Scribble Issue 9 Diversity In Literature Edition

S C R I B B L E Shrewsbury High School Literary Magazine, Issue 9 (December, 2021)

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NOTE FROM THE

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Isabel Clarke, Libby Driscoll, Aaina Jassell

ello reader! We’re Aaina, Iggy, and Libby, and we’re excited to introduce the first edition of Scribble edited by us. This term, we chose to create an issue focused on the theme of diversity within literature. This edition features a wide variety of fantastic articles, ranging from the exploration of How Diverse Children’s Literature is by Immy Hollins, to Emma Owen’s in-depth analysis of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

This theme is clearly something our wonderful writers feel passionately about, with Abigail Kulemeka sharing her own personal experience of reading as a child.

It is clear that representation of oneself is incredibly important within literature. Everyone deserves to see themselves portrayed in a positive light and positive representations of others allow us to develop into a more accepting and appreciative society. Libby Driscoll explores the importance of positive representation in her article, ‘Are All Your Favourite Villains Gay?’.

Seeing people who look, act, and experience life like yourself in media can undoubtedly make you feel more accepted and included in society. However, it is also important for people of other groups to see positive depictions of others in the media in order to prevent them from developing harmful opinions purely based on unrepresentative material. It can also allow them to better understand the hardships and discrimination faced by others. For those who are not a part of these marginalised and under-represented groups, it can be hard to be aware of or even imagine their experiences, so by consuming media that contains an honest depiction of this outlook, it can help them understand.

These articles range from canonical to modern literature and explore various marginalised groups’ presence within literature. We hope that all our readers feel represented within this issue, be it through resonating with a character discussed, or with one of our contributor's opinions. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this latest instalment of Scribble!

Contents 2 Welcome from the Editors 3 Contents 4 Young Female Protagonists - Influential or Identical?

6 How Diverse is Children’s Literature?

8 Are all your Favourite Villians Gay? 12 Red at the Bone by Darcy Duhra 14 Diversity Canon 18 I know why the Caged Bird Sings!

21 Book Reviews 22 The Importance of Diversity in Children’s Literature 24 The Woman with the Golden Gun 30 The Hidden Dangers of the Canon

Editors Isabel Clarke, Libby Driscoll, Aaina Jassel

Editorial Contributions Pippa Simcock, Isabel Clarke, Darcy Duhra, Emma Owen, Imogen Hollins, Abi Kulemeka, Aaina Jassel, Libby Driscoll, Robin Aldridge

Editoral Design & Typeset Tiffany Pardoe

Front Page Illustration Unity in Diversity by Irina Greciuhina (2020) Published by Scribble, Shrewsbury High School 32 Town Walls, Shrewsbury, SY1 1TN

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Young Female Protagonists Influential or Identical?

By Pippa Simcock

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oung adult literature - we’ve all read it, we all love it, but why are the girls always the same? Female protagonists aren’t uncommon in young adult novels, often strong and selfassured, they act as role models for teen readers embarking on a new chapter in their own lives. However, whilst reading my newest series, I realised they may not be as empowering as we like to think. It’s no secret that the female protagonists can lack diversity, with many backstories coming from the same cookie-cutter pattern; they are generally “not like other girls”. Although of

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course no two girls are the same, it seems strange that all the supposedly divergent characters are extremely similar. Surely, this lack of variety does not inspire young girls to be themselves and instead leads them to conform to a different female stereotype?

I’m sure we all know the kind of protagonist I’m talking about: Katniss Everdeen, Tris Prior, and Tally Youngblood from Uglies are all examples. They tend to have differing interests to everyone else, which is what I love about them, but their dislikes are often the same; Katniss finds that ‘other girls’ her age talk about ‘other girls, or clothes’, but she on the other hand isn’t ‘gossipy’ and clothes ‘bore [her] to tears’. It is clear that in order to make their characters stand out, authors can sometimes make the stereotypical interests of a girl seem negative. Personally, I have to admit I despise it when people assume all I am interested in is chatter and fashion, but I still believe that we should be able to enjoy these things without shame. When reading young adult literature, it is clear that we could be discouraged from pursuing certain things because they are not shown in a positive light by the determined young women we look up to.

It is important to remember that there are still some novels that provide fresh, relatable characters that a wide variety of people can see as role models. Personally, I find Citra Terranova from the Scythe series is a good example of a universal idol. She is powerful, determined, and refuses to give up her morals. She also respects those who have a different way of life from herself. But the main reason that I believe she is a good heroine is her relatability. It is easy for us to compare ourselves to the classic unshakeable female protagonists who, like Tris Prior from Divergent, ‘didn’t know what fear was’. Instead, she feels the fear but does it anyway, making a ‘vow to become the change’, a trait that I think we can all aspire to. On top of this, she is still allowed to have weakness and make mistakes. In other books, the protagonists can be presented as perfect, however Citra Terranova accepts her mistakes and is able to move on. Her dynamic as a scythe is particularly interesting, she is a bringer of death and in order to continue doing her job, Citra has learnt to leave her guilt in the past. She does this by respecting those she has gleaned and continuing her job knowing that she is doing so for the betterment of society, much like her mentor who reminds the main characters that they must ‘never lose [their] humanity’ and the ability to be imperfect.

So, why is it important for us to have a diverse range of characters to look up to?

Personally, I have found that the literature I consume has a profound effect on me.

From Hermione making me embrace my personal love for books, to Elizabeth Bennett reminding me I am worthy of respect, the women I have looked up to have shaped who I am today. When, as early teens, we begin to read the books I have mentioned, we are impressionable, so it is vital that we have a variation of young women to look up to. If we have this, our young readers will grow up to honour many different values and have a deep sense of self, instead of feeling obliged to be identical to the clichéd portrayals of strong women.

Essentially, I feel that female protagonists in young adult literature tend to lack diversity. Although the regular format of these protagonists is not bad and is intended to empower young readers, it is clear that we need a change. I hope that in the future we will see characters with new personalities, backstories, and lives to inspire readers across the world. What do you think?

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How Diverse is Children’s Literature?

By Imogen Hollins

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f you look back at your childhood, you will probably remember cosy times, cuddled up with a book at bedtime, either reading independently or being read a story. Bedtime stories, however, are not just a lovely ending to the day, these bedtime stories are a safe way to experience and discuss all sorts of feelings and situations.

of literature can serve as a powerful message to enable children to understand themselves, others, and gain the sensitivity needed to negotiate the modern world.

According to the National Literary Trust, books help children develop basic language skills and expand their vocabulary much more than any other media. They say that fiction and non-fiction books widen a child’s consciousness: ‘they expand our universe beyond time and place and inspire our own original thoughts’ (NLT).

These stories, therefore, should not only reflect the child’s own life, but also give them a safe way to learn about someone else’s life. When children identify with different communities and genders, it helps them learn about themselves and feel like they belong in the world.

It is important that diversity in literature goes beyond ethnicity. Diversity should include various facets of sexuality, gender, appearance, disabilities, language, religion, and culture. A variety of lives and experiences need to be explored in children’s literature to help them accept themselves and others. Done correctly, this type

In the 2011 Census, 13% of the UK population (over 8 million people) identified themselves as Black, Asian or from another ethnic minority. In 2019 the Annual Population Survey estimated that 1 in 25 of the population over 16 identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. According to Mencap there are 193 thousand children in the UK with a learning disability, and 750 thousand children are disabled. In the NCBLA survey of January to March 2020, they sought the opinions of

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58,346 children aged between 9 – 18. The opinions of the children in the study concluded that:

they did not all feature a “damsel in distress”; in 1740, Beauty and the Beast is told in a different way and ‘Belle’ kills the beast. These stories are important and have deep roots in every culture around the world. They have been important to us and have reflected our lives, hopes, and fears for generations.

• 32.7% did not see themselves in what they read and 39.8% would like more books with characters similar to them

• 37.3% of children from poorer backgrounds

Sally Goddard Blythe the director of the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology says that fairy tales “develop imagination and creativity, and they help children understand their own emotional dilemmas in an imaginative way’ and ‘help them understand firstly the quirks and weaknesses of human behaviour in general, and secondly, to accept many of their own fears and emotions” (PsychCentral 2020).

didn’t see themselves in what they read

• 44.3 % of those who describe their gender as not boy or girl said they didn’t see themselves in the books they read.

