Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children's Literature

Tison Pugh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136829154
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria

Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children's Literature examines distinguished classics of children's literature both old and new—including L. Frank Baum's Oz books, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series—to explore the queer tensions between innocence and heterosexuality within their pages. Pugh argues that children cannot retain their innocence of sexuality while learning about normative heterosexuality, yet this inherent paradox runs throughout many classic narratives of literature for young readers. Children's literature typically endorses heterosexuality through its invisible presence as the de facto sexual identity of countless protagonists and their families, yet heterosexuality's ubiquity is counterbalanced by its occlusion when authors shield their readers from forthright considerations of one of humanity's most basic and primal instincts.

The book demonstrates that tensions between innocence and sexuality render much of children's literature queer, especially when these texts disavow sexuality through celebrations of innocence. In this original study, Pugh develops interpretations of sexuality that few critics have yet ventured, paving the way for future scholarly engagement with larger questions about the ideological role of children's literature and representations of children's sexuality.

Tison Pugh is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Queering Medieval Genres and Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle English Literature and has published on children's literature in such journals as Children's Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Marvels and Tales.

Chapter One
“There lived in the Land of Oz two queerly made men”

Queer Utopianism and Antisocial Eroticism in L. Frank Baum’s Oz Books

The film version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the first novel of L. Frank Baum’s Oz series, serves as a pop-culture icon of twentieth-century Western gay culture. With Judy Garland as the star, its exaggerated characters of good and evil, and its Technicolor wonderland of vibrant colors and outlandish costumes, the film displays a queer sensibility that countless viewers adore.¹ Today gay bars in New Orleans, Seattle, and Sweden bear the name Oz, and the iconic polychromatic flag of the gay community pays homage to the film’s theme song, “Over the Rainbow.” References to the film appear in numerous other artifacts of gay culture, such as when, in Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band, one character derides another’s claimed heterosexuality by declaring “he’s about as straight as the Yellow Brick Road.”² Daniel Harris documents the “canonic” nature of references to Oz in the oft-repeated catchphrase, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,”³ which, for certain T-shirt incarnations, has been campily reformulated as “Aunt Em: Hate you! Hate Kansas! Taking the dog. Dorothy.”⁴ Although numerous other cinematic classics—from Mildred Pierce to Mommie Dearest—display a queer sensibility that elevates them to the status of cultural touchstones in the gay community, The Wizard of Oz towers above the rest in terms of its iconic role in queer cinema’s relationship to queer culture. As Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin observe, “almost every viewer (queer or not) probably enjoys the film not for its sepia-toned representation of banal ‘normality’ but for its breathtaking creation of a Technicolor Oz, a land where difference and deviation from the norm are the norm.”⁵ Somewhere during the transition from print to film, Oz lost its ostensible innocence as a children’s literary classic and was claimed by queers as a Technicolor land of deviance from normalcy.

But was Baum’s Oz ever truly innocent? Its queer roots are apparent from its very beginning as a series of children’s fairy tales, in which its celebration of children’s innocence is undone by its queer representations of heterosexuality. As Kenneth Kidd observes, “many classics of Anglo-American children’s literature are fundamentally homosocial, or concerned with same-sex friendships and family bonds. In retrospect, some of these classics seem decidedly queer,”⁶ and in such a light, the Oz books merit a retrospective analysis to plumb their queer depths. Certainly, they display an antinormative sensibility in their celebration of the unique, the eccentric, and the downright peculiar. After exploring the thematic queerness of the series in its queer-friendly messages of embracing oddness and in its construction of an antinormative utopia, this chapter turns to the ways in which Baum’s Oz books fundamentally reimagine procreation, heterosexuality, and erotic drives. As a queer utopia freed from the drudgeries of heteronormative inculcation, this fairy kingdom threatens the very possibility of heterosexuality by revisioning the meaning of romance and erotic attachment. As an antiheteronormative yet erotically queer utopia, Oz challenges the libidinal economy of heterosexual reproduction and highlights queer alternatives to expected forms of social organization. As incarnated in Dorothy’s body, the surface innocence of Oz highlights the perils of adult heterosexuality rather than its potential pleasures.

The Queer Utopia of Oz

In regard to Baum’s portrayal of Oz as a queer utopia dismissive of normativity and celebratory of carnivalesque social structures, numerous characters, places, and even objects in the books are passingly described as queer.⁷ Within the opening pages of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy meets the Munchkins, “the queerest people she had ever seen” (WWO 5), and she then finds the Scarecrow, who has a “queer, painted face” (WWO 9).⁸ The four travelers to the Emerald City—Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion—comprise a “queer party” (WWO 18), and even Oz itself is queer: “So [Dorothy] told [the Scarecrow] all about Kansas, and how gray everything was there, and how the cyclone had carried her to this queer Land of Oz” (WWO 10). The queerness in these examples—and in the vast majority of other instances when queer is used as an adjective in the series—is decidedly asexual, and Baum typically uses the word in its connotative sense of odd, unconventional, and eccentric.

