The Guardian recently published a list of feminist books for five-year-olds. Being one of those feminists who wasn’t exactly trained from the cradle, this sort of thing doesn’t tend to catch my interest; it seems to me that children either will find their way to right-thinking or they won’t, but I’m not convinced they are programmable, like computers. “You can’t teach gender studies to small children in a day, but you can make a start,” the journalist breezily avers, but I don’t know, I feel like I’m still teaching gender studies to myself, years out from the initial discovery, and most days I’m still not sure I’ve done much more than a “start” of it.
And yet… and yet. A couple of months ago I saw Where the Wild Things Are. I didn’t see it out of nostalgia. As a child it didn’t do much for me – I remember the naked picture of course, but I sort of skipped picture books because I was an early reader – or rather, was out of them by the time certain books got a foothold in my mind. No, I saw it because I do, after all, like Spike Jonze – one of the few real talents in the hipster-movie set, it seems to me, along with Charlie Kaufman. And because it was a fundraiser, and because I like Lauren Ambrose, and because I see just about every movie that sounds like it has even the slightest chance at greatness.
I can tell you that I tolerated the movie for just about fifteen minutes, and I can also tell you the exact point at which I got so annoyed I considered walking out. I can’t quite remember if it was in the book, but at the outset of the movie, you are shown a trophy which Max’s dad allegedly gave him, inscribed, “You are the owner of this world.” And just that briefest of images made me want to put my fist through the wall, kick the seat in front of me, storm out into the lobby, scream at the heavens. It was meant to be touching, sweet, a father’s gesture to the expansiveness of a young boy’s imagination, I know. But the hubris of it just sort of clunked off the curb, and from there on out I sat, arms crossed, bitchface on, irritated by the Karen O score, annoyed at the wild rumpus, indifferent to the pathos of finding out that the world will always disappoint you.
Because let me ask you this: can you picture someone giving a young girl a trophy with that same inscription? I can’t. And for some reason that hits a nerve, because in that image is, it seems to me, the whole key to the patriarchy itself: some people growing up thinking – hell, knowing – that the world belongs to them. Courtesy of that small bit of personal indoctrination, (some) men become the assholes who Explain Things, who forget to check if the person they’re fucking is enjoying it, who are indifferent to war if it means building a narrative of greatness for themselves.
But you want to know the strangest thing? Even knowing all that, I couldn’t help but be a little jealous, from an aesthetic standpoint. Lizzie Skurnick is right, of course, when she says that “ambitious” is an empty term, usually used to justify giving male literature the benefit of the doubt where so-called “greatness” is concerned. But I can’t help but wondering if it rather gives boys an edge in the imagination department, this whole “world-owning” thing. I don’t know that it’s pure coincidence that men have written most of the great imaginary epics while women have often been much more adept at what I think of as chamber novels. It’s not that I think women aren’t capable. It’s that very early on, we are simply told to keep our eyes on the ground, while little boys are told to reach for the stars. That has to have an effect, it seems to me, and I think I can feel the anchor sinking in women’s writing a lot of the time.
Does anyone else feel this way?
I think from the time I started reading, I felt this way, both desiring and resenting the unanchored imaginative freedom of boyness.
It’s also part of why I’ve grown to love feminist speculative fiction like Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler and Joanna Russ, among others. They attempt to imagine worlds outside current power structures in ways that even the most imaginative of male writers seldom do. Butler, especially, writes outside the myth of the solitary hero in ways I think I’m just now beginning to appreciate. I definitely hear you on not trying to gender-study kids, but I think I would’ve benefited from a children’s book that addressed different ways of expressing individuality and exploring power.
That said, Pippi Longstocking was a definite revelation to me. I feel like there are probably female-written epics for children out there, but they don’t draw the attention or following that, say, C.S. Lewis does, for obvious reasons.
