Gender(ed) Identities

Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children's and Young Adult Literature

Tricia Clasen, Holly Hassel, Tricia Clasen, Holly Hassel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317430704
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume brings together diverse, cross-disciplinary scholarly voices to examine gender construction in children's and young adult literature. It complements and updates the scholarship in the field by creating a rich, cohesive examination of core questions around gender and sexuality in classic and contemporary texts. By providing an expansive treatment of gender and sexuality across genres, eras, and national literature, the collection explores how readers encounter unorthodox as well as traditional notions of gender. It begins with essays exploring how children's and YA literature construct communities formed by gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and in face-to-face and virtual spaces. Section II's central focus is how gendered identities are formed, unpacking how texts for young readers ranging from Amish youth periodicals to the blockbuster Divergent series trace, reproduce, and shape gendered identity socialization. In section III, the essential literary function of translating trauma into narrative is addressed in classics like Anne of Green Gables and Pollyanna, as well as more recent works. Section IV's focus on sexuality and romance encompasses fiction and nonfiction works, examining how children's and young adult literature can serve as a regressive, progressive, and transgressive site for construction meaning about sex and romance. Last, Section IV offers new readings of paratextual features in literature for children -- from the classic tale of Cinderella to contemporary illustrated novels. The key achievement of this volume is providing an updated range of multidisciplinary and methodologically diverse analyses of critically and commercially successful texts, contributing to the scholarship on children's and YA literature; gender, sexuality, and women's studies; and a range of other disciplines.

1Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315691633-1

Holly Hassel & Tricia Clasen

With sales jumping almost 150 percent between 2006 and 2012 ¹ and at least 25% more books being published for young adult audiences now than in the 1990s, ² the commercial appeal of children’s and young adult literature is well documented. The material and ideological impact of this growth cannot be understated. As Rebekah Fitzsimmons has documented, explosive growth in popular children’s fiction resulted in a “radical restructuring” of one of the primary ways that success and use of literary works is counted: in 2000, the New York Times Book Review divided its Bestseller list, so that it now includes a ‘children’s book bestseller list’ in addition to fiction, nonfiction, advice, both paperback and hardback versions. ³ Subsequent changes include breaking down the children’s bestseller list even further into hardcover, paperback, picture book, chapter book, and series. Though the implications of these material and ideological decisions are not definitive, is it cultural policing? Has literary reading exploded? Are kids’ books substantially different from adult books and must that difference be accounted for in the ways we measure reading habits and publishing success? It is almost certainly a sign that the cultural status of children’s and young adult literature is influential.

Likewise, the establishment of a separate category of works for young readers has been accompanied by a rich growth in the body of critical work that has sought to interpret the trends, themes, and conventions that define particular eras of children’s literature. Most recently, critical directions have focused on questions about identity, environmental approaches, postcolonial readings, material contexts, and theoretical trends like historical materialism, psychoanalysis, and extra-textual or paratextual features (such as book studies and material features of children’s works). In this introduction to Gender(ed) Identity: Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children’s and Young Adult Literature we identify historically significant readings of gender and sexuality in children’s and young adult works in order to gesture toward how this volume enriches the critical conversation by offering new readings of classic works and established lenses to new works. To show more clearly how this collection participates in the previous discussion on the topic, we offer a brief overview of the major trends in the field of feminist textual critique as it intersects with children’s and YA literature in order to contextualize how the approaches offered in this book build on, contrast, or affirm prior readings.

Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Critique in Children’s Literature

Because children’s and young adult books are targeted at youth, portrayals of gender can be particularly powerful for readers whose conception of their own gender identity is in the process of forming and evolving. As the popularity of young adult literature itself has grown, so, too have the critical examinations of femininity, masculinity, and trans* identities increased. While some feminist readings have been done of, for example, the emergence of the “adventure story” that features a female protagonist, a natural and daring departure from the historical origins of children’s fiction and the explosion of science fiction/fantasy fiction featuring girl heroines, a full critical analysis of how gender is constructed in this body of work over the last two decades—as well as historical situating of that work—is called for.

