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Critical Approaches to Teaching
the High School Novel

This edited collection will turn a critical spotlight on the set of texts
that has constituted the high school canon of literature for decades. By
employing a set of fresh, vibrant critical lenses—such as youth studies and
disabilities studies—that are often unfamiliar to advanced students and
scholars of secondary English, this book provides divergent approaches to
traditional readings and pedagogical practices surrounding these familiar
works. By introducing and applying these interpretive frames to the field
of secondary English education, this book demonstrates that there is more
to say about these texts, ways to productively problematize them, and to
reconfigure how they may be read and used in the classroom.

Crag Hill is associate professor of English Education at the University of

Oklahoma, USA.

Victor Malo-Juvera is associate professor of English Education at the

University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA.
Routledge Research in Education

This series aims to present the latest research from right across the field of
education. It is not confined to any particular area or school of thought
and seeks to provide coverage of a broad range of topics, theories and
issues from around the world.
Recent titles in the series include:

Building Trust and Resilience among Black Male High School Students
Boys to Men
Stuart Rhoden

Researching and Enacting Change in Postsecondary Education

Leveraging Instructors’ Social Networks
Charles Henderson, Chris Rasmussen, Alexis V. Knaub,
Naneh Apkarian, Kathleen Quardokus Fisher, and Alan J. Daly

Education and Muslim Identity During a Time of Tension

Inside an American Islamic School
Melanie C. Brooks

Educating Young Children in WPA Nursery Schools

Federally-Funded Early Childhood Education from 1933–1943
Molly Quest Arboleda

Reconceptualizing Curriculum, Literacy, and Learning

for School-Age Mothers
Heidi L. Hallman and Abigail Kindelsperger

Critical Approaches to Teaching the High School Novel

Reinterpreting Canonical Literature
Edited by Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com

Critical Approaches to
Teaching the High School
Novel
Reinterpreting Canonical Literature

Edited by Crag Hill and

Victor Malo-Juvera
First published 2019
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera to be identified as editors
of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-815-37988-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-21470-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
This book is dedicated to readers and teachers of literature
past, present, and future.
Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiv

1 Introduction: The Center of the Canon: The High

School Classroom 1
C R A G H I L L AN D VICTO R MAL O - JUVE RA

2 Why Did the “Star-Crossed Lovers” Never

Have a Chance? (Mis)Guided Adult Interference
in Romeo and Juliet 18
M A R K A . L E WIS

3 Dances, Dresses, and Speaking Her Mind:

The Cultural Work of Pride and Prejudice 34
K ATH E R I N E MO N TWIE L E R

4 Teaching Huckleberry Finn in an Era of Tenuous

Race Relations 55
J U D I TH A . H AYN AN D A UTUMN M. DO DGE

5 It’s Really All About Tom: Performances of the

Masculine Self in The Great Gatsby 70
M I C H A E L M ACAL USO AN D KATI MACAL USO

6 Readers’ Hearts Seek Connection: Transactional

Theory Applied to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 87
S H A R O N K A NE

7 Disturbing the Universe: Reading The Stranger

Through a Lens of Philosophical Criticism 104
S E A N P. C O N N O RS
viii Contents
8 What Does The Glass Menagerie and Its Discussion
Questions Teach About Disability? And How to
Undo It 121
PATR I C I A A . DUN N AN D A N GE L A B RO DE RIC K

9 Reinterpreting Revolutions: An “Encoding/Decoding”

Analysis of Animal Farm 145
L A R A S E A R C Y, JO N ATH A N B . A L L RE D, SE TH D. FR ENC H,
A N D C H R I S T IAN Z. GO E RIN G

10 When New Criticism and Reader Response

Aren’t Enough: Reading “Against” To Kill a
Mockingbird Through a Critical Whiteness Lens 161
S U S A N L . G RO E N KE

11 Literary Authorship and Community Seers in

Bless Me, Última and The House on Mango Street:
“Let Me Begin at the Beginning” 176
R . J O S E P H R O DRÍGUE Z

12 “We Got to Be Smart to Git Away”: Revisiting

African American Language and Emancipatory
Literacy in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
and Sapphire’s PUSH 196
R A Q U E L K E NN O N

