with propaganda. Propaganda is a rather elusive concept to define

and many scholars have tried to understand and analyze it. Focusing on the purpose of

the communication process, Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’ Donnell define

propaganda as “the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate

cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent

of the propagandist” (6). Obviously, propaganda aims at achieving acceptance of the

propagandist’s ideology by the people.4 On a deeper level, any hegemony or

hegemonic leadership requires the consent of the majority to be secured politically. In

this respect, dominant social forces use mass media, education, propaganda, and

political agitation so as to maintain public consent within the agenda set by the

empowered social groups. Interestingly, Raymond Williams suggests that a dominant

and effective system of meanings and values in any society depends on a number of

forces such as “the processes of education; the processes of a much wider social training within institutions like the family; the practical definitions and organizations of work; the selective tradition at an intellectual and theoretical level” (414). All these

4 Successful propaganda depends on the prevailing public mood of the times, the existing socio- historical context and the elements of culture. For more information on the factors that contribute to successful propaganda, see Jowett and O’ Donnell (282-83), (369-73). On the identification of the propagandist and the target audience, see Jowett and O’ Donnell (283), (286-87), (374), (377). Koutsimani Ekaterini 7

practices may be either explicitly or implicitly involved in the dissemination of

propaganda and account for the way the dominant ideology is conveyed to the masses.

In fact, propaganda can take many forms. In his attempt to define categories of

propaganda, Jacques Ellul ended up with four distinctions one of which embraces the

pair of agitation and integration.5 He argues that “the propaganda of agitation is

usually subversive and oppositional. […] It can be understood as a call for action, whereas the propaganda of integration, […] is more properly regarded as a process designed to produce inertia, or at least conformity” (qtd. in Foulkes 11). Ellul’s distinction between agitation and integration is crucial to a discussion of propaganda in literature and, more specifically, children’s literature. Integration propaganda can be a powerful force within literature since, as A. P. Foulkes notes, “recent studies of racism and sexism in language have demonstrated […] [that] ideology can function within language as integration propaganda, and can in consequence socialize speakers

to the point that they are oblivious of having been socialized” (40). Given that

language is a source of integration propaganda, the language of children’s literature

may as well expose children readers to the risk of pathetically absorbing messages

and dominant ideas.

For propaganda analysts, the point is how readers can become aware of the

way propaganda manifests itself in literature. In order to understand when literature

functions as propaganda one should take into consideration that the act of literary

communication occurs within specific historical and cultural systems of discourse.

For the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson, “the political perspective […] [is] the absolute

horizon for all reading and interpretation [of literary texts]” (qtd. in Foulkes 19). In

5 More specifically, the four distinctions Ellul makes to define categories of propaganda are between: 1) political and sociological propaganda 2) agitation and integration 3) vertical and horizontal propaganda 4) rational and irrational propaganda. For a detailed analysis of Ellul’s four pairs of distinction with regard to propaganda, see A. P. Foulkes (10-12). For an interesting presentation of various forms of propaganda, see Jowett and O’ Donnell (11-21), (281-82). Koutsimani Ekaterini 8

this respect, when an ideological distance separates the reader from the act of literary

communication, that is, when the reader is distanced politically from the act of literary

communication, propaganda becomes easily detected.6 However, the propaganda

which is most elusive, and therefore in need of detection, is the one which succeeds in

directly engaging readers as participants in its communicative systems. As far as

young children readers are concerned, they are unlikely to have developed a political

ideology or be familiar with political interpretations of texts so as to recognize

propaganda. Michel Foucault is the critical theorist who, having recognized the

ideological implications of literary texts, stresses the importance of discourse for

being associated with power relations. He draws attention to the structure of discourse

and the control which it exercises on what can be said. Preoccupied with the

interconnectedness of power and knowledge and power and truth and the workings of

power in the production of knowledge, Foucault goes on to argue that “discourse

should be seen as […] [a system] which constrains our perceptions [of reality]” (qtd.

in Mills 55).7 Given that discourse conditions the way people perceive the world, it would be meaningful to examine the discourse of children’s narrative fiction in order

to recognize how ideology is inscribed within children’s narrative texts.

An analysis of narrative discourse in children’s fiction based on a theory of narrative and narrative engagement can explain how the narrative text is constructed and how children readers’ responses are shaped. More specifically, attention will be drawn to Andrea Schwenke Wyile’s theory of first-person narration which will allow readers to identify different kinds of first-person narration and be able to work toward

6 Jameson has developed the doctrine of the political unconscious according to which “narrative is always a part of the ‘normal’ functioning of a society […] and at the same time has something ‘abnormal’ about it as repressing an intolerable reality beneath” (qtd. in Dowling 115). For a critical introduction to his doctrine, see William C. Dowling (114-42). 7 Foucault’s work on discourse and power is useful in helping people realize how information is filtered before it is accepted as true knowledge. For a critical discussion of Foucault’s notion of discourse, see Sara Mills (53-66). Koutsimani Ekaterini 9

a clearer understanding of their response to first-person texts, as well as her theory of

narrative engagement according to which the types of engagement are determined by

the narration and objective evidence in the text whereas the levels of reader

engagement are a measure of reader response and depend entirely on the individual

reader.8

Although there are many types of narrative, a first-person narrative can create

a close relationship between the reader and the author.9 Agreeing with Roderick

McGillis who claims that a narrative voice “which embraces the reader is a

distinguishing feature of literature for young readers,” Andrea Schwenke Wyile

identifies three types of first-person narration that promote the idea of an engaging

narrator: immediate-engaging-first-person narration, distant-engaging-first-person

narration, and distancing narration (qtd. in Wyile 193). In immediate-engaging-first-

person narration, implied readers feel that they participate in the narrative action and

emotion due to the immediacy between the narrating and the narrated. In distant-

engaging-first-person narration, there is a considerable lapse of time between the

narrating and the narrated and in distancing narration implied readers feel like

8 For more details on this approach, see Andrea Schwenke Wyile (186-200). For a better understanding of Andrea Schwenke Wyile’s theories, it is also essential to mention the participants in the narrative communication situation. Seymour Chatman defines the participants in the narrative communication situation and explains their function. According to him, every narrative text has a real author, an implied author, a narrator and a narratee who are optional, an implied reader and a real reader. For a comprehensive presentation of the whole narrative communication situation within the discourse of a narrative fiction, see Chatman (147-51), Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan (86-89) and Stephens (21-22). 9 For a theoretical analysis of various types of narrative and narrative levels to which the narrator belongs, see Wyile (185-86), Rimmon-Kenan (91-96), Jane E. Lewin (227-52), Susan Sniader Lanser (133-48), (157-65), Stephens (56-57) and Maria Nikolajeva, “Exit” (227-30). Koutsimani Ekaterini 10 onlookers and just watch the sequence of events without participating.10 Emphasis should be placed on the fact that “engaging narration privileges the focalizer, [i.e. the character] who sees and speaks in the narrative, and distancing narration privileges the voice of the narrating agent, [i.e. the narrator] who sees and comments on the actions of the focalizer from a (noticeable) distance at the time of narration” (Wyile

190). Most of children’s first-person narration is engaging and, in particular, immediate-engaging-first-person narration is gradually becoming prevalent in children’s literature, especially in the second half of the twentieth century.11 What is characteristic about immediate-engaging-first-person narration is that the narrating agent and the focalizer are the same “person.” This implies that the character who speaks is at the same time the narrator who conveys that speech. Thus, there is no kind of mediation but the narrator-protagonist tells his or her own story based on his or her own perception.12

Given that the narrative voice directs the narration, the issue of the narrator’s reliability in children’s immediate-engaging-first-person narration is open to question.13 Focusing on immediate-engaging-first-person narration, Wyile argues that

10 Christopher Paul Curtis’s The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 (1995) and Jean Fritz’s Homesick: My Own Story (1982) are examples of immediate-engaging-first-person narration whereas Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons (1994) and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) are examples of distant- engaging-first-person narration. It is also possible to combine distant-engaging-first-person narration and immediate-engaging-first-person narration as exemplified by Ruth Park’s My Sister Sif (1986). On the other hand, examples of distancing narration are Katherine Paterson’s Jacob Have I Loved (1990), Guy Vanderhaeghe’s “The Watcher” (1982) and James Joyce’s “Araby” (1914). For more information on the three types of first-person narration and narrative engagement that Wyile identifies, see Wyile (197-98). 11 Examples of such texts are Kevin Major’s Hold Fast (1978), Minfong Ho’s The Clay Marble (1981), Brian Doyle’s Angel Square (1987) and Virginia Euwer Wolff’s Make Lemonade (1993). 12 For an explanation of the relationship between the narrator and the focalizer in immediate-engaging- first-person narration, see Wyile (188-89), (191). 13 The main sources of unreliability are the narrator’s limited knowledge and understanding or inadequate experience, his or her personal involvement, his or her language and his or her problematic value-schemes. In particular, a narrator’s unreliability can be attributed either to his/her limited knowledge and understanding as exemplified by a young or idiot narrator or to his/her personal involvement leading to a subjective view of reality or to his/her language when it contains internal contradictions and incongruities or to his/her problematic value-schemes when the narrator’s moral values do not tally with those of the implied author of the particular work. For a succinct account of the potential sources of the narrator’s unreliability, see Rimmon-Kenan (100-03). Koutsimani Ekaterini 11

it is likely to be unreliable for two reasons: “First, it is based solely on one character’s

point of view; second, it is expressed so soon after the fact that it is both biased and

incomplete” (196). In any narrative, the narrator adopts a certain point of view in the

presentation of events he or she is narrating. Similarly, in children’s immediate-

engaging-first-person narration, the narrator, who is also the main character, is a

young, inexperienced child through his/her innocent viewpoint the textual events are

perceived.14 Point of view is determined by the stance the narrator-protagonist takes

toward the fictional persons and events. Susan Sniader Lanser identifies four planes of

stance of which “the ideological level is the most basic and, along with the questions

of psychological affinity and approval […] [i.e. the narrator’s affective relationship to

a character (or event)] the most complex” (222).15 The expression of ideology by any

narrative voice may be either explicit on the surface of the discourse or more deeply

embedded in the narrator’s speech activity.16 In this respect, the narrator’s ideological

stance requires both formal and contextual elements to be retrieved.

With regard to point of view, an important issue that needs to be taken into

consideration is the author-narrator relationship. The status of a child narrator in

children’s fiction may range from a complete identification with the biographical

14 Point of view is a component of narrative discourse communicated by the narrator of the text, which refers to the presentation of the narrated and through which children readers’ subject positions are constructed and ideological assumptions inscribed, thus reflecting the narrator’s ideological stance. For information on point of view and its function, see Stephens (26-29), (54-57). For an explanation of the concept of point of view and its types, see Gerald Prince (50-54). On the point of view in first-person children’s narration including immediate-engaging-first-person narration, see Wyile (193-95) and Nikolajeva, “Exit” (228-30). For a detailed discussion of point of view and its relation to narrative voice, see Chatman (151-58). For an insightful presentation of the role of point of view in narrative, the relationships between textual perspectives and voice and the writer’s relationship to the literary act, see Lanser (108-48). 15 For a close examination of stance as an element of point of view, and of the framework of four planes on which stance operates (psychological, ideological, phraseological and spatial-temporal) Lanser borrows from Uspenskii, see Lanser (185-225). 16 A text like D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1920), for example, is quite explicit in its ideological expression whereas the ideology of Virginia Wolf’s The Waves (1931) is more difficult to recover. For useful information on how any given narrator’s or character’s ideology is expressed, how its “content” relates to the culture, and the position of power and authority held by the particular voice, see Lanser (216-22). Koutsimani Ekaterini 12 author to an absolute separation.17 The extent to which the author’s point of view coincides with that of the narrator is not easily discerned since according to Jill Paton

Walsh, “the author’s self must be set aside, or be concealed by the masks [of the narrative voices]. It is a story that is being expressed through the speaking masks, not a self” (169). Therefore, authors resort to narrative masks to avoid revealing their personal feelings and opinions. However, Lanser, commenting on the distinction between narrator and author, acknowledges that “the narrator who does not take part in the story world is conventionally most closely associated with the authorial voice.

The authorial voice is not conventionally equated with […] the […] narrator-character or the focalizer” (154). Consequently, in immediate-engaging-first-person narration the narrator-protagonist’s beliefs, attitudes and discourse are not necessarily equated with those of the author. In any case, children readers stick to the child narrator’s perspective but not all of them are affected in the same way. The levels of reader engagement vary depending on whether the readers are situated in a subject position aligned with or in opposition to that of the narrator. Readers’ full engagement entails a form of identification and empathy with the narrator-protagonist whose view of the world and stance are shared by the readers.18 Identification with the narrator- protagonist may lead children readers to take action in the real world in response to what has been narrated or have a deep impact on their self-formation. As John

Stephens realizes, “identification with focalizers is one of its [children’s literature] chief methods, since by this means, at least for the duration of the reading time, the reader’s own selfhood is effaced and the reader internalizes the perceptions and attitudes of the focalizer and is thus reconstituted as a subject within the text” (68).

17 For an interesting discussion of the status of the narrative voice and the extent to which first-person narrator-characters present an equivalence with the authorial voice on the levels of imagination, ideology and narrative style, see Lanser (149-56). 18 For a brief account of the levels of reader engagement and the reader’s identification with the narrator-protagonist in first-person children’s narration, see Wyile (191-93), (195-99). Koutsimani Ekaterini 13

Therefore, in immediate-engaging-first-person narration, children readers who

identify with the narrator-focalizer adjust their sense of selfhood to that of the

narrator-focalizer and their perceptions and attitudes are being conditioned by this

process. The fact is that children who assume the role of narrator-focalizer in

children’s fiction are empowered to transmit their own ideas and instill certain values

in children readers’ minds. Consequently, the use of children narrators-focalizers,

being a means of achieving intimacy with young readers, is an effective technique in

promoting a certain ideology and thus, contributing to the shaping of children’s

national or cultural identity.

Given that the texts that will be analyzed are white American children’s

books, readers who are not acquainted with children’s literature should be given some

basic information regarding this field.

The Field of Children’s Literature

Children’s literature is a literary field which until recently has not received

much critical attention. That being the case, it would be useful to explain what is

defined as a children’s book and then focus on the readership of children’s literature

and its basic kinds and themes.

A theoretical approach to the field of children’s literature would result in a

heated debate among critics given that there is no single definition of children’s

literature.19 However, as Peter Hunt acknowledges, “a particular text […] written

expressly for children who are recognizably children, with a childhood recognizable

today, must be part of the definition [of children’s literature]” (Criticism 62). This definition entails that the concept of childhood changes as societies change and thus,

19 For a detailed presentation of the conflicting definitions of children’s literature, see Peter Hunt, Criticism (42-64). Koutsimani Ekaterini 14 books which are no longer considered applicable to childhood are unlikely to attract children readers. In this respect, taking into consideration that childhood is not a stable concept, children’s literature could be defined as books read by, suitable for or satisfying for a group of readers defined as children. On the other hand, the purpose that children’s literature serves is clearly stated by Hunt: “It serves the purpose that

‘literature’ is frequently claimed to serve: it absorbs, it possesses, and is possessed; its demands are very immediate, involving, and powerful” (An Introduction 1). What becomes evident is that children’s literature concentrates on keeping its readers engaged and intrigued and making them active participants in the reading process. No matter whether intentionally or unconsciously, children are exposed to various messages, the impact of which may vary depending not only on the way they are conveyed but also on the child’s maturity, knowledge, experience or even guidance.

In this way, children readers are given a number of stimuli and may become involved in discovering implied socio-cultural meanings in texts.

Adults play a dominant role in the production and selection of children’s literature. They are the ones that write children’s books and make them available to children. Moreover, they usually function as mediators given that they decide and choose which books are mostly suitable and satisfying for their children. The primary readership is children, who are less experienced and less trained in encoding literary cultural signs than adults. However, J. D. Stahl, using the term “implied reader,” introduced by Seymour Chatman, acknowledges that the adult author of a children’s book may communicate through his work with at most four different implied readers:

“The adult as a mediator and as a reader, the child or the young adult as a sanctioned, Koutsimani Ekaterini 15

exemplary reader and as a nonsanctioned, secret reader” (82).20 In this respect,

addressees of children’s books are not only children, who might or might not have the

approval of mediating authorities, but also adults themselves addressed either as

mediators or as actual readers. Consequently, adults have the power to control

children’s literature since being writers of children’s books allows them to undertake

the responsibility for transmitting cultural values or even manipulate their readers,

whereas being mediators enables them to make choices of children’s books according

to their own criteria.

An attempt to categorize children’s literature shows that the traditional

division of literature into epic, lyric and drama does not seem to apply to this

particular field. More specifically, poetry and drama for children are two literary

categories which have not been at the forefront of attention. On the other hand,

children’s literature is mostly identified with epic and is mainly characterized by

various types of fiction. Thus, the evolution of epic narrative structures has

contributed to the emergence of different genres and modes in children’s literature.

For instance, some of the genres that it includes are: different kinds of stories, texts

designed for single sexes, religious and social propaganda, fantasy, folk- and fairy-

tales, interpretations of myth and legend, educational books, illustrated and picture-

books and mixed-media texts.21 However, recent developments of the field reveal that there are no longer clear dividers or boundaries between genres and kinds of

20 By the term “implied reader,” Seymour Chatman means “the reader the author has in mind as s/he constructs the narrative” (qtd. in Knowles and Malmkjær 33). 21 More specifically, typical examples of genres of children’s literature such as stories are the adventure story, the school story and the family story. On the other hand, John Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket Book (of which the earliest extant edition seems to be the seventh, published in 1763) is most notable for being a commercial, mixed-media text which included “an agreeable Letter to read from Jack the Giant-Killer, as also a Ball and Pincushion, the use of which will infallibly make Tommy a good Boy and Polly a good Girl” (Hunt, An Introduction 43). Koutsimani Ekaterini 16

children’s literature but, instead, a convergence of genres.22 Contrary to its divisions

and classifications, the themes of children’s literature seem to be rather diachronic.

They revolve around certain concepts or institutions which are family, friendship,

gender, home, race, religion and journey or quest. These are not mutually exclusive

and may be shared by the same texts.23 Moreover, Jill P. May mentions some

common motifs often found in children’s literature such as gates, doors, roads and

tones of light and dark which “signify thresholds of experience and imply social

change for the real and literary child” (84). Despite thematic similarities, children’s

books change or may even cease being considered parts of this category. In particular,

a variety of factors influence the evolution of children’s literature: social and

institutional structures, technological advances, market forces, pedagogical and

political claims, literary norms, discursive practices, changing notions of childhood

depending on historical and socio-cultural needs and educational aspects of reading.24

Therefore, children’s literature is not a static or homogeneous field but one that is constantly being changed and renewed.

The three chapters that follow will concentrate on white American children’s fiction. Chapter One will offer a brief account of its history whereas Chapter Two and

Chapter Three will examine The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a

Mockingbird respectively.

22 For a brief account aimed at marking the boundaries of the field of children’s literature and the genres included in it, see Nikolajeva, Children’s Literature (6-7), (95), Hunt, Criticism (17-18) and Hunt, An Introduction (9-11). 23 For more information on the institutions which are prominent in children’s fiction and serve as themes, see Murray Knowles and Kirsten Malmkjær (31-32). 24 The changing status of children’s literature is due to changes in social and institutional structures, market forces, notions of childhood and pedagogical views of literature. For a comprehensive summary of the factors that influence the development of children’s literature and determine its status, see Eva- Maria Metcalf (49), Nikolajeva, Children’s Literature (3) and Karín Lesnik-Oberstein (26). Koutsimani Ekaterini 17

Chapter One:

British and White American Children’s Literature: An Overview

Children’s literature in America has not been formed as a separate literary

system from British children’s literature. From a cultural-historical perspective, an

early history of children’s literature in Britain could be traced back to the Middle

Ages although it was not considered a discrete and established field at that particular

time. Fourteenth-century England witnessed the emergence of narratives of adventure,

which belonged to the Romance tradition and were in verse, and which attracted a

young readership without being written specifically for children. Later, during the

medieval era, prose narratives that started to appear included myths, folk-tales and

fables such as versions of Aesop’s Fables, the so-called chapbooks, the first cheap printed books for a popular market sold by pedlars and chapmen, educational texts and tracts. Those texts were equally addressed to both adults and children. However, it seems that as the sixteenth century progressed, a clear division between cheap simplified texts aimed at both adult and children readers and primarily instructive works directed at children was to mark a turning point in children’s literature. Despite their didactic flavor, the latter ones were not prevented from offering entertainment to their readers. On the contrary, the books produced for children in seventeenth-century

Britain had to conform to the demands of the Church and the Puritan tradition. At the time of the Puritans, when the primary concern was to save one’s soul considered damned from birth, children’s literature was not expected to entertain, given that reading for pleasure was regarded as the ultimate sin. These English Calvinist texts, characterized by their authors’ severity, were imported in America and the evangelistic attitudes permeated children’s books until the end of the eighteenth Koutsimani Ekaterini 18

century having a deep impact on children readers almost to the end of the nineteenth.

A widely known example is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) which has

been actually turned into a cultural symbol.25 Therefore, children’s literature before

the eighteenth century consisted of religious and instructional books whose authors’

task is summarized by Demers and Moyles as “the task of exhorting the young an

impassioned solemnity and the threat of imminent doom” (qtd. in Hunt, An

Introduction 40). This reveals the tendency of writers of children’s literature to

emphasize and promote heavy moralizing.26

The Eighteenth Century

According to historians, the generally agreed starting point of children’s

literature is 1744 when John Newbery, an influential English bookseller, established

the trade of publishing books intended solely for children. More specifically, in 1744,

the bringing out of Newbery’s book, A Little Pretty Pocket Book, one of the first

commercial children’s books, marks the beginning of children’s literature in terms of

publishing. Furthermore, specific social developments in the eighteenth century paved

the way for the flowering of children’s literature in Britain and America in the

nineteenth century. Philosophers, like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, helped

to change the established European perception of the nature of childhood by claiming

25 John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) functions as a cultural symbol given that its basic metaphor –life is a journey– is simple and familiar and enables even the simplest reader to share the experiences of the characters. It still survives in the phrases used in today’s English language: “The Slough of Despond,” “The House Beautiful,” “Mr. Wordly-Wiseman,” and “Vanity Fair.” For further details, see M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt (1: 2132). Another English Calvinist text imported in America is James Janeway’s most famous tract A Token for Children: Being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children (1692). For a short reference, see Hunt, An Introduction (39). 26 For a British-centered critical analysis of the early history of children’s literature before the eighteenth century, see Hunt, An Introduction (37-40) and for a short reference to the beginnings of children’s fiction in England, see Knowles and Malmkjær (3). Koutsimani Ekaterini 19

that children had their own needs and values.27 The gradual spread of education

toward the end of the eighteenth century through the Sunday School Movement allowed more children to learn to read.28 In addition, innovations in printing and publishing made books accessible to children more easily and cheaply.29 However,

British children’s books throughout the eighteenth century combined religion and

commercialism, education and folk-tale.30 They could be either imaginative works or

folklore such as fairy-tales or works mostly related to child-raising such as ABC and

toy books, volumes on courtesy and manners, and lessons about good and bad

apprentices. Texts like The Arabian Nights (1701), Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

(1719) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) are interesting examples that

gained increasing popularity. Furthermore, various moral tales by rational moralists

and tractarians, largely women determined to convey moral instruction, such as Sarah

Fielding’s The Governess (1749) or Hannah More’s Sacred Dramas: Chiefly Intended

for Young Persons (1782), were also very popular among the reading public. The

history of religion in British children’s books was really influential in the eighteenth

century when children’s books were seen as an essential part of children’s education

and were often overtly didactic. As Hunt notes, “although their declared intention was

27 John Locke presented his views on children’s education in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Émile: or, on Education (1762). For a short reference to these works, see Hunt, An Introduction (40), (42). 28 Robert Raikes, editor of the Gloucester (England) Journal, began the Sunday School Movement in England in 1780 gathering the working children of the Gloucester poor into schools on Sundays, where they were taught to read, with a view to improving their conduct. On the other hand, in America, Sunday Schools were formed solely to give religious instruction. For more information on the rise of the Sunday School Movement in England and America in the late eighteenth century, see Wayne Andrews (909). 29 For a brief discussion of the historical origins of children’s literature in terms of publishing, see Jerry Griswold, The Disappearance (36), Hunt, An Introduction (29), (32), (42), Knowles and Malmkjær (1- 2) and Dennis Butts (x). For an enlightening account of the eighteenth-century socio-cultural changes that contributed to the development of children’s literature, see Butts (x) and Hunt, An Introduction (38), (44-45). 30 In fact, through the eighteenth century John Newbery and his successors and rivals provided cheap books that ruthlessly mixed religion and commercialism using materials from folk traditions with a strong strain of fantasy to satisfy both the religious/educational and commercial interests for the market in children’s books. For a short reference, see Hunt, An Introduction (29), (34). Koutsimani Ekaterini 20

religious, many of these books are striking for their social engineering” (An

Introduction 45). In this respect, eighteenth-century British children’s literature also

aimed at helping children realize their social position and making them keep it. This

was mostly a concern of middle- and upper-class families which were not dependent

upon the labor of their children for survival. In particular, middle-class children were

considered incomplete or unformed for society until their formal education was

finished as opposed to lower-class children who were deprived of having access to

books. Thus, religion, loyalty and good morals were supposed to be inculcated in

children’s minds. It is Whalley and Chester who clearly explain that in the eighteenth

century, “the implied objective of children’s reading passed from religious education

in the early decades to social education in the later ones” (qtd. in Hunt, An

Introduction 45-46). In the second half of the century, nearly all children’s books

exerted a moral influence on children and reflected the obsession with manners and

morals which was mainly a middle-class obsession. More specifically, for the rising

bourgeoisie of the late eighteenth century, the acquisition of good social manners was

seen as fundamental to its status. Therefore, religion and proper social behavior were

the primary values that pervaded eighteenth-century British children’s literature.31

The Nineteenth Century

The nineteenth century is characterized by a proliferation of literature written for children resulting from certain movements in society, while, at the same time, various subgenres emerge within the field in response to particular sociohistorical developments. In Britain, in the early part of the nineteenth century, the Romantic

Revival enriched and extended Locke’s and Rousseau’s ideas about the nature of

31 For more analytic information on characteristics, authors, books and objectives of eighteenth-century British children’s literature, see Hunt, An Introduction (41-46) and Griswold, The Disappearance (36). Koutsimani Ekaterini 21

childhood through the works of writers like Blake, Wordsworth and Dickens. The

increased influence of the Sunday School Movement and the Evangelical Movement

with its Christian faith and desire to uphold most of the status quo kept religion at the

forefront of attention. Additionally, the steady growth of literacy and the

improvement of technology and the standards of book production contributed to the

fruition of children’s literature. On the other hand, social changes such as the

Industrial Revolution, the rise of the middle class and its ethics, the British imperial

expansion, the dominant ideology of imperialism and utilitarianism and the

development of the reformed public schools in England favored the emergence of

different kinds of children’s literature.32 However, change was slow in nineteenth-

century British children’s literature; the last decades of the eighteenth century and the

first decades of the nineteenth century were quite similar in terms of the types of

children’s fiction. According to Hunt, “in revolutionary times, children’s books were

a bastion of conservatism” (An Introduction 46). In this respect, what dominated

British children’s literature in the late- eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries were

didactic and moral tales which reflected the moral and religious purpose of the earlier

writings and were often presented in the form of Family Story, a new genre that

emerged because of the changing size and character of the family household during

that period.33 For instance, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Thoughts on the Education of

Daughters (1787), Maria Edgeworth’s The Parent’s Assistant (1796) and Mary

Martha Sherwood’s The History of the Fairchild Family (1818) reflected the

32 For a brief presentation of the nineteenth-century socio-cultural changes that favored the proliferation of children’s literature in England, see Butts (x-xi) and Hunt, An Introduction (29), (35), (48-49), (52). 33 More specifically, the Industrial Revolution in England created a wholly materialistic society which benefited the few at the expense of the many and resulted in an increased number of urban poor and the emergence of a new middle class. In the midst of these social shifts, family size declined and attitudes toward family life changed. In fact, middle-class families were mostly preoccupied with children’s morals and endorsed virtues such as self-control, a commitment to the work ethic and a reasonable concern for the good of the community. Koutsimani Ekaterini 22 patriarchal values of the time as established social norms and perpetuated evangelical moral and religious codes. These early didactic tales, largely produced by women, did not actually challenge the patriarchal values of the time but “moved the children’s story slowly towards the domain of the child” (Hunt, An Introduction 33). Moreover, fairy-tales were brought again to the surface but they conformed to middle-class morality since they eliminated erotic and sexual elements that might be offensive to middle-class people and promoted role models for their protagonists according to the dominant patriarchal order. In particular, they reinforced the domestic role of women and stressed the importance of female modesty, chastity and purity as exemplified by

Perrault’s translated tales as well as the Grimm brothers’ and Hans Christian

Andersen’s translated collections, a European influence on British children’s books.

