Gender is a fascinating concept because it is an instinctual certainty on a personal level that only the individual knows and may share, hopefully without being met with confrontation: it is one’s own sexual orientation. More and more people, particularly adolescents, are coming out of the closet professing their true gender. Just recently, unfortunately, there have been many suicides by the LGBTQ (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and the queer identified or questioning) youth due to bullying and harassment because of their sexuality. Reading YA novels that describe the experiences of coming out, in English classes, is therefore pertinent to today’s society and can yield many insights that may broaden and enlighten the minds of students. More specifically, approaching those novels with a feminist/gender lens will be beneficial in gaining new perspectives that differ from the traditional way of viewing members of the LGBTQ community, which involves seeing those members as deviants from the so called norm, or “freaks.” M.E. Kerr is one writer of YA literature who provides an exemplar work that illustrates the coming out of a seventeen year old lesbian through the eyes of her younger brother. M.E. Kerr’s book, Deliver Us from Evie, should be viewed with a feminist/gender lens, as opposed to the traditional New Critical lens (with an emphasis on biblical symbols and references) because doing so helps to show the struggles that adolescents face when dealing with gendered expectations, as well as the way most readers, themselves, are gendered.
Viewing literary works under the feminist/gender lens produces an array of interpretations about the gendering of both women and men in the novel, as well as the readers. In her book, Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, Deborah Appleman argues that is important for students to use feminist/gender lens when interpreting literature because they will learn how gendering is done and illumined in a literary work, and the influence of it by the gender of the author. This in turn will help them learn about new concerns of gender that are affecting the people in the society they live in:
There are at least four dimensions in which using feminist theory can transform students’ reading – how students view female characters and appraise the author’s stance toward those characters, how students evaluate the significance of the gender of the author in terms of its influence on a particular literary work, how students interpret whole texts within a feminist framework; and finally, and perhaps most important, how students read the gendered patterns in the world. (69)
Although feminist/gender lens used to be solely based on feminist theory, which focused on gender inequality and the social role of women in society (Cott 8), today that theory is becoming more generalized to accommodate the fact that not only do women face inequalities and criticisms about their gender, but so do men. Likewise, using the feminist/gender lens does not mean advocating for women’s right, but examining both men and women as they have to deal with societal expectations of their gender roles.
Using the feminist/gender lens to approach Deliver Us from Evie, readers can see how Evie and protagonist, Parr, deal with presuppositions about their expected gender behavior. Examples of subtle instances that reveal to readers hidden assumptions about gender roles pepper the text. Different characters’ actions and words touch stereotypes of women and men that can be broached when the text is being discussed with the feminist/gender lens. One example is Evie and Parr’s Mother’s expectations of how Evie should behave in terms of the clothes she (Evie) chooses to wear. Their mother, representative of the traditional way of viewing gender, always complains about how Evie dresses, and insists that she wears more feminine clothes. As an example, getting ready to go to a concert with Patsy, Evie wore kchacki trousers and a blue blazer. Her mother quickly insists that Evie wears a skirt instead: “Even if nobody dresses up, I doubt there’ll be anyone [women] wearing men’s trousers. I have a pair of good gabardine slacks I’ve hardly worn. Try them on, honey,” (37). This is but one of many cases in which Evie and Parr’s mother chastises Evie based on her clothes that men would usually wear. The stereotypes revealed through the mother’s reaction toward how Evie dresses revolves around the idea that even the way people dress is categorized, as in men are expected to wear certain types of clothing while women are expected to wear a different type of clothing and the two are not to be mixed, as we see that Evie’s mother tries to correct her. Parr notes this when he says, “She [his mother] was trying hard to change Evie that fall, trying everything, but it was like trying to change the direction of the wind,” (Kerr). Using the novel as a way to critically view our society, we can see why Evie’s mother is reacting this way: according to Estelle B. Freedman in her book, No Turning Back: A History of Feminism and the Future of Women, “in the West and internationally . . . most people consider lesbians as deviants, a threat to religious values and family stability,” (265). Evie’s behavior is upsetting a narrow status quo that her at first homophobic mother tries to fight. Upon reading the instances throughout the text, students will find that Evie is seen as going against the grain, deviating from what is expected of her.