List of Contributors 217

Index 218
Preface

For both of our careers as English teachers and English teacher educators,
the canon has been a dominant force. Crag Hill has taught Romeo &
Juliet, The Glass Menagerie, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill
a Mockingbird, and Bless Me, Ultima, among many of others discussed in
this volume, both in a secondary setting and in his methods courses. Vic-
tor Malo-Juvera taught titles such as The Lord of the Flies, The Odyssey,
and Julius Caesar as a public school teacher, and now teaches a college
level course that reexamines texts such as Of Mice and Men, Heart of
Darkness, The Color Purple, Things Fall Apart, and The Great Gatsby.
Regardless of the level of our teaching, the classic and classical texts have
been persistently at the center of our experiences.
From the beginning of this project, we wrestled with many questions.
Perhaps the biggest one was which canon were we discussing and how
could it be expanded to include authors and subjects that have been tradi-
tionally excluded. We both recognized the historic power of the university
and of literary tradition to create and maintain the canon, but we were
much more concerned with the texts that were taught in high schools
because of our past and current positions. Once we focused on what
we came to call the secondary canon, the texts that are most frequently
taught in high schools and even middle schools, we had many discussions
about how that canon is formed and maintained, eventually agreeing that
although there are many influences on the canon, ultimately, a text must
be taught and taught widely to gain entrance to the secondary canon.
But the canon is not a single list. As we contemplated the numerous
calls from scholars, educators, and authors to “open up” the canon, we
realized that the canon cannot be opened up by any one person or school
because it is not comprised of just one book list, but of innumerable
book lists in schools across the United States. Paradoxically, the canon is
finite—if a teacher adds a new text to instruct, another must be removed
simply because only a limited number of books can be taught each year.
This is even more true at schools where reading must be done in the
classrooms due to text shortages and various other reasons. The dilemma
of time is one we both faced teaching in public schools and as college
x Preface
professors. Do we teach fewer texts and go more deeply into them? Do
we teach more texts and focus on a limited number of topics from each?
Or do we mix the two, teaching a few texts in depth and then doing a
survey of five or six others? Regardless of the methods employed, there is
no avoiding the fact that the school year or semester is limited and that
adding a new text is always at the expense of another.
This topic led us to consider our experiences and the experiences of
our student teachers in terms of choosing texts. Many of our student
teachers do not have the academic freedom to decide what texts they will
teach, and this lack of input can often continue into an early teacher’s
career. We also reflected on how many teachers, regardless of their years
of experience, can be limited in text selection by factors such as school or
district level mandated curricula, being required to teach to any kind of
a test, or simply by being limited to what is included in their anthologies
and bookrooms. Thus, despite there being no shortage of texts, new and
classic, that teachers may desire to teach, for many the options to include
a text may be limited or nonexistent. We concluded that due to these
pragmatic limitations, there may be many teachers who are searching for
new ways to interrogate canonical texts with their students and that a text
like ours could provide those methods.
Ironically, we came together on this project at the Assembly on Lit-
erature for Adolescents (ALAN) workshop at the National Council of
Teachers of English conference in St. Louis. In the midst of a conference
featuring the latest young adult authors and titles, we were also discuss-
ing the canon. In retrospect, this is not that surprising considering there
have been numerous books by Joan Kaywell, Sarah Herz, Don Gallo, and
others that advocate pairing young adult texts with canonical texts. At the
ALAN Conference, we also discussed the influence of critical literature
pedagogy, which advocates interrogating texts for the ways in which they
maintain oppressive power structures. We agreed that these were both
excellent ways to expand instruction, and they are highlighted in chapters
such as Raquel Kennon’s, who analyzes The Color Purple along with
PUSH, and in the chapter by Susan Groenke, who uses critical White-
ness as a paradigm to interrogate To Kill a Mockingbird. However, we
believed that beyond reading against texts and pairing young adult texts
with classics, there were more paradigms available to expand the way we
read, discussed, and taught the canon.
Consider that since the publication of much of the seminal criticism that
drives the instruction of most canonical texts, there has been a growth
in the types of critical paradigms that scholars employ, such as queer
theory, BlackCrit, and the youth lens. Thus, we believed that a text that
featured fresh analyses of canonical texts could be of great value to teach-
ers and scholars. We are confident that our authors not only met but also
exceeded our expectations, and we hope that you agree.
 Preface xi
Volume Overview
The literature commonly taught in U.S. high schools—the secondary
literary canon—arguably serves as a hurdle to the kind of engagement
with literature in the classroom that could extend to spaces outside the
classroom, to spaces/times beyond an individual’s formal schooling. Yet
the literature that comprises the high school canon was not written to be
a part of such an oppressive edifice. The chapters in this book open up
new critical approaches to the novels, offering interpretations that are
cognizant of the strength of our differences. We present the essays in the
order of publication of the novels discussed in each chapter.
First, Mark A. Lewis, in “Why Did the ‘Star-Crossed Lovers’ Never
Have a Chance? (Mis)Guided Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet,”
illustrates that most of the fault for the lovers’ demise in Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet lies with adult desires to use adolescents for their own
ends. Rather than former psychoanalytic, feminist, or queer analyses,
Lewis’ chapter draws upon critical youth studies that assume “adoles-
cence” is a sociocultural construct, meaning that characterizations of ado-
lescence are as much ascribed to youth as naturally occurring from youth.
This analytic stance reveals that because of adult interference—including
through their feuds, attempts at arranging marriages, manipulation of
young love for ulterior motives, and rejection of youthful desire—Romeo,
Juliet, Mercutio, and Tybalt are doomed to fall.
In “Dances, Dresses, and Speaking Her Mind: The Cultural Work of
Pride and Prejudice,” Katherine Montwieler revisits Jane Austen’s well-
known and widely taught text using an interdisciplinary cultural stud-
ies approach grounded in the current #metoo movement. By examining
the stances that female characters take in opposition to unjust systems,
Montwieler shows readers how Austen’s text is relevant for contemporary
young readers who “chafe at the limitations imposed on them by institu-
tions beyond their control.” Especially timely in the current climate of
numerous grassroots social justice movements, this chapter provides both
teachers and scholars alike with a reading of Pride and Prejudice that
reaffirms its significance today.
Judith A. Hayn and Autumn M. Dodge believe that if Huck Finn con-
tinues to be required reading in schools, students’ reading of the book
should be framed in ways that help them examine and critique the world
in which we live today. Hayn and Dodge argue that students should be
taught how to scrutinize Mark Twain, his language, his assumptions
about race, and shown how these are different or similar to issues we still
need to address today. Using critical race theory, “Teaching Huckleberry
Finn in an Era of Tenuous Race Relations” provides a critique of Huck
Finn that can guide teachers and students as they negotiate the reading of
Huck Finn in the midst of our current era of racial tension.
xii Preface
Michael and Kati Macaluso’s “It’s Really All About Tom: Performances
of the Masculine Self in The Great Gatsby” pushes back against common
interpretations of The Great Gatsby as centering around the American
Dream and the concomitant discussions of social class and economic ide-
ologies. By using performance studies and theories of masculinity as the
lens of analysis, this chapter illustrates that Gatsby’s fall is the result of
his failure to perform a hegemonic masculine identity in the face of his
peers, especially Tom. With this interpretation, The Great Gatsby was
never about wealth but more about Tom and his ability to maintain the
self-impression of his hyper-masculine self, suggesting that the American
Dream is a masculine goal and performance. This interpretation opens
up the novel to interpretations beyond social class structures, including
gender and identity studies.
In “Readers’ Hearts Seek Connection: Transactional Theory Applied to
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” Sharon Kane discusses the multiple works
about Carson McCullers’ text in which scholars detail how it can be ana-
lyzed through various critical lenses, including Marxist, feminist, and psy-
choanalytic lenses, among others. Kane’s chapter uses transactional theory,
grounded in the work of Louise Rosenblatt, to draw parallels between
the story’s internal lenses and the critical lenses teachers and students can
explore and apply. First and foremost is what students bring to the rela-
tionship with the text: their experiences, desires, fears, and belief systems.
Though literature and philosophy are often regarded as separate schol-
arly projects, the two in fact share a long history, as Sean P. Connors
argues in “Disturbing the Universe: Reading The Stranger Through the
Lens of Philosophical Criticism.” Connors points out that the ancient
Greeks fused dramatic poetry and philosophical inquiry in ethics in the
pursuit of posing answers to the question about how humans live their
lives. In much the same way, modern philosophers from Nietzsche to
Sartre and Camus have used literature as a vehicle to present and develop
their ideas. While this chapter examines Camus’ The Stranger through the
lens of philosophical criticism, it also explores how the novel reproduces
core assumptions associated with existential philosophy.
Patricia A. Dunn and Angela Broderick in “What Does The Glass Menag-
erie and Its Discussion Questions Teach About Disability? And How to
Undo It” utilize a critical disability studies perspective to discuss how The
Glass Menagerie and the kinds of questions commonly used in teaching the
play reinforce and/or create myths about real people with disabilities. The
authors argue that the discussion questions teachers select to use to discuss
these texts can convey harmful or at least outmoded beliefs about disability.
This chapter also provides many suggestions on how to counter these myths.
In “Reinterpreting Revolutions: An Encoding/Decoding Analysis of
Animal Farm,” Lara Searcy, Jonathan B. Allred, Seth D. French, and
Christian Z. Goering invoke Stuart Hall’s seminal Encoding/Decod-
ing work in a modern reading of the text reconstructed to interpret the
 Preface xiii
current complex and dynamic relationship between the United States and
Russia. This chapter argues that the allegorical nature of Animal Farm is
universal and thus can be applied to not only past, but also future global
situations. This approach not only yields new understandings of Animal
Farm but also insights into the current political environment circa 2018.
Despite parental challenges to the teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird
(TKAM) in North American high schools and evidence the teaching
of the book can objectify and silence African American students in the
English classroom, the book remains a staple of secondary English cur-
riculum. Traditional instructional approaches taken with TKAM often
include what some theorists call “reading with the text”—approaches
that foreground a focus on literary elements (e.g., New Criticism), and/or
approaches that encourage readers to relate to “coming-of-age” themes
or characters present in the novel (e.g., Reader Response). Susan L.
Groenke’s “When New Criticism and Reader Response Aren’t Enough:
Reading ‘Against’ To Kill a Mockingbird Through a Critical Whiteness
Lens” presents an alternative approach to teaching TKAM—a “reading
against the text” approach that challenges the text’s canonicity, intro-
duces important counter-stories to the text, and interrogates Whiteness,
especially the White savior/hero trope.
Emphasizing the elements of narratology, R. Joseph Rodríguez’s “Liter-
ary Authorship and Community Seers in Bless Me, Última and The House
on Mango Street: ‘Let Me Begin at the Beginning’ ” examines how literary
authorship and community seers can inform and reinterpret two novels
from Mexican America to articulate adolescent and cultural knowledge in
response to Mexican-origin people’s absence, erasure, and misrepresenta-
tion in the canon of American literatures. Through examining both texts’
community seers, mentors who provide ancient and communal wisdom,
R. Joseph Rodríguez argues that Rudolfo Anaya (in the 1970s) and San-
dra Cisneros (in the 1980s) introduced a chorus of adolescent voices from
the margins of both rural and urban areas of the United States for greater
inclusion, readership, study, and understanding.
Employing womanist and Black feminist frameworks, Raquel Kennon’s
“ ‘We Got to Be Smart to Git Away’: Revisiting African American Lan-
guage and Emancipatory Literacy in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
and Sapphire’s PUSH” explores these novels as sister texts that embody
the practice of reading and revising characteristic of the African Ameri-
can literary tradition. PUSH signifies the linguistic codes and epistolary
form of The Color Purple by echoing the significance of claiming voice
in official and unofficial spaces of learning such as the classroom for the
main protagonist Precious in PUSH, or the lived world for first-person
narrator Celie in The Color Purple. Each story focuses on the traumatic
experiences, exploitation, and vulnerabilities of young African American
girls, but Kennon’s analysis reveals their liberation comes from similar
autobiographical writing practices.
Acknowledgments

