An old Folktale and a Modern Graphic Novel
Ideas and beliefs, and preconceptions are certainly perpetuated through a culture by the stories that the culture listens to. Well I think that the style of stories that effect cultures has certainly changed. I think today in our north American culture the stories are coming in diverse forms of text, such as television programs or celebrity personalities. IN the past however, this was not the case. In the past I think the written word had a stronger potential to influence the mindset of a culture. It is then in the past that we can really see how childrens literature in specific had an impact upon expectations and treatment of women.
Despite childrens literature fall from the status of a strong cultural influence, some authors are trying to present an alternative version to how females were often depicted in childrens literature of the past. The two texts that I read were No Girls Allowed: Tales of Daring Women Dressed as men for Love, Freedom, and Adventure, by Susan Hughes, and a collection entitled The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World, compiled by Ethel Johnston Phelps. These books are similar in that they present several different stories, and that all of these stories are in some way connected to 'feminism.' They are both illuminating forgoten stories from the past that show girls in a different role that what one might imagine classical childrens literature to depict females in. They are different in how these texts are presented.
No Girls Allowed is a graphic novel which retells seven stories of women, who forced by circumstance had to sacrifice their female identity in order to achieve what they wanted to achieve, usually as a means to help their family survive. The author, Susan Hughes, writes a variety of texts in which she become a temporary expert on the subject. In her uncovering of these stories that had never been told before, she was also able to insert a contemporary voice to the tales. The illustrator of the text specificaly said that she wanted the book to give girls power, to show them other girls in positions of authority.
In Maid of the North, Phelps did not retell the stories persay, but more so endevored to compile a selection of historic folk tales that showed females as the protagonist as opposed to the typical story where the male was the protaginist and females were the subject of victimization. This collection is interesting because it is the fact of collecting and preserving these stories that is pro feminist, and the author did not need to use her own voice to change these tales, as they had already been told as printed in the collection.
Both texts use historic stories, one retells factual accounts from history, adding emphasis to their feminist message, and the other does not retell the tales, but lets the act of collecting 'historical artifacts (folk tales)' and letting the volume of all of these collected add emphasis to a feminist message. Both of these texts had an important impact on me because they showed how children s literature, because of the conventions of what is normal within them, can have an almost subconscious influence on the people who are reading them. In the most popular texts of today, which likely include video and song, I am not certain hat these unconscious conventions are, I am not sure what preconceptions are being trained into the ears of children. However, the two texts I have presented hear are at least giving a convention that is not subconscious, but instead is loud and clear. They are saying that a) we need to be aware of the pressures that are being put on children because of their gender, and that b) both boys and girls have the right to be presented with role models that show them they have the ability to reach their potentials, and that they have the right not to be held down.
No comments:
Post a Comment