The need to publish books on diversity has now been recognised, but since 2020 only 7% of children’s books in the UK feature characters of colour. There are many publishing houses who are trying to remedy the situation, actively publishing books with diverse role models, books which actively teach about diversity and inclusion. It is important that these books are not written under one category, not just about a disabled child or a black child; these books should try and inspire the reader on many different levels and not under or over represent narratives. The feminist poet Audre Lorde said: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single–issue lives”.

Today, fairy tales are being re-written. In her collection Fierce Fairytales: & other Stories to Stir Your Soul, author Nikita Gill has changed the protagonists, such that in her versions of the tales, Sleeping Beauty is awake, and Cinderella’s mother begs her daughter to stand up to her abusers and she advocates the reader to be true to themselves. Gill says “we are teaching [them] to respect themselves and take responsibility for their own choices and decisions”.

Books strengthen our self-confidence and help us to understand who we are. They help us work out where we come from, and importantly, where we want to go.

They help us connect and empathise, helping a child work out the world before they have to experience it.

Unlike the media, reading takes us to a world where we alone decide what we think about book we are reading, there is no one looking over our shoulder telling us what we should think.

Unfortunately, diverse books are not mainstream and there are different reasons for this; publishing houses have believed that multicultural books will not sell, that they will be deemed to be just for and enjoyed by socalled minorities, rather than all children. Although the call for more diverse books is there, the pull of profit and the lack of knowledge and acceptance by editors and publishers means that the safe option of the tried and tested will be more readily available on the bookshelves.

The book industry - from publishing to literary festivals and prize committees - is seen to be intransigently white, middle class, and often male led.

I believe that fairy stories have their place, alongside diverse and inclusive children’s literature. Both genres should give a child the chance to dream and inspire, give them a safe place to examine the world, and give them the tools to take on life. It seems that we need more books which reflect our changing world; books which celebrate feminism, challenge racism, and keep up with the changing nature of our society. We shouldn’t, however, leave the job of ‘teaching’ our children to others, through any type of media. Is it right that Alicia Keys cuts out a whole section of children’s literature, and wouldn’t it be more useful to take on its positives and give our children the tools to question its negatives? I believe it is our job as ‘future parents’ to equip ourselves with what is needed, to be open minded, and guide our children to help prepare them for a successful future.

With some way still to go until books on diversity are mainstream, what are children currently reading, and how is this influencing their view of the world? In a survey conducted on behalf of the charity Booktrust, the results showed that more and more parents were actively choosing ‘modern’ books, but interestingly 7 out of 10 parents still chose to read fairy tales to their children.

Today, fairy tales are demonised by many for their use of stereotypes and how they promote racism and sexism. Recently the singer Alicia Keys said she would not let her children read or watch Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs due to its sexist portrayal of Snow White and its misogynistic theme. Fairy tales and fables have been popular for thousands of years - a version of Cinderella dates back to 860 AD in China. In history,

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Are all your favourite villains gay?

By Libby Driscoll

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In case you aren’t quite convinced yet, I will break down a few of the villains I have mentioned.

Ursula is perhaps the clearest example. Her character design was inspired by Divine, the legendary drag queen, with eyebrows, makeup, and a low, husky voice to match. She also possesses negative stereotypes associated with queerness: jealousy, over-sexualisation and obsession with appearance.

Similarly, look at the trope of the ‘sissy villain’, covering Hades, Jafar, Scar, and Captain Hook – they are all very flamboyant, sassy, and weaker than their counterparts. Even more clearly, Governor Ratcliffe from Pocahontas is very vain, wears bows in his hair, is obsessed with gold and glitter, and hates physical labour – he is even the only character to wear bright pink!

hink of a villain. Any villain. Let’s start basic, maybe a Disney villain. Who comes to mind? Ursula, Maleficent, Scar, Cruella De Vil, Captain Hook?

You’ll find all of these characters have certain common traits that aren’t shared by their heroic counterparts. They’re flamboyant and camp, with stereotypically queer personalities and appearances. This is called ‘queer coding’ when an author or director assigns a character stereotypically queer traits without specifically labelling their identity. While this may sound perfectly harmless, and perhaps it has created many of our favourite characters, it does create a dangerous association between queerness and villainy that can be instilled at an early age, especially in the case of Disney films.

Queer Coded Villain Queen Ursula from The Little Mermaid character design was inspired by the drag artist Devine

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“There is a dangerous association between queernessand villany”

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Poster for a theatrical adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. from 1880s

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This doesn’t end with Disney either, or even modern media. Classic villains such as Mr Hyde also have been interpreted as representing homosexuality. This character may have been based on a specific case of Louis V…, a patient in Rochefort Asylum who (according to modern research) probably had dissociative identity disorder. It was recorded that he undertook a startling metamorphosis, he was a ‘quiet, well-behaved, and obedient’ street urchin, but he abruptly became ‘violent, greedy and quarrelsome’, as well as a heavy drinker, a political radical, and an atheist. Accounts of the case study were published around the time he was writing the story, and some of Stevenson’s closest colleagues were the scientists researching male hysteria, the condition he was diagnosed with at the time. This term referred to ‘timid and fearful men, whose gaze were neither lively nor piercing, were rather soft, poetic and languorous. Coquettish and eccentric, they prefer ribbons and scarves to hard manual labour’.

Another queer coded villain within classic literature is Dorian Gray. Although late Victorian society did not allow for an explicit exploration of homosexual love, it has been called ‘the first gay novel written in English’.

On the surface, Gray may appear heterosexual – all his affairs are with women, starting with Sybil Vane, for whom he professes undying love (before the love promptly dies); and on he moves to a series of affairs of increasingly short duration, less meaning, and with decreasingly respectable women. And yet, there’s something about him. Written by infamously camp Oscar Wilde, his beauty is a central element of the novel, and it is openly admired by Basil and Lord Henry Wotton throughout. He is given the central characteristics of jealousy and vanity stereotypically associated with gay men and all the vague references to corruption, sensualism, and unspecified night-

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by the Irish author Oscar Wilde.

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time activities that are looked down upon by his erstwhile friends all create doubt as to his sexual identity. The novel has been viewed as partially autobiographical, as Wilde stated that ‘[he] used to be totally reckless of young lives’ and ‘used to take up a boy, love “passionately” and then grow bored with him and take no notice of him’.

There is also a trope – particularly within children’s literature, of hyper-masculine female villains. There was Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, ‘a gigantic holy terror, a fierce tyrannical monster who frightened the life out of pupils and teachers alike’. She is a character traditionally played in drag on stage, with her masculinity carrying an incredibly dangerous queerphobic message about the dangers of straying from traditional gender roles. Her physique is ‘gigantic’ and ‘formidable’, with ‘big shoulders’, ‘thick arms’ and ‘powerful legs’, and a ‘deep and dangerous voice’. She wears breeches that contrast with the other, more feminine characters’ clothes, flats rather than heels and often is depicted with a whistle around her neck. Her sport (hammer-throwing), too, is “gender inappropriate”, with the book being released seven years before the Olympics allowed women to participate. She shows a hatred of femininity, ‘if there’s one thing the Trunchbull can’t stand, it’s pigtails’, she tosses children like hammers as a punishment, eliciting cheers of ‘Well thrown, sir!’, and Dahl uses masculine metaphor when calling her evil, ‘The Trunchbull is the Prince of Darkness…’. In comparison, Miss Honey is the paragon of femininity: humble, demure, motherly, gentle, slender and beautiful ‘like a porcelain figure’. Her “damsel in distress” image stands in stark contrast to Trunchbull’s hot-headed masculine dominance – ‘Miss Honey stood there helpless before this great red-necked giant.’ Through this lens, the conclusion is clearly transphobic, as a child becomes less scared as she ‘realised exactly what was going on inside the Trunchbull’s pants’ and her masculine façade is broken with the entrance of her father to discipline her. He calls Trunchbull ‘Agatha’, and this proves the falseness of her masculine charade.

Matilda struggles to overcome her parents’ prejudices that ‘small girls should be seen and not heard’ and that for women ‘looks is more important than books’. Matilda is defiant of this gender predestination, but Dahl’s feminist message ends here. Women should be ‘gutsy and adventurous’, even intellectual and literary, but they should be feminine while doing so – lest they become a villain.