Oddness, however, can be difficult to tame, despite the ideological inflection of a given text. Steven Bruhm and Natasha Hurley argue that in creating a piece of children’s literature authors inculcate children into an ideological system: “If writing is an act of world making, writing about the child is doubly so: not only do writers control the terms of the worlds they present, they also invent, over and over again, the very idea of inventing humanity, of training it and watching it evolve.”⁹ Within the genre of children’s literature, oddness typically facilitates the creation of an upside-down world in which readerly expectations are tweaked, and Alison Lurie perceives a subversive quality in children’s novels because they “recommended—even celebrated—daydreaming, disobedience, answering back, running away from home, and concealing one’s private thoughts and feelings from unsympathetic grown-ups.”¹⁰ At the same time, subversive features of children’s literature are often tamed at the narrative’s end when a return to ideological and cultural normalcy is effected, such as when Alice leaves Wonderland by waking up. The oddness of much of children’s literature thus appears congruent with theoretical conceptions of the carnivalesque, an overturning of social structures and decorum that stimulates momentary release from the status quo yet ultimately reinforces the status quo.¹¹ Umberto Eco acknowledges that the return to normalcy after a carnivalesque eruption tames it of any revolutionary potential: “comedy and carnival are not instances of real transgressions: on the contrary, they represent paramount examples of law reinforcement.”¹² Terry Eagleton makes a similar point, declaring that “[c]arnival, after all, is a licensed affair in every sense, a permissible rupture of hegemony, a contained popular blow-off as disturbing and relatively ineffectual as a revolutionary work of art. As Shakespeare’s Olivia remarks, there is no slander in an allowed fool.”¹³ Queerness in children’s literature offers giddy visions of carnivalesque realities, yet such visions frequently dissolve their sense of fantasy for a return to normalcy at the narrative’s end.

The preponderance of odd and carnivalesque incidents in children’s literature refers primarily to asexual issues, and much of this literature, despite its quirkiness, introduces children to heteronormative ideology. Oddness, however, cannot always be contained within hermetically sealed and ideologically approved interpretations after being so promiscuously unleashed in a world of fantasy and wonder. For example, Kiki and Ruggedo, the primary antagonists of The Magic of Oz, consider mixing the shapes of several animals into a new hybrid creature. Kiki initially resists the idea, asking “Won’t that make a queer combination?”, to which Ruggedo tersely replies, “The queerer, the better” (MagO 681). As with many of the other examples of queerness addressed in the Oz series, these lines do not emphasize gender or sexuality, yet they highlight the fundamentally queer drive of children’s literature in that it so frequently rejects the banal for the unique. “The queerer, the better” could serve as a slogan for children’s literature that lionizes a topsy-turvy and carnivalesque social order. Although such queerness appears asexual in most instances, the Oz series highlights the ways in which asexual oddness bleeds into queer depictions of sexuality and gender. In a world that so frequently foregrounds oddness as a delightful and amusing alternative to normativity, it is difficult then to hinder queerness from influencing depictions of gender and sexuality.

Endorsing this theme of queerness, the utopian Oz books embrace the odd and the unique over the quotidian. Eccentricity and singularity are privileged characteristics in Oz, and such messages resonate with queer meaning, such as when the Scarecrow convinces Jack Pumpkinhead, who fears that his ragtag body invites ridicule, to appreciate his uniqueness: “That proves you are unusual … and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed” (MarvO 83). In privileging the exceptional over the everyday, the Scarecrow’s exhortation resounds with metaphorical meaning, as queer readers could readily apply this moral to their own sense of separation from the dominant heterosexual culture. In a similar vein, Uncle Henry is one of the series’ least marvelous characters because he bears no magical abilities, and he declares that he and Aunt Em are unlikely citizens in a fairyland: “[It ap]pears to me … we won’t make bang-up fairies” (ECO 260);¹⁴ nonetheless, he quickly realizes that one must appreciate people as they are in Oz: “This is a queer country, and we may as well take people as we find them” (ECO 278). Such themes pop up throughout the Oz books, and the Cowardly Lion voices another paean to diversity: “To be individual, my friends, to be different from others, is the only way to become distinguished from the common herd. Let us be glad, therefore, that we differ from one another in form and in disposition” (LPO 587). Additionally, the Shaggy Man’s words—“I think our longings are natural, and if we act as nature prompts us we can’t go far wrong” (T-TO 447)—potentially speak to any readers whose desires clash with those of the dominant culture, assuring them that natural desires will never deceive or mislead them. As with Baum’s use of the word queer, little in these examples specifically touches upon homosexuality or other enactments of sexual queerness, but they nonetheless create a fictional world in which diversity and uniqueness are esteemed over sameness and uniformity. If readers accept these themes as the lessons to be inculcated by the books, they must be prepared for women, men, and sexuality not to appear like women, men, and sexuality should appear within the gendered paradigms of early twentieth-century America.¹⁵

