Tina C. Vermillion
Professor Baker
English 496
2 December 2003
Adolescent Girls Gone Wild and Hunted in the Wilderness:
Protecting Our Endangered Students in the English Classroom
This summer I participated in an exciting and enlightening college course: Female Literary Tradition in English. My class often engaged in discussions of current events and issues that involve the roles of women in our American society. During one of those discussions, I learned about “Hunting for Bambi.” It is a game staged in Las Vegas where women run around in the wilderness, naked, while men pay money to hunt them down and shoot them with paintball guns. When the man “kills Bambi” he can have his way with her. In disbelief, I decided to see if this game was real. Uncertain of how to learn more about the game, I first went to the Internet and typed in the word “Bambi.” Thinking my search results would probably show as Bambi, that cute little deer from the children’s story, I was shocked to see my first listing as “HuntingforBambi.com.” I clicked on the website and there in full color was information on how people can order “Hunting for Bambi” videos. The promotional text is appalling:
[We’ll] take you on 10 incredible hunts that will shock you for life as well as give you a new outlook on women. […] If you are an avid outdoorsman or a hard core hunting enthusiast looking for the ultimate adrenaline rush, look no further. From tracking down women with dogs to chasing after them with a real armored tank. […] We sincerely hope you have as much fun watching this epic
documentary of
man’s quest for the ultimate women […]. (HuntingforBambi.com).
The advertisers even admit, “[T]his is without a doubt one of the
sickest and most shocking videos ever made” (HuntingforBambi.com). The website is well matched with this “sick”
video; there are photos of naked women hiding from men, being dragged by their
hair, and mounted on the wall as trophies.
Skeptics have questioned the game’s authenticity, but the videos are
real. It saddens me to think that in
the country in which I live, this “Bambi” is viewed as the “ultimate woman.”
I am concerned how
this image of womanhood affects younger females. Imagine a young girl doing a report on Bambi. She uses the popular Internet for
research. When she clicks on her first
search result, up pops photos of men dragging naked women by their hair across
a woody ground. The student may think
she typed in “caveman” by mistake. But
there is no mistake in the fact that this is this young girl’s
reality. She is living in a society
that promotes the male domination of females.
Her world is shaped by a multitude of patriarchal messages. From the Internet, television, movies,
magazines, peers, and most importantly school, a young girl learns about her
role in society. As a future secondary
English teacher, I want to ensure that I send her the right message: she can be a strong, independent, successful
woman. Adolescent girls are influenced
by what surrounds them; our job as English teachers is to surround them with a
gender equitable classroom environment.
We can help decrease the gap in gender equity in schools by changing our
pedagogy toward a more feminist approach.
We must select and teach literature to our students in a manner that
helps girls and boys aspire to build a society where they equally share the
wilderness.
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The life of adolescent girls today differs from ours of twenty years ago. Psychologist Mary Pipher says, “Their problems are complicated and metaphorical – eating disorders, school phobias, and self-inflicted injuries” (20). Pipher agrees that because of the women’s movement, women today are doing many things their mothers never dreamed of. However, Pipher continues, “[G]irls today are much more oppressed. They are coming of age in a more dangerous, sexualized and media-saturated culture. They face incredible pressures to be beautiful and sophisticated, which in junior high means using chemicals and being sexual” (12). Early feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir “believed adolescence is when girls realize that men have the power and that their only power comes from consenting to become submissive adored objects” (qtd. in Pipher 21). As I easily saw on HuntingForBambi.com, in media women are “increasingly sexualized and objectified” (Pipher 12). Meenakshi Gigi Durham, a researcher on teen media use among middle-school girls says, “All the girls I have talked to have expressed some dissatisfaction with their bodies and many of them have resorted to extreme measures such as starvation” (qtd. in Gibbons, par. 16). Author Joan Brumberg reports that young American girls “believe the body is the ultimate expression of the self” (qtd. in Gibbons, par 6). Unfortunately adolescent girls focus on the body not the mind, yet they need strong minds to confront the difficulties of adolescence. As girls continue to face intensifying pressures of divorced families, chemical addictions, casual sex, and violence against women, they begin to experience a diminishing sense of who they are and what they can do (Pipher 28; Pipher qtd. in Sprague 39).