The editors would like to acknowledge those who offered encouragement,

advice, and recommendations as this project moved from brainstorm to
full-blown manuscript, including Routledge editor Matthew Friberg. We
extend special gratitude to those who provided generous and constructive
feedback to chapter authors: Maia Butler, Patricia Dunn, Christian Goer-
ing, Sharon Kane, Mark Lewis, Jennifer Lozano, Kia Jane Richmond,
Lawrence Baines, Rachel Myers, and Laurie Schneider. Hill would also
like to acknowledge the support of Stacy Reeder and other faculty in the
Department of Instructional Leadership and Curriculum at the University
of Oklahoma as this work was being completed. Malo-Juvera would like
to thank Tiffany Gilbert, Mark Boren, and other faculty in the Depart-
ment of English and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of
North Carolina Wilmington for their continued support.
1 Introduction
The Center of the Canon:
The High School Classroom
Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera

The mention of “a” or “the” literary canon often elicits many reactions
from English teachers, professors, and educators. For some, it represents
the greatest literary achievements that have withstood the test of time,
the font of our cultural heritage: enduring values; impregnable ideals;
abounding confidence and optimism in the American dream; and inde-
fatigable faith in the face of challenges from every front—everyone must
be baptized in this font or they will be irrevocably lost. Others believe it
is a bastion of oppression that marginalizes writers and peoples who are
not part of the West’s dominant White patriarchy. They argue the canon is
exclusionary, power entrenching power, the lines of cultural heritage ger-
rymandered around the work of male writers of European descent, many
from affluent backgrounds (families, schools, societies). To detractors, the
canon’s hegemonic representation of this country is but one perception of
the human condition, one that marginalizes or negates the perceptions of
others: indigenous writers, writers of Asian, African, Central and South
American heritages. Differing sides have divergent hopes for the future
of the canon. Some, like Bloom (1994), want the canon preserved, others
such as Greenbaum (1994) want it opened, while still some, like Thomas
(2017), want it blown up and discarded. These discussions of the literary
canon can incite a range of opinions and emotions; however, rarely in
these arguments is it explicated which canon is being debated:

