English 24

Freshman Seminar: Boys and Girls in Mark Twain and Henry James

Other Readings and Media

James, H.: The Turn of the Screw and other Short Novels, What Maisie Knew; Twain, M.: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Description

Historians often define the era from 1880 to ca. 1915 as the ?era of the child.? Some historians also include the problem of American adolescence in this period. Just as there developed an issue of defining masculinity and femininity, authors of the period focused on children and adolescents. The crisis of major cultural/political/economic rapid change seems to demand these difficult and painful reconsiderations and redefinitions. At least, the narratives of boys and girls gave the culture the opportunity to observe, scrutinize, critique. Questions about boys and girls might also be not only about gender definitions but also about the development of an ethical consciousness, what might be called everyday ethical coping.

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