As such, perhaps even if I didn’t mention them here, your favourite villains are queer coded. Stories, with their villains and heroes, are often our first contact with moral judgement. The hero represents desirable values and behaviours, while the villain represents negative values and less socially accepted behaviours – which our juvenile minds easily recognise and mimic. The rigid black and white contrast in nature of these characters were created to teach the audience morality in its simplest form, with no grey areas left to confuse us. The villain is often dehumanised and made to evoke utter repulsion, while the hero is glorified. Therefore, the association made between queerness and villainy in these characters is incredibly dangerous – representation is clearly important in literature, but we must ensure it is in a positive light. That does not mean we cannot have villains, or even that we can’t have camp villains, but having these characteristics, be they overwhelmingly common within these roles, certainly creates a dangerous association. As Wilde himself put it, ‘I have no doubt we shall win, but the road is long, and red with monstrous martyrdoms’, and perhaps we can make the road to true equality ever so slightly shorter by promoting equal, positive representation for all.

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RED AT THE BONE

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A novel by Jacqueline Woodson

by Darcy Duhra

hen I was researching a book to include in this term’s edition of Scribble, I knew it had to be something special, something that touched on topics that might resonate with others, but also explored injustice from another perspective. The book drew me in because it’s a coming-of-age novel. When reading the book, I experienced a certain immediacy in the writing. It led me to research the Tulsa massacre in 1921 and look at 9/11 through a different lens.

From a single moment in time, where the story begins, Jaqueline Woodson offers glimpses at the lives of Melody, her mother (Iris), her father, her grandparents, and even her ancestors - dating back to the Tulsa massacre of 1921, when an entire Black community was wiped from the face of the earth.

When I was reading the interviews about Red at the Bone, what was evident in Jaqueline Woodson’s

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words was that she wasn’t only trying to bring light to the injustice that happened, but she also talks about how the Tulsa massacre is not taught in American schools. Accordingly, the violence becomes a powerful origin story for Iris’s family, and especially for her mother Sabe, who insists on repeating the story to her daughter and granddaughter as a way of teaching them to protect what’s theirs.

The novel opens in 2001, as 16-year-old Melody descends the stairs in a debutante’s traditional white dress.

An orchestra is playing the Prince song she’s insisted on, against her mother’s wishes, while white passers-by stop and gawk through the windows. Her coming-of-age party is a declaration of family pride, class status, and an effort to repair a broken link with the past: Melody’s mother skipped her own ceremony after becoming pregnant at 15. The novel explores this rift and its consequences over time, shifting between the perspectives of different family members. This rift offers an insight into how other family members’ actions have an impact on an individual and their life in the future; their mistakes become everyone’s mistakes, and all must suffer the consequences. I believe that what Jaqueline Woodson wants to explore is how, in the face of adversity (not only race and class), the family is strong, and powerful as they offer to help raise Melody after her mother goes to study at college somewhere far from Brooklyn.

The deep emotional connection that is established between each family member regarding Melody is evident; they see her as a symbol of hope, opportunity, and rebirth after the events of the past that nearly tore the family apart completely. Melody was a product of teen pregnancy - it is this that the family found hard to except, yet as Melody grew up, it wasn’t her the family resented, but her mother, who didn’t seem to care what happened to her after she left for college. The grandparents, for example, touch on the deep-rooted injustice in Tulsa 1921, each of them stating how in face of hatred and horror they ‘still rise’, quoting Maya Angelou in her poem ‘still I rise’.

The other major historical event that shapes the novel is 9/11, an occurrence that has also been vulnerable to distortion and mythmaking. It’s important for Woodson that the memory of the attacks includes the victims, who were not white-collar workers or emergency responders but ‘the janitors, the secretaries, the people working in the kitchens’ who often came from communities of colour, and whose losses tend to be overlooked. What I also think Woodson is trying to explore is black wealth vs black income, and how America has again and again annihilated black wealth. And so, when someone is able to hold on to their wealth, what does that look like?

What strikes me about this novel is the location, Brooklyn. Although it is not necessarily explored in the story it is evident how Jaqueline intertwines emotion and location. Brooklyn’s density and variety are what make it easy to bring characters - like Iris (Melody’s mother) and Aubrey (Melody’s father) - together across a class divide and to investigate what unites and separates them. “I think the thing that’s so interesting about Brooklyn is that you can walk 10 blocks and be in a very different neighbourhood ethnically, in terms of economic class, even in terms of architecture,” Woodson says. “I feel like I could write about Brooklyn for the next 50 years, and I’ll write a different story every time.”

This is one of my favourite aspects of this novel, I must say I have never read a book quite like it, the writing is very intuitive and free, (just like how I imagine Brooklyn to be).

The sense of belonging and the truth of how those who leave us don’t completely leave us, is applied in a bigger context. As each chapter is written from another family member’s or ancestor’s point of view, the sense’s of belonging in a community throughout time is explored to the degree whereby (in Jaqueline Woodson own words) “they are still in the air, moving around us, whether it’s through genetic memory, or DNA, or the stories that get told over and over again.”

What I have taken from this book is empathy. I think it represents all of us. There’s this way in which we’re all still cooking in a sense, still trying to figure out who we are, still really raw at the core and fragile. I could point to each one of those characters and show you where they’re red at the bone.

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Diversity Canon In this edition of ‘Scribble’, Head of English, Mr Aldridge, considers the diversity offered within the canon of English Literature.

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iterature is such a cornerstone of any culture’s self-representation and expression of identity, that it really should not be hard to make a case for English Literature’s ability to tell a range of stories from a variety of perspectives, to celebrate a diverse plethora of voices, ideas, experiences and identities, or to find a host of gender and sexuality identities open to students during their time at school. And

yet it is.

The canon of English Literature has long been a contentious concept, and one increasingly rejected by scholars and critics alike. The term ‘canon’ is derived from Ancient Greek: κανών (kanṓn), meaning a measuring rod, or standard; a simple definition of English Literature’s canon is a collection of ‘significant’ and ‘worthy’ texts which embody or exemplify Western culture and ideas - ‘essential’ and ‘important’ works that any student should read. In my first term at University, the compulsory module for students of English Literature was called ‘The Canon 101’ and ensured that all undergraduates developed a common grounding in English Literature’s ‘classics’. We read texts by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, Spenser, Marlowe, and needed some passing understanding of the works of Ancient Greece (Virgil, Homer, Sophocles) and of wider European writers (Pushkin, de Cervantes, Dostoyevsky). This was, by design, a grounding in the ‘canon’ of English Literature so that we were able to demonstrate an understanding of English Literature’s rich heritage and tradition. I don’t remember thinking it as a naïve eighteen year old, but I am staggered looking back at how gender and culture blind this initiation to undergraduate study was. The only female writer that was given any kind of prominence was Jane Austen; writers of colour were entirely omitted. Instead, women writers, non-English writers, non-conformist writers were all given their own unit, entitled ‘The Canon and its discontents’, which immediately followed the initial study of the Canon; I am glad that non-Canonical writers were celebrated on my degree, but it nonetheless remains problematic that these voices and stories were not deemed canonical, remembering that a canon comprises ‘significant’ and ‘worthy’ writers and texts, and, therefore, by definition, these non-canonical texts are somehow less significant and worthy than their canonical counterparts.

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Illustration: The Passion of Creation, by Leonid Pasternak, 19th century, exact date unknown.

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So, what’s changed in the last thirty years? Surely, in the modern, progressive c.21st, we are not still labouring under these limiting Western-centric parameters of what qualifies as Literature worthy of study? There are a number of touch-points with which we can measure this:

have John Agard’s celebration of black history in ‘Checking out me History’, female poets in Carol Ann Duffy, Jane Weir, Beatrice Garland, Imtiaz Dharkar and countless poems that challenge authority and highlight oppression in numerous forms.

That said, however, I do not feel that this is a curriculum that is particularly diverse in its consideration of literature and would welcome attempts in any future re-branding of English Literature to create opportunities to study works by writers of colour, works that are not immediately hetero-normative and works which include inspirational characters with diverse identities. The move in 2016 to ‘English Literature’ rather than Literature in English, removed seminal texts like Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ (which unquestionably challenges contemporary values on women and people of colour) and Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ (which offers a damning indictment on the treatment of black people in the Southern states of America in the early c.20th), and the time is right, in my opinion, to re-address this state of affairs.