Setting: English Department Meeting

to Discuss Curriculum Adoptions
Marsha, the English Department chair of a mid-sized high school in a
university community, prefaced the discussion of textbook adoptions for
the current cycle by responding to a request in an earlier meeting to add
young adult novels to the adoption request. “I know these books are
exciting our students. I can’t tell you how often they’ve asked about me
about The Hate U Give or The Fault in Our Stars—and what’s John
Green’s latest novel? I’m thinking they’re going to read these books on
their own, as well they should—they clearly resonated with our students.
2 Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera
But is that what we want them to read in our classes if they’re reading
them out of class?”
Silence followed. Awkward? Or the kind of thought-provoking silence
we want to instill in our classrooms. Some of the faculty checked the min-
utes from the previous meeting. Some glanced around the room, openly
or furtively.
“Look, if our kids are reading these books,” Kristy replied, a mid-career
teacher who has taught in urban and rural schools and in this current
context, “Shouldn’t we find some that meet our department’s literary
standards to include in our request? I’d love to have a class set of True
Diary. I can’t keep enough copies in my classroom library. They keep
disappearing. That’s okay.”
“I’d love a classroom set of Brown Girl Dreaming,” Vince, the senior
teacher in the department, chimed in.
“With the Common Core push for non-fiction, I’d love a set of March
to Freedom. My juniors,” Wendy said, “could read that in tandem with
the civil rights unit our students are doing in history.”
Hesitant through the initial comments, Javier spoke up. “But I don’t
want to give up Gatsby. We need new copies. And reading The Crucible
out of our textbook makes it hard to do performance activities with it.
We need copies students can hold and carry around. I want students to
experience these books. We’re still reading them for good reasons.”
“And I don’t want to give up those books,” Aiyana, an early-career
teacher responded, “because those were two of the books that gave me a
sense of our cultural heritage. We’d be remiss I think if our students grad-
uated without exposure to them, especially considering their shortened
attention spans. We need to connect our students to this cultural past.”
“Gatsby is the core of our American Dream unit,” the department chair
added. “And The Crucible gives students a window into the Puritan era
many of our values are rooted in.”
“Can we split the book choices?” Kristy asked. “The textbooks we
have haven’t changed much. Let’s go for trade books like Gatsby and The
Crucible and maybe a Raisin in the Sun, but let’s also get some books our
kids can see themselves in.”
“Will The Hate U Give and John Green be relevant by our next adop-
tion cycle?” Dan asked. “We could be stuck with stacks of books in the
bookroom none of us uses.”
“I’d argue,” Kristy replied, “that All American Boys will still be rel-
evant and relatable. Same with T.H.U.G. and True Diary. We all like to
put the books we assign into historical context. That context isn’t going
away.”
“Same is true with Gatsby, Huck Finn, The Crucible,” Javier added.
“I agree we need new copies of those, but let’s expand what we offer, as
well as how we teach the novels we do include, classic or contemporary.
We can have both.”
 Introduction 3
“I agree we need copies of those, but let’s expand what we offer. That’s
what I’m hearing.”
“Any other responses?” the chair asked. “If not, what I’m hearing is
adopt Gatsby, Finn, Crucible, Raisin, and add some YA literature, yes?”
Heads nod in agreement.
“Do we agree on the YA?”
“Could we have a couple weeks to read some of the suggested novels?”
Dan asked. “Then vote on them and select the top three?”
“Sounds good to me,” the chair replies. “Agreed?”
The meeting was adjourned.

To Be Taught Is to Be Canonical
The texts typically accepted as canonical by their defenders and detrac-
tors alike are often described as having enduring literary quality. With the
advent of literary criticism during the Renaissance period, perceptions of
literary quality were mostly decided and reinforced by writer/critics such
as John Dryden and Alexander Pope, and their influence is echoed in A
Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory’s (Cuddon, 2013) defi-
nition of the canon as “a traditional body of texts deemed by the literary
establishment to be authoritative in terms of literary merit and influence”
(p. 102). Before the study of literature became an academic subject in uni-
versities during the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (Kolbas,
2001), this definition certainly could be viewed as complete; however, in
the modern era with literary study occurring at all levels of schooling, it
would be an egregious mistake to ignore the integral role that students
play in canonical formation.
After World War I, intense feelings of nationalism fomented the devel-
opment of American and British literary canons that thrived in university
courses and led not only to modern anthologies that dominate survey
courses to this day (Kolbas, 2001), but also influenced the English cur-
riculum in many high schools where eleventh, and twelfth grade students
read American and British literature respectively. Even Bloom (1994)
who fastidiously defended the western canon agreed that students are a
required ingredient, defining the canon as “a list of books for required
study” (p. 17). Thus, despite or in addition to the influence of literary
critics, public reception, and scholarly attention, there are two required
elements to form a canon: a list of texts and students to read/study them.
To be taught is to be canonical.
The group of texts that Bloom (1994) refers to as the canon is what
we call the university literary canon. These are the texts that are gener-
ally taught in university English departments such as Jonathan Edwards’
“Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” or Thoreau’s Walden in Ameri-
can literature surveys; Beowulf or Byron in British literature surveys; or
Homer’s Odyssey or the Epic of Gilgamesh in World Literature surveys.
4 Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera
There are many more texts that literary critics and scholars consider
canonical. Bloom (1994) even organized the ones he considered canoni-
cal by time periods he labeled as the theocratic, aristocratic, democratic,
and chaotic ages. Although some, if not many, of the texts Bloom lists are
canonical in his terms, we question to which canon they belong. More-
over, we question whether they are still being read and perhaps, more
importantly, being taught in secondary or undergraduate curricula. By
Bloom’s own definition, to be studied is to be canonical, yet with the
decline of the English major in universities across the nation, whether
or not this traditional university literary canon is the canon is equivocal.
There are other literary canons and though there is often overlap, at the
university level the percentage of English majors who are required to take
courses that offer canonical texts is 2.2% nationally (National Center for
Education Statistics, 2017); on the other hand, most all students, unless
they have tested out of required composition credits via course or tests
taken while in high school, must take composition courses. Thus, the
composition canon, the major texts required for reading in composition
courses across the nation, could have far more of an impact on college
students than the traditional university literary canon espoused by Bloom
(1994). Lynn Bloom (1999) described a contemporary essay canon and
argued that it has deeper impacts precisely because it is taught and read
far more frequently compared to the university literary canon. Bloom
used a frequency count to examine composition textbooks, finding that
the six most frequently appearing essays (she lists over 50) were Orwell’s
“Politics and the English Language” (p. 1) and “Shooting an Elephant”
(p. 2), followed by Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook,” Thomas’ “Notes
on Punctuation,” and Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience.” Though her study
was conducted in the late 1990s, and we can assume there may have been
some shifting in what is taught in composition classes, we can also assume
that change is slow and that her lists probably hold much truth today.
Both Lynn and Harold Bloom drive home the point that to be taught is to
be canonical, and if we are to agree with that then the most powerful liter-
ary canon does not reside in universities at all but in secondary schools.
Although 58.9% of the population will attend some college, few will
take literature survey courses because many colleges and universities
no longer have a requirement for students to take such courses. In fact,
according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (2018), only
34.2% of colleges still require students to take at least one literature
course. Though most college students will take composition courses and
be exposed to the composition canon, they only represent an estimated
42.3% of the population who will complete an associate’s degree or
higher (Ryan & Bauman, 2016). On the other hand, education is manda-
tory until at least the age of 16 in all 50 states (National Center for Educa-
tion Statistics, 2018). In terms of impact on society and culture, then, it
is unequivocal that the secondary literary canon is more read and taught
 Introduction 5
than any other canon, and this argues strongly that the most important
canon is that of secondary schools, high schools, and middle schools,
because it is enforced reading for the entire population.
The secondary literary canon as we define it is the set of texts that are
taught most frequently to middle and senior high school students across
the country. In some ways this set of texts may mirror the literary canon
prescribed by Bloom (1994), but in actuality this canon is much narrower
because it does not often consider the critical reception of a text. There are
public schools, private schools, publicly funded private schools (charter
schools), and religious schools, and although there are numerous struc-
tural differences between these sites of education, there is little variation
in terms of the most frequently taught texts between these school types
(Applebee, 1992; Squire & Applebee, 1968), and though there is a rich
history of debate concerning what should and should not be taught in
secondary schools, there have not been any paradigm-shifting changes to
the center of the secondary canon since the 1960s.

