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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 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
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