Firstly, the GCSE English Literature curriculum for 2022, as considered via the AQA course taken by Shrewsbury High School students currently. Since the education secretary’s curriculum reforms of 2016 which cemented English Literature as English Literature, rather than literature in English, teachers and students have found a significant narrowing of voices and experiences available for study. The work of William Shakespeare is a non-negotiable component, and thankfully many of his texts allow for progressive interpretations of race, culture and sexuality – the representations of Mercutio, Shylock, and Portia all spring to mind. Alongside a Shakespeare play, students are asked to study a c.19th novel and have seven options – Stevenson, Dickens, Dickens, C. Bronte, Mary Shelley, Conan Doyle and Jane Austen. On the surface, we have an almost even split of gender, with three male and three female writers available; the problem I have with the options is the choice of novels made for Austen, Shelley and Bronte. Both ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ are fantastic novels, but share the same essential narrative – a woman or women who feel incomplete without having found husband to give her life meaning; the skill of the novelists is undeniable, but the values of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, and Lizzie Bennet (and her mother and sisters) and Mr Darcy are hardly progressive. This leaves Mary Shelley’s brilliant ‘Frankenstein’ as arguably the only available text which is progressive to its core – a sci-fi novel written before sci-fi had truly been imagined, centred on man’s utter fallibility in creating and sustaining life. The list of ‘Modern Texts’ for the third literary component of the GCSE arguably fares even more poorly – a collection of twelve modern texts, written by ten male writers and two female. JB Priestley, Willy Russell, Alan Bennett, Denis Kelly, Simon Stephens, William Golding, George Orwell, Kazuo Ishiguro and Stephen Kelman are all considered ‘significant’ and ‘worthy’ enough to be part of a sixteen-year old’s literary diet. By comparison, Meera Syal (Anita and Me) and Shelagh Delaney (A Taste of Honey) feel in the minority as female writers. The anthology of poetry available is where AQA’s remit of offering diversity is well-achieved; alongside the dead, white men, we

As an English Department, the teachers at Shrewsbury High School, alongside many of our colleagues across the GDST, are committed to finding more opportunities to read texts in Years 7-11 which include diverse representations of gender, colour and sexualities; of course, this would be alongside traditional and much-loved canonical texts, rather than a total replacement of them.

Secondly, at A-level we are given far more scope to include a range of voices and stories in our programme of study. There are numerous examination boards who offer numerous routes through an A-level; for measure, I will discuss the merits of AQA’s English Literature B course, which is the one we follow at the High School. the course is split in two – focusing on Crime and Comedy as literary genres, and I feel that our chosen texts offer strong possibilities to consider representations of diversity. In Kate Atkinson, we have found an inspirational writer for our young women to read, and, furthermore, the central characters of Reggie and Louise drive the core narrative of ‘When will there be good news?’, with a third female character, Joanna, given real agency in the text; by comparison, the central male character, Jackson, is arguably pretty passive and a bystander for the majority of the narrative arc, Atkinson consciously subverting the genre. Alongside this novel, Graham

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Benjamin Zephaniah Greene’s ‘Brighton Rock’ also includes prominent female characters – another teenager in Rose and the novel’s detective, Ida Arnold, both of whom also are given agency by the author. In the comedy module, Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is a text rich in opportunities for debate on society’s value of wives / daughters, and the deliciously subversive, tongue in cheek ending, however problematic it may be, can underline just how in control Katherina has become – to take the words of John Fletcher in 1647, it is a story of ‘The Tamer Tamed’ rather than the oppression of a shrewish woman. Both other texts studied involve considerable satire on the role of men and women in marriage, in Wilde’s ‘The Importance of being Earnest’ and Chaucer’s ‘The Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, particularly the ridiculous characterisation of Chauntecleer revealing just how vain and idiotic some men actually are.

Added to these two core units, our study of Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife encompasses a huge range of diverse representations of women and sexuality, touching on heterosexual and homosexual love, gender transformation and re-assignment, gender fluidity, motherhood, daughterhood and strong, powerful women along the way. Preparations for the NEA Prose unit has to include consideration of postcolonial literary criticism and allows for students to read extracts from Maya Angelou, Alice Walker and Chinua Achebe, among others.

The freedoms that are offered at A-level, however, are frustratingly not reflected in the wider literary community, and here I offer my final touchstone for

consideration. There exists the ultimate literary boys’ club, a group of almost entirely white men, who are supposed to represent the nation in all its diverse glory. The Poet Laureate. This position is historically significant and is appointed by the monarch with guidance from the Prime Minister. The role does not entail any specific duties, but there is an expectation that the holder will write verse for significant national occasions. The Laureate receives little pay, a stipend of £5750 and a barrel of sherry, but the significance comes in the job title – the primary poet of the whole nation, writing poems of national importance, capturing the mood and feelings of the whole nation.

To date, there have been 21 Poets Laureate since its inception in 1668.

20 men; 1 woman.

20 English men; 1 non-English woman.

20 straight men; 1 openly gay woman.

21 White poets; 0 poets of colour.

For me, this encapsulates the issue which study of English Literature faces. Institutionally, it is still very much the preserve of dead, white men – examination boards, Universities, public celebrations of Literature are still fixated on the work of a very narrow set of writers, involving a very narrow set of characters and narratives. Speaking before the appointment of current Laureate, Simon Armitage, black British poet Benjamin Zephaniah responded to vociferous speculation and calls for his appointment by stating

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Image: Creative Commons

“I have absolutely no interest in this job. I won't work for them.

They oppress me, they upset me, and they are not worthy.”

John Agard, photograph by Jack Latham

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To begin with, here is one of my favourite poems by John Agard – his ‘Alternative Anthem’:

“Alternative Anthem.

Put the kettle on Put the kettle on It is the British answer to Armageddon.

“I have absolutely no interest in this job. I won’t work for them. They oppress me, they upset me, and they are not worthy.” The appointment of a poet of colour to this position would have huge and significant impact on English Literature – encouraging people to celebrate their voice, whatever their colour, class, sexuality, gender identity, and in 2021 this is hugely overdue, in my opinion. There are many worthy and extremely capable poets who fall into this category, but my choice would be for John Agard, a regular and very popular contributor to GCSE poetry anthologies, and someone who effortlessly questions and challenges oppression. Many readers will be familiar with ‘Checking Out Me History’, which questions the oppression evident in the British curriculum imposed upon him as a child, but also rallies readers to find their own figures of significance in their lives, like Agard who is “checking out me own history, I carving out me identity”.

Never mind taxes rise Never mind trains are late One thing you can be sure of and that’s the kettle, mate.

It’s not whether you lose It’s not whether you win It’s whether or not you’ve plugged the kettle in.

May the kettle ever hiss May the kettle ever steam It is the engine that drives our nation’s dream.

Long live the kettle that rules over us May it be limescale free Wand may it never rust.

Speaking on behalf of the English team at Shrewsbury High School, we are excited by our challenge to bring more diverse voices to the classroom in future years; a challenge we have already begun making progress towards addressing. More widely, I urge all students of English Literature - whether they are students at school, parents of children at school, adults who work with children, or just people who like to read – to find ways to embrace and promote a sense of diversity in their reading. Find something – share it. Without people being their own agents of change, finding and celebrating their own voices and stories from across the world and from across time, we will never be able to say that English Literature embraces diversity and the canon will remain as closed and exclusive as it sadly is today.

Sing it on the beaches Sing it from the housetops The sun may set on empire but the kettle never stops.” ― John Agard, Alternative Anthem: Selected Poems (2009)

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I know why the Caged Bird Sings

by Emma Owen

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he narrative of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings highlights her childhood memories that are clouded by oppression from discrimination based upon the prejudices of racism. After reading about her life, the metaphoric meaning of ‘the caged bird’ overwhelms me, as her harsh upbringing and tormenting times conveys the idea that society trapped her from her childhood. ‘The bird sings’ freedom and liberation that everyone deserves. However, Angelou emphasises her desperate struggle towards release from societal values, people’s ignorance, and quite frankly, the world around her. An account of her childhood, in a book, screams to the world its ugliness and diabolical values and the shackles of racism and misogyny to command the need for change.

white schoolgirls who visited her Momma’s corner shop. Not only was Maya scared of the ‘powhitetrash kids’, but her grandmother exclaimed that they ‘frighten [her]’ also, revealing the idea that their presence was dangerous and nonetheless disturbing.

The quote ‘The girls had tired of mocking Momma’ suggests their rude and discourteous mannerisms towards the older generations, as well as their power against people, all because of colour.

Later when Marguerite and her brother reconnected with their mother and moved to St. Louis to live with her, Marguerite was oppressed on account of her feminist views, and her lack of knowledge due to her age, and was taken advantage of by Mr. Freeman (her mother’s boyfriend); she ‘awoke to a pressure, a strange feeling’ on her left leg and was later told by Mr Freeman that she ‘had wet the bed’. As a result of her religious and loyal upbringing towards her religion, she thought that she had sinned and was going to hell.