The History of the Secondary Canon

Debate about literary text selection in secondary schools is over a century
old and is often contentious. Traditionalists have argued that students
must read the best literature our culture has to offer (Hirsch, 1987; Jago,
2000; Ravitch & Finn, 1988; Scott, 1913), especially literature that has
been certified by the test of time. On the other hand, some educators have
repeatedly countered that students are not reading the literature deemed
by teachers to be absolutely necessary for their academic and cultural
growth; ergo, the curriculum must include the literature that they are
reading, literature that is relevant to their experiences (Applebee, 1974;
Rosenblatt, 1938; Tanner, 1907; Thurber, 1905). This conflict over what
should be taught in high school English classes contributed to the disar-
ray of secondary educational curricula in the late 1800s, especially as it
related to preparing high school students for the “utter chaos” of col-
lege entrance requirements (Mackenzie, 1894, p. 148). Thus, similarly to
European efforts such as The Berlin Conference of 1980 and the Oxford
Conference of 1893, the Committee of Ten Conference met in 1892 to
standardize secondary curricula in the United States and to align it with
college entrance requirements.
Not long after the Committee of Ten met in 1892 to discuss and devise
a set of suggestions for a unified secondary curriculum, Thurber (1905)
described a brewing conflict between canonical texts that were suggested
as part of secondary study and then contemporary texts. He argued that
English teachers have “become too much prejudiced against the books our
boys and girls are reading. The great majority of them are harmless, often
even stimulating” (p. 176). The independent reading students were doing
had value, if not necessarily the literary merit many of his colleagues were
6 Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera
insisting upon. First and foremost, young men and women were reading
these contemporary texts eagerly, as many do now over one hundred years
later. Yet he wrote that teachers described those titles to their classes as
“trash” (p. 176), an epithet that can still be heard today in classrooms
and in teacher workrooms.
In reporting the findings of a committee that surveyed over 60 schools
on the teaching of English, Tanner (1907) found agreement from other
teachers that schools need to include the reading that students are already
doing outside of school. This is one of the first quantitative studies of the
list of books schools were including in their curriculum, many suggested
by College Entrance Requirements, such as Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and
Silas Marner (see Table 1.1, p. 14). Tanner found that teachers in gen-
eral did not approve of the college requirement because the books were
too difficult or were not suited to the students’ needs. He quotes one
respondent:

I know of no better way to kill interest in reading than the plan of

requiring the reading of certain books. What should be a pleasure
becomes toil, in most cases. The better way, as it seems to me, is to
stock a library with good books, and let the pupils choose for them-
selves. All day long they have acquired knowledge from books under
a rigid system of school government and instruction: why not give
them entire freedom when they go to the library?
(pp. 43–44)

The committee found that a large majority of teachers took a middle

ground, not requiring a strict reading list but also not allowing students
freedom in what they read in schools.
As evidenced by Scott’s 1912 NCTE President’s address, “Our Prob-
lems,” published in the first issue of the second volume of the English
Journal (1913), the tension between high culture (in this case Joseph Addi-
son’s work) and low culture (popular magazines of the day which included
essays and stories relatable and accessible to students) has a long history
and continues to be one of the “problems” in English teaching to this day.
Scott asked, “How can we arouse and maintain in our students a genu-
ine interest in the English classics?” (p. 2). One answer Scott received from
the principal of a New York High School was, “not to read them at all,
but to read something else in their place. . . . His contention [the princi-
pal], if I read him aright, is that English classics must go. They are obso-
lete” (pp. 5–6). Yet Scott continued to argue that students should read the
English classics because at some indeterminate time in the reader’s future
the seed planted by these readings will bloom into insight:

A single sentence of Addison, once it is really liked and appreciated,

will vibrate in the memory for a lifetime, whenever it recurs attuning
 Introduction 7
the mind to its own sweet and gracious harmony, whereas the thou-
sands of clever sentences of a Robert Chambers or a Gouverneur pour
through the brain-paths like a flood and depart and leave no trace,
unless it be, in the case of the worst of them, a slimy sediment.
(p. 8)

Scott later quoted English poet and theologian Cardinal Newman, who
held a similar view about the necessary germination period for readers of
classical literature:

Passages, which to a boy are but rhetorical commonplace, neither bet-

ter nor worse than a hundred others, which any clever writer might
supply . . . at length come home to him, when long years have passed,
and he has had experience of life, and pierce him, as if he had never
before known them, with their sad earnestness and vivid exactness
(p. 8)

Thus, the conflict between less accessible canonical texts and more relat-
able modern titles has a long history and continues to be one of the “prob-
lems” in English teaching to this day.