Boys share girls’ low opinions of the female self. Many boys don’t see the value in being a girl, yet girls believe there are many benefits to being a boy. Researchers Myra and David
Sadker asked a group of 8th graders to write essays about how their lives would be different if they woke up one day as the opposite sex. The boys’ essays were negative about their lives, but the girls saw their lives as better. When the Sadkers asked the class to list advantages of being girls, only girls answered things like shopping, talking on the phone, looking pretty, and wearing nice clothes. No boys responded; they couldn’t think of any advantages (Sadker 87-8). When the Sadkers asked about disadvantages of being girls, both the boys and girls’ lists grew long and included such things as: “Not getting respect, people don’t pay as much attention to you, can’t be president of the United States, sex discrimination, don’t get as many jobs or make as much money” (88). I am disheartened that young people know such realities and may not be encouraged to change them. Judy Logan, a middle school teacher, felt the same way when she assigned her students a project to research and emulate the life of a prominent African American. The girls chose male and female figures, but the boys always selected males. Logan says, “It disturbed me that although girls were willing to see men as heroes, none of the boys would see women that way” (qtd. in Orenstein 249).
Schools perpetuate society’s favoritism toward men. Education professionals Barbara Martin and Saundra Newcomer agree that schools and society mirror one another stating, “The attitudes and prejudices of the school simply reflect the attitudes and prejudices of the larger society” (37). The class environment, student-teacher interaction, and curriculum and materials privilege males over females. I am currently observing an 8th grade English class. Everyday the students sit in a room surrounded by posters of men. Only three of the twenty posters include women, and one of those posters hides on the wall behind the television stand. It shows three female authors out of the nine authors pictured. I visited four other classes in the school, and,
unfortunately, I saw no illustrations of females. The classrooms did not equally represent the gender of the students.
Not only can the class décor make the students feel unequally represented, but teachers’ interactions with students can as well. The Sadkers learned of inequities in student/teacher interaction from their research in middle and high schools. They found that male students receive more praise, control classroom conversation, ask more questions, and get help when confused (Sadker 43). They recorded that boys call out eight times more often than girls, often about nothing or little to do with the teacher’s questions (44). I was curious how true these findings were and decided to monitor students in my 8th grade observation class. Although while observing it seemed to me that there was equal interaction, my numbers told a different story. In each of the four classes I observed, when considering the ratio of boys to girls, the number of times the boys volunteered or were called upon was always a greater ratio.1
Martin and Newcomer conducted student/teacher interaction research and realized similar results. Teachers called on male students more often and presented them with the majority of higher thinking skill questions (Martin and Newcomer 44). While the actual teacher/student interactions were overwhelmingly male-dominated, this was not the perception of the students or
the teachers. Teachers were unaware of the biased behaviors they exhibited to students in the classroom (44). Teachers need to be conscious of their interactions with students because “[e]ach time the teacher passes over a girl to elicit the ideas and opinions of boys, that girl is conditioned to be silent and to defer” (Sadker 13).
Gender biases in curriculum and materials can also silence girls into accepting themselves as inferior to males. Author Marylin Hulme identifies forms of bias found in instructional materials. Such biases can be categorized as: invisibility – the omission of women in texts implies they are of less value to society; fragmentation/isolation – separating issues related to women from the main body of the text implies these issues are less important and not part of the mainstream; and linguistic bias – masculine terms and pronouns, masculine labels and lack of parallel terms that refer to females and males (Hulme 192). While not completely omitting women, literature textbooks do not equally represent female and male authors.
I reviewed a few current English textbooks to see how women are represented. I looked at books for grades 10, 11, and 12. I examined each book’s section on the classics. In the 10th grade book, there were 6 female-authored selections out of 15 total selections; in the 11th grade book, there were 4 out of 17; and in the 12th grade book, there was 1 out of 19 (Applebee). The cover of the 12th grade textbook initially impressed me because it pictured Queen Elizabeth, but then I noticed the male image shadowed behind her.[1]2 What kind of message does this send: behind every strong, successful woman, there must be a man? I also reviewed the textbook in
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my 8th grade observation class and the selections the students will actually be required to read the first half of the school year. Out of the twenty-five pieces of literature their teacher has chosen from the text, only four are by female authors.
These textbooks mirror the kinds of literature recommended outside of schools as well. In 1998 the Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels of the 20th century written in English included only 8 women authors. Virginia Woolf was the only one in the top 50 (Whaley and Dodge 22). Curious to see if more women authors had been added recently, I located the list for 2003. Of the Modern Library Board’s top 100 novels, there are 9 women authored texts and 2 are in the top 50 (Modern Library). So, one female has moved up the ranks. I suppose we have to take our accomplishments, however small, as positive steps toward gender equity. As English teachers, however, we can make bigger steps than this in our classrooms.