Not only does Evie find herself subjected to traditional views of gender, so too does Parr. While going on a date with Angel (who comes from a traditional, Christian family who holds views similar to those of Parr’s mother), he is warned by Angel’s father to make sure she comes home at the curfew. When he does not, he is scolded at and blamed for it, even though the fault should have been on Angel, who wanted to stay and wait out the storm for a little while. After reading this section and specifically using the gender lens, students will see that Parr was expected to have a certain role in his heterosexual relationship with Angel by her father, even though Angel violated it. He is still blamed for bringing her late, because that aspect of the date is in his male domain.
It is no doubt that, throughout the novel, Evie and Parr remain close to each other. Why? With a feminist/gender lens, it could seem that they relate to each other in that they are imprisoned by the shackles of societal expectations of gender and may feel oppressed by them. Evie for example, after thinking that her mother believed that she (Evie) and Patsy would make a good couple (and thus suspecting that her mother knew she was a lesbian who was attracted to Patsy), found herself defensive, as if denying her lesbianism, that is, until her mother clarified that she meant to say that Patsy would be a good girlfriend for Parr (Kerr 12). Using the feminist/gender lens would result in our trying to answer the question of why Evie would become so defensive in this particular situation. Perhaps Evie is defensive because she is not ready to come out or that her particular context – a farm setting held down by patriarchal values – is not ready for her “radical,” true gender. If Evie were in a different setting, like a city where lesbians are a bit more acceptable than on a rural farm, she would not feel as defensive; nevertheless, when analyzing this scene, students will find that lesbians and members of the LGBTQ community would feel some degree of fearfulness, anxiety or shame to come out. They may fear violence, threats or unbearable scorn by all-too traditional (believe heterosexism is normal and homosexism is not) members of society who cannot find it in their hearts to the acceptance of members of the LGBTQ community. According to the editors of Violence on Campus: Defining the Problems, Strategies for Action, “these acts of violence are fueled by heterosexism – the assumption of the inherent superiority of heterosexuality, an obliviousness to the lives and experiences of LGBT people, and the presumption that all people are, or should be, Heterosexual,” (Hoffman 170). Upon close reading of this scene, students would broaden their minds to a different perspective – that of those of the LGBTQ community – and be more sensitive to the feelings of them. Thus, using the feminist/gender lens is important because using it to approach scenes like this would yield connections that students can make with certain people in their society, with whom a rise in suicides is occurring.
One classroom activity that I would engage students in involves seeing the novel through the perspectives of different characters. Rather than having students produce a written assignment, such as a re-writing of a chapter from the perspective of Evie or another member of her society who is against the idea of lesbianism (perhaps her parents or Angel’s parents – so long as their perspective is different from Evie’s), I believe an extremely beneficial activity would be a kinesthetic approach posed by Bruce Pirie in his article, “Meaning through Motion: Kinesthetic English.” In that article, Pirie believes that students have different ways of learning since people learn from experience and experience comes in different forms, one of which is through the active use of the body. Pirie firmly feels that, “the body has its own kind of knowing that may tap into new levels of understanding,” (46). Thus, it would behoove some students to engage in kinesthetic learning activities to better understand the material being taught.
I feel the perfect activity to use for Deliver Us from Evie from his article would be one called, “Walk This Way,” in which students pick a character and walk the way he or she thinks the character would walk. However, before letting my students loose on this activity, I would have them make an in-depth analysis of the characterizations of the character of their choosing. This will be done by breaking up the class into groups based on the four main characters: Parr, Angel, Evie’s mother and Evie. I would ask them in their groups (one group for Parr, another for Evie, etc) to list characteristic traits that pertain to the character’s physical look and way of behaving, as well as their personality and possible views they (the students) can glean from the character’s dialogue and what other characters may say or imply about him or her that the character holds. As an example, I would recall a scene in the beginning of the novel in which boys at Parr’s school remind him that he has two brothers: Doug and Evie. I would ask the class, what underlying assumption is made here about Evie? She is masculine, as is described by society, in that she is considered as a brother instead of a sister. Another example of Evie could be the scene I had described earlier where Evie was preparing to go the concert wearing men’s clothing.