Mid-Twentieth Century Positions

As the teaching of English picked up the mantle of progressivism (Squire &
Applebee, 1968) and reader response theory was born (Rosenblatt, 1938),
a call grew for a curriculum that built on what students were already
reading, then moving them toward more challenging books. Rosenblatt’s
(1938) rationale was based in civic responsibility, arguing that a wider
array of literary choices increased its “potential as an educationally lib-
erating force” (p. 214). Students will not only read books from the past
or present, but they will not be confined to reading only American and
British literature. “Instead, [they] will be permitted an insight into ways
of life and social and moral codes very different even from the one that
the school is committed to perpetuate” (p. 215).
Echoing arguments that came before and persisted after her, Rosen-
blatt (1938) believed that we introduce classical literature to students
“at an age when it is impossible for them to feel in any personal way
the problems or conflicts treated” (p. 216). Rosenblatt counters Scott,
Newman, and others who believed that students need to read the classics
in high school because there will never be another time for this reading
to occur. Rosenblatt deeply disagreed: “Those who try to crowd into the
school years everything that ‘ought to be read’ evidently assume that the
youth will never read again after school years are over” (p. 218). LaBrant
(1951) chimed in later, stating “The study of literature should be aimed at
understanding rather than at unquestioned acceptance of the judgment of
8 Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera
others” (p. 260). Starting with their own experiences with a text, students
should be asked how a book continues to be read despite the weaknesses
they perceive in it. The aim of schools should be to develop students into
inquisitive readers who may in their adult lives encounter these classics
when they are intellectually and emotionally prepared, at a time when
these texts may have a relevance for them.
Rosenblatt was not alone in calling for a more inclusionary second-
ary reading list for study, as Smith (1940), in response to a 1928 study
that found only 25% of students understood the reading required in high
school classes, urged teachers to take students’ interests into account and
argued teachers need to pay attention to the psychology of adolescence as
they select books for whole-class study. Smith believed “general educa-
tion aims to promote in boys and girls the habit of consciously seeking in
progressively better and better books the satisfaction of their educational
needs, the deepening of their understanding of human personality, and the
broadening of their outlook on human affairs” (p. 714), a belief similar
to that of Kittle (2013), Lesesne (2010), Miller (2014), and others in the
present in undergirding a program of reading in secondary classrooms.
Smith (1940) quotes the reply the president of Wellesley College gave to a
question about what was most essential to culture that colleges help shape:
“A capacity for being at home in a large world” (p. 716). She explains that
general education aims not to inculcate students in American or English
literature “as a purely national or racial product,” but rather provides a
range of literature through “which the nations of the world may throw
off the restrictions of race or color or geographical location and come to
understand one another as human beings subject to the same passions and
human limitations, devoted to the same aspirations and aims” (p. 716).
The books teachers choose to read in their classrooms and the books stu-
dents choose to read on their own are not meant to reinforce any one
culture’s norms and values, but rather they are meant to invite readers into
a larger world, one without borders. Smith (1937) earlier argued,

More fundamental than an intimate knowledge of any one book is

the ability to find information in printed sources; more vital than
detailed acquaintance with any single author, the breadth of outlook
and deepened sympathies come from extensive association with
many; more significant contact with a few set classics, the gradual
development of a habit of seeking in progressively better and more
challenging books a source of personal satisfaction and enjoyment.
(p. 107)

During the same period as Rosenblatt, Smith, LaBrant, and others

included the reader in the meaning-making equation, the field of literary
theory was making a very different argument as New Criticism was born.
New Criticism, a school of American critical theory born between the
World Wars, first named by poet and scholar John Crowe Ransom (1941),
 Introduction 9
began to dominate both secondary and university classrooms. Prior to
Ransom’s naming, I. A. Richards, William Empson, T. S. Eliot, and other
literary critics theorized that the inherent meaning of a literary work lay in
the work itself, not in the biography of the author or the historical context
in which the work was composed. O’Connor (1949) summarized their
positions by writing that the reader “should (1) center his attention on the
literary work itself, (2) study the various problems arising from examin-
ing relationships between a subject matter and the final form of a work,
and (3) consider ways in which the moral and philosophical elements
get into or are related to the literary work” (p. 489). Cleanth Brooks,
Robert Penn Warren, and W. K. Wimsatt Jr. in the following decades
refined Ransom’s approach. Utilizing close reading of texts, particularly
the connotative meanings of words and phrases, these critics developed a
practice of reading that is not only prevalent in many of today’s English
classrooms but is also the theoretical orientation that drives the design
of tests such as the AP Language and Literature Test, the SAT, and state
standardized exams, as well as state and national standards for literary
study such as the Common Core State Standards. Thus, New Criticism
has molded and reinforced the traditional literary canon as teachers teach
the texts that have stood up to close reading, and as the readings teachers
impart to students replicate widely accepted interpretations.

Vietnam War Era to the Present

The decade of cultural revolution, the 1960s, left changes on concepts of
nationalism, patriotism, and racial equality, but these changes were not
yet felt in most English classrooms despite the birth of the multicultural
education movement (Banks, 2008). For example, Squire and Applebee
(1968) found that canonical texts continued to dominate the curriculum
and that contemporary literature, despite being identified by students as
the most relevant to them, had been relegated to the margins of curricula,
if they appeared at all. Squire and Applebee found that teachers relied
mostly on anthologies and class sets of books for reading material and that
the most frequently instructed texts were Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet,
Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, A Tale of Two Cities, The Return of the
Native, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, Moby Dick, and
Our Town. Though the students in Squire and Applebee’s (1968) study
rated “the literature program as the most valuable part of the English
curriculum,” perhaps echoing the dissatisfaction with the status quo that
permeated most facets of culture during the 60s, they also claimed it was
the “most in need of improvement and modification” (p. 252).
Dissatisfaction with English curricula was not limited to secondary
schools, as the dominance of New Criticism in colleges and universities
began to break during the 1960s as a variety of critical approaches dis-
puted the conviction that the text possessed a singular meaning that the
reader must unlock. Reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1938), feminist
10 Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera
criticism (Showalter, 1977/2016), Marxist criticism (Eagleton, 1976/2006;
Jameson, 1971), structuralism (de Saussure & Harris, 1921/2016; Fry,
1957/2000), and post-structuralism (Derrida & Spivak, 2016; Foucault
& Rabinow, 2010) posit that texts do not exist in vacuums; rather they
are situated in complex personal and social contexts, each different con-
text engendering different readings. Along with this shift in theoretical
paradigms, there was a call for a wider variety of textual choices that
represented the cultural and ethnic diversity of the nation and the world,
giving birth to what Bloom (1994) would call the School of Resentment
during what became known as the culture wars or survey wars of the 80s
and 90s. During this time university English departments were locked in
heated battles over what texts would remain in survey courses (Aston,
2017; Donadio, 2007; Graff, 1992; Ravitch, 2002).
While the ivory towers were battling, secondary schools began to sink
into their own conflicts, but these were not based on inclusion, but in
privatization under the guise of performance. The 1970s brought increased
attention to basic skills as the public grew concerned that graduating high
school students lacked the abilities to fill the needs of the changing job
market. These concerns led to A Nation at Risk (Gardner, 1983), which
was penned by mostly non-educators handpicked by William Bennett,
Ronald Reagan’s conservative Secretary of Education. The report claimed
that American schools were failing and were falling behind other nations
at all levels: elementary, secondary, and university. Though the findings
in this report were debunked in The Manufactured Crisis (Berliner &
Biddle, 1995), and subsequent reports that take socioeconomic status into
account when dealing with academic performance, this report created a
narrative that led to calls for increased cultural literacy (Bennett, 1988;
Hirsch, 1987) and a vocabulary shared by all citizens (Hirsch, 1987),
based in the belief that these would not only strengthen a student’s pre-
paredness for a variety of jobs but would engage them in carrying the best
of our culture into the world throughout their lives.
Mirroring Harold and Allan Bloom’s derision of multicultural litera-
ture, Bennett and Hirsch both argued for “reasserting a focus on texts of
cultural importance, the ‘great works’ of Western civilization that have
been ostensibly replaced by less important writings by women and minori-
ties” (Applebee, 1990, p. 131). This deficit perspective on education and
blame on liberal ideals continue to dominate education to this day in
initiatives based on the fictive findings of A Nation at Risk in federal
educational laws and initiatives such as No Child Left Behind, Race to
the Top, and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Specifically, in
regard to English curricula, its impact can be felt in the textual choices in
recommended book lists for the CCSS and in its reliance on New Criticism
which is no better highlighted than by current College Board President
(think AP tests) David Coleman who argued that “people really don’t give
a shit about what you [students] feel or what you think” (Ravitch, 2012).
 Introduction 11
Ironically, in the midst of the culture wars that were raging across uni-
versity English departments that saw staunch canonical defenders such
as the Blooms at odds with multiculturalists such as Henry Louis Gates,
because of low scores on a nationally administered survey, formulated
from questions by National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP),
Ravitch and Finn (1988) posited that “there is assuredly no canon, and
no one could venture a confident guess as to what is read by American
students at any time in their schooling” (p. 10). Yet the canon was indeed
very much in the center of the secondary English curriculum as numerous
studies have shown (e.g., Applebee, 1992).