We can take steps toward changing our classroom culture. Pipher suggests to help girls, “[w]e can work together to build a culture that is less complicated and more nurturing, less violent and sexualized and more growth-producing. Our daughters deserve a society in which all their gifts can be developed and appreciated” (13). The culture in our classrooms must facilitate our students’ growth. We can change not only our curriculum but also our teaching to create a gender equitable environment for girls and boys.
Our first step should be to consider our pedagogy in terms of feminist literary theory. Linguistic theories ask if “men and women use language differently; whether sex differences in language use can be theorized in terms of biology, socialization, or culture; whether women can create new languages of their own, and whether speaking, reading, and writing are all gender marked” (Showalter 252-3). Feminist theorist Elaine Showalter asserts, “The problem is not that
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language is insufficient to express women’s consciousness but that women have been denied the full resources of language and have been forced into silence, euphemism, or circumlocution” (255). Do our classrooms provide students the full resources of their language?
In her essay “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,” Elaine Showalter divides feminist criticism into two varieties. The first variety she calls feminist critique. Feminist critique “offers feminist readings of texts which consider the images and stereotypes of women in literature, the omissions and misconceptions about women in criticism, and woman-as-sign in semiotic systems” (245). The second variety of feminist criticism is gynocriticism, which is the study of women as writers (248). To provide female students access to their language and their history, English teachers have to consider these two concepts when selecting and teaching literature. We can ask how women are represented in the male-authored texts we teach and what factors influenced the writings of female authors. Such questions can help us work toward building a classroom culture where girls and boys both have equal voices through learning about literature.
It is important to include feminist teaching in our English classes because, as feminist scholar Adrienne Rich claims, we cannot know ourselves until we understand the assumptions surrounding us (“Dead” 35). A feminist critique of literature looks at how it shows women living, how women have been led to imagine themselves, how women’s language is confining and liberating, and how we can begin to live anew (35). Studying literature of the past in a different way is a means to break tradition’s hold over us (35). We can challenge tradition by incorporating feminist literary criticism in our English classrooms, for as teacher Helen Harper claims, “[Feminist literary criticism] finds its power in directing attention to the uncertainties, contradictions, and tensions that underlie our reading/writing and teaching practices, producing
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and threatening who we are and who we can be as feminists, teachers, literary scholars, students, and as men and women” (227).
English teachers can help students be confident in who they are as young women and men by taking a feminist approach to teaching and selecting literature. Educator Diane Mitchell says, “If students are never encouraged to question the assumptions behind gender and race portrayals, the danger seems to be that students will accept the portrayal of characters as the way people really are” (77). What perceptions do adolescent students draw from literature? The Sadkers’ research shows that “when children read about people in nontraditional gender roles, they are less likely to limit themselves to stereotypes” (59). Hulme claims that “reading about successful women has been found to cause girls to have higher expectations of female success” (190). If we allow girls to learn about successful women and read about issues central to themselves, they can begin to have a more positive image of themselves. As responsible and caring English teachers we should heed Rich’s words: “It is our shared commitment toward a world in which the inborn potentialities of so many women’s minds will no longer be wasted, raveled away, paralyzed, or denied” (“Claiming” 235).
Critics of feminist teaching in our classrooms question its value, however many teachers find it is beneficial to all students. In 1999 English teacher Delane Bender Slack attempted to implement a women’s literature class upon her principal’s suggestion. When she presented her suggested curriculum to the English department, she received several objections. First, her colleagues said it would only be fair then to offer a men’s literature course. However, this would imply that all things are equal which has not been the case from the early years of schooling/socialization (Slack 92). They objected that few boys would take the course, but I
would counter, is it wrong to provide an atmosphere where girls can finally speak out? When her colleagues argued a women’s literature course would service only 50% of the population, Slack responded, “As teachers and parents we need to raise a generation of boys and men who can admire and appreciate women. […] We are doing our male students a great disservice by allowing male dominated texts and ideas to pervade our classrooms” (92). Liz Whaley in her rationale for offering more women’s literature says, “Sometimes I notice that the young women in the class have more to say about stories by or about women, but I don’t feel guilty that the young men have hunkered down some on those days: young women have been dropped into silence for years” (9). Judy Logan tells her students that a “woman’s unit” is not about ruling over, it is about existing with (qtd. Orenstein 259). She says, “Feminist teaching is not about allowing a win/lose situation to develop between boys and girls” (259). English Teachers Liz Whaley and Liz Dodge agree that teaching more women’s literature creates an equal balance in the classroom and in society. They argue, “We need to study women because otherwise we see only half a picture of the human race” (16). The goal of feminism is to eliminate unfair barriers for both sexes. The ultimate goal should be to “eliminate the need for women’s literature and/or women’s studies courses” (Whaley 62).