In the mid-nineteenth century, fantasy moved away from the mainstream and emphasis was placed on the developing genres of domestic tales for girls and the empire-building adventure stories for boys. The emergence of these two genres reflects and promotes the social and cultural separation between boys and girls in nineteenth-century England and implicitly corresponds to the distinction of the two

“separate sexual spheres,” the public sphere of paid labor in which only men could seek their fortunes and the private, or domestic sphere in which women were expected to remain and occupy themselves only with domestic affairs.34 The Adventure Story, mostly aimed at entertainment, lacks explicit moralizing and highlights imperialist thinking. It could be argued that it constitutes a reflection of British imperialism in the

34 For a short explanation of the “separate spheres” ideology, see John D’ Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman (56-57). Koutsimani Ekaterini 23

nineteenth century.35 To this tradition belong Johann Wyss’s The Swiss Family

Robinson (1814), Captain Marryat’s Masterman Ready (1841), R. M. Ballantyne’s

The Coral Island (1858), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) and G. A.

Henty’s With Clive in India: or the Beginnings of an Empire (1884). Another genre that appears is the School Story which can be attributed to public school reforms and changes in education. It concentrates on morals and depicts public schools as places where boys have to comply with a certain code of behavior necessary for them to govern and defend the Empire. Three main examples are Thomas Hughes’s Tom

Brown’s Schooldays (1857), Frederick Farrar’s Eric; or, Little by Little: A Tale of

Roslyn School (1858) and Rudyard Kipling’s Stalky and Co. (1899). On the other hand, stories for girls, mostly written by women moralists, stem from the tradition of

Family Story and, being rooted in domesticity, portray family relationships and reinforce the domestic role of women as mothers and daughters. One could mention works like Charlotte Yonge’s The Daisy Chain (1856), Juliana Horatia Ewing’s

Jackanapes (1884) and Mary Louisa Molesworth’s The Cuckoo Clock (1877). As

Murray Knowles and Kirsten Malmkjær explicitly state, “for girls the work of such writers […] continued to reflect the moral and religious purpose of the earlier writers”

(15). Thus, domestic tales for girls are filled with didacticism which does not only

persist throughout nineteenth-century British children’s literature but also inspires

girls’ stories in America such as the pioneering work of Louisa May Alcott Little

Women (1868). In fact, School Stories as well as stories for girls describe a closed

35 Historians make a distinction between two British Empires, the first dating from the seventeenth century to the American Revolution and expanding into areas such as North America, Africa, Canada and India, whereas the second from the 1770s to World War II and expanding into areas such as Australia and New Zealand. The second British Empire reached its widest point during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was the statesman whose expansionist vision of empire prevailed and was transmitted by newspapers and novels to a reading public dramatically expanded by the Education Act of 1870. For detailed information on the rise and fall of British Empire, see Abrams and Greenblatt (2: 2017-18). Koutsimani Ekaterini 24

world, dealing with initiation and hierarchies, rules and rituals which are aimed at

training young protagonists to enter the world of adults and survive in society. Trying

to highlight the gradual change in nineteenth-century children’s books in Britain,

Whalley and Chester claim that “by the 19th century the objective [of children’s

reading] had changed […] to that of social advancement through practical

knowledge” (qtd. in Hunt, An Introduction 46). This suggests that British children in

the nineteenth century were reading books hoping to find practical guidelines to

improve themselves socially or make themselves socially approved.36

A close examination of white American children’s literature reveals that

American fictional literature for children actually began to be written in the early

nineteenth century, about 1820, and was directly related to the sociopolitical

conditions of its time.37 In 1820, America was still a new nation but was subject to rapid and radical changes. Great economic and territorial expansion, a dramatic increase in population, industrialization and urbanization, the growing power of evangelical religion and the debate over slavery marked the forty years from 1820 to

1860 and created mixed feelings among Jacksonian Americans; on the one hand, optimism and national pride prevailed, but, on the other, anxiety and apprehension about the future contributed to social turmoil. White American children’s literature of the period, as Anne Scott MacLeod realizes, “reflected the intense interest in family and childhood that was to mark all of the nineteenth century, and it reflected too the sharpened nationalism so characteristic of the Jacksonian era” (American Childhood

88). By the second quarter of the century, Americans felt that white American children’s books should be home products and no longer imported British children’s

36 For a succinct account of genres, authors, books and objectives of nineteenth-century British children’s literature, see Hunt, An Introduction (33), (46-58), Knowles and Malmkjær (3-16) and Butts (xi-xiii). 37 The word “white” needs to be emphasized because the books chosen to be examined in this thesis belong to the mainstream of American children’s literature. Koutsimani Ekaterini 25 stories.38 However, early nineteenth-century American fiction for children was based on eighteenth-century English literary models; when American authors started writing for white American children, they followed the pattern of Maria Edgeworth’s fiction.39 The developing moral character of children was the primary concern in the period. Thus, juvenile fiction of antebellum America was written to provide moral education and help children acquire independent moral strength and, in this sense, it was instructive and prescriptive. Given that in the early decades of the nineteenth century the American republic was young and national feeling ran high, Americans were mostly preoccupied with the future of the new nation and the children who would end up as its active citizens. More specifically, MacLeod declares that:

The whole point of [white American] children’s fiction as they

[American, children’s authors] wrote it […] was to develop in children

that sensitive conscience, that internalized set of principles [obedience,

self-control, usefulness, charity, and a willingness to put the wishes of

others above one’s own] that would make them morally self-

sufficient.40 Then, and only then, could American society live with its

freedom without descending into social anarchy. (American Childhood

97)

38 Some typical examples which show the popularity of British children’s books in the nineteenth- century U.S. are G. A. Henty’s adventure stories as revealed by the publication of numerous official and pirated editions, and Maria Edgeworth’s didactic fiction which was much admired in America and many children, both before and after the turn of the nineteenth century, willingly read these books and were educated mentally and morally through their lessons. For further reference, see Butts (xi) and MacLeod, American Childhood (144). 39 Maria Edgeworth, a philosophic disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, wrote stories which “told of mildly wayward children learning rationally from their mistakes, aided, invariably, by the serene moralizing of their parents” (MacLeod, American Childhood 144). American authors agreed that the proper end of fiction was to encourage children to learn to control their own minds and, thus, imitated Maria Edgeworth’s didactic tales. For more information, see MacLeod, American Childhood (143-49). 40 In general, according to MacLeod, “[between 1820 and 1860] education, whether home or school, was primarily moral education –in part, of course, for its own sake, but also because only the firm establishment of exemplary character in the rising generation could secure the future of the republic” (American Childhood 89-90). Thus, early nineteenth-century white American children’s fiction echoes rationalist ideas about the creation of a new nation with “moral,” “self-sufficient” citizens. Koutsimani Ekaterini 26

Therefore, by being didactic, moralizing and partly political, early nineteenth-century

white American children’s literature aimed at instilling moral values in children’s

minds in order to control American society and qualify white American children to

become responsible citizens of the new republic. MacLeod further clarifies that:

Most [white American] children’s stories were didactic in two

directions. On the one hand, they instructed the child reader in the

value of goodness and the doleful consequences of disobedience,

carelessness, pride and a host of other moral failings. At the same

time, they offered models of correct child nurture for parents. […]

They advised parents to forbid and warn as little as possible, in

favor of allowing children to learn from the consequences of their

own decisions. (American Childhood 102)

This double focus of moral didacticism is due to the fact that, although the Calvinist

view of children as innately depraved faded after 1820, early nineteenth-century

Americans believed that the moral character of children was the result of training and

parental guidance and not a natural endowment.41 Actually, children were supposed to

be taught morality that was closely associated with the new standards of living created

by the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In this respect, parents were expected to assume the role of moral instructors. In particular, white American children’s fiction before 1850 presented stories where children were shown to make childish errors and learn from their consequences given that they were left to make the correct moral decision independently, having internalized their parents’ moral values. In brief, as

MacLeod explains, “[white American] children’s fiction in the early nineteenth

41 In mid-sixteenth century, John Calvin promoted the doctrine of predestination suggesting that God has determined from eternity whom he will save and whom he will damn, regardless of the merits or defects of these individuals. According to the Calvinist view, which prevailed until the early nineteenth century, children were seen as innately depraved. For a short reference, see Abrams and Greenblatt (1: 544-45). Koutsimani Ekaterini 27 century idealized children without sentimentalizing them” (American Childhood 146).

Thus, depictions of white American children as being capable of achieving moral autonomy through experience and prepared to meet the new, middle-class social and economic requirements in order to succeed appeared as simple facts. It is only during the 1850s that Edgeworthian didacticism was abandoned and white American children’s literature started to move toward sentimentality.42

The Golden Age

The 1860s is a landmark in the history of children’s literature since it marks the beginning of the “Golden Age” of children’s literature or the “First Golden Age,” a remarkable time which brings the real change in writing for children. The period lasted for the following sixty years till the First World War and, in the meantime, authors on both sides of the Atlantic wrote children’s books which became worldwide classics and are still read nowadays. In particular, during the Golden Age, the publication of British children’s books saw a rapid expansion which was favored by various sociopolitical factors. Families became smaller and more stable, major artistic movements, such as the PreRaphaelites, reestablished fantasy; the Empire seemed to lose confidence in itself; and women’s position in society started to change slightly.

Furthermore, books became cheaper due to press developments and free elementary education was legislated. As a result, the character of children’s literature also changed. From religious and educational beginnings, “we can [now] see an empathetic, rather than directive narrative relationship with children […] [in

42 From 1820 to 1860, America was marked by a great economic and territorial expansion which was partly due to industrialization, urbanization and amazing technological advances. In addition, the nation was affected by the excitements of evangelical religion, the various reform movements and the heated debate over slavery. For a thorough analysis of the sociopolitical changes in early nineteenth-century America and the characteristics and objectives of antebellum white American children’s literature, see MacLeod, American Childhood (87-102), (137), (143-46). Koutsimani Ekaterini 28

children’s books]” (Hunt, An Introduction 30). Thus, instead of guiding children

toward proper behavior, late nineteenth-century children’s literature takes into

consideration children’s feelings, problems and emotions and revolves around them.

This entails a new approach to childhood where both the ways in which children are

valued as individuals and the relationships between parents and children are

redefined.43

The Golden Age of children’s literature in Britain began with the work of

Lewis Carroll, George Macdonald and Charles Kingsley. All of them contributed to

the growing tradition of the fairy-tale and the tradition of fantasy story which paved the way for modern children’s literature. Hunt observes that “there are certainly common themes–including growth, security, initiation, and challenge to the world, to the world of the child as dictated, and to the world of the children’s book” (An

Introduction 77). The element of anarchy is crucial as exemplified by Carroll’s

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1864), Kingsley’s The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale

for a Land Baby (1863) and Macdonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872). The

contribution of female writers is also worth mentioning. In England, the tradition of

Charlotte Yonge and the moralists was continued by writers such as Juliana Horatia

Ewing and Mary Louisa Molesworth, while the first school stories for girls began to emerge by writers such as Evelyn Everett-Green and L. T. Meade. The empire- building novel also remained an important genre in fiction represented mainly by

Stevenson and Richard Jefferies who follows the adventure tradition in his Bevis, the

43 The period between 1860 and 1914 was a time when the publication of timeless childhood classics was aided by a number of factors such as changing attitudes toward and attention to childhood, the changing character of family household, the reemergence of the tradition of fantasy writing, the public concern about the survival of the British Empire, the spread of education, women’s active role in society and various press developments. For an interesting discussion of the Golden Age of children’s literature and the socio-cultural changes that favored the rapid expansion of British children’s books in the late nineteenth century, see Knowles and Malmkjær (16-21), Hunt, An Introduction (30-31), (58- 61) and Griswold, Audacious Kids (viii). Koutsimani Ekaterini 29

Story of a Boy (1882). Other writers, who can be considered representatives of the

Golden Age, are Beatrix Potter who is the first to initiate irony in young children’s

literature, as is shown by her books such as Peter Rabbit (1902), J. M. Barrie and his

phenomenal success Peter Pan (1911), Fabian Edith Nesbit who, inspired by the

development of the family story, mixes the idea of family and strong family

relationships with the idea of magic in books like Five Children and It (1902), the

early transatlantic writer Frances Hodgson Burnett, who, according to Hunt,

“represents the quintessence of this period: slightly overblown, enthusiastic,

sentimental, and having a fundamental belief in fairies,” and her Little Lord

Fauntleroy (1886), Kenneth Grahame and The Wind in the Willows (1908), and

Kipling, who touches different children’s book genres, and The Jungle Book (1894)

(An Introduction 95). Therefore, the Golden Age of children’s literature in Britain

offered a synthesis of the previously existed traditions and genres and emphasized

imagination and sentimentality.44

The Golden Age is a very important period in the history of white American

children’s literature as well. Between 1865 and 1914, there was a great flowering of

children’s literature in America; major American authors were drawn to this field and

children’s books had a wide appeal. As Jerry Griswold explains, “the popularity of

Children’s Literature [in America] during the Golden Age was a reflection of the era’s

unusual fascination with the figure of the Child and the subject of childhood. To a

great degree, the period between 1865 and 1914 might be reckoned the Era of the

Child” (Audacious Kids 20). Several factors can account for the intense interest in childhood in America in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the 1850s, there

44 For a detailed presentation of various traditions, authors and their works during the Golden Age of children’s literature in Britain, see Hunt, An Introduction (59-105). For a brief reference to the most representative authors of the Golden Age of children’s literature in Britain, see Knowles and Malmkjær (18). Koutsimani Ekaterini 30

was a crisis in American urban society. Poverty exploded in American cities, which

were overwhelmed by waves of immigrants, and there was a social concern for the

working children of the urban poor. Under these circumstances, white American

children’s literature was seen as a means of social protest against the victimization of

children. Thus, a new sentimentality toward children started to color the literature

written for them. In addition, morality was gradually replaced by sensationalism.

Even before the outbreak of the Civil War books like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle

Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly (1852) linked evangelically based social

reform with sentimentality. In the 1860s, apart from the evangelical fiction, the

American tradition of domestic tale, which “combined pious domesticity with a

strength of character and a freedom of movement,” emphasized strong emotions and

tended to prevail as a genre (Hunt, An Introduction 75). A well-known example is

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868).45 Domestic novels of the 1860s paved the

way for the romantic child who played a dominant role in white American children’s

literature of the last decades of the nineteenth century. In this respect, the Golden Age is characterized by the American romanticization of childhood. The emphasis on childish perfection through the depiction of children as naturally good, innocent as well as morally pure and, therefore, capable of redeeming fallen or strayed adults is in stark contrast to the rationality of early nineteenth-century children’s fiction where childishness had to be replaced by reasoned behavior. This signifies that the way

Americans regarded children and their place in society had changed. As MacLeod realizes, “by the last decades of the [nineteenth] century, childhood had acquired value in and of itself. Children’s innocence, emotionality, and imagination became qualities to be preserved rather than overcome; a child’s sojourn in childhood was to

45 Other examples of the American tradition of domestic tale written by women writers during the 1860s are Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did (1872) and Martha Finley’s Elsie Dinsmore (1868). Koutsimani Ekaterini 31

be protected, not hastened. By implication, romantic literature made childhood the

high point of life” (American Childhood 156). This romantic attitude toward

childhood was reflected in the romantic novels of the late nineteenth century which

dominated white American children’s market till the early twentieth century. They

were permeated by an emotional language, a sentimental view of life and portrayed

children as the embodiments of physical beauty, innate kindness and innocence,

purity, nobility and the power of redemption. In general, white American children’s

books of the Golden Age are characterized by the following uniquely American

motifs: a preoccupation with health, an advocacy of positive thinking and redemption

through naiveté.46 One can list quite a few which are widely read and have been turned into American classics nowadays; Mary Mapes Dodge’s Hans Brinker; or, The

Silver Skates (1865), Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Frances

Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) and The Secret Garden (1911), L.

Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan

of the Apes (1914) and Eleanor Porter’s Pollyanna (1913). What becomes evident is

that white American children’s literature during the Golden Age promotes an

idealized childhood and by focusing on the child and its sentiments it helps to

improve the relationship between children and adults and by extension, children’s

social position.47

46 Among the most conspicuous motifs in white American children’s books of the Golden Age is the emphasis on the subject of physical health, the substitution of psychology for religion through instructions about controlling untoward emotions and encouraging a confident optimism and the conviction that Adamic innocence alone is redemptive. For an extensive analysis of each of these uniquely American motifs of white American children’s literature during the Golden Age, see Griswold, Audacious Kids (16-19). 47 For an explanation of the changing character of white American children’s literature during the Golden Age and a presentation of white American children’s books and their authors in the late nineteenth century, see MacLeod, American Childhood (114-24), (146-56), Hunt, An Introduction (73), (75), (85), (93-94), (103) and Griswold, Audacious Kids (viii). Koutsimani Ekaterini 32

The Twentieth Century

Moving on to children’s literature in the twentieth century, attention should be

drawn to the fact that from the first to the second half of the century children’s

literature undergoes a radical change until it emerges as an established field which can

no longer be separated from the mainstream. With regard to British children’s

literature, the tradition of adventure and school story remained popular in the first half

of the twentieth century. In general, no innovations were noticed, but the period

between World War I and World War II provided a new type of adventure, the so-

called “local” adventure. The twenties and thirties established the tradition of the

girls’ public school story, which had already appeared in the late-nineteenth century,

and girls’ fiction reached its peak. Moreover, the fantasy story, and especially

domestic fantasy, continued to survive in Britain as revealed by the publication of A.

A. Milne’s successful Pooh books (1926 and 1928) and of various verses and fairy-

tales either original or adapted. Other books that also combined adventure, legend and

magic were J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937) and P. L. Travers’s Mary Poppins

(1934). However, after the First World War, as Hunt argues, “the trend,

unconsciously reflecting the times, was towards freedom through realism” (An

Introduction 118). For instance, one can name Enid Blyton’s books like The Magic

Faraway Tree (1943). Another important writer is Arthur Ransome whose realistic

books such as We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea (1937) deal with the middle-class family world and initiate themes like the mutual respect between adults and children. Thus,

realistic fiction either in the form of adventure or school story tended to prevail in

British children’s literature until the Second World War which prevented literary creativity.48

48 For essential information on the traditions, authors and books of early twentieth-century British children’s literature, see Knowles and Malmkjær (21-25) and Hunt, An Introduction (106-26). Koutsimani Ekaterini 33

Similarly, an attempt to examine white American children’s literature in the early twentieth century reveals that by the 1920s it consisted of romantic historical novels, girls’ stories, adventure stories for boys and various editions of myths and legends and of folk- and fairy-tales. From 1920 to 1940, different social, political and economic developments occurred in America which brought about the end of the country’s prosperity and the decline into a devastating economic depression that lasted until its involvement in the Second World War. These cultural changes affected white American children’s books. In this respect, romanticism faded and the sentimentality that had permeated the 1920s domestic fiction gradually disappeared.

On the contrary, in the 1930s, the world depicted in white American children’s books was more realistic. As MacLeod acknowledges, “1930s writers shifted the focus of children’s fiction. Where authors of the 1920s tended to look toward the future, putting achievement, social mobility, and material affluence at the center of their stories, 1930s authors turned their attention from future to present, and from status in society to relationships within families” (American Childhood 166). More specifically, white American children’s books of the 1920s conveyed the American society’s preoccupation with class and wealth and the dreams of success and achievement in the material world, whereas 1930s white American children’s fiction concentrated on the comforts of home and family as a shelter against insecurity and was pervaded by the faith in human nature and the assurance that happiness was attainable. The characteristic children’s book of the 1930s was the family story which focused on the relations between children and parents, children and children and children and community, while childhood constituted the major theme. In family stories, children were integrated into family and community, and relations between children and adults were based on mutual affection. Adults, though, were responsible Koutsimani Ekaterini 34

for nurturing and protecting children and for coping with all the problems of the

family and making the important decisions. A typical example is Laura Ingalls

Wilder’s books best known by the title of the third book published, Little House on

the Prairie (1935). The family story became the dominant genre in white American

children’s literature in the first half of the twentieth century which attests to the fact

that emotional security was the center of children’s literature of that time.49

In the second half of the twentieth century, children’s literature reaches its full complexity and variation and is established as a field with remarkable commercial success. The 1950s and 1960s are characterized as the “Second Golden Age” of children’s literature because they witness a vast improvement in its form and content.

The end of the Second World War had an immediate impact on British children’s literature which turned to fantasy of various kinds. Thus, in post-war British children’s literature, mythology and magic influenced the writing of adventure stories.

Roald Dahl was the most popular writer who mixed adventure with fantasy and magic in his books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). Other examples are

C. S. Lewis’s “Narnia” sequence from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) to The Last Battle (1956) and Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960)

and its sequel The Moon of Gomrath (1963). Fantasy dominated in the 1950s and

1960s and since then, Hunt has noticed “a swing towards a ‘new realism’: streetwise, multiracial literature, often written from the ‘inside’” (An Introduction 127). The

“new realism,” a genre introduced in British children’s literature by William Mayne, has gradually turned to exposing serious social problems. However, in the British tradition, the domestic novel and the family-centered tale continue to exist but they

49 For a critical overview of the development of white American children’s literature in the first half of the twentieth century and the characteristics of early twentieth-century white American children’s books, see MacLeod, American Childhood (125-26), (157-72), (198-99), (205-06), Hunt, An Introduction (121) and MacLeod, “The Journey” (125-26). Koutsimani Ekaterini 35 have been adjusted to the reality of late twentieth-century life; Jane Gardam’s A Long

Way from Verona (1971) and Bilgewater (1976) are characteristic examples. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the rise of the civil rights movement and of postmodernism had a liberating and empowering effect on British children’s literature in which different kinds of taboos were abolished and children’s emotions were emphasized.50 Moreover, a distinct “teenage” market emerged which promoted genres like the “teen novel.”51 Since the 1980s there has been a “literary emancipation,” favored by experimental writing, which affected forms of British children’s literature resulting in the rejection of any sort of boundaries and restrictions. What is important, though, is that, according to Hunt, throughout the second half of the twentieth century

“the religious/didactic element in children’s books has been replaced by a movement to be ‘politically correct’–socially and racially aware” (An Introduction 149). This change is best reflected in Bernard Ashley’s High Pavement Blues (1983) which is about working-class/multiracial life seen from the inside, Jean Ure’s A Proper Little

Nooryeff (1982) which deals with the embarrassment of a boy becoming a ballet dancer and Catherine Sefton’s Starry Night (1986) which is about Northern Ireland.

Therefore, late twentieth-century British children’s literature concentrates on illustrating socio-cultural problems and displaying social concerns, thus stressing the

50 The change in direction of writing for children in the late 1960s and early 1970s is reflected in books such as Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War (1973), Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners (1975), David Ree’s The Exeter Blitz (1978), Leon Garfield’s The Pleasure Garden (1976), Jan Mark’s Thunder and Lightnings (1977) and Bernard Ashley’s The Trouble with Donovan Croft (1974). 51 In Britain, Robert Leeson is one of the best known of writers for adolescents with “teen novels” such as Beyond the Dragon Prow (1973) and The Third Class Genie (1975). Koutsimani Ekaterini 36

importance of real life issues and their potential implications.52

The evolution of white American children’s literature in the second half of the twentieth century is indicative of its flexibility and openness to experimentation and reveals that it challenges and revises established concepts and traditions. Late twentieth-century America was marked by radical socio-cultural changes.

Sociopolitical struggles and the social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s such as the civil rights movement and the expansion of American society due to pluralism and multiculturalism affected the tone, form and content of children’s literature. Thus, although fantasy had its own representatives in America like Ursula Le Guin, a “new realism” prevailed in white American children’s fiction stemming from the conviction that children should be aware of the realities of the world they live in even if they are hard ones. In this respect, in the decade of the 1970s, subjects which were seen as taboos like death, divorce, alcohol and drugs, sexism and racism, and sexuality appeared in white American children’s books, while traditional fictional family relationships were questioned. In particular, white American children’s literature highlighted children’s hostility toward their parents, presenting children as victims of their parents’ inadequacies and failures. Stories of disintegrating families where parents were indifferent to their children, destructive and unable to cope with the problems of the family reflected the collapse of the settled hierarchy of parent and child. Thus, the American family could no longer be seen as the secure foundation of children’s lives. The portrayal of adult society as chaotic and untrustworthy

52 One of the most popular writers of British children’s books in the second half of the twentieth century is Roald Dahl. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that one of today’s most popular and bestselling works of fantasy is the multivolume Harry Potter saga (1997-2007) by Scottish author J. K. Rowling. For an analysis of the “Harry Potter phenomenon,” see Richard Abanes (123-79), (217-40). For a discussion of the changing status of British children’s literature in the second half of the twentieth century including references to authors, books and dominant traditions, see Knowles and Malmkjær (25-29), Hunt, An Introduction (127-62), Anne de Vries (43) and Metcalf (50-51). The term “literary emancipation” is borrowed from de Vries (43). Koutsimani Ekaterini 37

contributed to a sense of uncertainty, alienation and despair that persisted in

children’s fiction until the last decades of the twentieth century. In brief, “new

realism” implies that adult-child relations are doomed to fail. As MacLeod points out,

in white American children’s realistic fiction of the late twentieth century, “not

resolution but coping is the aim. As implicitly defined, coping means minimizing

pain, tolerating disappointment, accepting one’s own feelings, and, above all, limiting

one’s emotional investments. Insofar as the books endorse any goal, it is survival, not

mastery; endurance rather than triumph” (American Childhood 208). Therefore,

children are supposed to be prepared to tackle the problems of the real world by

looking inward for emotional strength, without expecting their parents’ moral

guidance. The literary model for adolescent novels of the 1960s and 1970s was J. D.

Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) which was followed by writers like Paul

Zindel, John Donovan, Isabelle Holland, Kin Platt, Robert Cormier and others.53

Nevertheless, in white American children’s literature of the 1980s and 1990s, attitudes have been modified. The concept of family has expanded to include new nontraditional models and the emotional support that it provides is understood to be important and necessary. Children characters resist alienation and coexist peacefully with family and friends but still retain their individuality and achieve personal maturity and autonomy. Furthermore, writers of white American children’s literature are free to experiment with form and content and transgress the boundaries of children’s fiction. These new trends and changes are reflected in the works of various writers like Chris Crutcher and Virginia Hamilton.54 On the whole, in the last decades

53 Examples of late twentieth-century white American adolescent novels include Paul Zindel’s Confessions of a Teenage Baboon (1977), John Donovan’s I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip (1969), Isabelle Holland’s The Man Without a Face (1972), Kin Platt’s The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear (1968) and Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War (1974). 54 Typical examples are Chris Crutcher’s Chinese Handcuffs (1983) and Virginia Hamilton’s Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1983). Koutsimani Ekaterini 38 of the twentieth century, white American children’s literature continues to evolve allowing space for variations rather than categorizations and embracing more complex views of childhood, society and human relationships.55

55 The enormous upheavals in American society in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with the emergence of a “new realism” in literature for children. Old taboos fell and subjects excluded from children’s books for years were brought to the surface. For a thorough account of the evolution of white American children’s literature in the second half of the twentieth century including references to authors, books and dominant traditions, see MacLeod, American Childhood (178-86), (200-15), Hunt, An Introduction (139-40), (149), Daniel D. Hade (115-22) and MacLeod, “The Journey” (125-29). Koutsimani Ekaterini 39

Chapter Two:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The Ideology of White

Supremacy

Mark Twain’s Social Environment

Mark Twain was born in Florida, in 1835, at a time when slavery prevailed in

southern states and black subordination was a common practice in white American

society. Being the child of slaveholders himself and growing up in a slaveholding

town, Hannibal, Twain unconsciously accepted slavery as a fact deeply rooted in

America’s reality. From his early infancy he had lived with enslaved African

Americans, an experience that influenced his whole life and way of thinking. As a

young boy, Twain was struck by the slaves’ rich oral tradition. He used to listen to

ghost stories and satirical orations delivered by Uncle Dan’l, a slave at his uncle’s

farm in Florida, and Jerry, a young black slave whom he considered “the greatest

orator in the United States” (qtd. in Fishkin, Lighting Out 22). Inspired by them,

Twain developed a special talent for storytelling and a liking for satire which would

be later reflected in his writings. However, despite the fact that he was attracted to the

black slaves’ cultural tradition and enjoyed spending time with slaves, Twain never

tried to challenge the institution of slavery during his childhood but, was instead

convinced, like most Southerners, that slavery was something natural and right.56

In the 1830s, a number of reasons contributed to the white Americans’

acquiescence to the institution of slavery. The great boom in cotton in southwestern

states created an urgent need for human property, and slaveholders, who longed for

56 For biographical information about Mark Twain, see Walter Blair (19-33) and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Lighting Out (21-23), (59), (91), (94). For further details about the black slaves that influenced Twain during his childhood as well as African-American voices that played a major role in the creation of his art, see Fishkin, Lighting Out (22), (51), (98), (111), Was Huck Black? (13-76). Koutsimani Ekaterini 40 profit, insisted on justifying enslavement. They argued that the slave system was both economically necessary in the rice- and cotton-producing areas and effective in keeping a potentially dangerous black population under control. Moreover, proslavery theorists of the 1830s and 1840s tried to defend the institution by developing arguments for inherent Negro inferiority. This racist ideology of white supremacy contended that the history of blacks revealed their supposed failure to develop a civilized way of life in Africa. It was also based on a biological argument which emphasized the physiological and anatomical differences between whites and blacks that supposedly demonstrated blacks’ mental and physical inferiority.57 Finally, it appealed to hidden white fears of widespread miscegenation since, according to proslavery theorists, the abolition of slavery would result in an increased number of intermarriages and the degeneracy of the white race.58

On the other hand, opposition to slavery, which had been felt in the South by the middle of the 1830s due to the rise of the abolitionist movement, paved the way for newly aggressive justifications of slavery on the part of proslavery polemicists.