I was also an early-ish reader, and I lived in a house where the bookshelves were dominated by my dad’s mysteries, spy novels and histories (my mom primarily reads magazines and such). So I took to those bookshelves, and was reading Ian Fleming by the age of 9. When I wanted to read history, I went to the shelves again and found very male-dominated stories of war and gore. I also read the “girl classics” like Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, but in between those I read an astonishing amount of books usually favored by middle-aged men. I think kids naturally want to identify with the protagonists of their books, and a lot of the books I was reading had James Bond bedding sexy female spies and such. I’m now convinced that this has had an effect on me, implanting early on in my life the idea that to be a powerful person in charge of one’s own life, it helped to be male. Looking back, I wish that I had been exposed to more fiction with strong adult female protagonists, or even just biographies of women, or social history.
As an undergraduate history major, I specifically eschewed social history because it was “feminized” and I thought that political history, favored by men, must therefore be more respectable. Then I finally did some reading on feminism, women’s history and sociology, and realized that I’d been brainwashed by a variety of factors into believing that the writings and history of my own gender were secondary.
Books were a luxury in my house, so I wrote stories, and looking back, I can see most of my stories featured female protagonists, or male protagonists introduced to spaces dominated by women. I think it would definitely be worthwhile for kids to have books that introduce alternative narratives that feature female protags. They don’t have to be explicitly feminist. They just have to have good stories featuring female characters.
As a kid, I remember being shocked and amazed every. single. time. I found a book with a female main character. Sadly, they were usually in fantasy books, which meant, in my mind, that these characters couldn’t exist in the real world.
@Odonata: I cannot tell you how happy I am to be reminded of the joys of Pippi Longstocking on a gray monday. That book took me to such a joyous place as a six-year-old that I even named a parakeet after her.
All of my favourite fantasy authors are women – Diana Wynne Jones, Katherine Kerr, Patricia C. Wrede, Tanith Lee, Victoria Hanley, Shannon Hale, Isobelle Carmody, Edith Pattou, Sherwood Smith, Tamora Pierce, Katherine Langrish, Sherryl Jordan, Monica Furlong, Lilli Thal, Juliet Marillier… and those are just the ones I can see on my bookshelf at the moment, most being young adult authors.
I think in recent times, women are definitely catching up in the area of fantasy. I wouldn’t label any of the authors I have listed writers of epic fantasy, but then, that sort of thing doesn’t appeal. It seems to me that real character development is often lost in the attempt to create a huge battle between the forces of good and evil *coughSaraDouglasscough* which is why I often prefer young adult fiction – the focus seems to be more on the character, and smaller events, rather than Hero/Heroine rides out with big sword to kill the evil sorceror of the Dark Forces, who doesn’t really seem to have a reason to destroy the world.
Oh I can’t believe I forgot Robin Hobb. As an adult fantasy author, I think she does an amazing job of creating realistic, detailed fantasy worlds that are truly epic. And it sounds weird, but as a rape survivor I particularly like the way she deals with rape in her novels. Rather than women being raped as a method of control and then they find the right man and yay! they’re happy again, she has really different motivations and reactions to rape, and each of her rape survivors (men and women) have varying coping methods, to varying degrees of success.
That’s a little off track, but her work is definitely the best epic fantasy I have read.
@sarah.of.a.lesser.god
That is just excellent. “Pippi” is totally on my short list of future-puppy names.
And @pilgrim soul: I forgot to say that I think the anchor you spoke of is actually valuable in many ways. No one SHOULD be told they own the world; that’s a really destructive value to teach. It’s entitlement training with a whimsical twist, those kinds of stories.
(I can’t shake the feeling that maybe Max grew up to be Wes Anderson, herald of perpetual boyhood.)
So interesting that you wrote this, and had this reaction-I havent seen the movie, no desire to, and told someone it seemed like more men I knew responded to it, but I didnt know why. Now I do, from your story and the comments.
At my kids’ age, most protagonists are female; the chapter-book set, for kids 5-9ish. And when I was growing up, the only boy I read about was Encyclopedia Brown. I always thought that it was even reverse sexism, that girls were assumed to read more than boys. I like the Junie B Jones series for my kids because Junie B is a little shit, she doesn’t behave and she’s hilarious. There’s a long tradition of those kind of girls in literature and I’m going to check out Pippi again! Good idea.