She was the one who felt guilt and thought that she would be rejected (again) from her family because of something that ‘she did wrong’! At the age of eight, she was threatened that if she ever told anybody, Mr Freeman would ‘have to kill Bailey’. Her love for Bailey was stronger than her desire for safety and this led to more occasions of rape and sexual harassment. Later, despite the fact she was in court testifying against Mr Freeman, she still lied to avoid disappointment from her mother and against the Bible from her being a victim to rape. By virtue of the eight-year-old’s fight to expose Mr Freeman, he was given a year and one day sentence, however, ‘his lawyer got him released that very (first) afternoon’. This proves the power and powerless, the elder verses the younger, the man against the girl. And of the two, who of course won, and who was left with total haunting guilt and shame for committing a sin that was forced upon her for the rest of her life? These struggles exist in so many news stories all around the world today - not just in terms

The initial feeling of abandonment rides along her childhood as Maya (Marguerite) and her brother, Bailey, are moved to a ‘musty little town’ called Stamps, Arkansas to live with their grandmother (called Momma) and Uncle Willie after their parents separated. At the young and innocent age of ‘three’ she is brought up questioning her parents’ motives of her desertion, and never seemed to adjust to life as well as her brother did. However, Marguerite was acutely aware of the importance of manners, respect, cleanliness, religious faith, and she had a strong work ethic all brought upon by her grandmother, Momma.

She was deeply aware of the segregation between the black and white communities due to her confused ideas of what ‘white people’ looked like as well as their ways of living. All she knew and believed was that between both communities, it was ‘the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the worked for and the ragged against the well-dressed’. Her view of people was based upon the colour of their skin and, subsequently, it was the same for the white community. Maya illustrates her pain and suffering caused by a visit of

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Illustration by Jessica Pardoe jcpardoe.com

of colour but an even bigger picture. Last year the Black Lives Matter movement built huge traction after video footage showing the tragic death of black people brutalised by white policemen was shown to the world. Riots ensued in America and rallies took place in large cities and towns all over England. Where is that movement now? I believe

it’s been swept under the carpet and put back in its box as powerful (largely white men) decide what news is reported on the worldwide scale. Are we any closer to change? Angelou addresses these issues 50 years ago when this book was published, yet are we any closer to change?

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After her torment in St. Louis, Marguerite and Bailey both moved back to Stamps to live with Momma, and in her tenth year, she was working as a maid in a white household. Her first encounter with her employer was swallowed by the ignorance and vulgarity whereby she saw Maya, making all assumptions based upon her colour. Marguerite’s identity was shredded along with any sense of meaning. The first question regarding her was ‘is she dumb?’, followed by the comment that ‘the name’s too long. I’d never bother myself. I’d call her Mary if I were you’, so that now the feeling surrounding Marguerite’s diminished her character into a robotic and uniformed ‘Mary’.

speaker named Mr. Edward Donleavy, came to speak at her school to show off all the upcoming upgrades to the schools in Stamps, yet he only highlighted the new programmes for the white-only school.

Afterwards, he was to highlight some students who excelled from Maya’s school - he only mentioned one black basketball player. Then continued with chances for white kids to become “Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins” and for the boys who attended her high school to become “Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises”. He didn’t mention a single thing of what a black woman can achieve, and for the boys, they, apparently, could only use their physique to become professional athletes, and if they weren’t sporty, then - based upon a white man’s views - couldn’t be anything else. In Marguerite’s position, she felt that ‘it was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against her colour with no chance of defence’.

Maya’s religion wasn’t just a belief, but a community of Black people who shared their ideas and prospects upon life based upon the Christian ways from the Bible - a community of reassurance, safety, equality, and most importantly, it felt like an escape from the ‘realworld’, a bubble from segregations and racism. Their revival meetings allowed the whole neighbourhood to come together and share their values, acceptance, and meaning. ‘Let the white folks have their money and power and segregation […] and mostly - let them have their whiteness’. The mere element of acceptance and the idea of hope diminishing highlights the unfair equality that teaches society to think differently about colour. Why do such ordinary colours as black and white - present so frequently in everyday life, from clothes to pen to paper - have put such an immense impact and devastation on society when it comes to race? I’m ashamed to read of and even live in a world that has not moved on. ‘How long God? How long?’ emphasises the desperate need for change and action, yet nothing. Nothing happens. No one does anything. The revival meeting also states from the Bible, that ‘before one word of this changes, heaven and earth shall fall away’ indicating the raw sense of getting what you deserve by going to either heaven or hell. Same again - based upon colours. Heaven being white and pure, and hell being dark and black with crime. Why these colours? What makes these colours have such an impact upon lives? To cause slavery? Bloodshed? Death? Two simple colours yet there’s an impact upon the whole human existence.

Angelou screams at this societal flaw, as she felt that in all aspects of life, it was ‘awful to be Negro’ due to her having ‘no control over her life’. At her graduation from Lafayette County Training School, a white

As Marguerite grew not only in age but in character, she wanted to be a conductor of streetcars in World War II at fifteen. Nevertheless, her mother’s first words to her were ‘they don’t accept coloured people on the streetcars’. Yet, Marguerite’s ‘immediate fury’ was followed by the ‘noble determination to break the restricting tradition’. Her application gave a ‘full face of astonishment’ to the receptionist since her ‘suspicious nature would not accept’, causing the receptionist to reject her application all due to her colour. Black vs. white ‘were bound to duel to death’ and provided Maya with the drive to seek support from ‘Negro organisations.’ After months of torment from her colour, her prayers were answered, and she was ‘hired as the first Negro on the San Francisco streetcars’. Angelou’s sheer determination and fight against societal values shaped her to be a phenomenal woman still only at fifteen. As her accomplishments continue to shred the flaws in society, I question why racism was only challenged in Stamps, In St. Louis and in San Francisco by Angelou then. Why were societal flaws not addressed and killed thousands of years ago? I feel that I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings helps all readers see the utter distress and violence one has to go through all based upon society.

It is our generation, our chance, to kill racism once and for all and allow diversity to be celebrated and encouraged.

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Scribble Diversity Reads Ariadne by Jennifer Saint Aaina Jassel

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3/5

This was a wonderful Greek re-telling of Ariadne’s trials and tribulations. At first I thought it would be all about the minotaur however this book explores Ariadne’s entire life pre-Theseus and after Theseus. Saint explores this by showing us how Ariadne prospered after being used and abused by Theseus who left her to die on an island. Ariadne’s story is beautiful and riveting – her tale of self-discovery and adventure. Not only this but Saint explores her sister Phaedra and her own stories which touch on marriage and power. These two sisters show great courage and there are many lessons that we can learn from their stories.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Ryhs

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Aaina Jassel

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4/5

This might have been one of the most interesting books I think I have read so far! This tells the story of Bertha Mason from ‘Jane Eyre’ – the crazy woman in the attic – and she how ended up in England. I loved reading Jane Eyre and immediately fell in love with Mr Rochester so seeing how he was portrayed in this retelling was intriguing. Here Bertha – Antionette – is a white Creole heiress who seems to be out of place everywhere; abandoned by her mother and ignored by her ‘husband’. Rochester himself goes unnamed throughout, showing him as a dominating colonial figure with unnamed power. This novel was extremely thought-provoking and I highly recommend to all!

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid

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Libby Driscoll

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5/5

‘Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you, do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America.’ A meta piece of fiction that immediately captured my attention, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ follows Changez Khan, a middle-class Pakistani from Lahore as he chases the American dream with a massive change in his outlook and his future when he sees the news footage of the twin towers falling.

It has a unique, elegant style and an intriguing perspective that can completely reshape your thoughts on terrorism, the outsider experience and the American dream. It holds a whole cast of ghosts and ideas behind its engaging and somewhat experimental narration that leave you reeling after you finish the short novel. It deliberately confronts ‘you’, the implied Western reader and implicates you in the plot to challenge you, leaving you to spend much more time considering it after its ambiguous and discomforting ending than you do actually reading the book. And it’s worth every second of it.

Brit(ish): On Face, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch

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Libby Driscoll

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3.5/5

‘In Britain, we are taught not to see race. We are told that race does not matter. We have convinced ourselves that if we can contort ourselves into a form of blindness, then issues of identity will quietly disappear… we want to be post-racial, without having ever admitted how racial a society we have been.’

Afua Hirsch (an old GDST girl!) writes this intriguing contribution to the study of British racism and our culture’s overwhelming desire to “look the other way” from anything overly shocking or divisive. With equal emphasis on her personal experience as a British person of Ghanian descent and of Britain’s history regarding race, she beautifully illustrates many (especially mixed-race) people’s struggles with identity in Britain today. There are a few points at which I feel that there is repetition, or I would prefer a deeper analysis, or a point appears a bit offcolour, but overall it is written as an accessible introduction to both the experience of a modern woman of colour and Britain’s racial history.

