Essay #5

Throughout history it has been shown how women are discriminated against for their gender, they are said to be weaker and not as strong as men are. This has been shown throughout the years. And now it is even being translated into novels. A novel such as The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn.I believe that The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is a book that was written in a matter that men dominate the story. The main characters of the book happen to be 2 males. Jim and Huck , and the whole novel revolves around both of them. All the women in the novel are women who are made to fit into the category that society puts them into.The critical controversy that I chose to read was the one by Nancy A. Walker , Reformers and Young Maidens: Women and Virtue in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. When I began reading the book I personally did not pay attention to all the main points that Walker brought up, but as I started reading her argument I realized that she was right.

A quote that I found very intresting by Nancy Walker was when she was staing what she felt aout the book. The object of praise, banning and veneration during the hundred years since it's publication, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has not commonly been considered a novel about women in the nineteenth century american society. Men occupy center stage in Huck Finn; women stand toward the back and sides of the novel, nagging, providing inspiration , often weeping or hysterical.(477)
I agree with what she is saying in this quote, in this book Twain made all the women stand back and made them seem annoying and not important. Both Miss Watson and the Widow Doulgas are the caretakers of Huck, and they both seem to give into society’s view of a womens role back in the day.

At the beginning of the book Huck always felt that Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas were always nagging him and wanted him to reform and try to fit in better. As we all know Huck is someone who has had a rough childhood, he grew up with a drunk father and falls a lot into peer pressure. In the book Widow Douglas plays the role of a women with a caring heart who really cares for huck, she just wants to make him a better person and make him have religious beliefs like herself.
The widow Douglas , she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out.(33)
He didn’t lke the idea of someone trying to help him become a better person, as he went on describing her he made her seem somewhat annoying. The role that she played was played out to be a women who just jkept nagging him, when in reality she was just trying to make him a better man.

And he did the same for Miss Watson.
Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and tooka set at me now, with a spelling book. She worked me middlinghard for about an hour, and thehn the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t stood it much longer(33)
Judith FetterleyAmerican literature is male. To read the cannon of what is currently considered classis american literature is preforce to identity as male.... Our literature neither leaves women alone nore allows them to participate.(477)

I still have more details and more paragraphs to add, and for some reeson the formating is not working right=(

Blog #10

My thesis would be- I believe that The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn is a book that was written in a matter that men dominate the story.

Nancy Walker
The object of praise, banning and veneration during the hundred years since it's publication, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has not commonly been considered a novel about women in the nineteenth century american society. Men occupy center stage in huck Finn; women stand toward the back and sides of the novel, nagging, providing inspiration , often weeping or hysterical.(477)

Judith Fetterley
American literature is male. To read the cannon of what is currently considered classis american literature is preforce to identity as male.... Our literature neither leaves women alone nore allows them to participate.(477)

I agree with both the qoutes , the first qoute targets The Book huck Finn while the other qoute talks about gender roles in literature in general.