English teachers can strive to achieve that goal. Although the board did not approve Slack’s women’s literature course, she will work toward feminist teaching in her existing classes. Slack is redesigning what she does in the classroom to avoid gender bias like studying nonsexist language, opening class discussions, providing journal prompts, choosing new novels, including more female authors and analyzing her own instruction (95). The American Association of University Women (AAUW) commissioned a reported titled “Girls in the Middle: Working to
Succeed in School,” and it suggested ways schools could help girls overcome the difficult challenges of adolescence (Sprague and Risher 39). Schools should make gender equity a priority and build identity development into the school curriculum (39).
As illustrated by Slack’s experience, it is difficult to develop courses specifically to address gender issues. However, educators can use literature as a way to build identity development (Sprague and Risher 39). Pipher suggests, “One way is through the reading of literature which introduces girls to strong female characters, ones who are able to maintain their true voices, despite challenges” (qtd. in Sprague and Risher 39). A great source to locating such novels is Odean’s Great Books for Girls (39). Hulme says it is important to show positive images of girls and boys and to make sure girls are main characters in stories (201). Female characters should show initiative and leadership; male characters should be able to show emotions (201). Education professor Wendy Glenn recommends young adult author Karen Hesse’s literature because in many of her novels “through the voice of her female characters [she] suggests a condemnation of patriarchal values” (Glenn 30). In her works, Hesse also uses male characters to promote positive role models for girls and boys. Glenn notes that in Hesse’s book Stowaway, although the narrator is a male, he doesn’t fit the stereotypical patriarchal role, and in Witness, “Hesse chooses […] to celebrate those whose voices ring with words of goodness and equality rather than those who spout the rhetoric of power or patriarchy” (33). English teachers can use the characters and themes in books like Hesse’s to introduce feminist literary theory to girls and boys. Our literature selections can send positive messages like Hesse’s in Stowaway and Witness: “[W]e may be free to be who we choose, regardless of whether we are born boys or girls” (33).
Changing the curriculum to include female-authored texts and works with strong female characters will promote better learning experiences for girls and boys. Dr. Carolyn Mathews, professor of English Education recommends, “By adding to our English curriculum works that reflect experiences outside the dominant, white, patriarchal culture and by encouraging students to delay judgment and read for understanding this experience that may be outside their own, we move them toward positive change” (31). We teach our students to love and respect literature and hope the stories will positively affect our students’ lives. Author and English teacher Leila Christenbury says there are a number of reasons for students to read literature: “Looking for oneself in characters is important to all readers, especially young readers. […] For many of our students, the questions of how they are individually related to the characters peopling the pages is of paramount interest” (125). Carolyn Heilbrun, who talks about writing a woman’s life says, “What matters is that lives do not serve as models; only stories do that. And it is a hard thing to make up stories to live by. We can only retell and live by the stories we have read or heard. We live our lives through texts” (37).
If our students are living their lives through the texts they receive in school, what are they learning about themselves? Education professor Josephine Young claims, “What boys learn about gender from texts is potentially damaging to them because it grows out of (and helps create) unequal power relations” (par. 5). The Sadkers believe that “[e]ach time a girl opens a book and reads a womanless history, she learns she is worth less” (13). Judith Fetterly writes in The Resisting Reader “because our literary canon is dominated by the male voice, the female reader is taught ‘to think as men, to identify with a male point of view, and to accept as normal
and legitimate a male system of values’” (qtd. in Mathews 29). If teachers persist in selecting a male dominated curriculum, the students continue to learn that they live in a patriarchal society.