Certainly, Oz is a utopia for women, where they are largely freed from traditional gender roles.¹⁶ Even in the texts not featuring her in the lead role, Dorothy is never forgotten, and her fame throughout Oz establishes her as the primary focus of the series. J. L. Bell describes her as a conquering hero,¹⁷ and Joel Chaston observes that she rejects her home life in Kansas that threatens to domesticate her.¹⁸ Moreover, Dorothy regenders the standard parameters of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, as Edward Hudlin notes: “The fact that Dorothy is an orphan whose parentage and origins are obscure and mysterious is essential to the further development of the story, as it prepares the reader for Dorothy’s future apotheosis.”¹⁹ Assuming the masculine narrative position of a questing hero, Dorothy queers the quest narrative from its heteronormative generic foundations.²⁰ The individual titles of the Oz series all follow the mythic structure of departure, initiation, and return, yet they do so by focusing on a predominantly feminine community rather than on the individualist quest of a lone male.

After Dorothy, Baum’s most prominent character is the fairy princess Ozma, who ascends to the throne of Oz in the second book of the series, The Marvelous Land of Oz, and her reign further positions Oz as a queer utopia. Gender roles and sexual morphism are topsy-turvy in this land, especially in regard to Ozma herself, who was raised as a boy named Tip before learning her true identity as a fairy queen. Tip initially resists transitioning from boy to girl (“Why, I’m no Princess Ozma—I’m not a girl! … I don’t want to be a girl!” [MarvO 100]), but she eventually accepts her female identity and regal duty to rule as a queen instead of as a king: “Ozma made the loveliest Queen the Emerald City had ever known; and, although she was so young and inexperienced, she ruled her people with wisdom and justice” (MarvO 101). The name Tip connotes phallic images, and this boy must be castrated semiotically and physically to assume his position as queen of the utopian land.

Ozma’s magical sex change demonstrates the ease with which sex and gender roles are swapped in Oz, and additional examples of gender switching abound. The talking chicken Billina, with her aggressive personality and forthright demeanor, prefers to be called Bill:

“So Bill I’ve always been called, and Bill is my name.”

“But it’s all wrong, you know,” declared Dorothy, earnestly; “and, if you don’t mind, I shall call you ‘Billina.’ Putting the ‘eena’ on the end makes it a girl’s name, you see.”

“Oh, I don’t mind it in the least,” returned the yellow hen. “It doesn’t matter at all what you call me, so long as I know the name means ME.” (OO 106)

Although this encounter may be read as Dorothy’s policing of gendered identities, Billina’s reaction—that gendered names do not affect her sense of personal identity—demonstrates that she remains recalcitrant in disrupting gender roles. Developing this theme further, Baum’s chicken cares little about the biological sex of her brood and names all of her hatchlings Dorothy in honor of her friend, regardless of their sex at birth. When she realizes that “two turned out to be horrid roosters” (ECO 263), she changes their names from Dorothy to Daniel, but, like Queen Ozma, these young cocks spent their formative period incorrectly identified in regard to their biological sex. Moreover, in a fairy kingdom such as Oz, many magical creatures can turn themselves into the opposite sex, as evidenced by the monstrous Phanfasm: “The First and Foremost [of the Phanfasms] slowly raised his arms, and in a twinkling his hairy skin fell from ...

Table of contents

• Children’s Literature and Culture
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Notes on the Text
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One “There lived in the Land of Oz two queerly made men”
• Chapter Two Eternal Childhood, Taming Tomboyism, and Equine Erotic Triangles in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Series
• Chapter Three Erotic Heroism, Redemptive Teen Sexuality, and the Queer Republic of Heaven in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials
• Chapter Four Dumbledore’s Queer Ghost
• Chapter Five “What, Then, Does Beatrice Mean?”
• Chapter Six Excremental Eroticism, Carnivalesque Desires, and Gross Adolescence in Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl
• Chapter Seven Masochistic Abstinence, Bug Chasing, and the Erotic Death Drive in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index