PSoul, did you read either “A Wrinkle in Time” or “Harriet the Spy” when you were a kid? If so, what did you think of them?
I’m all for trying to teach kids the lessons you want them to absorb via literature, as well as verbally and by example. I’m guessing that none of us would choose kids’ books that were overtly sexist or racist because we don’t want to expose them to ideas we find offensive, so why shouldn’t it work the other way?
Those of you who are fans of female fantasy/sci-fi writers might want to check out the conferences put together by Narrate Conferences: http://www.sirensconference.org/. I came across this group of women when they were doing Harry Potter cons, at one of which I had the privilege of hearing Tamora Pierce speak. Narrate puts together a great con. I highly recommend them.
I just bought my 7-year old nephew a couple of Magic Schoolbus books, both narrated by girls. I don’t see the kiddo often, but I want to do what I can to help counter all the nasty messages he’s getting from the culture at large.
I think you hit on a really interesting piece of socialization here, PS. I’ve always said that my early experience with several books about dragons formed my identity as much as anything in my life–probably those books and the Catholic church, from which I got my crazypants black and white understanding of morality. But I’ve never really thought about how those experiences may have deeply affected my socialization as a woman, as opposed to reading just about boys who can “be whatever they want” and who are encouraged to “be themselves,” which is what so many of my books were about.
I do think that Jane and the Dragon and The Princess and the Dragon have to do with my naturally owner-of-the-world assumption. Because as much as I recognize the patriarchy and the oppression of women, I tend to go about most of my life as if these things don’t exist, or perhaps don’t apply to me. Of course, that has as much to do with my white privilege and my intelligence and some dumb luck in getting a scholarship to a prep school and being taught with a bunch of rich people as anything, but it remains that my understanding that the patriarchy exists and applies to me has less impact on my behavior than the belief that if I simply do what what’s right (which is always the choice that subverts the patriarchy either intentionally or incidentally) everything will work out for the best in the end, the patriarchy will be smashed, and there will be a big party.
I’m the type of person who frequently gets, “A guy was bothering me at the bar, I wish you had been there because you would have yelled at him.” Now, this tendency to yell at men who annoy me has not yet gotten me in trouble, and as I’ve aged the dangers inherent in my impulsive need to crack down with my patriarchy-bashing hammer every bepenised agent of the patriarchy have become more apparent and I’ve dialed it back a bit. But I never really had that self-preservationist understanding that women were “supposed” to be submissive. Wait, no, that’s not true. What I mean is, I knew that women were supposed to be submissive–knew it to my bones. I just thought that it was “wrong” (see again my black and white moral code) and that if I refused to submit I would probably come out on top, just like Jane or the Princess or any of the characters I read as a kid. Like, this insane optimism about my own abilities and the belief that the good will prevail and that I am certainly just as good at saving the prince as any middle aged man that I must have gotten from books has totally determined my life. It certainly didn’t come from my mildly emotionally abusive family, or their conservative social and political beliefs.
So I don’t think that kids’ books teach gender studies, exactly. But I think they can have a powerful impact on the identity formation of kids in such a way that opens a bunch of doors and windows that lead to gender studies. But it should also be noted that I had no non-print friends and a scary family life, so books had an unnaturally big impact on my life, and I have the type of imagination that is so part of my non-imaginative life that a picture book could legitimately change my life. So maybe it only works on some kids.
I never felt like I was socialized by the fiction I read — especially not to keep my eyes on the ground and not have adventures and what not. Even though, my mom read The Lord of the Rings aloud to me when I was in 2nd grade and my first D&D character was a male halfling named Pippin (that was also during 2nd grade — I was 8).
Interestingly enough, I’ve always been criticized for acting like I owned the world — I guess being smarter than everyone around you has that benefit — and I can imagine someone giving a girl a statue that like the one you mentioned above. But maybe I’m just special like that.