An Overview of the Current Secondary Canon

Though there have been some changes to the secondary canon since
Tanner’s 1907 survey of 67 Midwestern high schools’ assigned readings,
Shakespeare was the center of the canon then and continues to occupy
that spot; the non-Shakespearean texts such as Ivanhoe, Milton, and The
Vision of Sir Launfal that occupied the center of the canon over 100 years
ago have been largely replaced by texts that had yet to be written at that
time—the works of Homer being the major exception. The texts that
dominate secondary schools across the nation today are not much dif-
ferent from fifty years ago when Squire and Applebee (1968) published
a book-length study of the English programs of 158 urban high schools
across 45 states (see Table 1.2 on p. 14 for most frequently taught texts).
Since Squire and Applebee’s survey there have been numerous regional
and national examinations of book-length works taught in high schools,
and in our review of studies that assessed more than one high school it is
apparent Shakespeare still has a privileged spot in the center of the canon, as
his works have occupied two to four spots in each subsequent survey of
texts taught in high schools (see Tables 1.3 through 1.9 on p. 14). On the
other hand, there have been some changes at the center of the canon as
texts such as Silas Marner, The Return of the Native, The Red Badge of
Courage, and Moby Dick have not appeared in any subsequent top ten
lists and appear to have been replaced by titles such as To Kill a Mock-
ingbird, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, and Night.
If we accept that a final premise/requirement for a text to enjoy inclusion
in the secondary canon is for it to be taught, then the possible size of the
canon is limited by the amount of reading that can be required between
eighth and twelfth grades. In Tanner’s (1907) study, he measured the amount
of books studied in each grade; results showed the average amount of books
read by grade to be 3–6 in ninth grade, 4–7 in tenth grade, 4–6 in eleventh
grade, and 4–8 in twelfth grade. Over 100 years later, Shanahan and Duf-
fet (2013) found similar results in a survey of teachers from 46 states and
the District of Columbia showing that 77% of middle school and 88% of
high school English language arts teachers required their students to read at
12 Crag Hill and Victor Malo-Juvera
least one novel per year. Furthermore, of those who share that requirement,
68% of middle schools required 2–5 books read per year while 19% read
six or more; high schoolers read slightly less, with 76% reading 2–5 books
per year and 10% reading six or more. Thus, we can estimate in perhaps
the roughest way possible that the majority of students read about 20 full-
length works between eighth and twelfth grades.
The size of the canon also appears to be expanding. Stallworth and Gib-
bons (2012) found that when comparing their 2011 study of book-length
works to a similar study done in 2006, there was an increase in overall
assigned titles; moreover, they represented not only traditionally canonical
texts, but also contemporary, multicultural, and young adult titles. Beyond
the center of the canon as represented by Tables 1.1 through 1.8 on p. 14
which show overall dominance of texts across grades, some studies (e.g.,
Stotsky, Goering, & Jolliffe, 2010; Stotsky, Traffas, & Woodworth, 2010)
provide the most taught texts by grade level, and these lists show a continu-
ally expanding canon. For example, Stotsky Traffas, and Woodworth found
S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967) to be the 17th most assigned title, being
read more often than traditional literary classics such as Great Expecta-
tions, The Glass Menagerie, The Red Badge of Courage, and even Macbeth.
Beyond The Outsiders, which is considered the seminal text that gave birth
to the modern genre of young adult literature, contemporary young adult
literature has also found its way into the hands of many secondary students,
as Stotsky, Traffas, and Woodworth found in their national survey of English
teachers that Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (1999) was the 20th most
taught book in high schools and was the 8th most taught text in ninth grade.
Thus, although top ten lists usually dominate discussions of canonicity,
because of the number of assigned texts that students read during their sec-
ondary school years, and due to the expanding variety of titles that teachers
are assigning, we could estimate that that size of the secondary canon may
be upwards of 40 books. As the canon simultaneously slowly expands but
at the same time retains the texts that have comprised its center over the
last 40 years, it is important to examine the major influences on the canon.

