Scout's daughters : race and creative development in contemporary adolescent literature

Malloy, Amanda, "Scout's daughters : race and creative development in contemporary adolescent literature" (2011). Honors Theses. Paper 117. At the heart of what Roberta S. Trites titles ―adolescent literature‖ – works written both for and about young adults—is a question of agency (Disturbing 7). In Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature, Trites asserts that adolescent novels attempt to answer the question of young adults who wonder if they ―should or even can affect the world in which they live‖ (1). Trites' argument is based on the idea that the distinguishing characteristic of adolescent literature is its focus on ―the social forces‖ that shape, and often limit, young adults (3). In order for real-world and literary pre-teens to learn about their agency they must constantly challenge the ―power‖ that pervades their life in the form of socially constructed ideologies (3-5). My thesis is an application of this theory as it applies to four novels: Harper Lee's of growth and development,‖ these works are categorized as ―Entwicklungsroman‖ (7-9). These novels are not considered bildungsroman, which would imply the protagonist has ―reached adulthood by the end of the narrative‖ (9-10). This difference is crucial, as it allows for a focus on the immediate, rather than long-term, results of challenging social forces. The shortened narrative time span of these novels gives the protagonist an opportunity to discern the impact of her actions – either affirming or undermining her agency. Trites begins Disturbing the Universe with an analysis of The Chocolate War, a novel she considers one of the first pieces of adolescent literature. Yet, Jerry Renault (the main character of The Chocolate War) has one major advantage over the protagonists in the novels I will be discussing, his gender. Gender, like race, ethnicity, or religion, is among the many ―political constructs‖ that are used to repress and define identity (Trites, Disturbing, 46). In order to 3 successfully recover her agency, an adolescent protagonist must rebel against such constructs. The novelists addressed in this thesis present the repressive construct of gender to their protagonists from the onset of each book. As females, Scout, Ellen, Lily, and Naomi (the four protagonists of the novels respectively) must struggle to become ―empowered regardless of gender‖ (Trites, Waking, 4). Trite argues that the most compelling way to revise gender roles is to depict a protagonist with agency (5). It is only once each protagonist successfully overcomes …