Similarly, an increasingly capacious social conception of sexuality has opened a space for discussion of LGBTQ works as well as queer studies analysis of classic and contemporary works. Book-length treatments as well as recent journal articles speak to the surge in this topic. For example, Kathryn Stockton’s The Queer Child ⁴ offers a fully theorized examination of ‘queerness,’ broadly conceived throughout the twentieth century. Tison Pugh hones in on multiple, major series in children’s literature from Harry Potter to The Wizard of Oz and Little House, providing close readings of these popular series and the complex portrayals of gender and sexuality in them. ⁵ Pugh argues most significantly that the ‘inherent paradox’ of children’s literature is the tension between preserving ‘innocence’—typically read as an absence of knowledge about sex and sexuality—and absorbing the ideology of compulsory heterosexuality in much children’s literature. Likewise, Abate and Kidd offer an expansive consideration of LGBTQ studies and children’s literature across eras and national literatures in Over the Rainbow: Queer Children’s and Young Adult Literature. ⁶ Their collection aims to fortify the employment of ‘queer’ as a hermeneutic literary analysis term rather than the more monolithic and more rigidly bounded concept of ‘lesbian/gay’ literature. They are interested both in reading literary works through a queer studies lens historically and examining the development of a body of LGBTQ/Queer literature aimed at young readers.

The present collection expands on this growing body of work situated at the intersection of cultural studies, queer studies, and women’s and gender studies, acknowledging that it wouldn’t be possible to have developed this rich and recent examination of LGBTQ themes in children’s literature without the foundation established by feminist and gender studies scholars. For example, Judy Simons in “Gender Roles in Children’s Fiction,” cites literary critic Edward Salmon’s 1886 claims about the socializing functions of children’s texts: “Boys’ literature of a sound kind ought to help build up men and girls’ literature ought to help to build up women,” yet even Salmon critiqued what he called the “goody goody” tone of works aimed at girls. What Simons characterizes as “insipidity,” attributed to “… its subject matter: the domestic tedium of the adult lives for which its readership was destined.” ⁷ Because “Children’s fiction was supposed to prepare youthful readers to enter a society where strict, even unforgiving, codes governed male and female conduct, and to influence their outlooks in ways that would be conducive to a better society in the future.” ⁸ Even contemporaneous critics such as Salmon could quickly identify why “girls’ literature” failed to inspire the enthusiasm that ‘boys’ fiction did. Certainly some classic works such as Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and The Daisy Chain by Charlotte Yonge featured “tomboy” characters who resist the limitations of traditionally circumscribed femininity. However, the critical mapping out of children’s literature historically has included genre categories like “domestic” versus “adventure” fiction, ⁹ and the two genres fall largely along traditional gendered lines that split the public from the private sphere.

What Rereading Gender in Children’s and Young Adult Literature takes up are established as well as fresh approaches to popular and classic texts in the field. This volume seeks to merge multiple important threads in current scholarship: girl studies, queer studies, feminist critique, trauma studies, and multicultural theories, ultimately building on past work that has created a concrete foundation in gender and women’s studies as an interdisciplinary lens for approaching texts. For example, the 1999 edited collection Girls, Boys, Books, and Toys: Gender in Children’s Literature and Culture tackles the historical situating of children’s literature, specific genres such as the ‘school story’ and poetry, and colonialist and postcolonialist readings of specific texts. ¹⁰ More recently, Kerry Mallan has approached children’s literature through lenses of sexuality and aesthetic theories, ¹¹ while cross-dressing and masculinities are addressed by John Stephens and Victoria Flanagan in their respective book-length studies. ¹² These critical interpretations—which tackle important questions about gender binaries, gender socialization, and heteronormativity—create the foundation that contributors to this volume extend.