Once they realized the full impact of the abolitionist assertion of racial equality,

57 Richard Colfax emphasized a whole range of physical differences between whites and blacks especially in cranial characteristics and facial angles in a pamphlet published in New York in 1833, entitled Evidence Against the Views of the Abolitionists, Consisting of Physical and Moral Proofs of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes. For a detailed presentation of his racist theory of Negro character, see George M. Fredrickson (49-50). In the late 1840s and 1850s, Colfax’s arguments were placed in a framework of respectable scientific theory by the “American School of ethnology.” On the American School of ethnology, see Fredrickson (71-97). A more supportive scientific justification of slavery was offered by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution based on the concept of the “survival of the fittest” which, when applied to human races, favored the survival of the white over the black race in the struggle for existence. More specifically, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution encouraged the century’s belief in racial differences and racial categories as biological and inherent. According to Darwinian ideas of evolution, the white race was the strongest one and thus, black people were expected to disappear in a struggle for existence with the superior whites. However, the possibility of achieving racial homogeneity through intermarriage was considered unthinkable given that the purity of the white race had to be preserved. On Darwinism and its contribution to nineteenth-century American racial theory, see Fredrickson (228-55), (322) and Susan V. Donaldson (74). 58 For a short analysis of the reasons that contributed to the white Americans’ acquiescence to the institution of slavery in the early nineteenth century, see Jonathan Arac, Huckleberry Finn (42-43) and Fredrickson (43-48). For a comprehensive presentation of early nineteenth-century proslavery theorists’ arguments for inherent Negro inferiority, see Fredrickson (49). Koutsimani Ekaterini 41

southern apologists for black servitude found themselves in a propaganda war with

abolitionists. The latter ones insisted on racial egalitarianism by arguing that the

social, economic, psychological and biological assumptions about black inferiority

provided no justification for slavery. Influenced by Christian and humanitarian values,

they projected an image of black slaves as wretched human beings degraded by white

racial prejudice. On the other hand, Southern defenders of slavery tried to counter this

image by maintaining that black slaves were naturally unfit for freedom and ideally

suited to slavery. In this respect, they used a variety of public means such as

pamphlets and newspapers to promote their views. In particular, they promulgated the

stereotype of the “happy and contented bondsman” aiming at persuading Americans

that black people found true happiness and fulfillment only when they had a white

master (qtd. in Fredrickson 52).59 Moreover, Southern proslavery propagandists

argued for the duality or instability of Negro character, the one set forth by Thomas R.

Dew between the savage Negro of Africa and the “civilized” black slave. According

to them, bestial savagery characterized by nature all black people who achieved

“‘domestication’ or ‘semi-civilization’” only under slavery (qtd. in Fredrickson 55).

The notion that slavery “civilized” blacks entailed that docility was not a natural characteristic of black people but rather a social product of slavery and, consequently, the perpetuation of black servitude and the prevention of black emancipation were considered necessary.60

Although in the antebellum period most Northerners opposed slavery as an institution because they feared that the growing economic power of the South posed a serious threat to their own prosperity, they were neither prepared nor willing to accept

59 The American popular culture of the nineteenth century was built on this assumption. More specifically, the stereotype of the happy and contented bondsman was introduced in nineteenth-century theatrical practices, the so-called minstrel shows, in which white men caricatured blacks. 60 For a discussion of the abolitionists’ arguments for racial equality as opposed to the proslavery spokesmen’s defense of the institution, see Fredrickson (50-58). Koutsimani Ekaterini 42 blacks as equals. Furthermore, in the North, the 1830s were marked by several instances of mob violence against abolitionists, a fact which revealed a consensus in favor of white supremacy. As George M. Fredrickson observes, after the 1830s, both

Northern and Southern whites agreed that “the destiny of the blacks in America is either continued subordination –slavery or some form of caste discrimination– or their elimination as an element of the population” (321). In this respect, the presence of blacks in nineteenth-century America was actually a problem that both Northerners and Southerners struggled to confront without risking losing their own privileges. On the part of Northerners who valued an economic or political connection with the slave

South or feared that emancipation would result in an inundation of the North by

Southern blacks competing with white labor and threatening the status of lower-class whites, the question of slavery was subordinate to the aim of ensuring national hegemony for Northern political, social, and economic institutions. Therefore, for white Americans, the principal debate after the 1830s did not occur between abolitionists and defenders of slavery but, in Fredrickson’s words, “between advocates of a permanent hierarchical biracialism and prophets or proponents of racial homogeneity through the eventual elimination of the black population” (322).

Hierarchical biracialism did not oppose slavery but rather promoted a system of racial segregation which made a clear distinction between the white and the black race and emphasized white supremacy. On the other hand, the ideal of racial homogeneity rejected the institutionalization of slavery and reflected a dream of an all-white

America where equality could be achieved because there would be no black Koutsimani Ekaterini 43

population to be subject to any kind of discrimination.61 This white racial nationalism was given shape by mid-nineteenth-century developments in natural science and social thought as well as by the republican rhetoric of equality, happiness and liberty which masked racial exclusion. In fact, the republican dream of a prosperous, harmonious, “homogeneous” nation appealed to the majority of white Americans who opted for the recolonization of blacks to Africa as the ideal solution to the institution of slavery. Andrew Burstein notes that “few placed unfree Southern blacks in the category of civic competence. Blacks were commonly assumed to be prone to emotional excesses and disruptive behavior if they did not receive direction” (245).

These attitudes toward blacks and the obsession with racial categorization revealed that racialist thinking and white supremacist ideology prevailed in nineteenth-century

America.62

In the years before the Civil War, American national consciousness had not

manifested itself in a variety of ways given that regional and local concerns acquired

primary importance compared to expressions of nationality. According to Samuel P.

Huntington, the notion of a coherent national identity “usually but not always includes

a territorial element and may also include one or more ascriptive (race, ethnicity),

cultural (religion, language), and political (state, ideology) elements, as well as

occasionally economic (farming) or social (networks) ones” (30). After the 1830s,

regional tensions caused by economic growth and the rise of a strong Democratic

party led to the salience of sectional and partisan identities over national identities.

61 Thomas Jefferson was one of the Founding Fathers of the American nation and governor of Virginia whose imperial vision of America involved the re-patriation of blacks to Africa. More specifically, in 1831 and 1832, the Virginia legislature debated a colonization proposal that might have opened the way to gradual emancipation of black slaves if it had not been defeated. For further reference, see Fredrickson (43-45) and Andrew Burstein (160-61), (244-45). 62 For a summary of the reasons for Northerners’ opposition to slavery in the 1850s, see Fredrickson (323). For a short reference to mob violence against abolitionists in the North in the 1830s, see Arac, Huckleberry Finn (42-43). For more information on the doctrine of hierarchical biracialism and the ideal of racial homogeneity, see Fredrickson (321-22). Koutsimani Ekaterini 44

The sectional competition between Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats due to their conflicting ideologies was a major factor in the disruption of the Union.

Southern Democrats insisted on slavery as the very basis of civilized life, rejected the materialism and lack of cohesion in northern society and accused Republicans of subordinating the rights of whites to those of blacks and of favoring the intermixing of the races. In essence, they did not only want to protect black slavery but also save republicanism since they viewed the Republican Party as a threat to self-government, the rule of law, Southern liberty and Southern equality. On the other hand, Northern

Republicans were dedicated to eradicating slavery posing themselves as champions of republican values and portraying their opponents as antirepublican, aristocratic, unlawful and tyrannical Southerners whose aim was to “enslave” Northern whites. To the Democrats’ accusations Republicans responded that they would keep the territories open and the races separate by barring slavery, and advocated colonization of blacks as a solution to the race problem. The Republicans’ opposition to slavery was based on their free labor ideology argument according to which all men, including blacks, had the right to participate as free laborers in the market-place, on their moral revulsion to the institution and on the fact that slavery was the foundation of the South’s economy, social structure and ideology. On the contrary, Democrats justified slavery by arguing that it contributed to the slaves’ moral improvement, to the purity of the white southern women and to the political stability in the South since they feared that emancipation would destroy southern society.63

The decline in the centrality of national identity in pre-Civil War America was also encouraged by various sociopolitical changes. Apart from the increasing economic antagonism between North and South, the emergence of the abolitionist

63 For analytical information on the ideology of the Republican and the Democratic Party before the Civil War, see Michael F. Holt (183-259), Foner, Free Soil (9), (261-317) and James A. Morone (169- 82). Koutsimani Ekaterini 45 movement and the territorial expansion westward brought slavery to the top of the national agenda. Furthermore, although before the 1820s the security of America was threatened by the three great European powers, Britain, France and Spain, American policy resulted in the purchase of the French and Spanish territories and the accommodation with the British in the Rush-Bagot agreement and the Monroe

Doctrine. Thus, the lack of an external threat allowed Americans to concentrate on their sectional and economic conflicts which stemmed from the controversial issue of slavery and its potential extension to new territories. On the whole, between the

American Revolution, which stimulated the emergence of American national identity, and the Civil War, Americans showed commitment to their nation when they were forced to fight for independence and security against foreign powers. For instance, the

War of 1812, fought between the United States and Britain because of the latter’s interference with American economy, generated a surge of American nationalism which reached its peak after Jackson’s victory at New Orleans. A few decades later, the breakout of the Civil War brought to the surface nationalist sentiments and, more specifically, a sort of racial nationalism, and American national identity was firmly established. Indeed, during the post-Civil War period, Americans developed and increasingly engaged in a wide range of patriotic symbols, rituals, ceremonies and national organizations such as the Grand Army of the Republic, formed in 1866. As

Samuel P. Huntington acknowledges, “the American nation was born in the [Civil] war and came into its full being in the decades after the war. So also did American nationalism, patriotism, and the unqualified identification of Americans with their country” (119). Therefore, it was the Civil War that made America a nation and Koutsimani Ekaterini 46 created and reinforced American national consciousness.64

The Portrayal of African Americans in Early- and Mid-Nineteenth-

Century American Literature

Since the late eighteenth century the presentation of black people’s life and character in American literature and popular culture has shown that African-American characters had been incarcerated in various restrictive racial stereotypes. These stereotypes that initially arose with slavery also influenced nineteenth-century white popular entertainment. For instance, by the 1830s, minstrel shows, which became the most popular form of nineteenth-century entertainment, created and popularized many of the racial stereotypes of blacks that exist even nowadays such as the contented slave, the comic minstrel, the wretched freedman and the exotic primitive. The setting of the minstrel shows was largely the industrializing, urban North where they were produced for and enjoyed by predominantly white working-class audiences. The strained class relations that resulted from the emergence of capitalism in early nineteenth-century northeastern cities produced a series of working-class fears about the status of whiteness. According to Eric Lott, “sandwiched between bourgeois above and black below, respectable artisans feared they were becoming ‘blacker’ with every increment of industrial advance” (Love and Theft 71). Therefore, blackface minstrelsy allowed working-class white men to resist the demands of industrialization by voicing class resentments toward blacks, immigrants and upper-class enemies.

The minstrels, who were influential whites that used the mask of blackface to speak as blacks, distorted elements of African-American culture by resorting to exaggerated black stereotyping in their performance. Having focused on the stereotypical portrayal

64 For an extensive explanation of the declining salience of American national identity in the three decades before the Civil War, see Samuel P. Huntington (116-19). On the contribution of the Civil War to American nationalism, see Huntington (108), (119-20). Koutsimani Ekaterini 47 of blacks in nineteenth-century American literature, Seymour L. Gross argues that

“these [racial] stereotypes, whether flattering or denigrative, all are marked by exaggeration or omission, all agree in stressing the Negro’s divergence from white

Anglo-Saxon norms, and all are consciously or unconsciously pressed into the service of justifying racial proscription” (10). In this respect, all the negative and biased depictions of blacks in nineteenth-century American literature and culture reveal that white Americans promoted racial segregation and white superiority by retaining control over any cultural practice and aspect of life and thus, black-white relations were by no means based on equality but on a continuing effort to keep African

Americans in a subordinate position.65

With roots dating back to the 1830s, Jim Crow and Zip Coon –two laughably grotesque song-and-dance caricatures of African Americans that appeared in minstrel shows– and other degrading images of blacks in culture, literature, theater and mass entertainment inevitably contributed to the development of a sort of racialized language that reflected the race relations of the period. White Americans, being the dominant social group, tried to impose social hierarchies of race on public discourse.

Thus, everyday English language, apart from being a communicative device, was used as a tool for shaping the concepts of black and white and instilling certain stereotypes and racial bias in people’s minds. In particular, since the beginning of African slavery, derogatory terms for blacks appeared in popular communication and the language of law keeping blacks separate from whites and justifying discriminatory practices.

65 On the stereotypical image of blacks in nineteenth-century American literature, see Seymour L. Gross (4-12) and Sterling A. Brown (338-39). On racial stereotypes of blacks in nineteenth-century American popular culture, see Lee Artz and Bren Ortega Murphy (94-95). For a definition of minstrelsy and historical information on minstrel shows, see Artz and Murphy (94-95), Henry B. Wonham (133-38), Eric Lott, “Mr. Clemens and Jim Crow” (129-52) and Elaine Mensh and Harry Mensh (37-38). Koutsimani Ekaterini 48

Moreover, derogatory slang terms for black were much more offensive than those for white. According to Lee Artz and Bren Ortega Murphy:

Synonyms for blacks include colored, Negro, coon, darkie, jungle

bunny, sambo, ape, pickaninny and worse. There is no serious racial

insult to whites. ‘Poor white trash,’ for instance, implies living below

standards acceptable to average whites. Honky, whitey, cracker, redneck,

or ofay just don’t ravage the same tear on one’s dignity as the ‘n-word’ –

the most enduring symbol of oppression– . (96)

The use of such terms for blacks reveals that they were deprived of self-respect and considered inferior beings. Therefore, through language, whites aimed at perpetuating black subordination and servitude by reinforcing the dehumanizing racist imagery and preventing blacks from sharing feelings of racial pride.

Gradually, this kind of verbal attack on blacks did not have only psychological consequences but, instead, it paved the way for blacks’ sociopolitical exclusion.

Ironically enough, the 1830s Jim Crow caricature gave its name to a rising mid- nineteenth-century system of racial segregation, the so-called Jim Crow separatism, which resulted in the construction and defense of institutional racism in late nineteenth-century America. Mark Twain himself was fully aware of the growth of Jim Crow separatism and witnessed its establishment by legislative action mostly in the 1890s, a time when racial discrimination against blacks had reached its peak. 66

66 For more details about the way language reinforces stereotypical depictions of blacks, see Artz and Murphy (95-98). For further historical information on Jim Crow separatism, see Jocelyn Chadwick- Joshua, The Jim Dilemma (14) and Arac, Huckleberry Finn (44). Koutsimani Ekaterini 49

The Context of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America underwent various socioeconomic changes which marked both the quality of life of its citizens and their ethics. First of all, it was transformed from a rural region into an urban, industrialized society that attracted increasing numbers of immigrants. The people who moved to the new, impersonal, industrial-commercial cities often suffered from a sense of loneliness and rootlessness. In particular, after the Civil War, the various technological achievements contributed to the development of American business enterprise and the restless pursuit of material advantages. People became obsessed with money and the growing materialism resulted in social categorizations on the basis of one’s acquisitions. The ongoing struggle for profit was a characteristic of individualism which prevailed in human relationships and promoted self-interest, antagonism and isolation. On the whole, capitalism established itself in postbellum

American society, a fact which had controversial implications for American people.

As Robert Shulman explains, apart from its benefits, American capitalism has brought to the surface “the underlying imperatives to expand, to maximize profits, and to commodify [human] relations, […] [which] have fragmented American society, whose divisions often reappear as internal splits within individuals” (3). In this respect, for the American population in the postbellum era, the fluidity of social categories like race, gender and class made possible the emergence of new identities and new stories. These were stories of previously marginalized social groups like white women, African Americans and immigrants who insisted on making their voices heard and demanded equal participation in the public sphere. More specifically, African Americans tried to cast off the old identities bestowed upon them by the institution of slavery and assert new ones for themselves. They expected that Koutsimani Ekaterini 50

all the injustices against them would be solved and that they would enjoy citizenship

status in the changing American society.67

During the period immediately following the Civil War, which became known

as Reconstruction, the most important problems that American citizens faced were the

rebuilding of the South, the reorganization and restoration of the seceded states to

their places in the Union and the question of the freedmen. John Hope Franklin and

Alfred A. Moss, Jr. note that “for all Americans, perhaps the greatest problem that

arose out of the Civil War and its economic aftermath was to find a way to retain

freedom, the desire for which had become almost an obsession, and yet at the same

time to enjoy security, which was becoming more precarious in the new economic

order” (200). That being the case, African Americans were forced to adjust

themselves to a new reality full of instability and risks with which they had to deal by

themselves. With regard to freedom, after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in

1863, which marked the beginning of Reconstruction, the white South undertook the

responsibility to do justice to the emancipated slaves and reintegrate them

successfully into the newly reunited nation. Indeed, African Americans became capable of exercising the same legal rights with whites since they shared political

power in the former Confederate states. They were enfranchised and offered equal

protection under the law and took advantage of public facilities through the laws and

Constitutional Amendments. With respect to security, meaning financial security,

African Americans had to win control of their working lives and gain access to the economic resources of the South. However, although they tried to free themselves from subordination to white authority and escape the conditions under which they labored, they were deprived of the opportunity to purchase their own land and

67 For a brief account of the socioeconomic and cultural changes sweeping American society in the years after the Civil War, see Donaldson (x-xv) and Shulman (3-33). Koutsimani Ekaterini 51

resorted to free labor as wage or share workers on land owned by whites. This

economic failure was favored by the white Southern leaders’ refusal to advance credit

or sell them property and by the Northern industrialists’ policy to impose their

economic control on the South and exploit their employees in the North. On the

whole, in the South, Reconstruction laid the foundations for blacks’ full citizenship

and participation in a democracy offering them equal opportunities for voting, holding

offices and educating themselves, but failed to provide a solution to their economic

dependence on their old masters, a fact that made easier the efforts of white

Southerners to overthrow Reconstruction and reestablish white supremacy.68

During the Reconstruction years, white Southerners were not prepared to accept that African Americans had earned the right to self-mastery and citizenship

but, instead, they were determined to resist their struggle to establish their autonomy.

A dramatic increase in violence against blacks appeared from the beginning of

Reconstruction when Southerners realized that they could no longer control the former slaves. Aiming at eliminating blacks from public life, they formed secret white protective societies and terrorist groups which were engaged in keeping African

Americans enslaved and reimposing segregation.69 Emphasizing the pervasiveness of

white violence, Franklin and Moss, Jr. claim that “white Southerners expected to do

by extralegal or blatantly illegal means what had not been allowed by law: to exercise

absolute control over Negroes […]. They used intimidation, force, ostracism in

business and society, bribery at the polls, arson, and even murder to accomplish their

68 Eric Foner focuses on the meaning of blacks’ freedom during Reconstruction. For further details, see Foner, Reconstruction (77-123). On the political and economic situation of African Americans during Reconstruction, see Franklin and Moss, Jr. (200-23), Foner, Reconstruction (106-10) and Fishkin, Was Huck Black? (70). 69 Some of the white terrorist groups that opposed blacks’ exercising the rights of citizenship in the Reconstruction years were the Knights of the White Camelia, the White Brotherhood, the Rifle Clubs of South Carolina, and the Ku Klux Klan. For a short reference, see Fishkin, Was Huck Black? (70) and Franklin and Moss, Jr. (226). Koutsimani Ekaterini 52

deeds” (226-27). The tactics of the white Southerners’ terrorist groups were reported

in the national press and Twain, who had already started writing The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn, was fully aware of them. The violence climaxed on the election

day of 1876 which led to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The restoration of white

supremacy in the post-Reconstruction era entailed the loss of the African Americans’

political, social, and economic rights, their disfranchisement and the legalized

segregation in education and public accommodations. Moreover, the high rate of

crime and violence against blacks as revealed by the large number of lynchings, and

their exploitation through sharecropping and the convict-lease system attest to the

white South’s insistence on maintaining sovereignty over blacks.70 In this sense,

Susan V. Donaldson refers to the forty-year period after the end of Reconstruction as

“the ‘nadir’ of African American history” recognizing the extremity of white racism in late nineteenth-century America (73).

In the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction period, black-white relations were not characterized as harmonious since racial separation was dominant and Jim

Crow segregation laws were widely imposed on the black population in the South.

The emancipation of blacks was followed by an emerging obsession with the color line and a widespread white racial essentialism which promoted racial categorization dividing the world into absolute blackness and whiteness. However, absolute racial difference and racial identity as defined by the seeming concreteness of blood, science and the white gaze became elusive and problematic given that white Americans could not rely on visual criteria to determine racial boundaries by the end of the nineteenth

70 On violence against blacks during Reconstruction, see Mensh and Mensh (98-99). For an explanation of the convict-lease system, see Fishkin, Was Huck Black? (73). Koutsimani Ekaterini 53 century.71 According to Donaldson, “the ultimate authority in matters of race in nineteenth-century America, […] had far less to do with science, measurement, or even visible difference and far more to do with the inequitable distribution of power, measured by access to the traditional tools of law, money, and sheer physical intimidation” (76). Actually, race was simply a matter of who had the authority and power to decide what race was. In this respect, white America’s anxiety about the crossing of the color line by Americans who looked white but had some black ancestry –the so-called mulattoes– along with the fear of loss of white social, cultural and economic hegemony can account for the whites’ effort to popularize convictions about Anglo-Saxon superiority and black “bestiality” no longer suppressed under slavery. Thus, the ideology of white supremacy and black inferiority continued to be the prevailing racial ideology in late nineteenth-century America and the southern culture of segregation remained visible in the American social order.

In the meantime, black portrayal in the fiction and mass media of

Reconstruction was based on new demeaning stereotypes of African Americans which were the brute Negro or the “black beast rapist” and the tragic mulatto. However, the national popularity of minstrel shows in the 1880s and 1890s revealed the nostalgia for romantic, sentimental depictions of the antebellum South and “darky” characters

71 Grace Elizabeth Hale argues that the rise of racial thinking and white supremacist ideology throughout late nineteenth-century American culture had been an attempt to ground the feared mutability of racial identity. African Americans could indeed elude visual categorization. The “one- drop” rule supposedly determined one’s race given that blood, the means to essentialize race, is not itself visible. Scientists failed to reach any consensus on the criteria, visible or physical, for determining definitive racial differences or even racial categories. The authority of the white gaze to detect and define racial differences was also questioned. On the contradictory character of race in turn- of-the century America, see Donaldson (72-76), Hale (43-51) and Linda Williams (182). Koutsimani Ekaterini 54

in literature and popular culture.72 Indeed, according to Theodore L. Gross:

From the point of view of most Southern authors [of

Reconstruction], he [the Negro] was villain or saint, depending on

whether or not he actively asserted his rights as freedman. If he

demanded equal opportunity as a newly enfranchised citizen, he was

pictured as partner in the Republican conspiracy to undermine the

congenial race relations that had existed in ante-bellum times; if, on

the other hand, he desired to perpetuate his role as servant, he was

drawn as a contented Negro who enjoyed status in Southern society,

gained the admiration of his kindly masters, and in turn, recognized

the natural and proper supremacy of the white man. (73)

Such presentations of black characters constituted a kind of propaganda on the part of

white Southerners given that they revived racial stereotypes of the old South and

addressed them to the American reading public. On the other hand, minstrel

representations of blacks had also a great appeal to Northerners, and, more

specifically, to white working-class men, since racial imagery was used to soothe the

latter’s fears of being displaced from work by blacks in the industrializing, capitalist

North, through the derision of black people. In fact, the period starting from 1870 to

1960 was marked by a rising American nationalism since American national identity

became the strongest of all other racial, ethnic, gender or cultural identities and

Americans, who started feeling members of a national community, strove to show

their commitment to their nation and demonstrate their patriotism. More precisely,

72 According to Eric Lott, “the minstrel show was less the incarnation of an age-old racism than an emergent social semantic figure highly responsive to the emotional demands and troubled fantasies of its audiences” (Love and Theft 6). On the minstrel show in American culture, see Lott, Love and Theft (15-38), William J. Mahar (1-8), (329-53), Eric J. Sundquist, To Wake the Nations (230) and Hale (52). For more information on the stereotypes of blacks in the fiction and mass media of Reconstruction, see Brown (338-40). Koutsimani Ekaterini 55

white racial identity was considered an essential component of Americanness as

opposed to non-Americanness and thus, whiteness formed a crucial part of American

nationalism, especially for white Southerners.73 Barbara Miller Solomon emphasizes

that in the 1870s and 1880s, a distinctive American nationality was attributed to

“Anglo-Saxon origins” and “social traits” (80-81).74 Thus, despite African

Americans’ adherence to nationalist principles and demonstration of patriotism during

the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World War II, as revealed by the black

soldiers’ military contribution, racial identity could not be transcended since

whiteness and Anglo-conformity were the grounds by which Americans differentiated

themselves from other peoples. Consequently, white Americans and mostly white

southern authors, in their effort to express their nationalist sentiments, depicted the

independent African-American characters as a menace to the white South and, by

extension, to the whole American nation and celebrated the image of the happy,

devoted slave.

Mark Twain began The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1876, carried it

through the first sixteen chapters and having lost his enthusiasm put the manuscript

aside. He worked again on it during 1879 and 1880 when he added the next five

chapters and then abandoned it once more. Three years later, in a burst of inspiration,

he picked it up and finished it after a seven-year period of composition. The book was

first published in England and Canada in 1884 and then in America in 1885. It

constitutes a kind of companion or sequel to another Twain’s book, Tom Sawyer,

which was published in 1876. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the

73 Matthew Frye Jacobson examines the political history of whiteness in the United States. He notes that the period of mass European immigration, from the 1840s to the 1920s, witnessed a fracturing of whiteness into a hierarchy of plural and scientifically determined white races which was followed by a debate about which of these was truly “fit for self-government” in the old Anglo-Saxon sense. For analytical information, see Jacobson (13-135). 74 For an analysis of the impact of Anglo-Saxonism on the American character and culture, see Solomon (59-81). Koutsimani Ekaterini 56 protagonist, Huck Finn, one of Tom Sawyer’s closest friends, having become a property owner, is kidnapped by his disreputable father from whom he manages to escape by contriving a scene of robbery and murder in the paternal hut, and then goes off in a canoe crossing the Mississippi river. He hides himself because the people of his hometown, St. Petersburg, are looking for his dead body, but he soon encounters a runaway slave, Jim, an old friend of Tom Sawyer and himself. With Jim he goes south down the river after having decided to help him gain his freedom and a series of adventures begins. The book enjoyed a steady sale after publication and became one of Twain’s most popular books. However, early critical response to The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn was extremely contradictory, ranging from high praise to condemnation as is shown by the decision of the Concord Public Library committee to exclude it from the library shortly after its first publication on the grounds that it exerted a dangerous moral influence on the young. In general, critical reaction to the book followed the course set by the Concord Library and most critics received it unfavorably in late nineteenth-century America.75

As Mark Twain mentions at the beginning of his book, the setting of The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Mississippi of the antebellum South at a time between 1835 and 1845. Interestingly, he chose to set his story in the pre-Civil-War period although the book came out during the post-Reconstruction years. Before the

Civil War, the institution of slavery dominated in the American South and enslaved

African Americans suffered both physical and psychological exploitation from whites.

75 Negative criticism against the book was based less on artistic grounds than on moral. More specifically, the critics thought the book was raw and its language coarse. This kind of criticism mostly appeared in American newspapers and magazines such as the Critic, the Boston Advertiser, the Boston Transcript, the Literary World, the Arkansaw Traveler and the Springfield Republican in the year of its publication. Moreover, guardians of the genteel tradition such as Louisa May Alcott also disapproved of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For a thorough examination of the publication and reception of the book in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, see Arthur Lawrence Vogelback (260-72), Laurie Champion (2-3), (11-20) and Bertram Wyatt-Brown (174). On the history of the composition of the book, see Robert Sattelmeyer (364-65). Koutsimani Ekaterini 57

Twain’s own reminiscences of his youth in the antebellum South allowed him to

convey successfully the atmosphere of slavery in his book which contains a lot of

autobiographical elements. In addition, Twain, while writing The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn, was also inspired by other Southern writers of the Reconstruction,

the so-called local colorists, who had already dealt with the issue of slavery in their

fiction. For instance, Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris, who were

acquainted with life on the plantations as children during the Civil War, were among

the authors who established the plantation tradition that glorified slavery as a

benevolent guardianship. In this sense, both Page and Harris idealized slavery and the

plantation with its happy slaves and promoted mutual affection and reunion between

the races as well as reconciliation between the North and South.76 More specifically,

Theodore L. Gross highlights that:

As sentimental as the fiction of Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler

Harris, and lesser writers may have been, it succeeded in establishing

the Southern conception of the Negro in the national mind. He was

pictured as the bewildered victim of unscrupulous carpetbagger

leaders; he, as well as the white man, recalled a better time ‘befoah

the war.’ In the hearts of all these Southerners there was no

rebellion, no hatred, no desire for renewed strife; and their land

became a welcome haven for Northerners who wished to live in an

agrarian culture. (82-83)

76 Some of Thomas Nelson Page’s works are In Ole Virginia; or Marse Chan and Other Stories (1884), Red Rock (1898) and Red Riders (1924). Joel Chandler Harris’s works include Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1880) and Gabriel Tolliver (1902). Mark Twain was mostly influenced by Harris’s literary image of the Negro, Uncle Remus, as is shown by his words: “I can hear Uncle Dan’l telling the immortal tales which Uncle Remus Harris was to gather into his book and charm the world with, by and by;” (qtd. in Lynn 410). For an insightful presentation of the fiction of Page and Harris, see Theodore L. Gross (71-83), Seymour L. Gross (6), (8), Brown (336-40) and Hale (51-67). Koutsimani Ekaterini 58

Given the racial uncertainties of the 1870s and the 1880s and the white longing for the prewar days, Page and Harris adopted a condescending attitude toward blacks and reinforced the old stereotype of the contented slave revealing an implicit racist tone in their writings and an inability to accept blacks as independent freedmen.