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The Importance of Diversity in Children’s Literature

by Abigail Kulemeka

Only 10% of children's books include people of colour. This needs to change.

Before diving into this article, I would like to give the definition of what I mean by the term ‘diversity’:

‘Diversity’ is differences in racial and ethnic, socioeconomic, geographic, and academic/ professional backgrounds. People with different opinions, backgrounds (degrees and social experience), religious beliefs, political beliefs, sexual orientations, heritage, and life experience.

So why is diversity in literature so important?

Seeing characters or people in a similar situation or who look, act, or think the same the way as yourself provides comfort and relief knowing that there are other people out in the world who relate to you. Because of this people tend to be drawn to stories with which they can identify and may feel isolated by those who don’t.

It is especially important in children’s novels for the children to be able to see themselves within characters, so that they are not isolated and restricted by the ideology they are shown of how certain types of people should behave and act.

Kate Sullivan, in her article “Why Diversity in Literature Matters” states - “This is a particular problem in children’s and YA literature because kids need to see themselves represented in order to develop healthy selfimages and to feel comfortable with who they are... You may not see other folks like you out and about in town... and you’re not always seeing them in books, either, making you feel even more isolated.”

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As a young girl I read popular novels such as the Harry Potter series, Charlie and Lola, The Twilight series, Roald Dahl and David Walliams, Dirty Bertie, and other books of the sort. When I think back to the storylines and characters within this collection of children’s books, I realised that the representation of people of colour was minimal, and any LGBTQI+ characters are practically non-existent. As a Black-British woman of colour I feel like I was never able to fully resonate with characters who shared these same traits with me. In this sense, it made it harder for me growing up to find books that drew me in.

Charles Dickens, Michael Morpurgo, William Shakespeare, C. S. Lewis, Dan Brown, J. R. R. Tolkien: these are all authors that were recommended by teachers and fellow avid readers as I began to mature. What do they all have in common? They are all British white men. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this – they are all fantastic writers in their own right – but these recommendations meant that most of the literature that I consumed was written from the male perspective, and on subjects which seemed to focus on any struggle other than the colour of one’s skin.

In the words of Walter Dean Meyers, an author and publishing expert: “As I discovered who I was, a black teenager in a white-dominated world, I saw that these characters, these lives, were not mine. What I wanted, needed really, was to become an integral and valued part of the mosaic that I saw around me.”

As a female person of colour, I didn’t need a novel to inform me of the struggles that minority groups face – simply because I experienced them in reality, but from the perspective of a cisgendered white male, for example, or someone who hasn’t had these experiences, is only natural that it would be harder to understand the challenges faced by these groups and they may not gain knowledge about them due to its absence from popular literature.

As Kate Sullivan mentions in her article “Why Diversity in Literature Matters”: In 1965, The Saturday Review published an article titled “The All-White World of Children’s Books” detailing how only 6.7% of children’s books published in the past three years had included black characters. For 2013, the numbers weren’t much better: only 10% of children’s books included people of colour, even though a full 37% of the United States—and most of the rest of the world—wasn’t white.

There haven’t been many similar studies done on representations of LGBTQ people in children’s and Young Adult books, but the numbers are probably very similar. For instance, author Malinda Lo compiles her own statistics on LGBTQ representation among traditional publishers and found that 47 Young Adult books with queer characters or themes appeared in 2014 - not many, considering all the Young Adult books published that year, but a 59% increase from the mere 29 books published by mainstream publishers in 2013.

The lack of diversity in novels makes it that much more difficult to try to shed light on challenges that minority groups face.

If people cannot understand or simply aren’t very aware of a problem, it becomes impossible to combat.

Therefore, literature must be diverse so that we learn not only for ourselves but for others as well.

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An insight into the various roles of women in the James Bond franchise, and why a female Bond is not necessarily the right way to combat the typical misogyny and lack of diversity seen in them.

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD

W

ith the latest iteration in the James Bond saga, No Time to Die, at last hitting cinemas in late September, the inevitable question of Daniel Craig’s successor resurfaced. Various names have been thrown around, from Henry Cavill to Idris Elba. Amongst these, there has also been talk of a female bond replacement as a way to buck the trend – much like the newest Dr Who, played by Jodie Whittaker, in BBC One’s latest season.

This comes following the increasing emergence of roles for women in the Bond franchise, whereby they do not merely exist as sex objects, conforming with one of the three archetypes seen throughout the books and films; Roald Dahl, who wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice, stated that “you use three different girls and Bond has them all. No more and no less”. Thus, the three Bond girls encountered are the sacrificial lamb, the femme fatale, and the heroine. The former, best exemplified by Shirley Easton’s Jill Masterson in Goldfinger (1964), is a woman who falls for Bond, before dying, used in terms of narrative as a way of motivating him to complete his mission: “Girl number one is violently pro-Bond. She stays around roughly the first reel of the picture. Then, she is bumped off by the enemy, preferably in Bond’s arms. In bed or not in bed? Wherever [the writer] likes, so long as it’s in good taste.”

“Girl number two is anti-Bond. She works for the enemy and stays around for the middle third of the picture. She must capture Bond, and Bond must save himself by bowling her over with sheer sexual magnetism. This girl should also be bumped off, preferably in an original fashion.” This figure is easily recognisable from other media, having originated around the 1940s and 50s, where, following a period of war, men feared that women had gained too much

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THE WOMAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN

By Isabel Clarke

power while they were away fighting, leading to worries about female infidelity, materialism, career ambition, and sexuality. In typical femme fatale fashion, she is either revealed to not be bad deep down after all - so becomes “good” and teams up with Bond, helping him to foil the villain’s master plan in the end (look to Pussy Galore of Goldfinger) – or alternatively, she meets a typically gory end often midway through the action as a punishment for committing the ultimate sin against Bond: sleeping with him before betraying him to their evil masters. The femme fatale is yet another obstacle for us to watch Bond overcome, either through violence or his own charisma.

The Girl with the Golden Gun is a photograph by Loriental Photography

Often acting as a foil to the femme fatale, the heroine is the classic Bond girl, who allies with Bond and assists him over the course of the movie; “Girl number three is violently pro-Bond. She occupies the final third of the picture, and she must on no account be killed. Nor must she permit Bond to take any lecherous liberties with her until the very end of the story. We’ll keep that for the fade-out.” These women are the closest to being Bond’s equal, and though they may not save Bond as he saves them, they are there to help him at the crucial moment, sometimes going head-to-head with the femme fatale in combat and ultimately defeating her. Heroines are shown to be morally pure, and their withholding of Bond’s ‘lecherous liberties’ until the denouement turns them into a sort of prize, marking what seems like the “happy ending” whereby good triumphs evil – or at least until the next movie, where both Bond’s nemesis and romantic interest of the previous film are disregarded in favour of an exciting new replacement.

The original Bond girl of Ian Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale (published in 1953), Vesper Lynd, is actually seen to exemplify all three archetypes in one; in the book, Vesper works as a personal assistant to Head of section S in MI6, and is lent to Bond to assist him in his mission to bankrupt Le Chiffre. However, the plot twist is that she is really a double agent working for the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, ordered to lure Bond into a trap having been blackmailed by SMERSH (whom Le Chiffre works for). Similarly in the 2006 screen adaptation, we see Vesper betraying Bond by secretly working for the terrorist organisation Quantum after being blackmailed to keep her lover alive. Her name ‘Vesper Lynd’ (translating to evening in Latin) has even been theorised to reflect her inevitable duplicity by being a pun on ‘West Berlin’, signifying her divided loyalties as a double agent under Soviet control.

In the novel, she dies by committing suicide, leaving a

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note for Bond admitting to her treachery and love, and in the film, she resigns herself to a fate of drowning, as she - in typical action movie style - locks herself in a lift of a sinking building, destroyed by explosions. Despite his cold detached façade following her death, in both the book and film (‘The job is done, and the b***h is dead’), it is evident that Bond still retained feelings for Vesper; in the fourth novel, Diamonds Are Forever, Bond skips the song ‘La Vie En Rose’ – a song closely associated with Vesper in Casino Royale – ‘because it has memories for him’, and then in the tenth, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, it is revealed that Bond makes an annual trip to visit Vesper’s grave – as we see him doing at the start of No Time to Die. Thus, we see the depiction of the original Bond girl as a heroine who matches Bond, betrays him, and eventually dies to motivate him to continue his career as 007.