The intersections of textual and sexual construction are also important points of inquiry in Gender(ed) Identities. In her overview of “Gender Studies” in The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature, Victoria Flanagan takes up the ways that feminist authors and critics have undertaken feminist revisions and the repurposing of traditionally patriarchal texts like fairy tales and princess stories as well as how works from the mid twentieth century (the second “Golden Age”) began to tackle meatier topics like gay identity and trans* issues. ¹³ Critical studies by Kenneth Kidd (2004) and John Stephens (2002) ¹⁴ introduced the lens of masculinity studies to unpack the usually invisible gendered nature of ‘boys’ fiction’ and ‘adventure fiction’ that earlier scholars had only glossed over. As Flanagan concludes,

Gender is one of the issues most frequently addressed in children’s texts. Over the past quarter of a century, many changes have occurred in the way that children’s literature and culture address the subject of gender. The application of gender studies to children’s texts, however, is still very much a work in progress. While significant inroads have been made, particularly in relation to feminism and the representation of female bodies and behaviours [sic], there is still much to be done in order to achieve and promote harmonious gender relations. ¹⁵

Recognizing that these themes of constructedness, intersectionality, and feminist revision have become important to the critical conversations in both literary studies and gender studies, the present collection updates critical perspectives on children’s and young adult literature to account for the most recent and most explosively popular works that have responded to the evolving demands of young readerships. Simultaneously, new lenses such as trauma studies and girl studies are applied to some of the most enduring works of children’s literature.

Rereading Gender

The opening section of Gender(ed) Identity: Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, “Gender(ing) Communities,” provides a multifaceted approach to gendered communities. Works in this section discuss the ways in which literature itself creates communities, as well as showcasing how gendered communities are portrayed in literature. Terry Suico’s “History Repeating Itself: The Portrayal of Female Characters in Young Adult Literature at the Beginning of the Millennium” treats the function of communities of girls in popular works for young adult readers, while Victoria Flanagan’s “Girls Online: Representations of Female Sexuality in the Digital Age” challenges traditional assumptions about digital spaces as dangerous or hostile and rather argues they are potential sites of feminist collaboration. Amy Cummins’ “Academic Agency in YA Novels by Mexican American Women Authors” investigates the importance of family structures in shaping the choices of the girl protagonists in several novels focusing on Mexican-American families. Angel Matos’s “Queer Consciousness/Community in David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing: “One the Other Never Leaving” analyzes how Levithan’s literarily experimental work uses fragmented narrative strategies while simultaneously “binding together diverse queer communities.” In this section, we explore how these post-millennial concepts of community highlight potential shifts in real-world constructions of gender as well as the powerful impact portrayals of community may have on gendered identities.

Essays in Section II hone in on the ways that literary texts explore and shape gender identity in terms of a particular religious, ethnic, or gender context. In “‘What Defines Me?’ – Performativity, Gender and Ethnicity in Korean American YA Fiction,” Lee and Stephens show how YA novels focused on Korean-American identity can be fruitfully understood as intersectional and that the ethnic subjectivity of the novels’ characters must also be understood as gendered. Josh Brown’s “Gendered Stories, Advice, and Narrative Intimacy and Amish Young Adult Literature” reinforces the role of periodicals in constructing gendered identities within this ethnoreligious community and addresses misconceptions about the active role played by young consumers of such texts. In “One Choice, Many Petals: Reading the Female Voice of Tris in the Divergent Series,” Jennings applies the feminist lens of Kay Vandergrift’s Model of Female Voices in Youth Literature to the lead character in the highly popular Divergent series. She argues that a wider and more complex vision of female identity is available in current YA literature. Friddle’s “Who Is a ‘Girl’? The Tomboy, the Lesbian, and Transgender Child,” draws attention to texts specifically addressing questions of sexuality and gender identity. Using a historical backdrop, this essay, like the volume as a whole, acknowledges progress in terms of the availability of texts and characters that push boundaries of traditional sexuality, though at times, the progress is formulaic and shallow, leaving an understanding that these ideas of identity development are part of a larger social conversation.

Children’s and young adult literature has always been riddled with difficult themes as the characters themselves grapple with death and rejection, particularly in relationship to constructions of gender identity. In section III, essays turn their attention onto three paths through such difficult themes. As Tribunella highlights in “Pedopho...