So would you advise a feminist mother to not take her son to see this movie? Or read the book to him?
Sammie, I’m not really one to look for for parenting advice. At the same time I feel like this bit of indoctrination is so deep and oddly therefore subtle that this movie is no worse than your average kids’ film feministically speaking. I highlight it mostly because I found that one moment rather illuminating.
Odonata, I totally agree with you, which is why I’d be totally upfront and say I feel jealousy, but in the end I don’t regret, precisely being trained to consider others before myself…
Cimorene: My aunt gave me Jane and the Dragon for Christmas one year and I loved that book more than anything. It’s still among my favourite children’s books and I nowlook for it whenever I’m in the children’s section. I’d love to find it again.
To everyone who remembers great feminist books from their childhood: can I get some specific title/author combinations? I have an 8 y/o goddaughter who gets nothing but tutus from everyone in her family (nothing wrong with tutus, I’m just trying to broaden her experience) and I’ve decided to send her books for Xmas but am coming up blank on titles. Who wrote these dragon-y books? Halp.
Jane and the Dragon. Beware that they made a terrible TV show about it, I’m not sure if it’s still on the air. But it was that terrible computer animation. Ugh. But the book is excellent, and apparently there are sequels, which I’ve never read.
The Princess and the Dragon. This one is for younger kids, but I read both until I was well into reading more grown-up chapter books, just because they were so good.
Dealing with Dragons, the first book in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. These are chapter books, so no pictures. I nanny two kids, a 11 year old girl and 8 year old boy; at 8, the girl would have read this and easily, without a problem. At 8, the boy would never read them because they’re no pictures. He has some reading comprehension problems, she’s an unusually good reader. So it depends on how much your goddaughter likes to read.
I’ll also recommend Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books, which are at about the level of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. I’ve read the first 3 quartets: the Lioness/Alanna books, the Daine/Immortals War books, and the Protector of the Small books. Each quartet (as a whole) has been progressively more complicated, reading-comprehension-wise, but I think that has more to do with Pierce’s maturity as a writer. The Protector books were written years and years after the Alanna books, and are therefore better in general. But I doubt a 10 year old would notice that.
I’ll also give a shout-out to a book I just reread, Graceling. It is excellent. It’s definitely for older kids, as it’s got some pretty explicit sex stuff (no descriptions of sex, but it’s obvious that they’re having sex). Actually, so do the Tortall books, but for some reason Graceling seemed more explicit to me. It’s probably got the best and most interested female protagonist in any YA book I’ve ever read. I mean, honestly, like the character (as opposed to the writing and stuff) is as complicated and interested as almost any female character I’ve read in a novel. And yes, I am comparing her to such complex characters as Elizabeth Bennett, Jane Eyre, and even Becky Sharp. Well, maybe Virginia Woolf is better. And maybe the older Catharine from Wuthering Heights. Ok, I’ll stop comparing this book to genius masterpieces of English literature. But still. I actually just finished rereading it like 20 minutes ago, so this all could be from a post-book euphoria, but if you have any tweens and want them to read about a bad-ass character/want to read a book for fun, check it out. You can even read the first 100 pages or so on google books.
Finally, Terry Pratchett has a short series of YA books, the Tiffany Aching series. SO GOOD. She might be my other favorite female character, though not quite as complex morally and psychologically as Graceling’s Katsa. Though the Pratchett books are far more amusing. Hilarious, actually. Start with The Wee Free Men.
Honestly, sometimes I want to have kids so just I can give them good books to read.
Thank you muchly, I have made a list. Also, by reading the reviews I have figured out where your screenname is from. Twofer!
[...] The Pursuit of Harpyness: Gender Studies for Kindergarteners (and the Kid in All of Us) [...]
[...] Gender Studies for Kindergarteners (and the Kid in All of Us) [...]
There is a great deal of investigation about the benefits of relating withdogs, in anumerous of ways: companion animals, therapeutic visits (e.g., to nursing housesand care services), animal assisted psychotherapy, etc etc.