The Narrator of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the autobiography of Huckleberry

Finn, a young boy of about twelve years of age, who lives in the town of St.

Petersburg in the Mississippi of the antebellum South. Mark Twain resorts to the technique of first-person narration and thus, Huck Finn becomes the narrator of his own story. From the very beginning, Huck introduces himself to the readers and distinguishes himself from the author Mark Twain, a fact which shows that Twain aims at making Huck’s and not his own voice heard. In particular, taking into consideration that Huck is both the narrator and the focalizer of the book, Twain allows for an immediate-engaging-first-person narration where the world is seen and judged through Huck’s perceptions. In this respect, young readers are exposed to

Huck’s point of view and, therefore, expected to identify with him since identification with the focalizer is an essential characteristic of children’s literature.

The choice of a child narrator-focalizer with whom children readers are most likely to identify with raises questions about Huck’s portrayal and system of beliefs.

A close reading of his narrative brings to the surface basic aspects of his life and personality. A social outcast, the son of the town’s drunk, Huck is a marginal figure,

“a distinct outsider, a boy who is only half ‘civilized’ or, in social science idiom, he has been incompletely acculturated” (Marx 166). Being young, inexperienced and

“uncivilized” Huck emerges as the embodiment of innocence, ignorance and naiveté, Koutsimani Ekaterini 59 attributes that account for the spontaneity and directness that mark his mode of narration. Moreover, the novel’s narrative style does not follow the established literary discourse as is shown by Huck’s vernacular and vividly conversational voice deriving from his illiteracy and low social class, which is actually a part of the author’s realist technique. Unconventional though he may seem as a narrator in terms of language, age and social status, Huck freely and unpretentiously reveals his inner thoughts and feelings and reflects on his experiences in a deeply confessional tone.

Jay Martin recognizes that “on the surface, it [Huck’s tale] is full of defects –false starts, contradictions, mixed genres and plot confusions […] [but] underneath, it has the ‘sound heart’ of a true tale” (71). Indeed, for the majority of readers, Huck’s narrative constitutes a direct record of honest sensations and feelings. Driven by his instinct, a young boy who seems unwilling to hide the truth, Huck provides readers with a realistic assessment of his experiences. Ironically, it is Huck’s lack of experience, limited knowledge and vernacular language, which are supposed to threaten his reliability as a narrator, as well as his reluctance to abide by the social rules for his own interest that attest to Huck’s impulse toward truth, thus arousing intense interest in his first-person perspective.77

For a deeper understanding of Huck’s role as a narrator-focalizer, it would be useful to examine the racial ideology of the society he lives in, in the mid-1830s. In the slaveholding town of St. Petersburg where Huck has grown up, black slaves were considered inferior to whites and expected to willingly obey and serve them. In

77 According to Janet Holmgren McKay, “what Twain actually does in Huck Finn is to use certain strategically placed vernacular and colloquial features to create the impression of an untutored narrator, while simultaneously developing a sophisticated, innovative literary style which uses a full range of standard English constructions and literary devices” (194). The colloquial tone and the vernacular style oppose the qualities of “refinement,” “delicacy” and “elegance” of the literary discourse of his time but strongly generate an aura of realism. On Southwestern vernacular in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, see David Sewell (201-15) and James M. Cox, “Southwestern Vernacular” (82-94). On elements of American literary realism in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, see Joseph Sawicki (692-702), John Earl Bassett (91) and Edwin H. Cady (386-87). Koutsimani Ekaterini 60 addition, the institution of slavery was by no means challenged or undermined. In this respect, the book successfully conveys the atmosphere and the dominant ideology of pre-Civil War America. More specifically, the racial ideology of white supremacy was deeply rooted in Huck’s white southern contemporaries’ minds as revealed by their racist attitude toward blacks. For example, Huck’s friend, Tom Sawyer, emerges as the embodiment of white violence against blacks when he ruthlessly says: “‘I wonder if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger [Jim]. If I was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn’t give him up, I’d hang him’” (Twain

187). That being the case, Huck seems to have been brought up in a social environment permeated by the belief in white superiority, and therefore implicitly trained to become a racist. Huck himself fails to realize that he cannot escape the pervasive influence of the white supremacist ideology. As a result of his social conditioning, he unconsciously acquires the racist mentality of his hometown. Huck’s point of view is actually the point of view of a white racially-biased child narrator.

For instance, in the course of the story, when Huck and Jim first meet each other,

Huck agrees to keep Jim’s escape a secret but at the same time appears brainwashed by the dominant racial ideology when he says that “people would call me a low down

Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum” (Twain 39). “Abolitionist” in Huck’s mind is like an insult. It is a derogatory term that carries political connotations regarding a highly controversial issue.

Other examples which show that Huck carries the standards and racial prejudice of his white southern society against African Americans include statements like “niggers is always talking about witches,” “he [Jim] had an uncommon level head, for a nigger,” “you can’t learn a nigger to argue” (Twain 11, 64, 67). All these derogatory racial stereotypes have been internalized and accepted by Huck as Koutsimani Ekaterini 61

axiomatic truths. For many scholars, even Huck’s use of the word “nigger” to

describe African Americans emphasizes the novel’s racist tone and allows for racist

practices and racial discrimination against them.78 Therefore, the power of discourse

to impose racial hierarchies attests to the hegemonic influence of the dominant racial

ideology inherent in language. In this way, children readers are exposed to a form of

integration propaganda and tend to unconsciously adopt the narrator’s racist attitude

toward blacks. Huck himself continues to reinforce the racism of his society even

after having helped Jim escape since he is filled with remorse: “I tried to make out to

myself that I warn’t to blame, because I didn’t run Jim off from his rightful owner;

but it warn’t no use, conscience up and says, every time, ‘But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told somebody.’ That was so – I couldn’t get around that, noway” (Twain 73). Huck’s inner conflict reveals

that the racist values of his social environment are inculcated in his mind and

continually influence his way of thinking. Accordingly, the moment Huck hears Jim’s

plan to assert his right to free his family as soon as he reaches a free State, he feels

shocked and frustrated: “It most froze me to hear such talk. He [Jim] wouldn’t ever

dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the

minute he judged he was about free” (Twain 74). Huck’s words convey the

disapproval and latent fear of most Southern and Northern whites of his time who

refused to accept that free blacks could enjoy the same privileges with whites and

were no longer obliged to display bashfulness and submissiveness to their former

masters. Moreover, it becomes obvious that even young children like Huck could

78 Perhaps the most dogmatic and outspoken critic against Twain’s book has been John H. Wallace who has denounced it as “racist trash” (qtd. in Arac, Huckleberry Finn 9). Other scholars concerned about the use of the word “nigger” are David Sloane, Jane Smiley, Peaches Henry and James M. Cox. For more information on their views, see Chadwick-Joshua, The Jim Dilemma (4-5), Arac, Huckleberry Finn (5-31), (63-89), Arac, “Putting the River” (113), John Alberti (921), Stephen Railton (64), Joe B. Fulton (56-57), Wallace (143-44), Champion (7), (147-55) and Cox, “A Hard Book” (171-86). Koutsimani Ekaterini 62

neither imagine a new reality for enslaved African Americans nor adjust to a new

social order in which the latter would gain control of their own lives.

It is interesting to explore the way racial ideology operates in Huck’s

consciousness in the most famous scene of the book when Huck is caught in the moral

dilemma of either sending a letter to Jim’s slave-owner, Miss Watson, or helping Jim

gain his freedom. The voice of Huck’s conscience is truly revealing: “And then think

of me! It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and

if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d be ready to get down and lick

his boots for shame” (Twain 168).79 Finally, Huck decides not to betray Jim: “‘All

right, then, I’ll go to hell’” (Twain 169). For Huck, having helped a runaway slave to

escape is an evil act which results in feelings of guilt and shame. Furthermore, despite

the fact that he chooses to keep helping Jim, he does not truly recognize Jim’s right to

freedom but instead, considers his decision a sin against the rightful order of things

justified only by his innate wickedness and unconventional upbringing.80

Commenting on the extent to which Huck has internalized the dominant racial ideology, Daniel S. Traber notes that “although Huck shifts in his persona between being rebellious and racist, the inner-psychological moments in which he battles with his conscience […] are the most telling because they reveal Huck’s continuing and deep-set adherence to the social codes” (31). Had Huck rigidly adhered to social codes and betrayed Jim, he would have gained social approval despite his marginal status. However, Huck’s decision cannot be considered a moral triumph of conscience over the social dictates since Huck’s failure to abide by the codes of slavery does not entail his opposition to the institution. On the contrary, no matter how close his

79 This could be an implicit reference to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 which obliged free states to return escaped slaves to slaveholders. 80 Huck considers himself innately wicked because he consciously chooses not to learn to behave properly by avoiding going to the Sunday School and by preferring to remain “uncivilized,” a fact which he attributes to the way he has been brought up by his father. Koutsimani Ekaterini 63 relationship with Jim is, Huck is convinced that he ought to remain a slave, which implies that he cannot completely transgress the ideology of white supremacy. Thus, when Tom Sawyer, Huck’s friend, offers to help him free Jim, Huck is astonished given that Tom was a well brought-up boy: “Here was a boy that was respectable, and well brung-up; […] and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody. I couldn’t understand it, no way at all” (Twain 184).

According to Huck’s words, good social position and up-bringing were supposed to prevent his contemporaries from challenging the institution of slavery, which shows that white racism was prevalent in his white southern community and did not allow space for any deviation from social norms. More specifically, a closer examination of the social classes in St. Petersburg reveals that no one seems to have a higher social status than Tom’s and, although there is no clear line between middle- and upper- classes, the line between middle and lower ones is well defined. In this respect, John

Alberti argues that “the construction of race has served to counteract tensions arising from class inequalities and to prevent class solidarity” (925). Any social and political equality with black slaves such as Jim would threaten not only Tom’s status as

“white” but also Huck’s given that the material benefits of racial privilege could serve as compensation for the vulnerable social position of lower-class whites. On the whole, Huck’s narrative not only exposes the white supremacist ideology of the antebellum South but also reveals its profound influence on his own system of beliefs.

Taking into consideration that Jim is the central black character of the book, attention should be drawn to the way he is portrayed in order to detect potential instances of racist propaganda against African Americans. The prototypes for the creation of Jim’s character were Uncle Dan’l, a slave owned by Twain’s uncle, John Koutsimani Ekaterini 64

Lewis, a free-born African American who helped Twain’s brother-in-law’s family, and George Griffin, Twain’s butler.81 With regard to Jim’s characterization, critics have argued whether and to what extent Jim’s portrayal corresponds to the prevailing mid-nineteenth-century demeaning stereotype of the gullible, superstitious, laughable, docile, ridiculous minstrel-show darky. Interestingly, the African-American critic

Ralph Ellison notes that:

Writing at a time when the blackfaced minstrel was still popular, and

shortly after a war which left even the abolitionists weary of those

problems associated with the Negro, Twain fitted Jim into the

outlines of the minstrel tradition, and it is from behind this

stereotype mask that we see Jim’s dignity and human capacity –and

Twain’s complexity– emerge. Yet it is his source in this same

tradition which creates that ambivalence between his identification

as an adult and parent and his ‘boyish’ naivete, and which by

contrast makes Huck, with his street-sparrow sophistication, seem

more adult. (422)

Indeed, Jim appears to be a comic minstrel figure since from the very beginning of the novel he is depicted as loving, submissive, all-suffering, dependent and superstitious.82 However, Jim is no Uncle Tom; there are instances when he tries to be

“visible,” assertive –but within limits– and even argumentative with Huck, thus emerging as a complete human being from behind the mask of the happy, gullible, childlike slave. This doubleness in Jim’s character can account for the fact that he cannot escape being treated like a “boy” and therefore remains the object of Huck’s

81 On the three African-American men whom Twain met and who later served as prototypes of the character of Jim, see Chadwick-Joshua, The Jim Dilemma (18-25) and Kenneth S. Lynn (410). 82 For a discussion of the minstrel types that gradually emerged in minstrel shows, their characteristics and their function, see Lott, Love and Theft (22-29) and Mahar (343-46). Koutsimani Ekaterini 65 control. The notion of the “twoness” of African Americans, first introduced by W. E.

B. DuBois, according to which “one ever feels his twoness, […] an American, a

Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings” is indicative of Jim’s attitude, since, on the one hand, he seems ready to struggle for his human rights as an

“American” but, on the other, he keeps satisfying his white master’s will and fails to achieve a real individuality as a “Negro” (qtd. in Baym 712). Actually, Jim is obliged to adjust his behavior to the racial stereotype of the happy “darky” so as to appease

Huck and ensure his willingness to help him gain his freedom. Not only is he an embodiment of love and compassion for all whites but also retreats to passivity and avoids resisting any form of torment or humiliation. Nevertheless, although Huck recognizes Jim’s kindness and self-sacrifice, he directly attributes these traits to the people of the white race implicitly emphasizing their “civilizing” impact on blacks.

For instance, Huck claims: “I do believe he [Jim] cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural but I reckon it’s so” (Twain 125).

According to Huck, black people like Jim are not expected to care for their family because they are viewed as racially inferior. Thus, although Huck cannot deny the fact that Jim misses his wife and children, he thinks it is something unnatural. In this respect, African Americans are deprived of their humanity and considered incapable of sharing the same qualities with whites. Obviously, Huck does not praise

Jim for possessing an inherent virtue but rather promotes white superiority and racial discrimination by comparing whites to blacks. Similarly, when Huck assumes, “I knowed he [Jim] was white inside, and I reckoned he’d say what he did say,” he demonstrates his white racial pride implicitly arguing that whiteness is a necessary precondition for one’s reliability (Twain 216). Therefore, despite the fact that Huck does not reject Jim, he seems to like him only because he is expected to act and Koutsimani Ekaterini 66

behave like whites, which implies that he is racially biased against blacks. However,

apart from Huck’s own racist representation of Jim, Jim himself appears convinced

that whites are indeed superior and “adult.”83 In particular, when Tom devises a plan

to help Huck save Jim from his captors, Huck comments on Jim’s reaction: “Jim he

couldn’t see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed

better than him” (Twain 196). Jim’s lack of initiative and servile attitude toward

whites confirm that he has internalized his racial inferiority ending up a pawn in the

whites’ hands. Moreover, Huck’s emphasis on Jim’s acquiescence to inherent black

inferiority implicitly functions as another form of racist propaganda against blacks.

The fact that black slaves like Jim seem to have internalized the racist ideology of white supremacy makes it clear that the rest of the black characters of the novel are most likely to be depicted as subordinate and powerless. The majority of them are slaves and servants who belong to white masters and live in abject conditions. Huck’s description is characteristic: “And behind the [nigger] woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys, without anything on but tow-linen

shirts, […] and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way they always do”

(Twain 174). Through the child narrator’s gaze, readers are exposed to a stereotypical

black image which is revealing of the blacks’ lifestyle and behavior in the antebellum

South. Discussing the status of black slaves in America at that time, James Oakes asserts that “to be a slave […] was to be denied both a public and a private life. […]

Slaves were physically abused and publicly humiliated in systematic rather than

83 The nineteenth-century black writer W. E. B. DuBois insisted on blacks’ need for education to achieve self-respect and true equality: “The final product of our training must be neither a psychologist, nor a brickmason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living” (423). Another nineteenth-century black writer, Frederick Douglass, asked the famous question “What Are the Colored People Doing for Themselves?,” a bold plea for black self-activity and self-assertion (qtd. in Gilroy 222). Contemporary racial theorists like Paul Gilroy acknowledge that the restoration of black masculinity damaged by operations of white supremacy through slavery and since, can contribute to the improvement of African Americans’ political fortune. For further details, see Gilroy (254-65). Koutsimani Ekaterini 67 incidental ways” (98). Whenever Huck meets or addresses blacks, they tend to resort to a pose of docile simplicity which fits to the racial stereotype of the gullible, superstitious, “pliant” darky who is ready to willingly serve and obey whites. For instance, during his stay at the Grangerford house, Huck observes that “each person had their own nigger to wait on them – Buck, too. My nigger had a monstrous easy time, because I warn’t used to having anybody do anything for me, but Buck’s was on the jump most of the time” (Twain 88). In this respect, the portrayal of black characters reveals the pervasive racism of Huck’s white southern community which not only nourishes Huck’s own bias thus affecting his perception of reality but also diminishes blacks depriving them of their self-esteem. In fact, Tom Sawyer’s words are indicative of the whites’ racial prejudice against blacks: “And Uncle Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the punkin-headed nigger, and don’t send nobody to watch the nigger” (Twain 188). Consequently, Huck, the narrator-focalizer, provides readers with an image of blackness which affects their own perceptions and allows them to develop racist views and assumptions concerning African Americans.

What needs to be more carefully examined is how the relationship between

Huck and Jim develops and deepens. From the very beginning, Jim’s decision to tell

Huck his secret and Huck’s promise to keep it are mutual acts of trust which pave the way for the growth of ties of family and affection between the two characters on their journey down the river. James L. Kastely observes that “Huck and Jim enter into a community that marks them off from other people and unites them in an effort of self- protection” (417). Actually, Huck and Jim are both fugitives who seek their individual freedom, the former from his ruthless father and the latter from his white master. In this respect, they are determined to cooperate so as not to be discovered. Although they are forced to spend much time together, Huck and Jim tend to enjoy the same Koutsimani Ekaterini 68 things such as smoking a pipe after breakfast and also share the same beliefs in the existence of ghosts and the significance of “signs.” The fact that they are both superstitious is important since Jim, who is capable of interpreting “signs,” can influence Huck’s decisions by warning him of potential dangers. In this sense, Jim seems to gain control over Huck and assume the role of the father who wants to protect his child from any sort of harm. It is at this particular moment that Jim manages to function as an adult who undertakes his responsibilities and makes his own voice heard. Driven by his own superstitions, he treats Huck like an ignorant child who needs guidance, as is shown by the following dialogue: “‘I awluz ’spected dat rattle-snake skin warn’t done wid it’s work.’ ‘I wish I’d never seen that snake- skin, Jim – I do wish I’d never laid eyes on it.’ ‘It ain’t yo’ fault, Huck; you didn’t know. Don’t you blame yo’self ’bout it’” (Twain 77). However, Huck does not always hear Jim and continues to doubt him for his predictions, which implies that he does not fully trust him. On the other hand, Jim gradually demonstrates his love and tenderness toward Huck making him realize the depth of his emotions when he responds to his return like a father who is reunited with his lost, beloved child. Indeed, once Jim sees again Huck after their separation, he is so glad that he nearly cries and immediately hugs and blesses him thus revealing their tight bond. Jim’s words are indicative of his affection for Huck: “‘Laws bless you, chile, I ’uz right down sho’ you’s dead agin. Jack’s been heah, he say he reck’n you’s ben shot, kase you didn’ come home no mo’; […] Lawsy, I’s mighty glad to git you back agin, honey’” (Twain

95). Although Huck is moved by Jim’s reaction, he is still so immersed in his racial prejudice that responds in a more reserved way trying to control his feelings.

Nevertheless, Huck and Jim mutually care for and protect each other and, therefore, the family ties they establish point to their deeper need to be loved. Huck, though, is Koutsimani Ekaterini 69

not the traditional child in this relationship since he is often assigned the role of the

adult-parent who is responsible for Jim’s safety. Indeed, Jim’s paternal role toward

Huck is limited to his effort to initiate Huck into the mysteries of nature and to

genuinely express his concern for Huck either explicitly or implicitly. Furthermore, as

Robert Shulman notes, “Huck is torn between the human claims of friendship and the

impersonal but compelling values of property and social convention” (40). More

specifically, Huck and Jim develop a true friendship which at least for Jim seems to

be vital and precious: “Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever

had; en you’s de only fren’ ole Jim’s got now” (Twain 74). Jim openly declares his

feelings of friendship and gratitude to Huck whereas the latter is intimately related to

Jim but at the same time divided because of his social conditioning. In this respect,

Huck treats and addresses Jim as a close friend, but he cannot reject the dominant

racist view of Jim as “nigger” and as property. For example, when Huck looks for Jim

during his absence, he does not look for Jim, his companion, but for Jim, his “nigger,”

his property: “The only nigger I had in the world, and the only property. […] Where is

he? – I want my nigger” (Twain 171). Jim is presented as an object which changes

hands until it returns to its former owner. Although this is not a very explicit case of commodification, it is Huck’s conditioned belief that Jim is his “nigger” and not his true feelings that becomes the source of his anxiety. Consequently, Huck’s words

constitute an instance of integration propaganda against African Americans since they

make readers internalize the idea of blacks as commodities either for purchase or for

sale.

Emphasis should be placed on whether Huck’s and Jim’s relationship as close

friends or metaphorically as father and son is characterized by true equality. The

family bond Huck and Jim create is strong enough as revealed by the love and Koutsimani Ekaterini 70 devotion they share and their harmonious coexistence. However, Huck’s superiority often emerges given that he is the one who takes decisions or tries to find solutions whenever he and Jim encounter difficulties or face the risk of being discovered. Jim is always willing to protect Huck but, in the long run, he appears incapable of doing so whereas Huck is depicted as Jim’s savior and a competent survivor. Hence, what results from Huck’s narrative is that Huck and Jim are not equally independent and powerful. The fact that a white child turns out to be the “father” of a black man is in favor of the ideology of white supremacy. On the other hand, Huck and Jim gradually form an intimate friendship which transcends racial discrimination. In particular,

Huck’s and Jim’s relationship promotes racial equality given that Jim, after being offended by Huck’s tricks on him, asserts his right to dignity by calling Huck “trash,” a daring act for a black slave at his time (Twain 72). What is important, though, is

Huck’s own reaction: “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger” (Twain 72). Huck conveys the white racism of his period but defies it with his stance thus acknowledging Jim’s humanity and his inherent right to dignity. Taking into consideration Huck’s apology, one assumes that an open and equal community exists between Huck and Jim. Actually, Huck cannot truly consider

Jim his equal since he refers to him as “property” and only partly recognizes his inherent values, which, according to Huck, cannot be generally attributed to the people of the black race. On a deeper level, Huck represents the essential contradictions of the American society of the time toward blacks who were treated as a major political problem. In this sense, Huck’s conflicting attitude toward Jim allows for racist interpretations of their relationship. On the whole, one cannot argue that

Huck and Jim embody interracial harmony; Huck himself does not seem ready to accept that blacks and whites are human beings that are essentially equal irrespective Koutsimani Ekaterini 71

of their race, and have the same rights to self-determination and full integration into

the larger society.

The Attitude of White Children Characters toward Blacks in The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Apart from Huck, the white child narrator, other white children characters

participate in the story such as Huck’s friend, Tom Sawyer. Therefore, children

readers are acquainted not only with Huck’s point of view but also with Tom’s. It is

interesting to examine whether the two children’s viewpoints coincide given that the

story is narrated by Huck and, hence, reflects his own way of thinking. As opposed to

Huck, Tom is a well brought-up and socially respectable boy who is devoted to social

conventions and institutions and complies with social rules and codes. With regard to

Tom’s profile, he is presented as a risky leader who is engaged in any sort of

adventure in which he can be a hero; Huck is simply a follower who succumbs to

Tom’s decisions. Therefore, when Tom is informed about Jim’s escape, he does not

hesitate to help Huck and insists on following his own plan to save Jim from his

captors.

However, Tom’s interest in saving Jim does not entail that he truly believes in

racial equality and recognizes Jim’s right to freedom. On the contrary, what

constitutes the greatest irony of the book is that Tom willingly offers to become

Huck’s accomplice hiding from him that Jim is already legally free. Although he

knows Jim’s real situation, Tom subjects him to cruelty and brutality and adopts a bossy attitude in his effort to set him free. According to Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua,

“Tom’s conscious deception and equally conscious disregard for Jim’s visibility and humanity both reveal the dilemma of indifference, ethnic intolerance, and continual Koutsimani Ekaterini 72

denial of basic human rights, basic rights afforded even the lowliest white” (The Jim

Dilemma xx). Indeed, this racial insensitivity on the part of Tom shows that he rejects

Jim’s natural freedom, influenced by the racist social beliefs in white superiority.

Moreover, Tom himself cynically explains to his aunt, Sally, that he devised such an

elaborate plan to save Jim simply because “[he] […] wanted the adventure of it”

(Twain 226). Tom’s motive is indicative of his selfishness and confirms his apathy

and inhumanity toward Jim, and by extension, toward African Americans. Thus, when

Huck asks Tom “‘what would you want to saw his [Jim’s] leg off for, anyway?’,” he

answers: “‘Well, some of the best authorities has done it. […] There ain’t necessity

enough in this case; and besides, Jim’s a nigger and wouldn’t understand the reasons

for it, and how it’s the custom in Europe; so we’ll let it go’” (Twain 189). For Tom,

torturing a legally free man is nothing but a game. Besides, as Huck realizes, it is a

game without consequences since Tom knows Jim’s status beforehand and therefore

his behavior is neither daring nor deviant. Once Huck provides himself with an

explanation for Tom’s willingness to help him, he is satisfied and relieved. In this

respect, Tom fulfills the white southern society’s expectations because his decision to

free Jim is neither an act of compassion for a black slave nor a conscious effort to

violate the codes of slavery and disrupt the social order. Instead, he sees Jim as an

object, a possession which can be bought and sold for money. Ironically, when Jim is

finally free, Tom gives him forty dollars “for being prisoner for us so patient” (Twain

228). This is the ultimate act of Jim’s humiliation on Tom’s part. Jim is rewarded for complying with the social rules imposed on him by the institution of slavery. In other

words, he is rewarded for confirming the racist stereotype of blacks as patient, docile,

long-suffering slaves. The qualities of kindness, self-sacrifice and devotion to both

Tom and Huck that he displays on the raft are not recognized at all. Consequently, Koutsimani Ekaterini 73

Tom’s attitude toward Jim serves as an instance of integration propaganda against

African Americans by giving readers the impression that blacks lack dignity and are

easily manipulated by whites. What needs to be noticed is that, apart from Huck,

Tom, another white child character, tends to acquire a racist point of view toward

African Americans. Huck, the narrator-focalizer, is worried about Tom’s stance

regarding Jim’s case, but when he learns the truth, instead of blaming Tom for Jim’s

degradation, he justifies his reaction and emphasizes the idea that whites with a good

upbringing are not supposed to challenge slavery to favor blacks for fear of losing

their high social status. Thus, two different white children share the same viewpoint

and Huck, whose voice is dominant, reinforces their perception of blacks in a way that

promotes the white supremacist ideology. As a result, the fact that readers are exposed

to the racist white southern mentality conveyed by white children, who are innocent

and vulnerable, has its own potential implications for their system of beliefs. In

particular, children readers are more likely to unconsciously adopt the views of a child

narrator-focalizer, which are also endorsed by the rest of the children characters, even

though they are racist and, therefore, not socially approved.

Given that Huck Finn grows up and lives in a white southern slaveholding town, St. Petersburg, in pre-Civil War America, his social environment is crucial not only to his upbringing but also to his perception of the world. To a large extent, Huck is influenced by the white southern mentality and therefore socially conditioned to believe in white superiority. Thus, a closer examination of the attitude of Huck’s white southern society toward blacks may reveal instances of racist propaganda

against African Americans to which Huck is exposed, and account for the impact of

the white supremacist ideology on his own perspective. Koutsimani Ekaterini 74

One of the most prominent white adult figures in the book is Huck’s father,

Pap Finn, the town’s drunk, a cruel, greedy and worthless person. Huck provides

readers with Pap’s drunken rant against a well-dressed, free mulatto professor from

Ohio who had the right to vote in that State, since, according to the 1850s Missouri

law, a “free nigger” without freedom papers could not be seized and sold for six

months:

When they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let

that nigger vote, […] I says I’ll never vote agin. […] Here’s a

govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and

thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole

months before it can take ahold of a prowling, thieving, infernal,

white-shirted free nigger and – . (Twain 27)

These few lines contain the essence of southern racial prejudice against blacks. Pap

Finn emerges as an avowed white racist who contests the black man’s right to

freedom and fiercely proclaims white superiority to all blacks. He implicitly conveys

the level of anxiety white southerners felt when African Americans struggled for

equality and acquired power at the expense of whites. What mostly annoys Pap is that

the mulatto professor’s appearance and behavior does not entail subservience but

rather attests to his visibility and social responsibility. Obviously, the professor does not fit the demeaning racial stereotypes against African Americans as is shown by his highest level of intelligence but, instead, he demands the respect and attention of white southerners. In fact, Pap does not only feel threatened by the presence of a free black man but is also jealous of the professor’s higher social status since he belongs to the lowest stratum of whites and is a strong example of social-class marginality in

American society. The whole episode reveals how white adults like Pap tried to Koutsimani Ekaterini 75 nurture racism and instill racial prejudice in young white children’s minds. More specifically, Pap Finn, despite his vices, serves as a model for his son, Huck, who is exposed to an attitude that favors racial discrimination against blacks. In this respect,

Huck is used to witnessing racist practices in his everyday life and can easily assume that African Americans are expected to be subjects to social exclusion, oppression or exploitation by whites. Thus, Pap’s outburst constitutes an instance of overt racist propaganda against African Americans since he directly attacks freed blacks and promotes institutional racial segregation.