Marylin Hulme says that one area of the curriculum we cannot change is in the inclusion of the classics. Because either we appreciate the canonical literature or our superiors recommend we include it in our curriculum, English teachers will continue to teach the classics. However, we can teach them with a feminist approach. Hulme suggests that in reading the classics “historical settings and influences, social mores and constructs must be put into context” (196). By studying the historicity of the texts, students can learn societal views and how they influenced the texts.3 Teachers can discuss with students that societal views are changing, and we do not need to live our lives through the stories of the past. Pipher gives an example using a feminist approach in the reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (21). As a girl, Ophelia is happy and free but in adolescence she loses herself. She lives for the approval of Hamlet and her father and is torn by her efforts to please both men. When Ophelia is spurned by Hamlet because she obeys her father, she goes mad with grief and kills herself. Teachers can discuss with students that in the 1600s girls may have lived their lives for the approval of men, or that male authors viewed women in submissive roles, but that does not have to be the reality today.
English teachers can teach all forms of literature using a feminist approach. Jean Hamm’s experience as an English teacher for twenty-eight years has helped her to see the need and benefits of becoming inclusive in her literature and taking a more feminist stance. She believes that teachers owe to the students the opportunity to hear women’s voices. She accomplishes this by integrating women into the existing curriculum. Hamm says, “I did not
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want my teaching to continue to marginalize women in a unit of study that was set apart from the ‘real’ literature” (70). She has tried to incorporate women’s voices in three ways: discussing roles of historic women, including more works written by women, and looking at traditional works from a more feminist perspective (70). She is opening up the texts to students in ways they have never seen before, giving them opportunities to think critically about the literature. Hamm admits that when she thinks about her teaching methods “what I am doing is no more than pointing students in a new direction. […] I will continue to expose students to a variety of perspectives, but I cannot impose one view upon them” (72).
Liz Whaley and Liz Dodge, who have many years of experience using feminist teaching in the English classroom, say, “We believe that all English teachers can and should work toward including more literature by and about women and toward a more feminist approach to teaching, empowering both young women and men and opening up English to something more exciting and more interesting, ultimately leading students to take charge of their own learning” (2).
Whaley and Dodge authored Weaving in the Women, which is a great source for English teachers who value incorporating a feminist approach into their teaching. Martin and Newcomer through their research found that “English and social studies teachers were more concerned with gender equity than were math and science teachers” (37). This is a good trend that English teachers must continue. We can create classroom equity by choosing literature and creating open forums that incite girls as well as boys to become responsible and active learners.
English teacher Helen Harper hoped to inspire her female students to become more conscientious about reading and writing practices; thus she implemented feminist literary theory in her high school creative writing class. Harper felt the need to do this “project” because
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“despite occasional gestures toward a women’s literature and feminist criticism, high school English programs remain trapped within more traditional texts and interpretive frames” (221). Her project “was designed to create a ‘woman’s space’ within the English curriculum. It was a space for young women to transgress traditional school reading and writing practices by exploring alternative texts and reading/writing strategies with a specific focus on the inscription of gender difference” (220). Harper learned that incorporating feminist literary theory into her teaching did not create all positive results. Although the young women enjoyed the female literature, it “exposed and threatened” their understandings of the self (222). Girls saw themselves as defined by their interests in men, and they didn’t like that men (thus heterosexual relationships) were ignored in the texts. Harper claims, “The feminist readings challenged and disturbed this definition of female selfhood” (223). The project challenged the students’ belief that they are unaffected by gender, race, or class oppression. The feminist literature in the class offered a belief that women have been oppressed, and the students did not think this applied to them. The students believed they had power to control their own lives. The literature threatened their sense of agency (223). The literature also challenged the students’ ideas of good girl/good student image. This image is qualified by “conformity, compliancy, control of the body, voice, emotions, and physicality” (224). A good girl writer/reader would not “mark herself as gendered, particularly in political terms” (224). Harper admits that the connection of the students to the feminist avant-garde writing was difficult but that she was pleased with the “depth and intensity of intellectual and emotional engagement this project evoked” (225). Harper says there are two shifts needed to use feminist literary criticism more effectively. One is toward a “greater complexity in our texts and pedagogy,” and the second is toward “greater historical
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contextualization” (226). Students need to be able to see alternative writing as well as conventional writing and how they are invested in these reading and writing practices (226).