Aside from their rather unsubtle names (Pussy Galore and Xenia Onatopp to name a few), the Bond girls all seem to possess various traits in common, what with all conforming to male appointed beauty standards and all being roughly the same age; a typical Bond girl is in her early to mid-twenties, roughly 10 years younger than Bond, who seemingly remains in his mid-thirties for the duration of the novels which were written by Fleming over roughly 13 years (1953-1966). The youngest partner of Bond’s is Mariko Ichiban, the 18-year-old masseuse whom he sleeps with in You Only Live Twice, and the eldest is Galore, whom Bond speculates is in her mid-30s. Also, it seems that frequently, the Bond girls’ previous experiences with men have not been positive, with many actually having been victims of sexual violence – such as Tiffany Case (Diamonds Are Forever) who was raped by a gang as a teenager, and Honey Ryder (Dr No) who was beaten and raped also as a teenager, and Pussy Galore who was abused by her uncle at age 12. It is only when James Bond comes along that they are saved from the alienation they felt towards men - sure enough, Galore even goes so far as to switch sexuality.

It is clear that the James Bond universe exists as a fantasy world of the male gaze (one needs only to look to the opening montage of a Bond film to understand what I mean), women are frequently treated as objects with their entire personas revolving around their existence for Bond’s pleasure. They are depicted as wearing either an elegant evening gown or a bikini and knife with very few alternatives in between. Yet, for both men and women, it seems Bond girls exemplify the epitome of a sort of glamourous coolness, in looks reticent of Old Hollywood charm. So why is it that despite this obvious misogynistic depiction of the ideal woman, that women still idealise the Bond girls? Why does the media still have this infatuation with the femme fatale in particular? Is it that we are still trapped within the male gaze ourselves? Or alternatively, it could be due to the fact that despite the clear-cut role for females in the Bond universe, they still were shown to possess a high level of independence – in Fleming’s novels, many Bond girls have some sort of independent job or even career; Vesper Lynd, Tatiana Romanova, Mary Ann Russel, and Mary Goodnight all worked within law-enforcement or intelligence, which, at the time of writing, would have been considered inappropriate for women.

Even those with more traditional or glamourous jobs were shown to have an independent outlook on life. There is certainly something admirable about the Bond girls, be it their perfect elegance or the power they possess in comparison to women of Fleming’s contemporary period.

Despite everything, aspects of the Bond girls are arguably widely empowering; several are shown to display obvious signs of inner turmoil, and/or have suffered traumatic pasts. Thus, they demonstrate great strength against adversity – be that their own internal conflicts, or literal life-or-death situations where they almost die at the hands of some deranged villain with a shark tank. Bond girls - specifically the femme fatale figures - rebel against typical connotations of women as submissive and inferior, possessing a skill and cunning to rival Bond’s own. Though they are servants to the main enemy, they exist as formidable opposers in their own right, and more often than not, give Bond a run for his money. Their power lies in embracing their femininity rather than rejecting it, such that they are able to then use it as a weapon against the most notorious spy in Britain, if not, the world.

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Nevertheless, it is evident that all Bond women from back in the day required a great many changes, in order to keep up with the ever-increasing influence of feminism. It is not enough to give a girl a tragic backstory and stick her in a gorgeous gown to distract us from the reality that these characters lacked relatability for the growing female audience, who wished to see more assertive roles for the Bond girls, where they saved themselves, as opposed to always playing the damsel in distress. Fortunately, the most recent reincarnation of Bond, played by Daniel Craig, has brought with it some much needed improvements to the characters we know and love.

First played by Bernard Lee in Dr No, the 1995 film GoldenEye, Dame Judi Dench broke tradition by playing Bond’s superior M, a role written as and played previously by a man. It is in this film, that M delivers the iconic line condemning Bond as a ‘sexist, misogynist dinosaur’ and ‘a relic of the Cold War’: M: You don’t like me, Bond. You don't like my methods. You think I'm an accountant, a bean counter more interested in my numbers than your instincts.

BOND: The thought had occurred to me.

M: Good, because I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War, whose boyish charms, though wasted on me, obviously appealed to that young woman I sent out to evaluate you.

BOND: Point taken.

Here, we see Bond’s producers acknowledging his nature as a culmination of the male gaze of a post war period, and thus a level of knowingness which recognises that Bond is essentially a product of the early days of mass consumerism. Suave, sophisticated, and chauvinistic, James Bond is ruthless... yet not as ruthless as Dench’s M – she is cold, calculating and driven, and, relying on a different set of feminine tropes, she illuminates Bond’s essence as a grown-up disobedient child. It is an interesting marrying of qualities seen here; on one hand M could be interpreted as the demonised figure of ‘spinster’ as opposed to ‘seductress’, being career-driven and uncaring. However, as the character has been suggested to display subtle maternal overtones towards both Bond and Silva (the villain in Skyfall who previously worked for MI6), and as there have actually been brief references to M’s family throughout the films – in GoldenEye, she responds to Tanner calling her the ‘Evil Queen of Numbers’ by saying “If I want sarcasm, Mr Tanner, I’ll talk to my children, thank you very much”, and in the 2012 film Skyfall, she is revealed to be a widow – M actually subverts this ‘spinster’ role with her persona of a woman in a position of high power, yet still having a family and not forsaking traditional feminine characteristics entirely. M is shown to be highly intelligent, acting with the caution and strategy required of the Head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, and thus exposing Bond’s impulsive decision making, and his rather narcissistic belief that he and he alone will be the one to save the day – as demonstrated in GoldenEye when she tells Bond “If you think for one moment I don't have the balls to send a man out to die, your instincts are dead wrong. I have no compunction about sending you to your death. But, I won't do it on a whim. Even with your cavalier attitude towards life.” She possesses immense power and authority over her male counterparts, once again holding a position in a male-dominated workplace, yet this time she as a Bond woman is permitted to excel far beyond the ranks of secretary. But ultimately, she could be said to take on the role of the sacrificial lamb as she dies in Bond’s arms at the end of Skyfall.

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Miss Moneypenny too is granted an updated twist on the original portrayal, whereby her core identity, as established in earlier films, was that she was pining after Bond, but forced to forsake her feelings as she has made the decision to be a professional – this we see in the novel Thunderball (1961), where Fleming writes that she ‘often dreamed hopelessly about Bond’. Today’s Eve Moneypenny (played by Naomie Harris) has a social life outside her work, and plays a far more active role in the overall narrative, actually shooting bond (accidentally) on M’s orders in Skyfall. Alongside Moneypenny, the newest films have given us various other strong female characters in the likes of Eva Green’s Vesper - who saves Bond’s life in the famous Casino scene (a refreshing change from Bond saving his female counterparts), Leá Seydoux’s Madeline Swann – who is more developed female character, and one who actually sticks around for the next film, and Lashana Lynch’s Nomi – with whom we see a black woman taking on the title of 007. Of her role, Lynch has said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar “I didn’t want to waste an opportunity when it came to what Nomi might represent. I searched for at least one moment in the script where Black audience members would nod their heads, tutting at the reality but glad to see their real life represented. In every project I am part of, no matter the budget or genre, the Black experience that I’m presenting needs to be 100 per cent authentic.”

So, to return to the initial question: in light of the changes to women’s roles in the franchise, could the next James Bond be female - a Jane Bond if you will? To this, I answer yes, she could. However, whether this female Bond would be a good thing is an entirely different question. It seems the virulent debate as to Bond’s gender is non-negotiable; Bond is a character hinged on traditional concepts of masculinity – he is a lone-wolf, who seduces women as part of his mission, and moves through an apparently endless string of lovers as he jets around the world, fighting evil in a particularly male-gaze-apparent way, such that the entire spectacle becomes, to some extent, an elaborate male fantasy. While Craig’s James Bond has undoubtedly taken steps towards a more modern man, demonstrating a far softer side to the character than has previously been seen with the original Sean Connery, the fact still remains that at Bond’s core he is a womaniser with narcissistic tendencies and a saviour complex, and, after all, was written to be a man.

In the novel Casino Royale, there are various examples of blatant misogyny from Bond, where he showcases his true opinions regarding the role of women: ‘Women were for recreation. On a job, they got in the way and fogged things up with sex and hurt feelings and all the emotional baggage they carried around. One had to look out for them and take care of them.’

“These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men.”