During his journey down the river Huck meets Tom Sawyer’s aunt, Sally, and their brief exchange is also characteristic of the white society’s attitude toward

African Americans in the antebellum South. Actually, Huck, trying not to be discovered, makes up a story about a steamboat explosion which he tells to aunt Sally and faces her reaction: “‘Good gracious! anybody hurt?’ ‘No’m. Killed a nigger.’

‘Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt’” (Twain 175). The way

Huck replies to aunt Sally’s question and her comment that follows reveal that they both deny that blacks are human beings and consider the death of a slave a completely meaningless matter. The young boy is influenced by the ideology of white supremacy to the point that he devalues the black man’s life. On the other hand, aunt Sally’s stance reinforces Huck’s racial bias against black slaves, thus promoting white racism against African Americans. Ironically, she appears racially insensitive, merciless and cynical toward blacks by ostentatiously dehumanizing them. The fact that she does not try to contradict Huck attests to the whites’ insistence on instilling their own racist ideas in young children’s minds and their effort to present racist practices as natural and harmless. Similarly, Huck also meets two frauds calling themselves the king and the duke who, driven by their own acquisitive individualism and longing for social Koutsimani Ekaterini 76

ascendancy, despise blacks and openly express their disapproval while talking about

them: “And do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not borrow some of it?”

(Twain 142). Once again African Americans are confronted with racism and

considered inferior to whites. The two frauds’ negative criticism against blacks shows

that in pre-Civil War America, white Southerners did not hesitate to diminish African

Americans and publicly promulgate racial stereotypes against them to create a certain

image of blacks destined to emphasize white superiority. Consequently, Huck himself

falls prey to the white adults’ brainwashing and propaganda against African

Americans and is likely to follow their racist perceptions. On the whole, the white

society in which Huck’s story takes place consists of people whose attitude toward

African Americans conveys the racist atmosphere of the antebellum South and to a

certain extent reinforces the white narrator’s racist point of view.

Huck Finn, the Narrator vs Mark Twain, the Author

Given that the reader tends to internalize the perceptions of the focalizer, in

Huck’s immediate-engaging-first-person narration, most readers are likely to identify

with Huck, the narrator-focalizer, and adopt his own viewpoint of African Americans.

However, the choice of the white child first-person narrator is actually Mark Twain’s

choice, a fact which highlights the significance of the author’s role and poses

questions about the reasons for his choice and the extent to which Twain himself

identifies with Huck. It is tempting to examine whether Twain hides himself behind

the mask of his narrator and, thus, avoids being criticized or censored for the dissemination of racist propaganda against African Americans. In this way, it would

be interesting to see whether the author’s use of the narrator is designed to

ideologically manipulate readers. Koutsimani Ekaterini 77

At first, one might easily wonder why Twain chooses his narrator to be a

young white boy with racist views and whether he is a racist himself. Indeed, Twain

has been harshly accused of being a racist by both white and African-American

scholars.84 However, as already mentioned, the authorial voice is not conventionally

equated with that of the narrator-character or the focalizer. Hence, although Huck, the

narrator-focalizer, projects certain deep fears and longings of the author, he does not

completely identify with Twain.85 In this sense, Huck’s racist viewpoint is not

necessarily the same with Twain’s. On the contrary, Twain’s use of a child narrator

with a proslavery perspective is consciously aimed at attacking the issue of racism

against African Americans. It could be argued, though, that The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn is not a fierce antiracist polemic given that racism coming from a child appears less “severe.”

As revealed by the ending, the whole tone of the book is ironic given that

Twain chooses his white characters and especially Huck, his narrator, to remain

“slaves” to the ideology of white supremacy and not to reject the racist practices of their slaveholding society. Even when Jim’s adventure is over, Huck neither recognizes nor condemns the wrongs of slavery but still maintains his racist view of

African Americans. Thus, after Tom has revealed the truth about Jim’s condition,

Huck fails to reject his own racial bias since he admits: “I couldn’t ever understand, before, until that minute and that talk, how he [Tom] could help a body set a nigger

84 Some of these scholars are John H. Wallace, Julius Lester, Kenny J. Williams, Bernard W. Bell, David Sloane, Jane Smiley, Jonathan Arac and Peaches Henry. For example, Wallace asserts that the teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with its use of the word “nigger,” perpetuates the teaching of racism in American classrooms. In Arac’s view, the novel has led to “white” complacency about racism, the legitimation of racial epithets, and the delegitimation of African-American experience. Smiley argues that Twain is unable to portray African Americans realistically. For a brief account of their perspectives, see Stacey Margolis (329-31), Alberti (921), Arac, “Putting the River” (113), Wallace (143-44), Fulton (56-57) and Chadwick-Joshua, The Jim Dilemma (4-5). 85 As Robert Sattelmeyer notes, “by projecting himself through and into the character of Huck, Twain could give expression to that side of his nature that craved release from the restraints of both civilization and conscience” (366). Koutsimani Ekaterini 78

free, with his bringing-up” (Twain 227). However, the fact that Twain’s narrator does

not seem to change, does not entail that Twain himself approves of Huck’s stance.

Instead, Twain’s use of a racist narrator as spokesman for the prevailing racial

ideology of the dominant white culture is aimed at satirizing the white society’s

mentality that makes people see blacks as less than human, and serves as an

indictment of the institution of slavery and racism. For example, the satirical attack on

white racism is reflected in Huck’s description of his white southern contemporaries’

reaction after Jim’s arrest: “Some of them wanted to hang Jim, for an example to all the other niggers […]. But the others said, don’t do it, it wouldn’t answer at all, he ain’t our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure” (Twain

222). Moreover, Twain’s use of a white child narrator facilitates his target of satire since it allows him to attack the whites’ hostile treatment of blacks without becoming directly offensive. Whatever annoys Twain can be more easily criticized through

Huck, his mouthpiece, given that white readers can neither actually blame a white child for his racist views nor generalize and consider his attitude representative of all whites. In this respect, Huck’s perception of the world does not seem to make white readers feel either guilty or uncomfortable regarding their own attitude toward

African Americans. Besides, taking into consideration the context of the book’s

publication, the post-Reconstruction era, Twain could not explicitly reveal the ultimate objective of his assault since the work’s potential persuasive power might result in its ideological rejection by publishers, negative reviews and finally censorship or even banning.86 Therefore, unlike political authors whose personal

86 However, Twain’s book has been banned from more libraries and schools than any other book in history. For instance, it was banned from the Concord Library in 1885 on the grounds that it was rough, coarse, inelegant and exerted a dangerous influence on children’s morals and from Mark Twain Intermediate School in 1982 on the grounds that it was racist and frequently used racial slurs. On the book’s banning, see Lou Willett Stanek (159-63). Koutsimani Ekaterini 79

ideologies tend to be expressed more openly, Twain resorted to ironic satire so that

readers draw their own conclusions.

Generally, in literature for children, satire is a common form of attack against

anything that runs counter to the author’s ideology. For instance, in The Marvelous

Land of Oz (1904), L. Frank Baum satirizes militant feminism, in The Thunderbolt

House (1944), Howard Pease attacks acquisitiveness and in The Jungle Book (1894),

Rudyard Kipling attacks human pettiness, inconsistency, pretension, shallowness and

self-importance.87 In his article on political ideologies in literature for children,

Robert D. Sutherland assumes that “to the extent the attacks are understood by readers

(irony and satire are effective only when they are recognized as such), the author’s

underlying ideologies may be inferred” (151). In particular, Huck’s attitude

symbolically stands for the white Southerners’ attitude during the post-Reconstruction

era, whereas Jim’s status as a slave stands for the African Americans’ status in post-

Reconstruction South where the living conditions of blacks did not actually differ

from those under the institution of slavery in pre-Civil War America. However,

Twain’s use of irony to attack white racism against African Americans cannot be easily perceived by white children readers to whom the book is mainly addressed and, thus, most of them tend to uncritically accept Huck’s viewpoint as theirs without further recognizing the author’s underlying, opposing ideology in the work.

What also needs to be mentioned is that Twain decided to focus on the issue of slavery at a time when Reconstruction had already failed to fulfill the expectations of African Americans for better living conditions in a society where they were supposed to enjoy equal rights, freedom and self-respect. This implies that he was aware of the inadequate policy of the government toward blacks as well as the

87 On the use of satire as a form of attack in literature for children and on Twain’s satirical targets in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, see Robert D. Sutherland (147-51). Koutsimani Ekaterini 80

injustices and the physical and psychological maltreatment they suffered in their

everyday life. Some critics have argued that Twain, tormented by his own absence

from the battlefield during the Civil War, resorted to the use of Huck as first-person

narrator to awaken the reader to the continuing injustice and contradictions of post-

Reconstruction.88 In particular, Joe B. Fulton argues that “Twain […] seeks to change

the reader, and through him or her, have an impact on society. Twain is concerned not

with how Huck appears to the world, or with how the world appears to Huck, but with

how the world appears to the readers who have viewed it through Huck’s eyes” (64).

Therefore, Twain is mostly interested in the image of the world Huck conveys to the readers to make them realize the immediate need for social change and thus take action to create and live in an alternate social formation where people would no longer be mentally dominated by those in power. In this sense, the target of Twain’s

criticism is the established social order which he indirectly attacks through Huck and

his vision of the world.

In fact, Twain himself avoided being outspoken so he did not explicitly refer

to the aims of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The notice included in the first

pages of the novel is indicative of his personal stance: “Persons attempting to find a

motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it

will be banished;” (Twain 2). On the way he viewed his work, Twain had also written: “I don’t care anything about being humorous, or poetical, or eloquent, or anything of that kind –the end and aim of my ambition is to be authentic– to be considered authentic” (qtd. in Blair 227). More importantly, with regard to the issue of race and, more specifically, slave property as presented in The Adventures of

88 In particular, according to critics, Mark Twain had spent the Civil War in Nevada, a sometime employee of the federal government, advancing his career as a comic journalist, a fact which later made him feel extremely guilty. Examples of these critics include Neil Schmitz and Lawrence Howe. For further reference, see Schmitz (80) and Howe (76). Koutsimani Ekaterini 81

Huckleberry Finn, Twain commented: “That strange thing, the conscience –that unerring monitor– can be trained to approve any wild thing you want it to approve if you begin its education early and stick to it” (qtd. in Blair 144). Many scholars who were also interested in the concept of race focused on how Twain handles it in The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Shelley Fisher Fishkin notes that “‘race,’ for Mark

Twain, far from being the ‘ultimate trope of difference,’ was often simply irrelevant.

The problem of racism, on the other hand, was for Twain, […] undeniably real” (Was

Huck Black? 144). More precisely, Twain tries to deconstruct “race” as a meaningful category and criticize the illusion of individual autonomy which depends on the control society exercises over its members. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, race remains a most powerful social marker only to be satirized by Twain and therefore rejected by his readers. Gilbert M. Rubenstein further emphasizes that:

[In the story of Huck and Jim and in the foul anti-Negro rantings of

Pap Finn] the notion of race superiority, the whole code of white

supremacy, is revealed as romantic nonsense. […] The spirit of

democracy, according to Mark Twain, is not to be found in the

romantic myths of class or racial superiority. Human beings are

superior to one another only in the goodness of their hearts and in

their love for other people. (60)

Indeed, at the end of the story, none of the white children or adult characters appear as essentially superior to blacks either mentally or morally. On the contrary, Huck, Tom and the rest of the white southern community, by either intentionally or unintentionally diminishing Jim and other black characters, cannot actually convince readers of their superiority but rather call into question slavery and the racist attitudes that regard black people as inferior to white. Thus, Twain does not attempt to promote Koutsimani Ekaterini 82 or argue for racial hierarchies but, instead, make readers realize that for all people, irrespective of their race, true superiority lies in kindness and the sincere feelings of love and affection for each other.89 More specifically, Twain’s characters are not supposed to be judged by their race, but by their character and morality. Jim himself risks his freedom for Tom Sawyer when he says: “‘Ef it wuz him dat ’uz bein’ sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, ‘Go on en save me, nemmine

’bout a doctor f’r to save dis one? Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat?

You bet he wouldn’t! Well, den, is Jim gwyne to say it? No, sah–I doan’ budge a step out’n dis place, ’dout a doctor; not if it’s forty year!’” (Twain 216). In this sense, Jim emerges as a superior character whose superiority stems from his ability to love and care for other human beings, often at the expense of himself, without complaining. In particular, the comparison between Jim and the rest of the characters is based on moral rather than racial grounds. On the other hand, although Jim’s representation could be viewed as rather stereotypical of the loving, caring, docile, meek “darky” whose behavior does not pose a threat to the white society, it should be emphasized that humanity, goodness of heart and love for other people cannot be imposed on anyone whether a free person or a slave.

To sum up, given that Huck’s role as a narrator facilitates Twain’s satirical attack on racism, it cannot be argued that Huck’s voice is definitely Twain’s voice. In fact, Twain was worried about the issue of racism and Huck’s narrative allowed him to expose it without making his own statement but leave readers reflect on and question the ideology informing and shaping his work.

89 For a thorough discussion of this idea, see Rubenstein (54-60). Koutsimani Ekaterini 83

The Impact of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on Children Readers

Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is mostly addressed to young

American readers. It has been tempting to examine its effect on both black and white children readers, and the extent to which the use of a child narrator may shape their national consciousness by instilling certain values in their minds. What matters most is not to participate in the twentieth-century critics’ heated debate and argue for or against the book, but focus on its impact on contemporary American children readers’ identity formation and critically assess the effectiveness of white American children’s fiction as a medium for racist propaganda against African Americans.90

A presentation of the political ideas that have been the basis of American national identity is crucial in order to reach safe assumptions about how a particular racial ideology in any white American children’s book may affect the shaping of the readers’ sense of national identity. Beginning with the American War of

Independence, the need for an ideological definition of America became imperative.

The commitment to the political principles of liberty, equality, democracy, individualism, human rights, representative government, and private property began to define the notion of an American national identity. These were the core values of the political ideology of republicanism which aimed at instilling a national consciousness of equality, racial, religious and ethnic homogeneity, and prosperity for all Americans. In this respect, America was defined as a truly liberal and democratic nation where all American citizens would enjoy the same privileges and rights

90 African-American protests against the teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in American classrooms –especially at the junior high level– began to appear in the press as early as 1957, in the midst of the first phase of Southern white protests against school integration, because of the book’s several hundred repetitions of the deeply offensive term “nigger.” For a juxtaposition of the arguments used by defenders and opponents of Twain’s book in the late twentieth century, see Arac, Huckleberry Finn (16-89). Koutsimani Ekaterini 84

regardless of race.91 However, the image of the American nation as presented in white

American children’s fiction poses questions about the extent to which republican

ideology is compatible with American racial politics toward African Americans. A very well known example is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life

Among the Lowly (1852). Slavery, racial discrimination and segregation attest to the fact that equality, democracy and morality did not actually reign in America in the nineteenth century. This becomes obvious in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a critical reading of which reveals that whiteness was politically sanctioned by the republican tenets of homogeneity and equality which were never truly meant to oppose racial exclusion.92 Thus, twenty-first-century American children readers who

read the book are exposed to the exclusionary tendencies of nineteenth-century white

American society toward African Americans and the respective contradictions of republicanism itself.

At first, it would be interesting to provide some statistical information about the popularity and the reception of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in twenty- first-century American society. According to Andrew Grabois, “the current slate of bestselling classics from Barnes & Noble include […] [The] Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain” (2). In 2004, Online Computer Library center

(OCLC) Research published a list of the top 1000 titles owned by member libraries

91 On the contrary, throughout their history, Americans discriminated against blacks, Indians, Asians, Catholics and European immigrants, a fact which highlights the essential discrepancy between the republican rhetoric and social inequality in American society discerned not only in children’s fiction but also in other books and writings. For a critical examination of the components of American identity, see Huntington (37-58). 92 More specifically, some of the exclusionary political practices of American society which favored racial and ethnic homogeneity were the first naturalization statute, in 1790, which opened citizenship only to “free, white persons,” the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in 1798, according to which any foreigner suspected of agitation within the United States would suffer expulsion or prison without benefit of trial and the Indian Removal Act, passed in 1830, which allowed President Andrew Jackson to relocate eastern Indians west of the Mississippi. For more information, see Huntington (54-55) and Burstein (191). Koutsimani Ekaterini 85

and Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was on the list at number 7.93

Moreover, in the early 1990s, the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature completed a national study of the book-length works taught in high school English programs and among the ten titles most frequently taught in public, Catholic and independent schools for Grades 9-12 was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. On the other hand, according to the American Library Association (ALA) Office for

Intellectual Freedom (OIF), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was on the list of the

100 most frequently challenged books of 1990-2000 at number 5. Seventy-one per cent of the challenges were to material in schools or school libraries. Another twenty- four percent were to material in public libraries. Among the reasons for challenges were “offensive language” and “racism.”94

As would be expected, contemporary white American children readers of The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is used as a teaching material in multicultural

American classrooms to open discussions about racial identity and racial oppression,

are not affected in the same way as their African-American counterparts. The

former’s identification with Huck seems rather inevitable taking into consideration

that he is a white child narrator. Huck functions as a role model promoting the white

supremacist ideology of his time and contributing to the formulation of a national

consciousness of white pride. Being a first-person narrator and the focalizer of the book, he is empowered to reinforce his racist point of view and determine the readers’

perceptions using not only direct address to his readers but also the stream of

consciousness technique. Through these techniques, Huck also implicitly voices his

criticism of the hypocrisy of the social institutions of his time like the family, the

93 Founded in 1967, OCLC is a non-profit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs. More than 50.540 libraries in 84 countries use OCLC services. 94 For further information on the challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom between 1990 and 2000, see American Library Association. Koutsimani Ekaterini 86 school and the church rather than the people’s racist attitudes and mentality. Hence, young white American readers tend to internalize Huck’s belief in white superiority and justify his racism against African Americans. Moreover, the racial ideology of white supremacy sustained throughout the whole book unavoidably affects the formation of white American readers’ national identity. More specifically, John

Alberti, who teaches the novel in multicultural American classrooms, emphasizes the immediate identification of “white” students with the “white” characters in historically distant texts, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which

“occurs even when the use of the social marker ‘white’ may be anachronistic, even when students are separated from these characters by barriers of gender, ethnicity, and language, and even when they may be critical of the actions of these ‘white’ characters” (924). Therefore, although they may denounce prejudice or bigotry, white

American children are expected to define themselves in terms of their white race and not in terms of republican values. To understand this, it is indispensable to take into consideration today’s American context since, in contemporary US society, the people of color in general, and blacks in particular, still experience forms of racialized hostility in their lives. The “new racism” “is characterized by an assertion of the naturalness of both a desire to live amongst ‘one’s own people’ (Us) and hostility towards a culturally or racially distinct immigrant presence (the Other) that threatens the existence of ‘our way of life’,” and seems to result from a combination of factors including economic factors, political factors, sexism, and psychological needs (Small

270). In this respect, race becomes a dominant social marker to which the concept of

“Americanness” is closely related. Huck’s role in the dissemination of racist propaganda against African Americans is crucial given that white American children readers, who lack experience and training, cannot help rising from the narrative with Koutsimani Ekaterini 87 new perspectives and attitudes that reflect white racial nationalism. For instance, the fact that “Huck’s monologues have often been interpreted as proofs of compassion or well-meaning […] suggests that the white freedom desired by many of Huck’s white- identifying readers has been freedom from responsibility for or participation in the construction and maintenance of race and racial oppression in the United States”

(Alberti 931). Such readings of the book condemn slavery and racism but at the same time carefully maintain the color line.

On the other hand, Huck himself is a low-life, uneducated white American boy whose act of helping a runaway slave to escape is unthinkable for white children with a good social upbringing and a respectable family background at his time. Thus, it is tempting to concentrate on the extent to which contemporary middle- and upper-class white American children readers are influenced by Huck. In the course of the story, while Huck seeks reasons for Tom’s decision to become his accomplice, he expresses the whites’ fear of losing their socio-cultural hierarchy and economic hegemony. This is most evident when he reflects on Tom’s social status: “[Tom] was a boy that was respectable, and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at home that had characters; […] and [he was] knowing and not ignorant; […] I couldn’t make out how he was willing to go into this thing” (Twain 184). In particular, according to Huck,

Tom Sawyer, a respectable, upper-class white boy, is doomed to marginalization and shame in case he chooses to help him free a runaway slave. As revealed at the end of the story, though, Tom has offered to help without really risking his social status.

Although young middle- or upper-class white American readers of the book do not immediately identify with Huck, a low-class white boy, Huck’s system of beliefs as the narrator-focalizer is deeply implanted in them as well as his racist concern about Koutsimani Ekaterini 88

the social patterns of American society.95 Therefore, they are not supposed to

condemn the racial discrimination that black slaves suffered by whites in higher social

ranks in antebellum America. However, in America of the twenty-first century,

middle- and upper-class white American children readers do not need to worry about

their social position and dignity since African-American slaves no longer exist.

Actually, in Fredrickson’s words, “‘the psychological needs of white groups in a

competitive free-labor society’ […] have been among the most important factors contributing to the persistence of racism to this day […] they also carry with them a material dependence on the benefits of racial privilege, however marginal these benefits may be at times” (qtd. in Alberti 925). In this respect, young middle- and upper-class white American readers may still internalize the idea that African

Americans constitute a threat to their socioeconomic development and prosperity, since, in contemporary American society, “although rising income inequality and growing class segregation clearly serve to undermine the socioeconomic welfare of all racial and ethnic groups […], the consequences have been particularly severe for

African Americans because they are so highly segregated by race” (Massey 352).96

Apart from the previous examples of negative influence, one might also argue

that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has the power to exert a positive influence on young white American readership. As John Alberti emphasizes, “this only makes sense if we presuppose a white readership that needs lessons in the immorality (or even existence) of racial bigotry, or that needs to learn to see African-Americans as fully human” (923). Consequently, white American children are expected to be

95 Discussing the subject position of readers, Alberti argues that “one of the remarkable aspects of the construction of whiteness in the United States is the way it allows people to find some kind of kinship across barriers of time, language, religion, and social class solely on the basis of perceived racial unity” (924). 96 For a discussion of the intersection of class, racial and ethnic segregation and the extent to which it contributes to social inequality in contemporary American society, see Douglas S. Massey (348-54). Koutsimani Ekaterini 89 trained to respond as racially-sensitive readers who will renounce racism and bigotry and accept African Americans as equals. This kind of training is crucial since white

American children are required to acknowledge the existence of racial difference so as to immediately renounce it. However, a necessary precondition for their successful training is their ability and even willingness to recognize the book’s irony and consider its implications. Unfortunately, the majority of young children lack this critical ability, a fact which can account for their racist interpretations of the book’s satirical elements such as the use of the word “nigger” to refer to African Americans including Jim. Under these circumstances, only white American children readers who succeed in recognizing the formal technique of irony in The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn are likely to see it as a work that challenges white racism and not as a first-person narration that promotes racist propaganda against African Americans.

Attention should be drawn to the effect of The Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn on contemporary young African-American readers and especially on middle- class black American children. Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua clarifies that:

Twain’s use of the pejorative nigger over two hundred times, his

usage of Negro dialect, his depiction of Jim as an uneducated,

superstitious, and pliable slave who ‘appears’ to place a significant

portion of his fate in the hands of an uneducated white adolescent

have contributed to multitudinous complaints […] emanating most

often today from middle-class African-American students and their

parents. (“Mark Twain” 228)

Because of all these reasons, middle-class black American children readers, who fail to acknowledge the novel’s ironic treatment of racial oppression, have deemed the work racist and unworthy to be read, and are mainly the ones who demand its banning Koutsimani Ekaterini 90

reacting to its content and ideas. For instance, in 1984, a group of black parents

succeeded in having the novel taken off the list of required reading in Waukegan,

Illinois high-school English curriculum because their children were offended by the

repeated use of the demeaning epithet “nigger.”97 For them, Huck, the first-person narrator, is the purveyor of racial stereotypes and humiliating racial depictions of blacks that function as forms of racist propaganda against them and enforce African-

American subordination. Obviously, they cannot identify with Huck and endorse the ideology of white supremacy that he represents, but he still affects their identity formation and self-development. In particular, African-American children readers are at a loss since their racial identity, that is their blackness, is in contrast to their national identity, that is their Americanness. They are implicitly forced to accept that

American national identity is defined on the basis of white race rather than the political principles of republicanism. In this respect, they do not only feel marginalized and excluded from American society due to their black race, but they are also supposed to acquiesce to black inferiority and experience racial discrimination.

As a result, they are deprived of shaping a national consciousness which reinforces

mutual respect and cooperation across racial lines. To sum up, Huck’s narrative fills

black children readers with feelings of anxiety and pain since it does not project an image of African Americans’ harmonious integration into the American nation but implicitly stresses whites’ longing for blacks’ assimilation.

African-American objections to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have not prevented it from attaining the status of a classic in white American children’s literature and being widely read and taught in American schools nowadays. One reason for the popularity of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is its style which

97 For further reference, see Leo Marx (164). Koutsimani Ekaterini 91

established for American written prose the simplicity, directness, fluency and

immediacy of American colloquial speech.98 More importantly, the book still remains popular because it serves a national and political function as “an icon of integration”

(Arac, Huckleberry Finn 21). In particular, white Americans tend to identify with

Huck rather than his racist contemporaries and attribute his moral goodness toward

Jim to the whole American nation. In other words, for white Americans, Huck Finn is

morally virtuous and so is the America he “quintessentially” represents. This covert

politics of complacency offers white Americans a defensive alibi for their own

failures to overcome the social and racial injustice that still exists in the United

States.99 Stephen Railton suggests that “the novel’s emphasis on racism is why it was

still entirely pertinent when Twain wrote it in the second decade after slavery had

been abolished, and why it remains relevant today, as America continues to struggle out of the shadow cast by slavery and the racist ideology that slavery made necessary”

(64). As revealed by the young black readers’ protests “against the book’s established role in the schools,” African Americans are still struggling to acquire their own place in American society and eradicate all prejudices rising from their former status as slaves (Arac, Huckleberry Finn 19-20). However, other forms of racism such as

“reverse racism” by blacks against whites also begin to appear nowadays in the

United States (Small 271).100 Therefore, white American children’s books which

tackle the thorny issue of racism against blacks attract the interest of contemporary

young American readers and encourage them to reevaluate the terms by which they

define both their personal and national identity. Whenever the story is told by a white

98 For a discussion of what The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn represents for the American literary tradition, see Lionel Trilling (326-28). 99 For an interesting account of what The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn represents for the American national heritage, see Arac, Huckleberry Finn (13), (14), (21), (62), (218). 100 On the different kinds of racism, including “reverse racism,” in twenty-first-century, multicultural American society, see Stephen Small (260-71). Koutsimani Ekaterini 92 child first-person narrator, its hidden message or ideology is more easily conveyed and instilled in the minds of American children readers and affects their national consciousness. Consequently, white American children’s fiction may serve as an effective medium for racist propaganda against blacks directing white American children’s responses, beliefs and attitudes toward African Americans. Koutsimani Ekaterini 93

Chapter Three:

To Kill a Mockingbird: The Ideology of White Supremacy vs

Racial Liberalism

Harper Lee’s Social Environment

Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama, in 1926, when African

Americans, confined by Jim Crow and legal discrimination, were still economically

and socially segregated and politically handicapped. Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee,

who was a lawyer in the small town defending blacks in various court cases, seems to

have influenced her portrayal of Atticus Finch, the major character in To Kill a

Mockingbird, and inspired her liking for the legal profession. From 1945 to 1949, Lee

studied law at the University of Alabama, including one year abroad at Oxford

University. Then, she moved to New York, where she spent her time writing “–

influenced by her literary heroes Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne and

Eudora Welty–” and working for an airline, but she soon decided to be a full time

writer (Jones 414). Lee’s upbringing in Alabama in the 1930s marked her literary

works which reflect the social and legal silence imposed upon African Americans in

the segregated South.101

In the 1930s, America had to face a serious economic crisis which deeply

affected the lives of its citizens. Within a few years after the crash in October of 1929,

thousands of Americans were unable to support themselves in any occupation. A

close examination of the period, known as the Great Depression, reveals that African

Americans were the most deprived on the American economic landscape, having to

101 For biographical information about Harper Lee, see Carolyn M. Jones (413-14) and Jonathan Noakes and Margaret Reynolds (7). Koutsimani Ekaterini 94

cope with unemployment and poverty. The Great Depression affected the labor

movement in the United States and black workers had great difficulty in breaking the

barriers that excluded them from the major labor unions which maintained their

discriminatory policies in an effort to secure employment for whites. However, the

emergence of labor organizations like the CIO (Committee for Industrial

Organization), which sought to organize workers regardless of race, created feelings

of security and belonging among black workers and contributed to their struggle for

greater integration into American life.102

A variety of gradual changes in the American polity during the 1930s and

1940s paved the way for a political and legal climate that favored racial equality and the enforcement of equal rights. In particular, industrial expansion in the North, along

with reduction in foreign immigration, attracted a large number of African Americans

from rural Southern regions to northern cities. This massive black migration to the

North placed renewed emphasis on the issue of race relations which could no longer

be restricted to the South. Having escaped southern disenfranchisement, urban

African Americans achieved political equation and used their right to vote in northern states, a fact which had a direct impact on national elections. Furthermore, Franklin

D. Roosevelt’s presidential victory showed that the Democratic Party had gained the support of northern black voters.103 African Americans relied on President Roosevelt because they regarded the relief and recovery programs that he advocated as the ideal

solution to their socioeconomic predicament during the Depression. Indeed,

Roosevelt’s policy, the so-called New Deal program, aided blacks in their efforts to

102 For a detailed examination of the Great Depression and its consequences, see Franklin and Moss, Jr. (339-42). On the impact of the Great Depression on the labor movement in the United States, see Franklin and Moss, Jr. (356-59). For more details about the organization of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) in 1935, and other labor unions which also included black workers, see Franklin and Moss, Jr. (357-59). 103 For a summary of the sociopolitical changes in the American polity that contributed to racial equality during the 1930s and 1940s, see James W. Ely Jr. (133) and Joseph Crespino (12). Koutsimani Ekaterini 95

ameliorate their living conditions. More specifically, blacks benefited from various

New Deal measures to acquire better living accommodations and to secure

employment and relief. However, the New Deal never directly challenged Jim Crow

and institutionalized racial injustice against blacks. Actually, there was outright

discrimination against blacks in the local administration of most of the New Deal

measures in the South, and variations between black and white relief grants, numbers

of workers and salaries in the government agencies of relief. James W. Ely Jr. notes

that “New Deal labor legislation in practice often harmed blacks economically and

caused displacement of black workers” (133). Although the New Deal policy did not

actually make possible the achievement of true economic equality for the black man

in America, it was a decisive official step toward breaking down the established

pattern of racial discrimination.104

Substantial progress toward racial equality was also made after the entry of the

United States into World War II. The United States used segregated armed forces to

fight the Axis powers but, throughout the war, it tried to project the image of a nation

that promoted egalitarian practices contrary to the atrocities committed by Nazi

Germany and imperial Japan. In particular, all schemes of racial subordination were

criticized and greater emphasis was placed on civil rights. Thus, wartime rhetoric

emphasized that racial subordination was incompatible with American democracy.

