Howards End: Margaret, Henry, and the Situational Performance of Gender

Howards End by E.M. Forster is based in the year 1910 and is set in England. The novel portrays the expected traits of men and women. Using Gender Theory and, more specifically, Judith Butler’s idea of “performing gender”, one can better understand the actions of two of the main characters, Henry and Margaret, based on their performance of gender. For example, Margaret allows Henry to take over her affairs when they are engaged, and Henry suppresses all emotions, each performing gender specific attributes. However, the qualities performed by these characters are continuously changing and are not always specific to one gender. For example, when Margaret is head of her household, she performs masculine traits such as making decisions about houses. This continuous transition of repressed and displayed behaviors suggest that gender qualities are on a relative continuum that ranges from masculine to feminine qualities in each individual “performed” in different situations or when not in control, such as in the event of a major crisis. Using this relative continuum and the idea of situational gender performance, this essay attempts to better understand the personalities of these two characters and what implications their gender performance has on society

The Orphan Train Adventures Series: The Kelly Siblings’ Trek to Responsibility

The Orphan Train Adventures, a series of historical novels by Joan Lowery Nixon (1927-2003), is concerned with the responsibility exercised by its child characters during the antebellum and Civil War periods. This thesis examines how Nixon, by illustrating the positive effects of responsibility through her child characters, suggests the value of cultivating responsibility in children of the contemporary period. Nixon’s use of the mid-nineteenth-century setting and the rearing practices associated with this time allows her to demonstrate positive acts of responsibility in her main characters—six siblings sent west from New York City on the “orphan trains.” This study finds that children are capable of exercising responsibility and that a sense of responsibility is necessary for children to develop into successful adults. Through her characterizations Nixon suggests that familial relationships actually have a strong effect on one’s development of responsibility and that family members are essentially accountable for the development of responsibility among each other. Nixon thereby suggests that even as the American family has undergone many changes in the contemporary period, children and parents should combat these changes to successfully develop responsibility. In fact, this study works to understand the characterization of responsible siblings in children’s and young adult literature and offers new ways to understand responsibility and the contemporary child