Heroine in Newbery Medal Books

As revealed previously, research had shown that gender bias in Newbery books was not as obvious as it was in the early years, and female protagonists tended to be more independent in recent years. This section would show research concerning about the heroines in Newbery Medal winners.

Groce (2001) reviewed how female protagonists were portrayed in recent

(1985-2000) Newbery books. A qualitative content analysis was employed to analyze the sample of twenty-three books. The research analyzed 1) how the female protagonists evaluated their abilities and 2) how other characters evaluated the female main characters. The instances of success and failure and the instances of guidance and support encountered by the female main characters were reviewed to evaluate each main character. Findings revealed that female main characters evaluated their own abilities in physical, cognitive, social, domestic, and emotional terms. The evaluations of personality, characteristics and self-esteem issues were also included.

In general, the characters were with physical shortcomings but exhibited positive perceptions regarding their academic abilities. In addition to being evaluated based on social norms for gender roles, the female protagonists were evaluated by others on physical and academic issues. Results showed that female main characters were described negatively based on body type or other physical attributes, but often received positive descriptions for their academic achievement. Analysis of instances of success and failure revealed that female protagonists were recognized for their heroic feats while struggling with a variety of social problems. Finally, a review of the instances of guidance and support revealed that female main characters received support in various ways including encouragement, compliments, direct guidance, and academic support from other, usually an older male.

Beesley (2001) reviewed the journey tradition from Joseph Campbell’s male archetype to Maureen Murdock’s redefinition of this model to develop a heroine’s journey. These journeys allowed men and women to know themselves better through models in literature. At the same time, Mary Pipher had alerted society to the great need of young women for strong models to help them survive the stormy years of adolescence. By comparing Campbell's and Murdock's work and acknowledging the needs of young women as outlined by Pipher, Beesley focused on the heroine’s Journey in adolescent literature and chose the heroines of ten Newbery Medal books and their Journeys for her point of concentration. Referring to Maureen Murdock’s archetypal model of the mother/daughter split, Beesley made a review of the heroine’s journey in Newbery winning novels and found that there were literary models that could assist young women in a positive direction for their own journeys. She treated Billie Joe’s Departure in Out of the Dust as a separation from the feminine. As for the Separation stage, she divided the heroines into different types: identification with the masculine (The view from Saturday), road of trials (Walk Two Moons), finding the boon of success (The Midwife’s Apprentice), awakening to feelings of spiritual aridity:

death (Jacob Have I Loved), initiation and descent to the Goddess (Missing May), urgent yearning to reconnect with the feminine (Caddie Woodlawn), and healing the mother/daughter split (Dicey’s Song). The final stage (Return) was represented by the heroine healing the wounded masculine (The Hero and the Crown) and integrating the masculine and feminine (The Summer of the Swans).

After reviewed all the female characters in Newbery books from 1967-2003, Ricks (2003) made a conclusion that the young heroine tended to be Innocents, Orphans, or Seekers. The protagonists in The Blue Sword (1983), Out of the Dust (1998), and Walk Two Moons (1995) shared similar stories even though they represented different genres such as fantasy, historical, and contemporary fiction

respectively.All of the heroines had lost their mothers and were dealing with either emotionally or physically absent fathers. In that sense, therefore, they were considered Orphans. When they chose to leave their homes in order to complete the Journey, they were also Seekers. Another similarity shared by the heroine was that most of them were not satisfied with their appearance. They were not considered to be classical beauties and usually in the company of a popular sister or friend who was more pretty and pleasing to the parents and others. On the other hand, Ricks also indicated that all the protagonists in Newbery were praised for their intellectuality and talent. Most of the female protagonists of the Newbery books were girls right in the middle class of the social structure. They had friends and were generally liked, but they were not characterized for looking or acting like ladies or appearing to resemble males.

Baecker (2007) echoed to the Orphan and Innocent image of female protagonists in Newbery books by examining the young girl in Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins. The girl was abandoned on an island off the west coast of the United States and spent eighteen year living alone. She was finally rescued by white hunters and be brought back to the human world. The researcher indicated that the heroine counted on herself for a long time on an isolated island; therefore, this was a feminist story of survival, not a story of rescue, as it typically was in most of the female stories such as Cinderella or Juliette.

Zilboorg (1990) also did a feminist case study on one of the Newbery Award winning books, Carol Ryrie Brink’s Caddie Woodlawn. She reviewed famous women in twentieth-century American literature such as Daisy Fay in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatesby; Brett Ashely in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Caddie Compson in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. She then indicated that all female main characters in these stories were portrayed as unreliable, romanticized and physically weak. Then she went on to analyze the contents of Caddie Woodlawn and pointed out that this

work was, if not outstanding enough to be called an evidence of feminism’s persistence, a work that presented admirable girl hero as feminist role model. Zilboorg also emphasized the relationship between Caddie and her father was out of the dual identification and was non-patriarchal at all. The female protagonist was portrayed in a liberal and outgoing way and no inferior to her male companions. Thus the researcher finally concluded this book provided a new model for young girls, so that they needed no longer to bear the stereotypes of faint ladies, sacrificing mothers, and boring old ladies offered by the popular patriarchal literature.

Following the feminist view, Maher (1996) surveyed the female protagonists in two of Carol Ryrie Brink’s novels: Caddie Woodlawn and Magical Melons. She provided principle structure for each novel and analyzed the main characters’ moods and impulses by using content analysis and emphasized on the multi-faceted gender roles portrayed in both stories. Although time lines setting up for these two books differed from one to three years, Maher indicated that the author, Carol Ryrie used the same structuring principle for these two books: a series of episodes linked together by character development and family history. Both novels showed male world privilege by setting up conflicts between male and female worlds with male side and emphasized on domestic life. Yet they also demonstrated woman’s genius in settling an unsettled world and provided the certainty of home. Homebuilding constructed the narratives of these two stories and gendered space was constructed in harmony in the small unities.

To summarize, researchers had found female protagonists tended to be under evaluated on physical part but praised on academic qualities (Groce, 2001). The images of heroine in Newbery books reflected diverse perspectives (Beesley, 2001).

Some researchers indicated that female main characters tended to be orphans (Baecker, 2007; Ricks, 2003) and they received support in various ways, mainly from

an older male (Groce, 2001) or even rescued by male and/or adapted to the patriarchal world in the end of the story (Baecker, 2007) . But still, adopting feminist point of view, some studies revealed that female protagonists remained the quality of self-survival while comparing to their rivals in previous work such as Cinderella and Snow White in fairy tales or faint ladies in literature of early Twentieth Century (Baecker, 2007; Maher, 1996). As for independent work, Caddie Woodlawn, the 1936 Medal winner, had been noticed as a successful work of eliminating the boundary of masculine and feminine and offered a good role model for its young readers (Maher, 1996; Zilboorg, 1990).

The heroines in Newbery Medal winners were important role models for young female readers. The researchers above made positive comments on these books’

depictions of young women facing their life journeys optimistically with ability of self-survival and intelligence.