After the groups have analyzed their specific characters, they would start “Walk This Way,” trying to be in character. Doing this activity involves the students’ walking as if they were the character their group chose. Each character, set with a different personality and way of being, has his or her own way of walking. For example, perhaps Evie may walk more like how men usually walk while the mother would walk more like how women usually walk. Students would break into pairs (of two different characters), taking turns walking as various characters. While one group member is walking, the other is taking notes about how that character is walking, and then they would pair up with another classmate of a different character. After about five to seven minutes, I would have the class switch groups to see how different characters would walk. Everyone would take notes all the while. The next day, the students will have to pick another character and get back in the same groups and walk as that other character, based on their notes, and again they would switch groups. Doing this activity helps students to see and try on different perspectives of characters who have polar views toward gender roles. Learning these perspectives is imperative because they will raise awareness in the students that society is very much gendered by traditional views that have suppressed latent differences in genders.
In keeping with perspectives, what makes this novel different from most books is the point of view M.E. Kerr decided to use, which can reveal how the readers, themselves, are gendered, as they read the book with the feminist/gender lens in mind. The novel is narrated by a central character who is of the opposite sex from the author: Parr is a straight male while M.E. Kerr is an out-lesbian. Why would Kerr write the novel with the protagonist being a straight male instead of a lesbian? In other words, why would she let the lesbian character, Evie, step aside so that we readers view the novel through a straight male’s point of view? Clearly, this is a strategic move by Kerr, a move that may tell us something about how we readers are gendered. Perhaps she is writing through Parr’s eyes instead of through Evie’s because she knew that reading through his point of view is more palatable for us readers, who are used to living in a patriarchal society, our views of genders being influenced by traditional and narrow beliefs (i.e. it is abnormal to be a homosexual). The fact that she wrote the novel this way supposedly for that reason tells us, inherently, that we are indeed gendered, that we need to be eased into the reading of a work of literature that deals with what is traditionally viewed as “out of the norm.” It is as if she were preparing us for what is the real issue, which is the fact that we need to broaden our minds to accept people of unorthodox sexual orientations. When students discuss the point of view of the novel, keeping in mind this possible reason for why it is written this way, they learn or may realize just how influenced by society they are, in terms of inculcated gender expectations.
Students may also realize how they are gendered, if they consider the gender of M.E. Kerr, as an out-lesbian of her time. After learning her gender, would they think that this kind of book – one addressing lesbianism – is expected of her? If so, what would that prove about how they themselves are gendered? Perhaps they find that they believe people of a certain gender only write about their own gender because it is a way of expressing themselves or opening up. In a different perspective, maybe some students might be turned off from the book upon learning Kerr’s gender. That would prove that they are reinforcing the idea that they are living traces of what a patriarchal society wants to make: people who believe in the same traditional views of gender roles. Students may find, therefore that they stand a chance of being homophobic, if they realize they do not want to read literature of a certain “deviant” gender. Likewise, students who find that they bode well with the novel may come to the realization that they are tolerant or accepting of people of the LGBTQ community. Therefore, using the feminist/gender lens is important when exploring Kerr’s book because students understand how they are gendered as they connect the novel to society and ultimately to themselves.
Reading, analyzing, and discussing YA novels about the coming out of members of the LGBTQ community is highly kairotic to today’s issues regarding gender. It would be a disservice to students if they were not approached – at least not briefly – in the English classroom, a setting where students not only learn to appreciate literature, but also to be critical and sensitive citizens of a changing society with respects to gender. M.E. Kerr’s book, Deliver Us from Evie is only one of many YA novels that, when approached through the gender/feminist lens, can expand the minds of students to new gender-related perspectives and refine their sensitivities in the process. If short stories are more appealing to the students, perhaps the anthology, Am I Blue? Coming Out of the Silence, edited by Marion Dane Baur, is more applicable. Containing short stories by authors such as, Nancy Garden, William Sleator, Jane Yolen, C.S. Adler, Bruce Coville, and M.E. Kerr herself, this anthology brings the same insights that Deliver Us from Evie can.
Works Cited
Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modernism Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987.
Freedman, Estelle B. No Turning Back: the History of Feminism and the Future of Women. New
York: Ballantine Books, 2002.
Hoffman, Allan H., John H. Schuh, and Robert H. Fenske. Violence on Campus: Defining the Problems, Strategies for Action. GAithersberg, Maryland: Aspen, 1998. 170. Print.
Kerr, M.E. Deliver Us from Evie. New York: M.E. Kerr, 1994.
Pirie, Burce. “Meaning through Motion: Kinesthetic English.” National Council of Teachers of
English. 84.8. 46-51. Web. 14 Nov. 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are welcomed!