0 Bewertungen0% fanden dieses Dokument nützlich (0 Abstimmungen)
60 Ansichten2 Seiten
Anne of green ables is fascinating for its central focus on the coming of age of a young girl. As Anne is trying to find her place, so is modern feminism searching for what it means to be a woman. What female adult exemplars does Anne have to learn from on her journey?
Anne of green ables is fascinating for its central focus on the coming of age of a young girl. As Anne is trying to find her place, so is modern feminism searching for what it means to be a woman. What female adult exemplars does Anne have to learn from on her journey?
Anne of green ables is fascinating for its central focus on the coming of age of a young girl. As Anne is trying to find her place, so is modern feminism searching for what it means to be a woman. What female adult exemplars does Anne have to learn from on her journey?
Anne of Green Gables: Presentation Discussions and Feminism
In our group presentations for the novel
Anne of Green Gables, we have discussed many aspects of coming of age, what it means to grow from a child to a fully realized adult both in Annes world and our own. Who holds the keys to this mysterious adventure behind the gate? What does it look like? Will we know it when we arrive or is adulthood an island that you only know youve reached once youve lived there for a time? Weve followed Anne as she navigates the challenges and frustrations that come with growing up and fitting into a world that doesnt always think or act the same way she does. Through her experiences and interactions with adults and her peers, Anne must juggle who she wants to be, who she needs to be, and what society is telling her she should be to ultimately find herself. Anne faces many hurdles, traversing the emotional challenges that come with being an adopted child, societys expectations, interpersonal relationships, and chasing after education in a time when the working and educated woman was only just emerging as acceptable. Anne of Green Gables is fascinating for its central focus on the coming of age of a young girl, a process that is currently shifting and lacking of a concrete definition of what it means to be a grown woman. As Anne is trying to find her place and discover herself, so is modern feminism searching for what it means to be a woman beyond equality of the sexes.
What female adult exemplars does Anne have
to learn from on her journey? Marilla Cuthbert: Annes example of a homemaker. Marilla runs her household. She is in charge of the caring and feeding of both Anne and Matthew, the upkeep of the home, and also the raising of Anne. Mrs. Rachel Lynde: The voice of society and the social woman. Rachel is there to remind Anne of the proper woman, with manners, fashion, and societal rules. Miss Muriel Stacy: The working woman. Miss Stacy shows Anne the educated and working woman, devoted to teaching and making her own way in the world. Josephine Barry: The older, independent woman. Aunt Josephine gives Anne a glimpse into the future of the independent, self-made woman.
Anne works hard for her education,
competing heavily to beat Gilbert Blythe and with the help of Miss Stacy eventually growing to compete for herself and her own accomplishment. Women still face many challenges when it comes to higher education both in the United States and worldwide. Though there is a great disparity in the degree of those challenges, there are many women, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai working hard for that to change. In Annes time, dedication to education and career was either a short term ambition or a sentence to life without a family of ones own. Annes ambition for learning was, in general, supported by the adults in her life, with Miss Stacy in particular working hard to encourage her. None the less, career options for Anne were limited mostly to teaching. That has changed significantly within the US; however women are often forced to choose between career and family. Paid maternity leave, the division of household labor, and women returning to demanding jobs after giving birth are topics hotly debated. European nations have proven more progressive in these areas than the US. Even Anne must choose between her duty to her family and her continued education. Anne decides to commit to her duty to her mother figure, returning to care for Marilla as Marilla has cared for her. She gives up the opportunity for continued learning in favor of teaching and devotion to her adoptive family.
Annes coming of age journey is
complicated by her status as an adoptee, and she and the Cuthberts must learn to grow together and love one another as family. Anne struggles with isolation, her own identity, and her place at Green Gables.
Of course Anne is far from alone. She has
not only her adult role models, but childhood friend Diana Barry and her cerebral match/rival Gilbert Blythe. These friends have profound impacts on Annes life, whether it is stalwart encouragement and support or motivation and strengthening of her will. Anne of Green Gables only follows Anne into adulthood. We are left to imagine and contemplate what the rest of Annes future will hold. After all, adulthood, despite being raced toward by children, is really a very long time. Who will Anne be once she reaches an age closer to Aunt Josephine, Marilla and Mrs. Rachel? In literature older ladies tend to fit into a finite number of stereotypes: The Hen Pecker, The Hearth Keeper, The Witch, The Cat Lady, The Super-Traditional, The Wealthy Widow, and The Extremely Religious. Rarely do we see self-made, well socialized, and
welcoming women in their twilight years.
Likely, Anne will deviate from traditional categories as much in her adult life as in her childhood, aging into something altogether fitting of her personality and life experience. The representation of women in literature in any age bracket is all too frequently lacking, despite a recent surge in the female protagonist and hero. However, is lack of representation due to lack of inclusion or to a lack of consensus on how those characters should be conveyed, particularly in childrens literature? With changing norms in womens education, career choices, marriage expectations and acceptable sexuality, the Bildungsroman path for women is a fluid category, in contrast to the traditions of growing up for young men. What makes a modern, feminist teenager? Child? What challenges and choices do girls face and how do they overcome them? In a culture that seems to demand the strong woman or the traditional more dependent with little understand of a space in between, girls working their way into adulthood struggle with what they want, and what they feel they should be as feminist and progressive thinkers. We are trying to adapt to the uncomfortable restrictions we feel, trying to find a way to live that upholds our values without compromising our happiness. -Rachel Kincaid
Just as Anne in Anne of Green Gables is
working to find herself, so is the modern feminist. In her article Frustrations of the Modern Feminist in a 2007 issue of Off Our
Backs, Rachel Kincaid discusses many of the
conflicting duties facing a young feminist thinker. Struggling, like Anne, to discover and become the right kind of woman. Kincaid asserts, however, that the foundation of feminism is that we deserve to be happy; that we will continue to struggle until all women are able to be comfortable with who and what they are, without fear of recrimination or shame. Feminism has never been about becoming the right kind of woman; it makes the opposite claim, that we are each of us exactly as we should be (Kincaid, 61). Feminism in 2014 is strikingly different from feminism in 1922, or even 1980. Progress has been made in rights and liberties for women, such as voting legislation, education for women, careers for women, and also an increased exploration of previously taboo subjects like womens sexuality. There is a long way to go, particularly in countries where young girls face violence even for seeking basic education. As young girls search for who they are, hopefully there will be increasing acceptance in the future that there is no wrong answer. Difficulties and struggles, certainly, society and culture will always push back. But whether you are societys darling like Diana, self-made like Aunt Josephine, a homemaker like Marilla, a social matriarch like Mrs. Rachel, or curious and imaginative like Anne Shirley, you deserve the opportunity to chase after yourself, wherever you may be found. Works Cited: Kincaid, Rachel. Frustrations of the Modern Feminist. Off Our Backs 37.4 (2007): 60-61. Web. 5 Nov 2014. Montgomery, Lucy Maud. "Anne of Green Gables." Classics of Children's Literature. By John W. Griffith and Charles H. Frey. Sixth ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005. 915101074. Print.