Abstract
This paper offers a close reading of two works, Eleanor Estes’ The Hundred Dresses (1944) and Marcus Ewert’s 10,000 Dresses (2008), that feature in current anti-bullying campaigns. Starting with The Hundred Dresses, this essay examines how Estes’ use of the school story not only exposes the social dynamics of relational aggression but also suggests how girls develop a sense of identity that is profoundly intersubjective. Focused on the development of the artist as a young girl, The Hundred Dresses not surprisingly reveals the importance of language and speech acts in the construction of self as well as social relationships. The paper then argues that 10,000 Dresses, written more than 60 years later, returns to the preoccupation with creativity, subjectivity, and conformity in The Hundred Dresses so as to redefine conventional ideas of gender and to make room for transgendered subjectivity. In approaching these two literary works, this essay draws on work concerned with psychological and social constructions of gender and identity in children.
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Notes
Describing The Hundred Dresses as ahead of its time, Virginia Wolf (1983) notes that “it movingly criticizes discrimination against those ethnically, financially, or racially different from the majority. A simple, brief book, it is nevertheless psychologically complex in its explanations of why people do not speak out against cruelty and why they must.” Frances Clark Sayers (1976/1952) says: “The Hundred Dresses is a revelation of a child’s suffering. The book transcends all of the labels which have been applied to it in the name of brotherhood, tolerance, and intercultural understanding. It is an enduring story of compassion” (p. 72). According to Mabel Rice (2001/1968), “Reviewers have exhausted their stock of adjectives and had to repeat. Poignant, compassionate, tender, lovely, different, charming, original, subtle, unforgettable, always unforgettable … This delicate story of child snobbery toward the underprivileged pupil is all too familiar to most of us” (p. 39).
Three major adaptations for children have appeared since the late 1990’s. First, Bill Williams adapted The Hundred Dresses for the Eckerd Theater Company (1997–1998; 2001–2002; 2004–2005; 2007–2008; 2010–2011; 2011–2012). Second, Mary Surface Hall adapted The Hundred Dresses for the Seattle Children’s Theatre (Winter 2008). Third, Ralph Covert and G. Riley Mills scripted The Hundred Dresses as a musical for the Chicago Children’s Theatre (Fall 2009; Fall 2010). Hall’s The Hundred Dresses has subsequently been produced by First Stage Children’s Theatre, Milwaukee, WI (Spring 2011), and the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte (Spring 2014); Covert and Mills’ The Hundred Dresses, the Atlantic Theatre Company (Spring 2012) and Imagine U, Northwestern University (Fall 2013). The didactic function of children’s theatrical productions is borne out in the study guides prepared for audiences.
Erving Goffman first articulated the concept of the “nonperson” in Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings (1963). Nonpersons—who, according to Goffman, typically include menial laborers, the mentally ill, visible minorities, and children—are treated in public situations as if they do not exist. Although present, they are not noticed or recognized as such. Goodwin (2006) adapts this idea to the practice of social exclusion in girls’ groups (pp. 227-232).
Valerie Hey (1997) later uses Bakhtin’s idea of “‘interanimations’ or ‘ventriloquisms’” to examine how girls’ speech echoes “familial, cultural and community discourse” (p. 137).
B.J. Epstein (2012) writes: “One thing I love about this book is that Ewert uses female pronouns when referring to Bailey, which suggests that the narrator has accepted Bailey for who she is and that, therefore, so should the reader. While this might confuse some young readers, it can be easily explained by an adult reading besides them, and also is a good starting point for discussion.”
The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) produced “Ready, Set, Respect,” an elementary-school toolkit, in response to a “study, based on national surveys of 1,056 elementary school students in 3rd to 6th grade and 1,099 elementary school teachers of K-6th grade, examin[ing] students’ and teachers’ experiences with biased remarks and bullying, and their attitudes about gender expression and family diversity” (Marra, 2012). The study, Playgrounds and Prejudice, found that “almost one in ten of elementary school students (8 %) … do not conform to traditional gender norms—i.e., boys who others sometimes think act or look like a girl, or they are girls who others sometimes think act or look like a boy” (GLSEN and Harris Interactive, 2012, p. xviii). Moreover, “students who do not conform to traditional gender norms are more likely than others to say they are called names, made fun of or bullied at least sometimes at school (56 vs. 33 %)”; they “are less likely than other students to feel very safe at school (42 vs. 61 %) and are more likely than others to agree that they sometimes do not want to go to school because they feel unsafe or afraid there (35 vs. 15 %)” (GLSEN and Harris Interactive, 2012, p. xviii).
According to Candi Cushman (2012), “the material includes some things we can all agree with—like protecting children against bullying and stopping name-calling,” but “this ‘toolkit’ crosses the line” by engaging in “an Orwellian type of brainwashing that redefines the very meaning of ‘family’ and ‘male’ and ‘female’—whether parents like it or not.” Similarly, the Pacific Justice Institute (2010) opposed the endorsement of 10,000 Dresses and All I Want to Be Is Me by the Alameda Community Alliance Resource for Education (CARE) on the grounds that these works
show only one side of a controversial issue. Instead of explaining that “transgender” behaviour requires treatment and is categorized as a Gender Identity Disorder in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, the[se] … two books promote “transgender” behaviour. The chances of these children being helped decreases if they are affirmed at school.
Significantly, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) has removed Gender Identity Disorder and included instead Gender Dysphoria as a diagnostic category. In making the change, the APA (2013) sought language that was descriptive but that did not stigmatize “gender incongruence” as a “disorder.” As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (2004/1991) argues, the pathologization of gender nonconformity in children, which occurred at roughly the same time as the depathologization of adult homosexuality, was especially hostile to “effeminate boys” (p. 141). Impervious to such concerns, the Pacific Justice Institute also pursued in 2009 a lawsuit against Alameda Unified School District’s Lesson 9 in the Caring School Community Curriculum which was designed to protect students from harassment, including that based on actual or perceived sexual orientation. The court dismissed the suit, but the AUSD subsequently broadened the terms of the lesson to implement a K-5 anti-bullying curriculum intended to embrace six state-protected classes: race/ethnicity, national origin, gender, disability, religion, and sexual orientation.
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Sharon Smulders teaches children’s literature and nineteenth-century poetry in the Department of English, Mount Royal University. She has written on questions of diversity in the work of P.L. Travers, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Robert Service.
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Smulders, S. Dresses Make the Girl: Gender and Identity from The Hundred Dresses to 10,000 Dresses . Child Lit Educ 46, 410–423 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-015-9242-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-015-9242-6