Accordingly, most Americans felt that, unlike their enemies, they had to take meaningful action against racial separation in the social structure. In general, World

War II affected American public opinion toward race relations especially in the northern states where increased interest in the civil rights agenda resulted in

104 The New Deal was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legislative program which was aimed at aiding the total population in recovering from the severe depression in the 1930s. For a detailed account of the New Deal and its various policies and measures, see Franklin and Moss, Jr. (339-59). For a limited critique of the effectiveness of the New Deal and its achievements, see Ely Jr. (133-34) and Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” (187). Koutsimani Ekaterini 96

affirmative action policies such as affirmative action in employment. For instance, in

1945, New York became the first state to establish a fair employment practices

commission. Actually, Americans’ heightened awareness of racial inequality was due

to increasing black protests and the fear of potential international embarrassment

rather than the blacks’ eager participation in World War II. Moreover, hope for

improvement in blacks’ social status was generated by the emergence of several

litigation groups and organizations aimed at attacking racial segregation. The most

famous among these was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (NAACP), founded in 1909. During the 1930s, the NAACP formulated

various litigation strategies with a view to addressing questions of racial inequality in trial as well as in graduate and professional school education. Efforts to unionize blacks and secure the total integration of black workers were also made by organizations such as the Friends of Negro Freedom, composed primarily of New

York radicals (1920), the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids by A. Philip

Randolph, composed of black and white porters and maids (1925) and the Steel

Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), composed of black and white steel workers

(1936). Instances of success in this area paved the way for more systematic attempts

to assert one’s rights and not to tolerate unfair treatment.105

On the other hand, in the 1930s, under the pressure of African-American

representatives elected from the northern cities, the Supreme Court began to condemn the racist practices of the South’s criminal justice system. In particular, a series of racial discrimination cases in which black defendants seemed to be convicted after hasty trials was reexamined by justices in an effort to discover potential false accusations. Furthermore, Harry S. Truman’s interest in civil rights during his

105 For a discussion of the entry of the United States into World War II and the emergence of various litigation groups, including the NAACP, as important catalysts for change in the American racial politics in the 1930s and 1940s, see Ely Jr. (133-34) and Franklin and Moss, Jr. (339-40), (357-58). Koutsimani Ekaterini 97

presidency after World War II laid the groundwork for important judicial moves

toward achieving racial equality. The Truman administration focused on legal battles

in the Supreme Court and demanded that the justices strike down segregation in

interstate transportation and higher education. According to Ely Jr., “for the first time

since Reconstruction the executive branch displayed enthusiasm for equal rights and

could be counted on to support judicial initiatives in this field” (135). The

government’s concern about racial segregation remained dominant with the onset of

the Cold War. As the United States and the Soviet Union competed for influence in

the world, the former was struggling to appear as a democratic nation fighting against

a repressive totalitarian state. However, United States officials realized that legalized racial discrimination in the South harmed American foreign policy interests since it contradicted the American egalitarian ideal. International disapproval of racial discrimination necessitated that the country tackle the issue of southern segregation.

Therefore, the decisions taken by the Supreme Court throughout the Cold War were not expected to perpetuate formal racial segregation.106

During Lee’s youth, the most notorious court case which drew attention to

southern injustice was the Scottsboro case of the 1930s. In a sequence of trials lasting

from 1931 to 1937, nine young black men known as the Scottsboro Boys who had

been arrested and jailed in Scottsboro, Alabama, were sentenced to death on charges

of raping two white women on a freight train. The speedy procedure of the initial

Scottsboro trial was intended to preserve the appearance of due process and avert mob

rule. However, new trials were ordered by the Supreme Court on the grounds that in

the original trial the black defendants were not represented by adequate counsel and

106 On the Supreme Court’s role in condemning the discriminatory administration of criminal justice in the 1930s South, see Ely Jr. (134-35). On the post-World War II Truman administration’s racial policies, see Ely Jr. (135). On the implications of the Cold War for the issue of southern segregation, see Ely Jr. (135-36) and Crespino (12-13). Koutsimani Ekaterini 98 the Alabama jury selection procedures systematically discriminated against them.

Finally, the Scottsboro boys were not acquitted of rape charges but, instead, were sentenced to terms up to ninety-nine years. Although the Scottsboro trial’s accusations of rape were undoubtedly false, the defendants’ guilt was predetermined and it was not until 1950 that the last of them had been released. As Eric J. Sundquist claims,

“Scottsboro was only the most egregious evidence that the kinds of justice administered by southern mobs and southern courts were often indistinguishable”

(“Blues for Atticus Finch” 185). Indeed, the Scottsboro case had a deep impact on the

South’s criminal justice system not only because it brought to the surface the latter’s inconsistencies but also because it made it the object of national scrutiny and negative public criticism.107

Growing out of the Scottsboro case, the case against Ozie Powell in Powell v.

Alabama, in 1932, paved the way for the gradual elimination of constitutional restraints on criminal and civil rights. Powell v. Alabama was remarkable for the

Supreme Court’s reversal of its initial verdict since Powell, the defendant, was deprived of his right to counsel and therefore remanded back to Alabama. More specifically, Powell’s case raised the question of criminal defendants’ legal representation in courts of criminal law and, eventually, the Court mandated the appointment of defense counsel in capital trials. Sundquist stresses that “in guaranteeing a constitutional right to counsel in certain capital cases, Powell for the first time partially incorporated the Sixth Amendment into the Fourteenth, thus nationalizing right to counsel as a matter of due process” (“Blues for Atticus Finch”

195). Indeed, Powell was one of the most important decisions by the Court, initiating

107 For analytical information about the Scottsboro case of the 1930s, see Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” (185), (196), (200), Franklin and Moss, Jr. (345) and Claudia Johnson (129-30). On the mechanism by which Atticus’s defense of Tom Robinson overlaps with Scottsboro, see Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” (198-200). Koutsimani Ekaterini 99

an attack on ongoing discriminatory procedures of state criminal law and, thus,

contributing not only to criminal justice but also to civil rights.108

The changing social attitudes and political realities in the 1930s world of

Scottsboro and Powell also affected white racial thinking. The nineteenth-century

ideal of white racial homogeneity continued to remain popular in the 1920s and

1930s, especially among extreme racists. In addition, white Americans were mostly

preoccupied with the maintenance of white supremacy so as to control blacks in the

twentieth-century American South. As Hale acknowledges, though, “since southern

black inferiority and white supremacy could not, despite whites’ desires, be assumed,

southern whites created a modern social order in which this difference would instead

be continually performed” (284). In this respect, for whites, the performance of racial

segregation in the South perpetuated white hegemony and emphasized white

superiority. Under these circumstances, African Americans were the victims of white

discrimination and oppression in all aspects of life, a fact which shows that in the

early decades of the twentieth century the white supremacist ideology was widely

endorsed in American society.109 More specifically, according to Hale, “for southern

African Americans visibly to violate the rituals, to refuse to play the role of blackness

that white southerners continually assigned, was to invite the threat of violent

retribution that the spectacle lynching periodically and very publicly staged” (285).

However, by the Second World War, a new egalitarian racial ideology, the so-called

liberal environmentalism, had made its appearance as opposed to the racism of the

108 For a detailed account of Powell’s case, which nationalized the constitutional right to counsel in courts of criminal law, and its assault on the doctrine of southern segregation, see Ely Jr. (134-35) and Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” (195-96), (205-06). 109 For a brief description of the fate of the ideal of white homogeneity after World War I when its most famous exponents were advocates of black deportation like Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi and Ernest Sevier Cox, a Virginia racial theorist, see Fredrickson (326-27). On the ritualistic enactment of racial differences vital to the maintenance of white supremacy in the twentieth-century American South, see Hale (284-85). Koutsimani Ekaterini 100

Nazis. The liberal environmentalists claimed that there were no differences between the races which might influence their social, cultural and intellectual performance; the apparent ones resulted from the environment. More importantly, liberal environmentalism or liberalism promoted the full assimilation or integration of blacks into American life. This doctrine was meant to bring about change in American racial policies and contribute to blacks’ equality. In particular, according to the liberals’ position, racial prejudice against blacks could be eliminated through education and legislation, thus making possible the transformation of America into a color-blind society. However, although key civil rights legislature and judicial policy is traced back to the Depression era, the practice of segregation, and often of mob rule, remained a fact in the Jim Crow South of the 1930s, unchallenged by the rise of southern liberalism. Therefore, taking into consideration that blacks were still treated as inferior to whites, the racial ideology of white supremacy could not be easily questioned in the first half of the twentieth century.110

The twentieth-century sociopolitical changes in the United States stimulated an intense nationalism and contributed to the development of American national consciousness. In particular, World War I generated a surge of patriotism and created a sense of common national identity. During the Great Depression, though, nationalism faded since nationalist sentiments were actually replaced by economic and political concerns about decent standards of living. American national identity reached its peak in World War II with the rallying of Americans to their country and its cause. Americans defined themselves as the global champions of the principles of democracy and liberty against German Nazism and Japanese militarism. Therefore,

110 According to Fredrickson, “[liberal environmentalists] argued openly for the possibility and desirability of the full assimilation or integration of blacks into American life” (330). For a critical overview of the rise of liberalism as a racial ideology in the United States, its vision of racial change and the factors that contributed to its triumph, see Crespino (11-20), Fredrickson (330-32) and Gary Gerstle (579-84). Koutsimani Ekaterini 101

World War II heightened the salience of the ideological component of American

identity and laid the foundations for the decline in the centrality of race as a defining

element of that identity. In fact, after World War II, not only did the national

perception of race relations and civil rights start to change but also the segregation

imposed by the white South came to be seen as a problem that required a national

solution. Discussing the unifying impact of World War II, Samuel P. Huntington

emphasizes that “the identification of Americans with their country reached its

highest point in history during World War II” (136). Similarly, during the Cold War,

Americans struggled against Soviet communism and it was precisely the ideological

threat posed by the Soviet Union that sustained the salience of their national identity

until the 1960s when economic, social and cultural tensions reinforced the emergence

of other identities.111

Regarding the way white racial thinking in the 1930s has shaped the image of

blacks conveyed in American literature, the depiction of blacks in early twentieth-

century American fiction is slightly different from the stereotypical literary

representations of black characters in mid- and late nineteenth-century American

writings. Since the mid-1920s, most white and black authors had taken to writing

novels and plays marked by a “newer, wilder, more insulting version of the old

stereotype of the Exotic Primitive” (Seymour L. Gross 14).112 More specifically,

blacks were presented as exotic primitives who did not fit in white society due to their

natural spontaneity, emotionalism and sensuality. Furthermore, emphasis was placed

on the fact that they could not control their sexual passions and instincts. According to

111 On the intensification of American nationalism in the first half of the twentieth century, see Huntington (49), (120), (136-37). 112 Examples of black writers of the period are Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer and Claude McKay, whereas works by white writers include O’ Neill’s plays about blacks, Waldo Frank’s Holiday (1923), Sherwood Anderson’s Dark Laughter (1925), BuBose Heyward’s Porgy (1926) and Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven (1926). Koutsimani Ekaterini 102

Fredrickson, what was new about the image of blacks “was not the stereotype itself

but the lack of moralism in the treatment of what would previously have been defined

as black immorality or even animality” (328). Another black image that emerged in

the 1920s and 1930s was the “image of the Negro-as-unfettered-child-of-spontaneous-

joy” (Seymour L. Gross 13). Blacks were seen as innately joyous and genuinely

pleased with the simplest things of life, qualities which were also reflected in their

older traditional Jim Crow image. Apart from their innocence and naiveté, blacks

were also characterized by a strong commitment to their superstitions. In this respect,

they could often end up being exploited by whites. In the Depression years, though,

this stereotypical childlike depiction of blacks was replaced by that of the oppressed

proletarian who suffered from social and economic deprivation, which was basically

promoted by liberal and radical circles as part of a more militant protest orientation.

Brown summarizes the traits of the working-class black who struggled to survive in

an oppressive environment of racial and economic injustice: “A self-respecting, virile,

quiet but strong hero, slowly but surely awakened, capable of the greatest trust,

willing and ready to die for the causes of race advance and economic brotherhood”

(349). The portrayal of blacks as victimized workers reflected the sociopolitical

conditions of the period and highlighted the fact that African Americans were

deprived of the opportunity to compete in the labor market having to cope with

segregation, discrimination and poverty imposed by whites.113

113 For an examination of the stereotypical images of blacks conveyed in American literature in the early decades of the twentieth century, see Seymour L. Gross (12-15) and Fredrickson (327-28). On the new image of blacks as oppressed proletarians in American literature during the Depression when there was a growing recognition of the effects of social and economic deprivation and when Marxism and the proletarian ideology had an impact on American thought, see Brown (349), Fredrickson (329-30) and Seymour L. Gross (16). Koutsimani Ekaterini 103

The Context of To Kill a Mockingbird

The decades of the 1950s and 1960s constituted a landmark in African

Americans’ continuing struggle for political, economic and social rights in the United

States. In the aftermath of Scottsboro and Powell, the civil rights campaign led by

NAACP, aimed at dismantling the legal foundations of southern segregation, achieved

a crucial victory. In 1954, the Supreme Court handed down its Brown v. Topeka

Board of Education decision according to which racial segregation in public schools

was unconstitutional. Ely Jr. claims that “this decision inaugurated the modern civil

rights era and heralded a comprehensive attack by the federal government on the

segregated society of the South” (136). With regard to the implementation of Brown,

though, it had not been made clear how and when the desegregation of America’s

public schools would be accomplished. In their effort to prevent implementation of

the Brown ruling, southern whites launched an organized opposition to school

desegregation known as “massive resistance.” Nevertheless, despite white

Southerners’ massive resistance, during the mid- to late 1950s, race relations in the

South were defined and dominated by the Brown decision resulting in early

nonviolent forms of black protest against enforced segregation and subordination.114

In fact, the language of the Court’s 1955 decree of implementation of the Brown decision –“at the earliest practicable date […] with all deliberate speed”– exemplified the nationalist rhetoric of the time which promoted gradualism and was meant as a tranquilizer to momentarily soothe anxieties and hush black activists up (qtd. in

Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” 190).

Mounting tension over civil rights activism was augmented by Emmett Till’s lynching. Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago, was brutally murdered

114 For a discussion of the significance of Brown v. Topeca Board of Education decision and the massive southern resistance to its implementation, see Ely Jr. (136-38), Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” (189-90), Hale (288-89) and Theodore R. Hovet and Grace-Ann Hovet (71). Koutsimani Ekaterini 104

by two white men in the Mississippi Delta in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white

woman in a store in Money, Mississippi. What made Till more than just another black

man murdered was the fact that his mother demanded an open casket at his Chicago

funeral, and photos of the disfigured corpse appeared in Jet magazine. The Emmett

Till trial, which took place after Till’s funeral, aroused intense public interest and was

watched by a black and white national audience. The exoneration of Emmett Till’s

white murderers highlighted white southern injustice and violence and paved the way

for more concrete forms of black protest in the South.115 Moreover, examining the

impact of Till’s case on white Americans, Hale argues that “unlike the Brown

decision, the Till lynching divided rather than united southern whites, splitting apart

those who were invested morally and practically in national opinion from those who were not” (292). In this sense, a segment of white southern population, influenced by

the public outcry over such racist practices, would no longer tolerate white racial violence and brutality pushing the system of segregation to its inevitable conclusion.

On the whole, the Emmett Till trial is regarded as one of the galvanizing events of the early civil rights movement and seems to have provided a workable model for aspects of Lee’s fictional Tom Robinson trial in To Kill a Mockingbird.116

The period from approximately 1955 to 1968 is viewed as the modern phase

of a general social movement seeking equal rights for black people known as the civil

rights movement. The 1955-56 bus boycott by the black citizens of Montgomery,

Alabama was the starting point for the shaping of nonviolent black resistance on a

115 In 1960-61, more direct forms of black protest against racial segregation were lunch counter sit-ins in different southern cities. Moreover, in 1961, Freedom Riders challenged segregation in transportation facilities and were brutally attacked by mobs in Alabama. In 1963, urban rebellions or “riots” occurred in many American cities such as Birmingham and Danville. For further reference, see Ely Jr. (139). 116 For a detailed presentation of the Emmett Till case and its significance, see Hale (289-92) and Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” (185), (189), (194-95), (197), (200). On African-American responses to Till’s case, see Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” (202-04). For an interesting juxtaposition of the similarities between the Emmett Till trial and the trial of Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, see Patrick Chura (5-23). Koutsimani Ekaterini 105

mass scale. Nonviolent forms of black protest included sit-ins, pray-ins, and wade-ins,

as well as marches, boycotts, and rallies. After Martin Luther King’s death, though,

violent forms of black protest also appeared such as murder, attempted murder and

lesser crimes given that blacks were involved in numerous encounters with the police.

The main objective of the movement was “integration–the full and equal participation

of black people in American institutions” (Blumberg 1). African Americans strove to insure equal access to basic rights such as seats on buses, education, occupation, the vote and fair trials when accused. Their efforts culminated in important victories like the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

The end of formal segregation and the political empowerment of blacks were fundamental changes in a society dominated and run by white people. Therefore, with decisive public action taken in response to the civil rights issues, southern society had been substantially reconstructed for a second time in the late 1960s, a period often referred to as the Second Reconstruction.117

In post-World War II America, race relations were seen as a national rather

than regional problem and the democratic rhetoric of American racial liberalism

exposed the indignities of southern racism. By the early 1960s, liberalism, being an

integrationist ideology aimed at bringing meaningful change for African Americans,

had become the dominant racial ideology in American society endorsed even by a

small number of white southerners convinced of the need for racial reform. To be

more specific, the ideology of the liberal consensus had initially revolved around the

issue of class inequality and held that American capitalism was a revolutionary force

117 For a detailed discussion of the rise of the civil rights movement which destroyed the southern culture of segregation between the mid-1950s and the late 1960s and its goals and objectives, see Rhoda Lois Blumberg (1-9) and Hale (293-95). For a close examination of the factors that contributed to direct and more drastic action to secure the rights of African Americans and especially of the widespread, massive resistance of whites to the extension of those rights, see Franklin and Moss, Jr. (436-48). For historical information about the Second Reconstruction, see Ely Jr. (136-40). Koutsimani Ekaterini 106

for social change. Since the mid-1950s, though, civil rights had become an important

part of the liberal consensus and liberalism provided a theoretical basis for the civil

rights movement of the 1960s. Dedicated to the cause of racial justice, liberals wanted

to attack southern racism and viewed integration into American society as the ultimate

goal for African Americans. As Manning Marable briefly explains, “liberal

integrationism […] is a strategy of political action that calls for the deconstruction of

institutional racism through liberal reforms within the government and the

assimilation of Blacks as individuals within all levels of the work force, culture, and

society” (296). Indeed, in the civil rights era, white racial liberalism played an

important role in ending the system of Jim Crow discrimination and contributed to

equal political participation for African Americans. Therefore, race no longer

appeared as a defining component of American national identity.118

The literature of the 1960s reflects the spirit of the times, the hopes, the

uncertainties, the upheavals and the psychological costs of the struggle for black

equality. Concerning old stereotypes of blacks, some of them were undermined but

they still existed in white American authors’ literary works. A white American author

of that turbulent decade, Harper Lee, being one of the few southern liberals in the

1950s South, wrote her first and only novel To Kill a Mockingbird in a three-year

period at the end of the 1950s, a time when black-white relations were being tested in

the courts. It was published first by Lippincott in 1960, intersecting with important

events of the civil rights movement. To Kill a Mockingbird focuses on the life of the

protagonist Jean Louise “Scout” Finch and her family in Maycomb, Alabama. Scout

is the daughter of a white Alabama lawyer, Atticus Finch, who is faced with the task of defending a crippled black man, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping Mayella

118 On racial liberalism as the dominant racial ideology in the 1960s, see Crespino (12-13). For a definition of the ideology of the liberal consensus, see Godfrey Hodgson (67-98) and Crespino (11-12). Koutsimani Ekaterini 107

Ewell, a poor white woman who had made sexual advances toward him. One of the

plot’s central episodes narrated by Scout is Tom Robinson’s trial which questions the

idea of southern justice.119

The novel was an immediate popular success and was well received by the

critical community. For instance, Keith Waterhouse wrote in the New Statesman that

To Kill a Mockingbird was authentic and fresh, taking a common theme and making it work “forcefully” and Richard Sullivan observed in the Chicago Tribune that it

offered “a view of the American South, its attitudes, feelings, and traditions,” without

being a sociological novel (qtd. in Jones 414). By the time it received the Pulitzer

Prize in 1961, it had already sold five hundred thousand copies and been translated

into ten languages. It was Bestseller’s paperback book of the year in 1962. It is also

worth noting that in a 1991 survey by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of

Congress’s Center of the Book, To Kill a Mockingbird was listed second only to the

Bible as a book that made a difference in people’s lives. Moreover, its story was made

into a successful film which garnered Academy Awards in 1962 for Gregory Peck’s

portrayal of Atticus Finch and for Horton Foote’s script. In light of the novel’s

popularity, Lee was named, in 1966, to the National Council on the Arts. However, in

the late decades of the twentieth century and in the early twenty-first century, certain

schools in the United States have censored or even banned the novel for its sexual

content and depiction of racism. For example, according to the 2004 Banned Books

Resource Guide of the American Library Association, the novel was challenged in the

Normal, ILL Community High Schools sophomore literature class (2003) as being

degrading to African Americans, and at the Stanford Middle School in Durham, N. C.

(2004) because it uses the word “nigger.” Notwithstanding the objections that it

119 On the image of blacks in American fiction during the 1960s, see Brown (354-56). On the composition and publication of Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, see Jones (414), Johnson (129-30) and Noakes and Reynolds (7). Koutsimani Ekaterini 108

raised, To Kill a Mockingbird has sold between twelve and fifteen million copies and

is the most widely read twentieth-century American work of fiction dealing with the

issue of race in America.120

The story of To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the small southern town of

Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s, from 1933 to 1935. Lee chose as setting the

Depression-era South and, consequently, Maycomb is depicted as a poverty-stricken

town in which the Finch family, landholders and ex-slave owners, is one of the most

respectable families. In general, African Americans who lived in the South during the

Depression were still subject to structural forms of racial discrimination. Thus, the

novel’s historical present highlights blacks’ economic dependence on whites, their

unfair treatment in court and the threat of lynching which created a subtle and

effective system of control that policed interracial boundaries. Not surprisingly,

Patrick Chura observes that “racial events and ideology of the 1950s –the period

concurrent with the novel’s production– leach into the depiction of Lee’s 1930s

history, orienting large sections of the text not to the Depression era but to social

conditions of the civil rights era” (1). In this respect, the issues in To Kill a

Mockingbird were shaped by the 1950s when it was written as well as the 1930s, the

time chosen for its setting. Thus, both the 1930s world of Scottsboro and Powell and

the 1950s world of Brown and Till served as a source of inspiration for the

composition of Lee’s novel which is permeated by the racial ideology that

characterized not only the Depression but also the early civil rights era.

Liberal trends that appeared in American literature in the 1930s and 1940s

drew attention to the issue of race. In particular, several studies focused on southern

120 On the reception of To Kill a Mockingbird and its popularity, see Hovet and Hovet (67), Jones (414- 15) and Crespino (10). On positive reviews of Lee’s book, see Crespino (15-16). On the lone negative review of the novel written by Elizabeth Lee Haselden after it had received the Pulitzer Prize, see Crespino (16-17). Koutsimani Ekaterini 109

racism and emphasized the transgressions of southern segregation. Examples of these

studies echoed in Lee’s novel are Charles Johnson’s Shadow of the Plantation,

published in 1934, John Dollard’s Caste and Class in a Southern Town, published in

1937, and W. J. Cash’s The Mind of the South, published in 1941. Racial liberalism

was mostly promoted in Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma, published in 1944,

which argued that “the discrepancy between the egalitarian impulse of the ‘American

Creed’ and the oppressive treatment of African Americans presented a troubling dilemma for white America” (Crespino 12). The most outspoken southern liberal was the Georgia novelist Lillian Smith whose nonfiction work Killers of the Dream, published in 1949, examined the deleterious effects of segregation on children. All these works contributed to the formulation of Harper Lee’s liberal consciousness and deeply affected the novel’s racial politics as revealed by Lee’s celebration of

American racial liberalism through the character of Atticus Finch.121

The Narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is narrated by Scout Finch, a nine-year-old girl, who is

the autobiographical protagonist of the novel and describes community relationships

and events in her native town, Maycomb, in the South during the Depression Era.

Like Twain, Lee uses the technique of first-person narration and therefore, young

Scout’s first-person perspective is dominant throughout the novel. However, To Kill a

Mockingbird is slightly different from Twain’s book, based on immediate-engaging-

first-person narration. In particular, the frame of Lee’s book is distant-engaging-first-

person narration as revealed by Scout’s words on its opening page “when enough

121 In the 1930s and 1940s, many works that belonged to the tradition of liberal exposés of southern racism were popular and especially Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944) which became an instant classic. For more information on the 1930s and 1940s prominent works that contributed to racial liberalism and inspired Lee, see Crespino (12), (14) and Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” (187-88). Koutsimani Ekaterini 110

years had gone by to enable us to look back on them” whereas the body of its story is

immediate-engaging-first-person narration because Scout is at the same time the

narrating agent and the character/focalizer who sees and speaks in the narrative (Lee

9). Thus, taking into consideration children readers’ identification with the focalizer

in children’s books, Scout is empowered to influence their perceptions and values

since her own voice is the prevailing one and, consequently, her viewpoint determines

the presentation and interpretation of facts during the narration.

The significance of Scout’s double role as a child narrator-focalizer lies in the

fact that she can freely express her views and make her own judgments. That being

the case, a closer examination of Scout’s portrayal can be truly revealing of her basic

personality traits and attitudes. In fact, Scout does not seem to conform to community

codes and traditional gender roles imposed by her southern society.122 As Claudia

Johnson notes, “Scout, whose very nickname is boyish, is allowed to be herself, an adventurous tomboy whose customary attire is overalls, who rarely dons a skirt, who plays and fights with boys and is given a gun instead of a doll for Christmas” (134).