Then, he takes it a step further by making various sinister references to rape: in Casino Royale (1953), when musing on Vesper Lynd, Bond remarks on how ‘the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would have the sweet tang of rape’. Then again in From Russia with Love (1957) he muses that ‘all women long want to be swept off their feet. In their dreams they long to be slung over a man’s shoulder and taken into a cave and raped. […]. Women like their men to be heroes’, and similarly in The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) he says ‘All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful’.

Thus, while we could take a characteristically unpleasant character and solve the issue of diversity by placing a woman in the role, it seems, if I may be so bold as to say, a pathetic solution; to attempt to combat issues within society by simply doing a gender-swap does not really achieve anything. This Jane Bond would not bring to the role the same essence of character (excluding the racist, misogynist part), and therefore be regarded less highly than the previous Bonds. She would not have the same influence as a role model for men as cisgender heterosexual Bonds do, and thus Bond’s potential to be a didactic character would be null and void – by presenting us with a conventional Bond, who retains his integral manly traits, yet who is good-hearted,

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respecting women and being accepting of our more diverse society, we can provide a better example for people, especially those who don’t see the franchise as a fake fantasy to indulge in rather than to emulate. With a changing societal outlook, we can also start to see Bond as this flawed figure, an example of how not to act at times, which seems more beneficial than completely obliterating the presence of the male after any call to update a character.

Nonetheless, there is still the need present for a true female equivalent; instead of merely shoving a woman into a man’s role, there should be more female characters written to conform to the female gaze, having been written as a woman by a woman. This is where the wonderful Paloma, of the latest Bond installation, No Time to Die, comes in. Though only appearing for around 10 minutes of screen time, Paloma (played by Ana de Armas) stole the show with her innocent charm and hardcore combat skills – not to mention her sly sense of humour, quickly establishing herself as the most likeable character, as well as a perfectly capable counterpart of Bond. In an interview with Vogue, costume designer for No Time to Die, Suttirat Larlarb comments on Paloma’s character saying “We could’ve done a jumpsuit with fantastic boots, but she’s the most capable recruit and can do anything James can do – only in heels and elegant dress”. Paloma is iconic and without a doubt the best role model in Bond history – she demonstrates how fashion and ability can go hand in hand, a fact various works of literature like to negate; wearing beautiful clothes does not correlate with competency, nor do they always exist as a hinderance when it comes to fighting. Paloma empowers women by showing that femininity does not make one less strong, rather I would argue she is far more powerful through the way she unexpectedly tears down bad guys in a stunning gown by Michael di Sordo, Chopard diamonds, and 4-inch silver Aquazurra high-heels, and looking absolutely fabulous while doing so. Larlarb even added that “whenever [she does] a film with a stunt department, the women are always asked to pull off these incredible stunts in stilettos while the men come in and say that their [flat] boots are too tight”. Paloma is not just a temporary accomplice whom Bond flirts or sleeps with, her character is so well developed in such short space a time, that it seems almost definite that she was set up for something greater than a tiny cameo in a movie series. Perhaps she will be the female character we are looking for?

Yet it must be noted that despite this widespread contention surrounding the next Bond’s gender, in actual fact, it turns out that the ‘Jane Bond’ debate isn’t a new one, as a woman was considered for the starring role in the superspy’s very first movie outing way back in the 1950s; back in 1955, when filmmaker Gregory Ratoff acquired the film rights to Casino Royale from Ian Fleming, he and writer Lorenzo Semple Jr reportedly seriously considered actress Susan Hayward as 007. Speaking to the Daily Record in 2012, Semple recalled how “Frankly, [they] thought that James Bond was kind of unbelievable” and “even kind of stupid, so we thought the solution was to make Bond a woman, ‘Jane Bond’, if you will”. He continued by saying how “Gregory announced one day, ‘We’ll get Susie Hayward. I dated her when she was a $75-a-week actress, so she owes me one’ “. Nevertheless, Hayward turned down the opportunity and Sean Connery instead became the first James Bond in the 1962 film Dr No, which Semple did admit was a good choice.

This really does beg the question, what would Bond be like if we had got a female Bond from the beginning?

Would it really have worked, and would Jane Bond enjoy the same mass popularity James does today? One thing is certain: we can never know for sure what public reaction would’ve been. All we know is that James Bond as a literary figure was a man, and that now a female Bond would be out of place. Instead, we should carry on with the steady progression of development, whereby the Bond girls enjoy roles where they work alongside Bond, in equal alliances, as opposed to the inferior, sexualised versions we have seen previously.

This it seems is being done well, and there is much hope for the future of the Bond universe, even if it is not necessarily through James himself. As in the words of Bond girl Leá Seydoux, when asked if a female bond is something she’s like to see: “James Bond is James Bond. But I would love to see a female character like James Bond and I’m sure that will happen”.

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The Hidden Dangers of the Canon

by Aaina Jassel We all know about canonical literature – they can be described as ‘classics’, or as ‘boring’ and ‘intellectual’ depending on what you like to read. Despite what you may think about this genre, the fact is we’ve all read at least one (even in school) as well as being aware of others. It isn’t just the novels, the authors names are also well known. I for one have never read an Ernest Hemingway novel yet I know his name; I can say the same about Harper Lee but I have no idea why she’s killing mockingbirds. Why do we all know these novels and authors and are they worth knowing?

What does canonical literature actually teach us?

J

ane Austen. One of the most famous female authors of her time creator of a number of well-renowned novels from Pride and Prejudice to Mansfield Park. Her novel Pride and Prejudice feature the strong female character of Elizabeth Bennet who wasn’t ‘girly’ nor weak-willed, but a wellread, adventurous woman. This character was deeply undermined by Austen’s use of female stereotypes throughout the rest of the novel. There is Elizabeth’s sister Lydia Bennet who swoons at the sight of the soldiers, collects ribbons, and is seen to be hyper feminine. This stereotype of a young girl who is interested in ‘girly things’ such as ribbons and boys doesn’t undermine Lizzie’s character alone, but paired with the stereotype of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, together they completely contradict the feminist lead. Lady Catherine is a clear representation of the

negative portrayal of a woman with her outspoken nature and coldness – both of which emit unpleasant connotations. Austen gave us a wonderful feminist character in Elizabeth Bennet and then completely destroyed this progressive nature by featuring these minimised, stereotypical characters. In her novel Mansfield Park Austen creates a huge narrative gap as Mansfield estate could not be sustained without Sir Thomas’s property in the Caribbean. Sir Thomas as a character himself is a pure example of a colonising figure who returns from the Caribbean to ‘restore order’ to Mansfield. His time away – the time spent on his plantation – fuels his living in England, yet is rarely, if ever, mentioned. Both of these widely popular Austen novels show the lack of diversity and display a huge lack of diversity through race and gender alike.

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The Prioress's Tale, a painting by Edward Coley Burne-Jones

"Within the first 38 chapters of Oliver Twist Fagin is referred to as ‘The Jew’

Felix O. C. Darley, 1865

Dickens’s The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Household Edition, vol. 1 frontispiece.

Is this what we want to teach the future generations?

Charles Dickens is another widely known author who unfortunately doesn’t seem to teach us the right lessons. You don’t need to look far and some of you might have already thought of this. Dickens’ portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist is not just problematic but full of antisemitic stereotypes. Within the first 38 chapters of Oliver Twist Fagin is referred to as ‘The Jew’ roughly 257 times. This emphasises that he is nothing more than his religion and that his religion is to be frowned upon – it is a derogatory term to be ‘a jew’. This representation of Jewish people being inherently evil stemmed from images created by non-Jewish people to villainise those who differed to themselves. This promotion of hatred to a specific group of people is in a novel that not only has been glorified and made into many productions but also is a school text for some.

Despite this, there are some canonical texts which seem to provide a better view for society. In Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest, the women are definitely not placed in the weaker roles as the men completely change themselves to please – achieve – the women, not the other way

round. This suggestion of the women having more power is an important message that should be seen in more literature. Women do not need to be the weaker gender automatically, men are allowed to be in weaker roles. This is shown in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as three of the pilgrims are in fact women; The Wife of Bath, The Prioress and the Second Nun. Many critics have said that the female narrators have more complex characters than their male counterparts but also as they journey on the women are seen as equal to the men. These women, whilst being in traditional female roles such as the wife and the mother, are rounded characters. These two examples show that canonical literature does still hold value and can teach us worthy lessons and ways.

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These canonical texts are called ‘classics’ for a reason. But is this a good enough reason to reinforce racist and sexist ideals amongst the newer generations?

S C R I B B L E Independent Day School 32 Town Walls , Shrewsbury, Shropshire SY1 1TN www.shrewsburyhigh.gdst.net scribble_magazine_shs

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