Although Harper’s project caused some discomfort among the girls’ view of their female selves, at least it provoked critical thinking and created an awareness of female issues represented in literature. Young asserts, “[E]ven though it is hard and uncomfortable, we must continue to question and challenge existing practices of gender in order for gender equity to ever exist. It is only through disruption, not comfort, that social transformation can occur” (par. 67). Disruption in how we teach and what we teach can be good, and girls and boys will reap the benefits. Peggy Orenstein talked to some of Judy Logan’s female students who said, “I like that Ms. Logan does things on women and women’s rights. She never discriminates against girls, and I’m glad that someone finally got that idea” (254). An older female student explained how boys rationalize the inequities of the curriculum: “They say ‘It’s different in those classes because we’re focusing on the important people in history who just happen to be men’” (255). From her experiences in Judy Logan’s class, this female student knows differently; there are equally as many important people in history who happen to be women.
When high school English teacher Kathy Smaltz implemented feminist and other critical approaches in her classes, her students began to look for points of interest to them, not just what they were told to look for in the way of themes, characterizations, and symbolism. Students chose their own approach, including feminist. Smaltz reports, “Several girls really engaged in the literature of women’s roles – something they had never consciously thought of before” (55). Allowing students to choose how they read gives them autonomy, and they enjoy the literature. They are exploring issues that have not been afforded them in the past thus students’ reading
response logs and class discussions become richer and more complex. Such rich and critical thinking will extend beyond the classroom and into the students’ lives in society.
A girl’s life becomes richer and more complex as she moves from adolescence to adulthood. The way in which a girl handles the difficulties and challenges of her adolescence can affect her future. Pipher says, “Without some help, the loss of wholeness, self-confidence and self-direction can last well into adulthood” (25). One of the factors that makes young women vulnerable to their culture is that girls are expected to distance themselves from parents and turn to peers for support (23). If their peers are girls just like themselves, who suffer from low self-esteem and boys who devalue girlhood, how will girls survive adolescence? How can we support them and keep them from depression, suicide, self-inflicted injuries, eating disorders, and preoccupation with physical beauty? How can we fight a society that sends girls messages that women are newsworthy only when they get a starring role on a “Girls Gone Wild” or “Hunting for Bambi” video? How do we compete with teen magazines that “[…] have little to say to girls about the value of academic achievement, civic engagement or intellectual challenges” (Gibbons 5)?
We, English teachers, can present them with literature that challenges these messages. We can provide them with opportunities to imagine themselves as successful women. We can treat them equally in the classroom by giving them topics of interest and a forum in which to speak, by asking them questions, and expecting answers. We can educate boys on the lives of women so that they appreciate their value in our society. We can create a gender equitable classroom. As Rich exhorts, “Our struggles can have meaning and our privileges – however precarious under patriarchy – can be justified only if they can help to change the lives of women
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whose gifts – and whose very being – continue to be thwarted and silenced” (“Dead” 38). Because of my positive experience in a Female Literary Tradition class, I want to share with girls that they have a hidden history to uncover, a challenging present to overcome, and an exciting future to realize. In this wilderness of school that students roam everyday, our role as English teachers is to make them feel free to explore, not afraid to venture beyond, gendered borders.
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InfoTrac Web: Expanded Academic ASAP. 9 Oct. 2003
|
Class |
Number of Students |
Number of
Times Students Volunteered or Called Upon |
Ratio of
Responses to Students |
||
|
1 |
6 boys |
15 |
2.50 |
||
|
5 girls |
7 |
1.40 |
|||
|
2 |
11 boys |
15 |
1.36 |
||
|
7 girls |
6 |
0.85 |
|||
|
3 |
8 boys |
12 |
1.50 |
||
|
10 girls |
13 |
1.30 |
|||
|
4 |
4 boys |
11 |
2.75 |
||
|
15 girls |
11 |
0.73 |
|||
2 The image is a silhouette that looks like the figure of a man wearing a hat. It appears behind the right side of Queen Elizabeth. These are the images on the cover of the textbook: Silhouette: UPI/Bettmann. Background Photo: Big Ben and Houses of Parliament. Copyright 1993 Romilly Lockyer/The Image Bank. Queen Elizabeth: Queen Elizabeth I of England when princess (about 1542-1547) unknown artist. The Granger Collection, New York. Painting: Interior in Venice (1898), John Singer Sargent. Royal Academy of Arts, London, Bridgeman/Art Resource, New York. Book: Photo by Alan Shortall (Applebee).
3 Louise Montrose explains the historicity of texts as how all modes of writing are embedded in the society from which they are constructed (Booker 136).