Acting and dressing like a boy, Scout appears dynamic, courageous and determined to fight for those she loves. Indeed, throughout the novel, Scout demonstrates her love and affection for her father and older brother, Jem, and her admiration for a boy of her age, Dill. Being a young girl, though, Scout is mostly characterized by ignorance, innocence and naiveté. She often asks questions that bring to the surface thorny issues of race such as “‘what exactly is a nigger-lover?’,” “how do you know we ain’t

Negroes?,” “‘what’s a mixed child?’” (Lee 114, 167). Spontaneous and curious, Scout is gradually initiated into the world of adults and exposed to the complexity of

Maycomb’s legal and social codes. Ironically, while seeking satisfactory answers to

122 More specifically, Scout does not conform to the notion of Southern ladyhood since she does not behave like a typical, well-bred, cultured Southern white woman who is expected to be weak, conciliatory, passive, tolerant and pious. Koutsimani Ekaterini 111

her questions, she realizes for the first time the ugly nature of race relations in the

segregated South. However, with regard to Scout’s first-person narration, Nick Aaron

Ford acknowledges that “her [Scout’s] dramatic recital of the joys, fears, dreams,

misdemeanors, and problems of her little circle of friends and enemies gives the most

vivid, realistic, and delightful experiences of a child’s world ever presented by an

American novelist, with the possible exception of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and

Huckleberry Finn” (122). Indeed, Scout’s innocence and ignorance, instead of

questioning the reliability of her narrative, attest to a realistic portrayal of her

character and of the fictional world since she is interested in an accurate interpretation

of events.123

Given that Scout’s middle-class, conversational voice is consistently heard

throughout the novel, it is worth examining the extent to which she conveys the racial

ideology of the society she lives in, in the mid-1930s. In the early years of the

Depression, all the inhabitants of the old town of Maycomb, where Scout has grown

up, were forced to face the plight of poverty. The town’s economy, based on

agriculture, collapsed and lower-class whites as well as blacks were the ones who had

greater difficulty in surviving. In particular, blacks were totally dependent on white

employers and had to cope with various forms of institutional segregation. Moreover,

sexual relations between black men and white women were not tolerated and the

former were used as scapegoats for any crime or act of sexual violence against

women. According to Lisa Lindquist Dorr, “though the statutes directing punishment

for sexual violence made no racial distinctions, placing sentencing solely in the hands

of all-white, all-male juries allowed those juries to draw on their own racial prejudices

and race-specific gender ideologies to impose disparate sentences based on race”

123 For a close examination of Lee’s use of the conventions of realism such as the middle-class, conversational narrative voice and the language characteristic of the particular character’s race and social class in To Kill a Mockingbird, see Hovet and Hovet (68-72). Koutsimani Ekaterini 112

(717). The same applied to Tom Robinson’s case in which the jury consisted only of

white men, mostly farmers. In this sense, the book seems to sustain the racial ideology of white supremacy which was still prevalent in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, by comparing Atticus’s ideological stance to that of his contemporary southern American society, one can assume that the text merges racial ideology from the 1930s and the 1960s. Thus, it is permeated by both the white supremacist ideology and racial liberalism.

The majority of white Southerners in Scout’s hometown despised African

Americans and did not form close relationships with them. Therefore, Atticus’s

decision to defend Tom Robinson was strongly rejected by both the people of

Maycomb and the members of his family. Young Scout, being innocent and ignorant,

cannot fully understand the meaning of her cousin’s words: “Now he’s [Atticus]

turned out a nigger-lover we’ll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb agin.

He’s ruinin’ the family, that’s what he’s doin’” (Lee 89). The term “nigger-lover,”

paralleling the term “abolitionist” in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is used to

degrade and offend whites who favor blacks and reveals the white Southerners’

contempt for and racist attitude toward African Americans. Moreover, the fact that

Atticus’s defense of Tom brings shame on his family name and leads to his

marginalization indicates that the ideology of white supremacy is deeply instilled in

people’s minds. Ironically, even when the ladies of the missionary society of

Maycomb meet and discuss, they seem to have internalized the racial prejudice and

stereotypes against blacks, and more specifically that of the “black rapist”124: “We can

educate ’em till we’re blue in the face, we can try till we drop to make Christians out

124 The stereotype of the “black rapist” had existed in southern code and southern white mythology since the 1880s. For an interesting examination of the stereotype, see Fredrickson (272-82). On the appearance of the stereotype in American literature, see Brown (338-39) and Seymour L. Gross (10). On a current use of the stereotype in Lee’s work, see Chura (2). Koutsimani Ekaterini 113 of ’em, but there’s no lady safe in her bed these nights” (Lee 239). The missionary women’s conviction that their efforts to Christianize African Americans are useless points to their hypocrisy and bigotry. As Claudia Johnson states, “the missionary ladies can safely exclude blacks from the sisterhood of the human race by failing to view them as other than types, establishing with heart and mind a segregation more pernicious than any system maintained by law” (137). Indeed, the missionary society’s system of dual, contradictory codes shows that its members promote rather than resist white racism, thus facilitating the dissemination of racist propaganda against African Americans. Atticus himself is aware of “Maycomb’s usual disease

[…] reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up” and also admits that racial segregation is officially established in his contemporary southern society: “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins” (Lee 94-95, 226).

However, Atticus Finch, being a southern liberal, fervently opposes the white supremacist ideology and promulgates racial liberalism. Therefore, he tries to raise his children, Scout and Jem, in such a way that they will not acquire the racist mentality of their town, but will embrace the values of justice and equality. For instance, while defending Tom Robinson in court, Atticus openly argues for blacks’ equal rights turning his defense into an antiracist sermon: “You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women – black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men” (Lee 211). For Atticus, human dignity for

African Americans is unquestionable; black people should be regarded as individuals, human beings, not as dehumanized types. Furthermore, although Atticus, after having lost Tom’s case, is forced to accept the reality of white racism in the South, he still Koutsimani Ekaterini 114

remains faithful to the liberal, democratic ideals as is shown by his discussion with

Jem: “You’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but […]

whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is,

or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash125” (Lee 227). Atticus’s

words reveal that he does not hesitate to condemn the people of the white race who

exploit black people and deprive them of their rights. Focusing on the quality of

Atticus’s moral character, Joseph Crespino assumes that “Atticus is a modern hero

who, while embodying the most noble aspects of the southern tradition, also

transcended the limits of that tradition and attained a liberal, morally rational racial

viewpoint that was seen as quintessentially American” (20). Atticus’s portrayal as a

man that represents the continuity of American egalitarian values can account for the

fact that he remains a touchstone figure of decency and respect.

With regard to Scout’s stance, she does not uncritically adopt the white racist

views of her southern hometown, but to a large extent she is influenced by the

ideology of white supremacy. This becomes evident after Tom’s trial, when Scout,

contrary to her friend, Dill, remains indifferent to the humiliating way Tom has been

addressed in court by simply claiming: “‘Well, Dill, after all he’s just a Negro’” (Lee

205). By failing to recognize blacks’ humanity and dignity and by not protesting

against racial injustice, Scout unconsciously contributes to the dissemination of racist propaganda for black inferiority. Moreover, trying to minimize Tom’s suffering, she

appears brainwashed by the dominant racial ideology which leads her to social

conformity. On the other hand, Scout herself seems convinced of white superiority

since she considers that innate goodness is primarily a characteristic of the white race:

“It occurred to me that in their own way, Tom Robinson’s manners were as good as

125 Juxtaposing derogatory slang terms for blacks and whites, Artz and Murphy note that “‘poor white trash,’ […] implies living below standards acceptable to average whites” (96). Koutsimani Ekaterini 115

Atticus’s” (Lee 201). What Scout implies is that a black man like Tom Robinson would not normally behave properly in comparison to a white one like Atticus, thus emphasizing a distinction between blacks and whites. This constitutes another instance of racial prejudice against African Americans implicitly conveyed by Scout.

Like Huck Finn, Scout also uses the derogatory term “nigger” to refer to

African-American characters because “‘’s what everybody at school says’” (Lee 81).

Following the example of other children of her own age, Scout cannot escape social conditioning. Due to her innocence and limited knowledge, she fails to realize that words such as “nigger” illustrate the white Southerners’ enduring appeal for racist labels for blacks and reinforce the social hierarchies of race encoded into language.

Thus, language emerges as a source of integration propaganda that cannot be easily perceived by children readers who tend to accept the very expressions that lead to blacks’ stereotyping. Interestingly, Eric J. Sundquist observes that:

It is something of a mystery […] that the book has failed to arouse

the antagonism now often prompted by another great novelistic

depiction of the South […] Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which

arguably uses the word nigger with more conscious irony than does

To Kill a Mockingbird and whose antebellum framework and moral

complexity ought to be a far greater bulwark against revisionist

denunciation. (“Blues for Atticus Finch” 183)

Indeed, To Kill a Mockingbird has not been harshly criticized for its use of the word

“nigger” revealing much about American racial politics in the first half of the twentieth century. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, set in the antebellum

American South but published in the post-Reconstruction period, the word “nigger” was ironically used to expose the continuity of the issue of racism and condemn racial Koutsimani Ekaterini 116

injustice against African Americans. In addition, taking into consideration the book’s

setting and Huck’s social conditioning, the use of the word “nigger” seemed

inevitable. On the other hand, in To Kill a Mockingbird, set in the Depression-era

South but published in the early civil rights era, the word “nigger” was used to create

sympathy for blacks’ predicament in the American South and highlight the

forthcoming achievements of the civil rights movement. More importantly, the use of

the word “nigger” was not supposed to create much reaction against the book since it

was rejected by Atticus who opposed southern racism and celebrated racial liberalism.

In this respect, it was the character of a man like Atticus that actually made the

difference between the two books.

Scout’s belief in white superiority is further confirmed by the discussion she

has with the family’s black cook, Calpurnia, about the two different languages the

latter speaks depending on whether she is with blacks or whites. Seeking an

explanation, Scout asks Calpurnia: “‘Why do you talk nigger-talk to the – to your

folks when you know it’s not right?’” (Lee 131). Unlike most blacks, Calpurnia is

educated and therefore, she can talk like whites. However, she continues to use the

black idiom when being with other African Americans to assert her own identity, as she daringly admits: “‘Well, in the first place I’m black–’” (Lee 131). Scout, though, insists on Calpurnia’s consistent use of the language of whites: “‘But Cal, you know better’” (Lee 132). She cannot understand that the black idiom is an authentic cultural element of Calpurnia’s African-American heritage and considers “nigger-talk” a sign of cultural and intellectual inferiority. By encouraging Calpurnia to cease using the black idiom and talk like whites, Scout implicitly promotes blacks’ assimilation into white American culture. Thus, she appears influenced by the ideology of white supremacy which is incompatible with black autonomy, authority and subjectivity. On Koutsimani Ekaterini 117

the whole, Scout emerges as a conditioned narrator whose point of view reflects the

racist beliefs of her society in the Depression-era South.

Given that To Kill a Mockingbird revolves around the story of Tom

Robinson’s trial, it would be meaningful to focus on the way he is portrayed by Scout

so as to reveal instances of propaganda, racial prejudice or stereotypes against African

Americans. Tom, a twenty-five-year-old black man, married with three children,

cannot actually speak for himself but is represented through the white voice of his

counsel, Atticus Finch. According to Sundquist, “because it filters Tom’s story

through the legal representation of Atticus Finch and the storytelling representation of

Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird denies Tom even this much of a voice in his story

and therefore precludes a full portrait of the African-American struggle for justice”

(“Blues for Atticus Finch” 201). In fact, Tom is stereotypically presented as

pathetically innocent and naive, a helpless victim of Mayella Ewell’s loneliness and

abuse and incapable of asserting his masculinity and his right to dignity as a black

man. Tom’s muted black voice resulting from the legal and social silence imposed

upon African Americans at his time makes him a contemporary version of Uncle

Tom. Unlike Twain’s Jim, Tom Robinson remains submissive and humble and never

tries to object to his treatment as a “boy.” He is the personification of the widespread

fear among African Americans accused and persecuted in the Jim Crow South in the

1930s that they would be punished for crimes they had not committed.126 In this

respect, Tom’s reply to the prosecutor during his trial is characteristic: “[I’s] scared

I’d hafta face up to what I didn’t do” (Lee 204). Tom’s declaration of his fear is

considered an act of impudence but it is not really a conscious effort to publicly

challenge the judicial system of whites since he immediately apologizes to the

126 As John Dollard notes, “every Negro in the South knows that he is under a kind of sentence of death; he does not know when his turn will come, it may never come, but it may also be at any time” (qtd. in Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” 193). Koutsimani Ekaterini 118

prosecutor for being outspoken. In addition, when Tom confesses to Atticus that he

has left Mayella’s house running because he was scared, Atticus asks for an

explanation and Tom emphatically adds: “‘Mr. Finch, if you was a nigger like me,

you’d be scared, too’” (Lee 201). Tom is depicted as a weak and helpless black man

who, though harmless, is subject to white racism and therefore, doomed to death just

like mockingbirds, those innocent songbirds that do nothing but “make music for us to

enjoy […] sing their hearts out for us” only to be senselessly slaughtered by hunters

(Lee 96). It is also significant that while exposing the harsh reality of black

defendants’ life, Tom uses the word “nigger” to refer to himself. Being an African

American who uses a derogatory term for blacks, Tom not only implicitly acquiesces

to black inferiority but also legitimizes white Americans’ racist attitude toward

African Americans. Consequently, the fact that Tom seems to have internalized the

racial prejudice of his white southern contemporaries may function as a form of racist

propaganda against African Americans.

However, Tom’s appearance and compliant behavior do not seem to apply to

the stereotype of the “black rapist.” On the contrary, Tom is a hard-working, crippled, working-class black whose innocence may strike as rather unquestionable. Scout herself, listening to Tom’s testimony in the courtroom, tends to believe that he must be telling the truth: “He seemed to be a respectable Negro, and a respectable Negro would never go up into somebody’s yard of his own volition” (Lee 198). Apparently,

Scout sympathizes with Tom but she cannot avoid the racial bias of her white southern community since she calls him a “respectable Negro” instead of a respectable man. Therefore, it could be argued that Scout does not generally expect blacks to behave properly or demonstrate any kind of virtue and considers Tom an exception. In any case, Tom’s portrayal as a silenced, innocent and passive African Koutsimani Ekaterini 119

American not only promotes white superiority but also draws attention to African

Americans’ inability to resist or fight against racial discrimination resulting from

racial prejudice and conventional white southern fears of black sexuality.

Another black character whose presence is dominant in the novel is Calpurnia,

the Finch family housekeeper, babysitter and surrogate mother figure. Joseph

Crespino notes that “in Calpurnia, Lee recognizes the role African Americans played

in exposing white racism; through her Lee acknowledges the working-class African

American civil rights protestors in the South who revealed the ugly face of Jim Crow

to liberal America” (18). Indeed, Calpurnia is devoted to instilling egalitarian values

in Scout’s and Jem’s minds and allows space for communication and mutual

understanding between blacks and whites. However, Calpurnia does not directly

challenge white southern racism. Instead, the novel utilizes symbols to suggest that

Calpurnia’s and, by extension, African Americans’ role is limited to that of warning

the white southern liberal, that is Atticus, of the imminent danger of racism. This

becomes evident when Calpurnia calls Atticus to stop a mad dog from approaching

the house. Atticus possesses the skill and courage to shoot the dog while Calpurnia

watches on the porch with the children. The mad dog that Atticus shoots and kills

represents the mad dog of southern racism.127 It is significant that only Atticus, being

a southern liberal, appears capable of dealing with white racism and protecting his

children, whereas Calpurnia is just a spectator. According to Crespino, “Lee […]

imagined a form of racial change that would occur through the leadership of people

like Atticus Finch – in other words, through elite southern white liberals” (15). In this

respect, for Lee, African Americans were not assigned an active role in the abolition

of racial segregation.

127 On the novel’s use of various symbols including the mad dog, see Jones (416-17) and Crespino (17- 18). Koutsimani Ekaterini 120

What is also worth mentioning is the brief exchange between Calpurnia and

another black character, Lula, a member of Calpurnia’s church, who rejects

Calpurnia’s initiative to bring Scout and Jem to worship at the black church. Lula

angrily remarks: “‘You ain’t got no business bringin’ white children here – they got

their church, we got our’n. It is our church, ain’t it, Miss Cal?’” (Lee 125). Calpurnia,

though, replies: “‘It’s the same God, ain’t it?’” (Lee 125). Then, Lula disappears from

the scene and the rest of the church welcomes the children. Through this episode, Lee

aims at showing the proper African-American response to the white presence. Lula

disapproves of the white children’s entrance to the black world and the respect with

which they are treated by blacks. As Crespino argues, “Lula’s position in relation to

Calpurnia reproduces Black Power’s position toward African American liberals during the civil rights era. Lee removes all doubt as to which model white America prefers;” (23). In the 1960s, the Black Power movement questioned liberal assumptions of racial change that could advance African-American interests.128 Black

Power leaders criticized African-American liberals who believed that assimilation

into middle-class America could provide equality for the black community.

Interestingly, it is Lula, who opposes the white presence, that is obliged to leave

whereas Calpurnia, who willingly accepts the company of whites, finally enters the

church. In this way, Lee makes it clear that people like Lula, who totally reject any

form of relationship between blacks and whites, are not expected to survive in white

American society and be equally protected by the white law.

In general, the rest of the black characters in the novel are peripheral and depicted as subordinate to and dependent on whites. Most of them are working-class

128 Black Power was a nationalist, revolutionary ideology which held that “racism could not be eradicated from white hearts and minds, that blacks needed unity and self-pride rather than integration, and that self-defense was a proper response” (Blumberg 10). On the rise of the Black Power movement toward the middle of the 1960s, see Blumberg (9-10). On the Black Power advocates’ devastating attack on American racial liberalism throughout the 1960s, see Crespino (20-23). Koutsimani Ekaterini 121

blacks whose harsh working conditions reveal African Americans’ predicament in the

Depression-era South. As Scout points out, “it was customary for field Negroes with

tiny children to deposit them in whatever shade there was while their parents worked–

usually the babies sat in the shade between two rows of cotton. Those unable to sit

were strapped papoose-style on their mothers’ backs, or resided in extra cotton bags”

(Lee 129). Apart from African Americans’ exploitation by whites and their inferior

social status, Scout also observes that blacks are forced to adopt a servile attitude

toward whites. For instance, on the day of Tom Robinson’s trial at the Maycomb

County courthouse, “the Negroes, having waited for the white people to go upstairs,

began to come in” (Lee 169). Furthermore, when Scout, Jem and Dill reach the

courtroom and have nowhere to sit, Scout adds that “four Negroes rose and gave us

their front-row seats” (Lee 170). This presentation of black characters reinforces the

white supremacist ideology since blacks willingly serve whites at their own expense

as if they have been convinced of their inferiority. Although the blacks’ attitude is

partly justified by the context in which they live, they do not seem determined to

assert their rights and try to change their social status. On the whole, the fact that

black characters are stereotypically portrayed by Scout, the narrator-focalizer, as

voiceless and incapable of resisting or dealing with white racism as well as the fact

that only blacks who favor integration into white American society are respected

influence the readers’ way of thinking, contributing to the perpetuation of racial

prejudice against African Americans.

The Impact of Tom Robinson’s Case on Scout

Being young and inexperienced, Scout is not actually conscious of the true nature of black-white relations in the southern town where she lives. Scout’s father, Koutsimani Ekaterini 122

Atticus, knowing that his decision to defend Tom will lead to social turmoil, tries to

make her understand the real motive of his act: “This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is

something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience – Scout, I couldn’t go to

church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man” (Lee 111). Driven by his

social sensitivity and moral principles, Atticus hopes that Scout will share his

antiracist feelings but the latter expresses her doubts about her father’s defense of

Tom: “‘Atticus, you must be wrong […] most folks seem to think they’re right and

you’re wrong…’” (Lee 111). Scout’s words reveal the extent to which she has been

influenced by the racist views of her white southern society, permeated by the

ideology of white supremacy, as well as the whites’ hostility toward Atticus.

In one of the novel’s most famous scenes, Scout follows Atticus to the

Maycomb jail where Tom Robinson is kept in a cell waiting for his trial. Outside

Tom’s cell, Scout faces a confrontation between Atticus and a lynch mob ready to lynch Tom Robinson. She witnesses the scene being totally confused and dares to interfere only when she thinks something important is about to happen. Despite the fact that Atticus tries to make her go home, Scout starts asking naive questions to the mob such as “‘how’s your entailment gettin’ along?’,” “‘you brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?’,” “‘tell him [your boy] hey for me, won’t you?’” and the men that consist it finally decide to leave (Lee 159). The meaning of the scene is summarized in Atticus’s words: “‘So it took an eight-year-old child to bring ’em to their senses, didn’t it?’ […] That proves something – that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children” (Lee 163). What Lee wants to emphasize is that the liberals’ struggle to end racial segregation was most effective when it was backed by the moral weight of Koutsimani Ekaterini 123

a child’s voice.129 Thus, children themselves could be trusted to awaken the white

Southerners’ consciousness and contribute to the creation of a more just world. In

Scout’s case, though, it should be noted that she is unaware of the fact that the people

she addresses aim at lynching Tom and she does not consciously act out of sympathy

for the black prisoner. Consequently, it cannot be argued that Scout has internalized

Atticus’s liberal ideals and rejected the white racism of her southern society but the

whole incident shows how a child perceives things from a completely different

perspective until it is fully conditioned.

Scout does not have the opportunity to meet Tom Robinson until she goes to

the courtroom to watch his trial. Being exposed to both Tom’s and Mayella’s version of the story, she attempts to make her own judgments and ends up believing in Tom’s

innocence. On the surface, Scout seems unaffected by the white southern racism since

she is not biased against the black defendant. However, although Scout sympathizes

with Tom and hopes that he will not be convicted, she is neither frustrated by nor

concerned about Tom’s abuse by the prosecutor. On the contrary, she justifies the

prosecutor’s stance given that Tom is a “Negro” and should be treated accordingly.

This implies that Scout, being used to racial discrimination against blacks, cannot

discern racial injustice. As Tom Robinson’s trial proceeds, though, Scout realizes that

there is a discrepancy between the perverse hidden codes of the community of

Maycomb and the democratic ideals embedded in its legal system. In fact, the official

legal code of the United States based on the principle of equality is not the code men and women live by since the forces that motivate people in Maycomb are unwritten

social codes which are largely based on physical difference (gender, race, and age) as

well as class. The dark underside of the community is uncovered in the conviction of

129 On the importance of the children’s contribution to the liberals’ struggle to end racial segregation since the former’s moral impulse can make adults realize that it is the children of segregation who ultimately have the most at risk, see Crespino (20) and Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” (189). Koutsimani Ekaterini 124

Tom, and Scout, who perceives for the first rime the complexity of race relations in the segregated South, informs the reader that Tom’s fate is predetermined: “Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men’s hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella

Ewell opened her mouth and screamed” (Lee 247). Consequently, Tom’s case makes

Scout contemplate on the blacks’ position in the South and the white racism they had to confront, the lack of justice as well as the social hypocrisy of whites. More specifically, when Scout’s teacher, Miss Gates, who tries to instill the democratic ideal in children’s minds, reveals her own racial prejudice against blacks after Tom’s trial, Scout feels so worried and confused that she wonders: “How can you hate Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home–” (Lee 253).

Nevertheless, Scout does not openly condemn the southern system of justice nor does she challenge the racist community norms that prevailed in her typical southern society, a fact which shows that the young girl is also silenced.

Apart from Scout, the white child narrator, the two basic white children characters of the novel are Scout’s brother, Jem, and the two siblings’ friend, Dill

Harris. In this respect, it would be interesting to compare Scout’s viewpoint with that of Jem’s and Dill’s given that the novel’s first-person narration reflects Scout’s perspective and thus, she may control what is narrated to the readers. Scout’s relationship with Jem, who is four years older than her, is an antagonistic one since she continuously tries to convince him that she is not acting like a girl. Jem wants to become a lawyer like his father, whom he admires, and is interested in Tom’s case.

Unlike Scout, who always asks questions and fails to account for the racial injustice she has begun to observe, Jem is able to follow with acumen and critical thought the proceedings of Tom’s trial. Koutsimani Ekaterini 125

Being a racially-sensitive adolescent, Jem is shocked by the difference

between Maycomb’s established law and the unwritten laws that lie beneath the

surface. Claudia Johnson explains that “Jem, in particular, is traumatized because the

law in theory had been sacred to him, but in practice it is mendacious, uncovering a

powerful, concealed code at work in complete contradiction to written law” (135).

Jem, who also watches Tom’s trial in the courtroom, is certain that his father will win

the case and Tom will gain his freedom. To Jem’s surprise, the jury returns a

unanimous guilty verdict and Tom is sentenced to death. Jem bursts into angry tears

and complains that “he [Tom] wasn’t guilty in the first place and they said he was.

[…] ‘You just can’t convict a man on evidence like that – you can’t’” (Lee 226).

Atticus proudly acknowledges: “If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other

boys like you, Tom would be a free man […]. So far nothing in your life has

interfered with your reasoning process” (Lee 226). Despite living in a southern

society dominated by white racism against African Americans, Jem has not

internalized the white supremacist ideology. On the contrary, not only does he resist brainwashing but also expresses his disapproval of the hypocrisy of the people of

Maycomb. Jem’s sentiments can be attributed to the fact that he is more mature than

Scout and therefore capable of detecting injustice and he also sees his father as his

role model and embraces his views.

On the other hand, Dill, an eight-year-old boy from a broken family, spends

his summer holidays in Maycomb and, being closely related to the Finch children,

learns about Tom’s case. While sitting with Scout and Jem and watching Tom’s trial in the courtroom, Dill starts crying and Jem makes Scout take him out. Dill confesses to Scout that he could not stand the way the prosecutor acted when he cross-examined

Tom: “The way that man called him [Tom] ‘boy’ all the time and sneered at him, an’ Koutsimani Ekaterini 126 looked around at the jury every time he answered […]. It ain’t right, somehow it ain’t right to do ’em that way. Hasn’t anybody got any business talkin’ like that – it just makes me sick” (Lee 205). Surprisingly, although Dill is not exposed to the ideology of racial liberalism like Scout, he is the one who strongly opposes racial discrimination and supports blacks’ equal rights. However, his objection to injustice is a matter of instinct and innocence rather than of critical thought and introspection.

The fact that a young, innocent boy like Dill condemns the white racist practices and attitudes toward blacks is important since it shows that children themselves are able to embrace difference and make judgments based not on custom and prejudice but on character and truth. Therefore, contrary to the character of Tom Sawyer in The

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the white children characters in Lee’s novel, Jem and Dill, do not contribute to the dissemination of integration propaganda against

African Americans. It is also worth noting that although Scout’s limited point of view

–which at times is manifestly racist– does not exactly coincide with Jem’s and Dill’s,

Scout, the narrator-focalizer, allows readers to become acquainted with opposing viewpoints rather than exclusively drawing attention to her own. In this respect,

Scout’s first-person narration, focusing on Jem’s and Dill’s antiracist attitude toward blacks, partly questions the prevailing white supremacist ideology, thus potentially affecting the children readers’ perceptions.

Scout Finch has grown up and lives in a typical white southern town,

Maycomb, in Alabama during the early Depression. Taking into consideration that the vast majority of the people of Maycomb believe in white superiority, Scout is continuously exposed to racist practices against blacks and likely to acquire a racist mentality similar to that of her contemporaries. Given that Scout’s social conditioning seems inevitable, it is tempting to concentrate on her social environment to detect Koutsimani Ekaterini 127 instances of racist propaganda against black characters and examine the extent to which white southern attitudes affect Scout’s own perspective. Atticus’s voice, full of anxiety, “I just hope that Jem and Scout come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town” attests to the pervasiveness of white racism in the community of

Maycomb (Lee 95).

Scout is forced to confront the society’s contempt for her father who decided to defend Tom in the Maycomb County courthouse. An old, morphine-addicted

Southern lady, Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, who lives near the Finch family alone except for a black girl in constant attendance, does not hesitate to insult Atticus when she sees Scout and Jem crossing the street: “‘Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for!’” (Lee 108). Mrs. Dubose’s words are indicative of blacks’ marginal social status and implicitly convey the idea that any white Southerner who tried to help African Americans was also turned into an outcast. Furthermore, the conversation about Atticus among old men, members of the so-called “Idler’s Club” and therefore of a lower social status, that Scout overhears outside the courtroom reveals the reason for public hostility toward her father: “‘Lemme tell you somethin’ now, Billy,’ a third said, ‘you know the court appointed him to defend this nigger.’

‘Yeah, but Atticus aims to defend him. That’s what I don’t like about it’” (Lee 169).

Atticus’s contemporaries do not wish to accept blacks’ equality before the law and blame Atticus for his genuine effort to save Tom Robinson from being convicted.

Even though Tom is finally convicted and later killed attempting to escape the jailers, the society of Maycomb attributes his death to inherent black inferiority, thus promulgating racial stereotypes against African Americans. As Scout claims, “to

Maycomb, Tom’s death was Typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger’s mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first Koutsimani Ekaterini 128 chance he saw” (Lee 246). The white indifference and cynical attitude toward African

Americans like Tom in the Depression-era South shows that the white supremacist ideology was deeply instilled in people’s minds.

Atticus’s most prominent enemy is Mayella’s father, Bob Ewell, a man of low socioeconomic status who has beaten and forced her to accuse Tom Robinson of rape.

