From: Hollis Rudiger <hmrudiger>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:43:07 -0500

So many teachers appear in children's books as either de facto parents or in opposition to parents. They are there to provide guidance and encouragement in cases where there are no parents (Matilda Bone, by Cushman or to be for the child what the parents cannot be (Hermione and other Muggle born wizards, to name 2 quick examples) There are tons of boarding school stories where we see teens developing outside of the traditional family.

Girls especially, I think, attach themselves to teachers for different reasons at different ages: a kindergartner needs a mommy, a middle schooler needs a powerful woman who is NOT mommy, and a high schooler might need a role model.
(Boys probably do too, but as a former girl and teacher at a girls' school, I guess I am more interested right now in female adolescence)

In some cases, I think mothers are killed off or absent as a way to explore girls' development, or at least, the relevance of a mother?ughter relationship. Everything on A Waffle. Rodzina. The Breadwinner Trilogy. Pictures of Hollis Woods. Or classics like My Antonia or Heidi. (In Milkweed, its a boy, but it is a great example of a theory of " natural" human development without parental interference) When a mother is absent, there is almost always a subsitute, usually a teacher figure, even if not in a traditional classroom. (The fact that there is a recent popular book called Another Hideous Book Where the Mother Dies might be proof enough!)

KT mentioned Miss Wilcox in A Northern Light. The mother daughter teacher triangle in that novel has been on my mind since I read the book becasue it reminds me so much of another novel: The Wide Wide World, by Susan Warner published in 1852. While not written for children or YA's, it was America's first bestseller (outselling Huck Finn, speaking of orphans) and it has pretty much fallen off the literary map due to its sentimentality, but I think it is a really important book, and might in fact, speak to what is happening in some of these contemporary "girl novels." I am hoping A Northern Light might help us return TWW to the canon.

In it, Ellen Montgomery is bounced around as her mother first leaves her to convalesce and then, literally leaves her in death. She dies quickly, and her parting wish that her daughter be pious and Christian haunts Ellen as she navigates the world without her mother and instead, with other adult women who offer either a very harsh and unappealing Christianity, or an alternative to Christianity. There is a pull between her loyalty and love for her mother with the reality of her world and her developing relationship with her teacher, who represents education and progress and self realization. Sounds a lot like Northern Light, eh?

Whatever is going on here defies the classic Antigone pattern, of moral and ethical development (female values) and civil law (masculine values) as these 2 young women find themselves rejecting the ethics of their mothers. It makes them both feel terribly treasonous. And yet the alternative to their mother's way is NOT their father's, but rather, another woman who has, in fact, replaced their mothers. In both cases, it is a teacher, who, during that time, offered education and learning as the alternative to compliance and religion, which was a male domain.


I realize this is a long windy road from the original topic, but The role of Teacher is a child's life is so critical, especially in the absence of Mother or Father, and I am interested in how gender influences school relationships. Thanks for your thoughts.

HR
 


Hollis Margaret Rudiger, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706

hmrudiger at some.place Voice: 608&3930 Fax: 608&2I33 www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Tue 28 Sep 2004 10:43:07 AM CDT