Placing the responsibility for Mayella’s abuse on a black man, Bob Ewell emerges as a racist figure whose intense racial hatred for African Americans is reflected in his testimony in the courtroom: “I knowed who it was, all right, lived down yonder in that nigger-nest, passed the house every day. Jedge, I’ve asked this county for fifteen years to clean out that nest down yonder, they’re dangerous to live around ’sides devaluin’ my property–” (Lee 181). Significantly, Bob Ewell, who harshly criticizes blacks, occupies a marginal position in the society of Maycomb since he belongs to the class of poor, uneducated rural whites, the so-called “white trash.” In this sense, Theodore

R. Hovet and Grace-Ann Hovet suggest that “Ewell’s false accusation that Tom raped his daughter must be read as more complex than a simple act of racism. Ewell is also attempting to break out of the social isolation that has been imposed upon him and his clan by mainstream society in Maycomb” (74). Therefore, Bob Ewell accuses Tom not only because he despises blacks but also because he hopes to raise his status in the town. In fact, in the first half of the twentieth century, the social-class issue and the race issue were interrelated and cases of black-on-white sexual assault also involved underlying class tensions. Elite white men, whose class interests were not aligned with those of the “white trash,” were sceptical of the accusations of white women like

Mayella Ewell, the daughter of poor, “white trash,” against blacks, believing that they grew out of the poor whites’ hostility toward blacks rather than out of attempted rape.

In particular, the poisoned relations between poor whites and blacks were due to the Koutsimani Ekaterini 129 former’s conviction that the latter’s intrusion into the American economic landscape accounted for their marginalization and poverty.130 Consequently, African Americans in the community of Maycomb had to deal with white racism as well as with class interests, both of which were factors that contributed to racial segregation and blacks’ oppression.

Apart from low-class whites, one of the most respectable members of the society of Maycomb, Scout’s teacher, Miss Gates, seems to have internalized the ideology of white supremacy. Although in class she has tried to instill the ideal of democracy in her students, outside the courthouse, after Tom Robinson’s conviction,

Scout hears her say, “it’s time somebody taught ’em a lesson, they were gettin’ way above themselves, an’ the next thing they think they can do is marry us” (Lee 253).

The fact that even the teacher speaks contemptuously of blacks and objects to interracial marriages arguing for black inferiority confuses Scout and highlights social hypocrisy. Moreover, it reflects a typical white concern over black social progress, which, people of a higher social status, like Miss Gates, also share. The only person who has violated the southern code by preferring the company of blacks to whites is

Mr. Dolphus Raymond who has been married to a colored woman and has got mixed children. Rejected by the community because he has chosen to live in this way, Mr.

Raymond adopts a friendly attitude toward African Americans as opposed to “the simple hell people give other people –without even thinking […] the hell white people give coloured folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people, too” (Lee

207). He sincerely condemns the white racist practices against blacks and is one of the

130 For a close examination of 288 cases of black-on-white rape between 1900 and 1960 in Virginia which reveals the interactions among race, class and gender as embodied in the southern legal system, see Lisa Lindquist Dorr (714-48). Koutsimani Ekaterini 130

few supporters of Tom Robinson in his trial.131 However, like Huck, Scout is mostly

exposed to the white adults’ propaganda and racial prejudice against African

Americans which affect her system of beliefs to the point of questioning her father’s

compassion for Tom and other blacks. On the whole, the white attitudes toward

blacks in Scout’s society attest to the sociopolitical exclusion of African Americans in the Depression-era South and account for the white narrator’s initiation into racism.

Scout Finch, the Narrator vs Harper Lee, the Author

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is marked by Scout’s immediate- engaging-first-person narration, a narrative strategy consciously chosen by the author in an attempt to address the issue of racial injustice. Given that Scout’s racial viewpoint permeates the whole narrative and that readers tend to internalize the perceptions of the focalizer, one tends to expect their identification with Scout, the child narrator-focalizer. Lee’s decision to use a female, white child narrator raises questions about the extent to which Lee herself identifies with Scout. In this respect, it is worth examining whether Scout serves as a convenient mouthpiece for Lee’s own point of view which might constitute an indirect form of racist propaganda against

African Americans.132 With this in mind, it could be argued that the author resorts to first-person narration to mask the ideology being expressed.

131 Actually, it was Link Deas, Tom’s white employer, that leaped up from the spectators’ seats in the courtroom to attest to Tom’s respectability. Dorr suggests that “the support of white employers of black men accused of assault could be so powerful that, had Tom Robinson’s case been real, Atticus Finch’s failure to call his employer to testify would have been a serious, possibly fatal, oversight” (743). For more information on white patronage and its impact on African-American men who called upon it, see Dorr (743-48). 132 Harper Lee refuses to comment on her novel and maintains an absolute silence about both her life as a writer and her relationship to To Kill a Mockingbird. According to Jones, she has described her novel as “a simple love story –of Atticus Finch and justice” (415). With regard to Lee’s stance on the issue of race, in 1946, she wrote in a one-act play aimed at satirizing a racist politician who dominated southern political rhetoric in the age of massive resistance: “Our very lives are being threatened by the hordes of evildoers full of sin […] SIN, my friends […] who want to tear down all barriers of any kind between ourselves and our colored friends” (qtd. in Crespino 13-14). Koutsimani Ekaterini 131

It is significant that the focus of Lee’s novel is the sociopolitical condition of blacks in the Depression-era South while she wrote at a time when racial liberalism played a part in ending the system of Jim Crow discrimination that had developed in the aftermath of emancipation. Being a liberal herself, Lee was committed to the liberal vision of meaningful racial change for African Americans who were still subject to segregation in mid-twentieth-century America. According to Crespino,

“Lee’s characters and choice of narrative strategies in To Kill a Mockingbird reflect the moral tensions that all liberals faced in the Jim Crow South” (14). Indeed, through

Scout’s narration, Lee draws attention to Atticus’s moral struggle for blacks’ equal rights in the racist southern society. However, although she believes in southern liberals’ competence in dealing with racism, Lee presents the liberal ideology through the eyes of an innocent child narrator who questions her father’s liberal racial politics because she is confused. Taking into consideration the novel’s allegorical temporal displacement, “Atticus and Scout Finch may be less characters in a novel than the embodiment of the nation’s profound, continuing, and frequently self-deluding need for racial salvation” (Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” 205). The fact that Scout faces the risk of being socially conditioned to believe in white superiority while

Atticus defies social criticism to defend a black man is aimed at awakening readers to the moral imperative for racial change. Thus, Lee longs for a massive resistance to southern racism implicitly asking the reader to take a questioning, constructive approach and recognize the political, cultural and personal force of Scout’s narrative.

On the other hand, taking into consideration that Scout appears to be a conditioned child narrator, one might wonder why Lee, an adherent of liberalism, did not opt for a liberal first-person perspective. Given that the authorial voice is not conventionally equated with that of the narrator-character or the focalizer, Lee’s racial Koutsimani Ekaterini 132 viewpoint does not necessarily coincide with Scout’s. On the contrary, it seems that

Lee constructed the character-narrator for her own specific reason: to challenge white southern racism. Actually, Lee does not wish to promote Scout’s racist views but to highlight that the consequences of racism were to be felt especially by a younger generation. Like Scout, the younger generation stands confused but is the only hope for a future world of racial justice. Crespino observes that “in To Kill a Mockingbird

Lee’s decision to report Atticus’s heroics through the perspective of his nine-year-old daughter is crucial in reinforcing the moral impulse that it is children who ultimately have the most at risk in the nation’s struggle to end racial segregation” (20). In this respect, Lee relies on the fist-person perspective of a child narrator, who conveys the racial ideology of the time, in order to expose the children’s vulnerability, loss of innocence and continuous brainwashing stemming from their regular witnessing of southern injustice. As in Scout’s case, young children are the product of their environment since they lack the critical ability to make their own judgments. The people who create their environment are held responsible for their views and confusion. Hence, taking into account Lee’s adherence to liberalism, Scout’s fist- person narration reflects Lee’s interest in the children’s predicament during southern segregation rather than her identification with Scout. In Crespino’s words, for Lee, the end of southern segregation was “a project […] to be carried out by good liberals like

Atticus, but even then it was most effective because it was backed by the moral weight of a [child narrator’s] […] voice” (20).

In addition, Lee’s use of an ignorant white child narrator instead of a liberal adult one clearly and directly promoting the liberal ideology could possibly prevent her book from being either rejected or censored by her white southern contemporaries. In particular, at the time of the book’s publication, racial liberalism Koutsimani Ekaterini 133 was not widespread among white Southerners who despised southern liberals for betraying their region and its way of life. Besides, behind the veneer of Scout Finch’s first-person naiveté, Lee could more easily tackle the issue of southern injustice without directly offending white readers since a white child narrator’s racist views cannot be generally attributed to all whites. Moreover, Scout might be chosen as a narrator since the child narrator smoothes over the contradictions and ambivalences of the political/racial ideology of the time. On the whole, it seems that Lee does not completely identify with Scout. Being concerned with southern racism, she resorted to

Scout’s first-person narration in an attempt to arouse the readers’ sympathy for

African Americans so that they question the white supremacist ideology and take action against racial segregation.

The Impact of To Kill a Mockingbird on Children Readers

Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is mainly addressed to young American readers.

Given the fact that it is permeated by two opposing racial ideologies, racial liberalism and the ideology of white supremacy, which are presented through the eyes of a white child narrator, it is worth examining its effect on both black and white children readers as well as the extent to which the use of a child narrator may affect their national consciousness through the promulgation of certain beliefs and values. What is of particular interest is the book’s impact on contemporary American children readers’ identity formation.

As already mentioned, the political principles of equality, democracy and individual rights constitute the essence of a distinct American national identity. In twentieth-century America, these values were promoted by the political ideology of liberal individualism which had its roots in nineteenth-century America marked by the Koutsimani Ekaterini 134

new standards of industrial morality. However, during the first half of the twentieth

century, American racial politics toward African Americans did not actually differ

from those in the late nineteenth century despite the awakening of southern liberalism.

Thus, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird also projects

an image of the American nation which is in stark contrast to its ideological

definition. In fact, racial liberalism sanctioned whiteness since it promoted that racial

reform in America could occur only through individual moral reform and not through

social or structural change that might challenge the political status quo of white racial

privilege.133 Consequently, twenty-first-century American children readers of the

book need to follow an adult’s interpretation to notice the discrepancy between the

rhetoric of American democratic liberalism and the presence of legalized racial

discrimination in mid-twentieth-century American South.

Contemporary white American children readers’ responses to To Kill a

Mockingbird are not the same as those of their African-American counterparts. This is

more clearly shown by some statistical information about the popularity and the

reception of the book in twenty-first-century American society. According to Andrew

Grabois, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird would be included in the current slate of

bestselling classics from Barnes & Noble but its omission “[was] due to

misclassification [as ‘Crimes-Fiction’]” (2). According to the American Booksellers

Association, in 2007, it was selected by booksellers and librarians from across the

country, who chose from among titles appearing on the Book Sense Picks lists or on

Barnes & Noble bestseller lists, or those earning a starred review in Publishers

Weekly as the best audio book read by Sissy Spacek (Caedmon Audio/

HarperCollins). In 2004, Online Computer Library center (OCLC) Research

133 For a short critique of racial liberalism based on the fact that the consciousness of race as a basis of personal identity seems difficult to eliminate and race issues should not be conceptualized within an individual, moralistic framework, see Crespino (26) and Fredrickson (331-32). Koutsimani Ekaterini 135

published a list of the top 1000 titles owned by member libraries and Lee’s To Kill a

Mockingbird was the highest ranking work by a living female author, at number 149.

Furthermore, in the early 1990s, the Center for the Learning and Teaching of

Literature completed a national study of the book-length works taught in high school

English programs and among the ten titles most frequently taught in public, Catholic

and independent schools for Grades 9-12 was To Kill a Mockingbird. On the other

hand, according to the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual

Freedom (OIF), To Kill a Mockingbird was on the list of the 100 most frequently

challenged books of 1999-2000 at number 41 and on the Radcliffe Publishing Course

list of the top 100 novels of the twentieth century which have been the target of ban

attempts at number 4. According to the 2004 Banned Books Resource Guide of the

American Library Association, the efforts to challenge or ban To Kill a Mockingbird

in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries were mostly made by black

students and parents about profanity and racial slurs in the text.134

Under these circumstances, white American children readers are more likely

to identify with Scout given that she is a white child narrator. Scout herself, being

exposed to both the white supremacist ideology and racial liberalism, does not

actually choose between the two, but seems to have internalized the racial prejudice of

her white southern community which functions as a form of racist propaganda against

African Americans. Taking into consideration that the first-person narrator and

focalizer of the book cannot help acquiring a racist point of view, young white

American readers are expected to share her belief in white superiority, thus formulating a national consciousness of white pride unless they are instructed to question and criticize Scout’s attitude and beliefs. However, although Scout’s

134 For further information on the banned and/or challenged books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the twentieth century and the reasons for challenges, see American Library Association. Koutsimani Ekaterini 136 perception of blacks seems to change toward the end of the novel, the white supremacist ideology remains unchallenged by racial liberalism throughout the whole narrative. In this respect, Scout’s ambivalent racial attitude serves as an example for white American children readers who tend to form a racially rather than ideologically defined American national identity. Despite the argument that young white Americans are allowed “to face racism through a tale that deflects the problem to the South […]

[and] its action belongs to a bygone era,” the novel’s conclusion which points to the persistence of racism remains relevant nowadays since racial inequality still exists in twenty-first-century multicultural American society (Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus

Finch” 187). Thus, to avoid becoming racially insensitive, children readers need to adopt a critical position toward Scout’s viewpoint given the novel’s “enduring appeal to deep wells of white American innocence” (Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch”

184). The fact that Scout’s narration allows inexperienced white American children readers to see race as the basic defining component of American identity also attests to Scout’s contribution to the dissemination of racist propaganda against blacks.

On the other hand, white American children readers might also have a different reading of Scout’s first-person narrative. Given that the novel’s frame is distant-engaging-first-person narration, Scout’s story employs a literary device familiar to readers, the so-called “coming of age” formula.135 Hovet and Hovet argue that:

The coming of age formula leads readers to expect that […] Scout

will respond to negative experiences and threatening events by

developing an individualistic moral center that can triumph over

135 The “coming of age” formula makes readers overlook the variety of contending voices in the novel and anticipate a positive narrative closure. On Lee’s skillful use of formulas and techniques common in American literature, such as the “coming of age” formula, as well as their function, see Hovet and Hovet (68). Koutsimani Ekaterini 137

them. This developmental paradigm, […] encourages readers to

equate Scout’s psychological and intellectual growth with progress

in the South as a whole and to overlook the reality that the social

structure in Maycomb remains unchanged at the end of the novel.

(68)

In To Kill a Mockingbird, the “coming of age” formula refers only to Scout’s

physical and psychological maturation since the social structure of Maycomb is very

resistant and its people are unwilling to abandon their racial bias. For those readers

who apply the formula to the text, Scout gradually adopts a moral, racially-sensitive

viewpoint instead of tolerating racial injustice, and her internal change also reflects the younger generation’s need for a radical change in southern way of life and mentality. Thus, Scout’s gradual awakening to racist practices against blacks accounts for the fact that To Kill a Mockingbird can be viewed as a work that questions white

racism rather than promoting racist propaganda against African Americans.

Contrary to Huck Finn, Scout Finch is a middle-class, educated white

American girl, who belongs to a family that occupies a higher position in the social

hierarchy of Maycomb. Lee’s use of a middle-class narrative voice raises questions about its effect on contemporary middle- and upper-class white American children readers. According to Hovet and Hovet, the middle-class, conversational voice

“establishes an intimacy with the reader, regardless of his or her cultural background, and an ethos of moral authority that initially overrides internal contradictions in her narrative and softens other voices in the story that challenge her interpretation of events” (68). From the very beginning of the novel, young middle- or upper-class white American readers can more easily identify with Scout since she is also a member of the middle class. In the course of the story, although Scout reveals her Koutsimani Ekaterini 138

own racial bias against blacks, she seems to end up assuming that poor whites –the

“white trash” represented by the Ewell clan– are primarily responsible for the unjust,

racist treatment of African Americans. This “white trash scenario” is appealing to

middle- and upper-class whites who are not blamed for their bigotry but emerge as

capable of dealing with racial injustice.136 On the other hand, working-class white

American children readers are likely to feel closer to poor whites such as the Ewells.

In the course of the novel, “when the system protects the Ewells […] [who are made to believe by the rich and powerful whites that their white skin affords them privilege], they continue to feel superior to blacks, and the blacks hate them even more because once again whites have benefited at the expense of blacks” (Wilson, Jr.

30). Therefore, Scout’s point of view is rather willingly adopted by middle- and upper-class white American children readers who tend to believe that low-class whites are responsible for blacks’ predicament in the Depression-era South. Despite the fact that in America of the twenty-first century blacks no longer experience official segregation, these readers are likely to attribute any sort of hostility toward blacks to low-class whites and the latter are expected to compete with blacks since, according to William Julius Wilson, in contemporary American society, the growing class segregation and the persisting racial and ethnic discrimination are interrelated:

“Race relations in America have undergone fundamental changes in recent years, so much so that now the life chances of individual blacks have more to do with their economic class position than with their day-to-day encounters with whites” (qtd. in

Small 270).

136 According to Hovet and Hovet, “the narrator’s strategy of placing responsibility for American intolerance and injustice on the vanishing rural poor […] was so successful that it has become a cliché in popular culture, evident not only in To Kill a Mockingbird but also in films like Easy Rider, [ released in 1969], and in prime time television programs such as Heat of the Night, [run from 1988 to 1994], and I’ll Fly Away, [run from 1991 to 1993]” (70). On the “white trash scenario” and its impact on poor rural whites, see Hovet and Hovet (70-71). Koutsimani Ekaterini 139

Emphasis should be placed on the response of contemporary young African-

American readers and especially middle-class ones to To Kill a Mockingbird. What

mostly annoys middle-class black American children is that “locked into the paired

narrative capacities of Atticus and Scout, Tom Robinson, and the social and historical

African-American world for which he stands, are left without a true voice in their own

representation” (Sundquist, “Blues for Atticus Finch” 206). In this respect, Scout, the

first-person narrator, is left to promulgate racial stereotypes and convey a certain

image of blacks as compliant, weak and dependent on whites which constitutes a form

of racist propaganda against African Americans. Under these circumstances, African-

American children readers cannot identify with Scout, who, to a large extent,

embodies the white supremacist ideology, but she does affect their identity formation.

More specifically, African-American children readers are faced with a problematic

self-definition given that their racial identity as blacks questions their national identity

as Americans. They are supposed to internalize the idea that the crucial component of

American identity is not the commitment to the democratic, egalitarian principles but,

instead, one’s whiteness. Consequently, they are deprived of developing a national

consciousness of equality and unity for all Americans and tend to consider themselves

inferior and secondary citizens in American society. To conclude, Scout’s narrative

makes black American children feel nervous and uncomfortable given that African

Americans are not presented as active and self-assertive members of American

society but rather as victims of whites’ exploitation and treachery.

Like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird is also a

classic white American children’s book which is still studied in American schools and

colleges nowadays. For Carolyn M. Jones, the novel is timeless since “the South and

the nation are the same, in many ways, in 1936, 1960 and now: children still face rites Koutsimani Ekaterini 140 of passage, lose their innocence, and decide what kinds of adults they will become.

Racism still exists, and good people still fight it” (417). Given that racial discrimination against blacks still exists in America, the issue of racism in white

American children’s literature triggers contemporary young American readers’ curiosity. In this respect, it could be also argued that both The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird are still taught as examples to be avoided in a society that has not learned anything from its past. However, in the case of white children’s first-person narratives racial ideologies can be easily instilled in the minds of American children readers, thus formulating their national consciousness. Therefore, taking into consideration that it shapes white American children’s beliefs and attitudes toward African Americans, white American children’s fiction can be regarded as an effective medium for racist propaganda against blacks.

Koutsimani Ekaterini 141

Epilogue

Written in different sociopolitical contexts, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are equally effective in

depicting the problematic nature of the relationship between blacks and whites in the

United States. Despite the fact that the former focuses on the antebellum period whereas the latter on the Depression era, the racist treatment of African Americans in

American society has remained unchanged. With regard to the authors’ gender, both men and women writers of the South have explored themes such as race relations but women writers of the Southern Renaissance “have […] broadened these typical themes” (Perry 237).137 Harper Lee is considered a novelist of the Southern

Renaissance, which implies that her work has a broader scope than Twain’s since she

deals not only with racism, but also with sexism and class oppression. Taking into

consideration that the books were primarily addressed to a white adult readership, attention has been drawn to the extent to which they express the dominant ideology of their time. Interestingly, Twain’s book, written during the post-Reconstruction, sustains the dominant racial ideology of the time, the white supremacist ideology, but is set in pre-Civil War America where white supremacy was also dominant. On the other hand, Lee’s book, written in the early civil rights era, partly questions the dominant racial ideology of the time, racial liberalism, since it is set in the

Depression-era South where the dominant racial ideology was still the white supremacist ideology and racial liberalism had just made its appearance.

137 The Southern Renaissance (1900-1960) was a period of time in the history of southern literature when southern women writers demanded a voice of their own reacting against a decidedly male tradition. For more information on the Southern Renaissance, see Carolyn Perry (233-41). Koutsimani Ekaterini 142

It would be easy to assume that the two books express their authors’ personal ideologies. However, neither Twain nor Lee consciously aimed at promoting the white supremacist ideology which emerges as the dominant ideology in each one’s story. On the contrary, they both wished to show their opposition to white racism without directly attacking it. Twain himself resorted to ironic satire of white attitudes toward blacks to make readers realize the urgent need for racial change in the

Reconstruction years. On the other hand, Lee, being a southern liberal, created the character of Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial liberalism, to share her liberal vision of racial change in the turbulent decade of the sixties with a significant number of readers. Therefore, the white supremacist ideology that permeates the two books is not idiosyncratic to each individual author but reflects and expresses the values of Twain’s and Lee’s society respectively.

More importantly, in both books, white children first-person narrators are the ones who convey the dominant racial ideology of their social environment. In particular, through the narrative technique of immediate-engaging-first-person narration, Twain and Lee achieve an effect of immediacy and draw attention to the children narrators’ viewpoints. In this type of narration, where the narrator is also the focalizer, that is the person who speaks is the same person who sees, readers tend to adopt the viewpoint of the narrator-focalizer. Therefore, the very point of Huck Finn’s and Scout Finch’s first-person narratives is that by an “unquestioning identification” with the narrator, children readers get a fuller, or experiential, sense of the narrator’s experience which affects their own self-formation (qtd. in Wyile 195). In this sense, the role of the white children first-person narrators is significant given that they are empowered to instill certain values and ideas in young American readers’ minds. Koutsimani Ekaterini 143

More specifically, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn, who is socially conditioned to believe in white superiority living in a slaveholding community, promotes the white supremacist ideology by presenting a stereotypical image of Jim as the “happy, childlike darky” and by treating him accordingly. In To

Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch finds herself caught between the ideology of white supremacy, endorsed by her segregated southern town, and racial liberalism, represented by her father, Atticus. Although she does not seem to approve of the white racist practices against blacks, she has internalized the white supremacist ideology as is shown by her inability to recognize Tom’s dignity and right to self- assertion. Thus, the difference between Huck and Scout is that Scout is an educated girl who does not uncritically acquire a racist point of view because of the way she has been brought up by Atticus and the sociopolitical conditions of the time which paved the way for racial equality. On the other hand, Huck, an uneducated boy of low social status, has unquestioningly picked up the culture’s stock prejudices. However, both children narrators appear brainwashed by the white supremacist ideology, a fact which shows the pervasiveness of white racism in their social environment.

Contemporary American children readers of white American children’s books who choose to read either The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a

Mockingbird become acquainted with the white children first-person narrators’ perspective. By conveying the white supremacist ideology, the racial stereotypes and the racist attitudes of their white contemporaries toward blacks, Huck and Scout implicitly contribute to the perpetuation of racial prejudice and the dissemination of racist propaganda against African Americans. Even though the two children narrators do not directly accuse blacks of being inferior human beings, the racial ideology of white supremacy is inherent in their language, as revealed by the words they use such Koutsimani Ekaterini 144 as “nigger,” and also reflected in their own attitude toward African Americans.

However, both books are considered American classics according to the criteria included in Frank Kermode’s analysis in The Classic (1975). In particular, Kermode argues that “the text [of a classic] must be loosejointed enough to allow posterity to slide over the dull or anti-humanistic passages” and also “‘naïve,’ that is, it must be generalized enough to allow successive generations to read into it a meaning adapted to their own time or, in effect, to recompose it” (qtd. in Budd 202). In this way,

Huck’s and Scout’s first-person narratives constitute instances of integration propaganda by making readers passively absorb the narrators’ racial bias and conform to the social standards of behavior they exemplify.

The white children narrators’ promulgation of the white supremacist ideology as the dominant American racial ideology deeply affects young American readers’ national consciousness and identity formation in twenty-first-century, multicultural

American society. As John Alberti emphasizes, “the identification along racial lines that students […] make with fictional characters and historical actions necessarily involves this question of racial privilege, even when such identification is used as a means of criticism” (926). More specifically, children readers are exposed to the harsh reality of the segregated American society to which the political principles of equality, democracy and individual rights that had been the basis of American national identity since the Declaration of Independence are not applicable. The oppressive treatment of African Americans and the children narrators’ acquiescence to blacks’ subordination to whites prevent young American readers from formulating a national consciousness of equality and prosperity for all American citizens. On the contrary, they are implicitly forced to accept that the white race constitutes a crucial defining component of American national identity. Therefore, the basic idea that is Koutsimani Ekaterini 145 instilled in children readers’ minds is that American national identity is racially rather than ideologically defined. This idea is also reinforced by the fact that contemporary

American society remains racially biased while in theory still projects the rhetoric of

American republicanism as is shown by the Americans’ discrimination against new forms of enemies such as terrorists or fundamentalists who are not white. In this respect, inexperienced white American children readers, who fail to recognize

Twain’s satirical thrust directed against slavery and Lee’s sympathy for African

Americans’ predicament during the Depression, tend to formulate a national consciousness of white pride whereas their African-American counterparts are deprived of a coherent self-definition and their self-respect, and thus convinced of their inferiority. That being the case, Huck Finn and Scout Finch, the children narrators, can be viewed as propagandists that project a certain image of African

Americans which has a profound impact on young American readers’ self- development.

To sum up, the analysis of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a

Mockingbird shows that white American children’s literature may serve as the ground for promoting a certain racial ideology that affects young American readers’ national consciousness and contributes to the formation of their identity. In America of the twenty-first century, where various ethnic minorities coexist, the issue of racism remains still relevant and thus, white American children’s books that tackle it attract the interest of contemporary children readers. This is actually the reason why both

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, dealing with white racism against blacks in America in different sociopolitical contexts, have become classics and are widely read and taught in American schools nowadays. However, taking into consideration that white American children’s fiction belongs to the Koutsimani Ekaterini 146 mainstream of American children’s literature, it can be easily used as a medium for either overt or hidden propaganda that plays an important role in influencing children’s beliefs and value systems. Similarly, in contemporary American society, ideology can be produced and instilled in the minds of children through other forms of popular culture such as movies, TV programs, video games, advertisements, songs or various sources on the net. As far as white American children’s fiction is concerned, its effectiveness in promulgating any kind of ideology lies primarily in the fact that it is addressed to an inexperienced, innocent and often immature reading public unable to recognize and identify its underlying messages. Moreover, the use of proper narrative techniques such as first-person narration and types of narrative engagement such as immediate-engaging-first-person narration in white American children’s books, as exemplified by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a

Mockingbird, increases their potential persuasive power as conveyors of ideological freight.

For further evidence of the effectiveness of white American children’s fiction as a medium for propaganda, one should study a large number of white American children’s books, mainly recently published ones, that deal with black-white or other race relations so as to explore the continuity of the issue of racism in contemporary

America. On the other hand, it would be also interesting to focus on African-

American children’s literature, which has developed in America since the early twentieth century, and examine whether African-American children’s books question or sustain the dominant racial ideology.

In conclusion, the teaching of racially-sensitive white American children’s books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird requires a careful pedagogical approach that will enable students to engage in critical thinking Koutsimani Ekaterini 147 and evaluation of the characters’ actions and reactions within the framework of the fictional milieu. To succeed in recognizing the promulgation of ideologies in white

American children’s fiction and avoid being affected by instances of racist propaganda against blacks, American children readers should be properly taught and trained so as to become suspicious and critical observers of what they read with regard to racial politics toward African Americans. This presupposes cooperation and understanding on the part of both parents and teachers who need to be open-minded and racially-sensitive so as to help children distinguish texts aimed at imposing any racial ideology without appearing to do so.

Koutsimani Ekaterini 148

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Biographical Note

Ekaterini (Katerina) Koutsimani was born in Thessaloniki in 1982 and entered the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2000. As an undergraduate student she succeeded in getting scholarship titles offered by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation for each year of her studies. She has written papers on applied linguistics and has studied Anglo-American literature and culture. She graduated with a distinction in 2004 and in the same year she was admitted to the graduate program of the Department of American Literature and Culture at Aristotle University where she attended courses in the fields of Feminist and Cultural Studies, Theory of American Culture, Theatre Theory and Literature and Culture of the American South. Apart from English, she speaks and holds certificates of French and Italian. She has attended a number of teacher training seminars and international conferences on American Studies. She is a member of the Hellenic Association for American Studies and an undergraduate student in the School of Psychology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. From September 2006 she has a permanent position as an English language teacher at the secondary level of education in a Greek state school. Following the reception of her Master’s degree she plans to apply for a Ph.D. in American Studies.