How the Canon Is Formed and Maintained

Because membership in the secondary canon is determined by the fre-
quency with which texts are taught, perhaps the best way to understand
how the canon may change, or remain unchanged, is to get a better under-
standing of how teachers choose texts for instruction. Although schol-
ars and critics often believe that literary awards, critical reception, and
scholarly research are powerful influences, it appears that more pragmatic
forces may be the dominant determinants of whether or not a text ends
up in the hands of a student reader.
Over the last fifty years, researchers (Applebee, 1992; Holloway &
Greig, 2011; Squire & Applebee, 1968) have found that the two primary
sources for assigned readings were literary anthologies and class sets of
 Introduction 13
texts. These findings should not be surprising for anyone who has taught
in a high school as at the end of every summer during the week before
school starts English language arts teachers can often be founding brows-
ing through the literary anthologies for titles to teach or searching through
the bookrooms to see how many class sets there are and what kind of
shape they are in.
Bookrooms represent the cultural history of a schools’ English depart-
ment, and the texts there can be decades old, reflecting the literary values
of colleagues who may be long into retirement. With the recession caused
by the housing bubble crisis in the late 2000s, and with the reduction in
available funds exacerbated by money being funneled to charter schools,
commercial curricula and technologically driven programs such as Accel-
erated Reader, many schools have not had funding in years, if not decades,
to purchase class sets of novels (Gallagher, 2009). Some schools also have
policies that prevent teachers from asking students to purchase their own
texts, effectively locking teachers into the choices that can be found in the
bookroom. The availability of texts in the bookroom is often a driving
force during department discussions when texts are chosen as grade level
selections. Taken together it is straightforward, no matter any other fac-
tor, that you cannot teach a text that you do not have.
Although this dearth of funding can also impact anthologies, most
schools do have class sets of anthologies and these carry a great deal
of power in influencing what English teachers teach as they are some-
times the only source teachers have for texts. Thus, the contents of these
anthologies are important to examine. Despite a dearth of research on the
subject, Hansen (2005) found in a content analysis of Florida high school
literature anthologies in 1991 and 2003 that the majority of non-White
authors who have been traditionally excluded from the secondary canon,
who were included in the 2003 anthologies, were overrepresented in the
genre of nonfiction. She further found that the 2003 anthologies showed
little change in the literary selections which continued to be dominated
by White authors. Thus, despite the influences of state and national stan-
dards, sensitivity reviewers from both the left and right (Ravitch, 2003),
and the influence on textbook design by large states such as Florida,
Texas, California, and New York, it appears that literary anthologies
have not changed much in terms of full-length fictive selections.

What Can Change?

This book in a pragmatic way addresses many of the calls from those
who would like to open up the canon. The canon itself cannot be opened
like a door, since the canon does not exist in one place—it is not a single
text list for a classroom or even a district-wide curriculum. It is more like
the Internet, existing in and between thousands of English classrooms,
thus the only way for a text to enter the canon, even if it is just the outer
edges as opposed to the center, is for the text to be taught. And taught a
Most Frequently Taught Texts: Results from Studies Conducted from 1907–2012
Table 1.1 Midwestern High Schools (67 schools surveyed) Table 1.4 Alabama High Schools (72 schools surveyed) Table 1.7 Arkansas High Schools (400 teachers surveyed)

1 Julius Caesar 1 Great Expectations 1 Romeo and Juliet

2 Macbeth 2 The Pearl 2 Julius Caesar
3 Silas Marner 3 Julius Caesar 3 The Crucible
4 Milton’s Minor Poems 4 The Scarlet Letter 4 To Kill a Mockingbird
5 Merchant of Venice 5 The Lord of the Flies 5 The Great Gatsby
6 Burke’s Conciliation 6 Of Mice and Men
6 Romeo and Juliet
7 Vision of Sir Launfal 7 Antigone
7 To Kill a Mockingbird
8 The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner 8 The Odyssey
8 A Separate Peace
9 Ivanhoe 9 Animal Farm
9 Of Mice and Men
10 Macaulay’s Addison 10 Night
10 The Great Gatsby
Source: Tanner (1907) Source: Stotsky, Goering, & Jolliffe (2010)
Source: Stallworth (1999)

Table 1.2 Metropolitan High Schools Nationwide (158 schools surveyed) Table 1.5 Alabama Secondary Schools (72 schools surveyed) Table 1.8 National Survey, Grades 9–11 (406 teachers surveyed)

1 Macbeth 2002–2003 school year 2003–2004 school year 1 Romeo and Juliet
2 Julius Caesar 2 To Kill a Mockingbird
1 To Kill a Mockingbird 1 The Scarlet Letter
3 Hamlet 3 The Crucible
2 The Great Gatsby 2 The Great Gatsby
4 Silas Marner 4 Julius Caesar
3 The Scarlet Letter 3 To Kill a Mockingbird
5 The Scarlet Letter 5 Of Mice and Men
6 A Tale of Two Cities 4 Romeo and Juliet 4 Julius Caesar
6 Night
7 The Return of the Native 5 Julius Caesar 5 The Crucible
7 The Great Gatsby
8 Huckleberry Finn 6 The Crucible 6 Macbeth
8 Lord of the Flies
9 The Red Badge of Courage 7 Macbeth 7 Romeo and Juliet
9 Huckleberry Finn
10 Moby Dick 8 Huckleberry Finn 8 Wuthering Heights
10 The Scarlet Letter
10 Our Town 9 Animal Farm 9 A Raisin in the Sun
Source: Stotsky, Traffas, & Woodworth (2010)
10 A Separate Peace 10 Lord of the Flies / OurTown / Huckleberry
Source: Squire & Applebee (1968)
Finn (three-way tie)
Source: Stallworth, Gibbons, & Fauber (2006)

Table 1.3 Public Schools Nationwide, Grades 7–12 (488 schools surveyed) Table 1.6 Minneapolis-St Paul High Schools (29 schools surveyed) Table 1.9 Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Tennessee Secondary Schools (216 teachers
1 Romeo and Juliet 1 To Kill a Mockingbird surveyed)
2 Macbeth 2 Romeo and Juliet
1 The Great Gatsby
3 Huckleberry Finn 3 The Great Gatsby
2 Romeo and Juliet
4 Julius Caesar 4 Of Mice and Men
3 The Crucible
5 To Kill a Mockingbird 4 The Crucible
3 The Odyssey
6 The Scarlet Letter 6 Hamlet
5 To Kill a Mockingbird
7 Of Mice and Men 6 Night
6 Night
8 Hamlet 8 Lord of the Flies
9 The Great Gatsby 7 Their Eyes Were Watching God
10 The Scarlet Letter
10 The Lord of the Flies 8 The Scarlet Letter
10 The Odyssey
Source: Applebee (1992) Source: Stallworth & Gibbons (2012)
Source: Hoffman (2007)
 Introduction 15
lot. This is how Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel Speak (1999)
made it into Stotsky et al. (2010) lists of most frequently taught texts. It
is not because of the scholarly attention the text has received—in fact,
it has probably received as much scholarly attention because it has been
taught by so many teachers in so many different school districts. So Speak
teaches us a paradoxical lesson—that it is possible for a young adult novel
to make its way into the canon, but at the same time the center of the
canon remains much unchanged
Although there are changes to the canon, they are occurring mostly in
the outer circles. So what are the choices for a teacher with a bookroom
of texts that have occupied the center of the canon for the last forty years?
This book attempts to provide some options. Although we would like to see
the canon diversified, we are also pragmatists and understand that teachers
may only have access to canonical books and in many places may even be
required to adhere to mandated text lists. Thus, as the center of the canon
holds steady, teachers can instead examine and teach texts from different
paradigms, reading against the dominant interpretations of these texts.

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2 Why Did the “Star-Crossed
Lovers” Never Have a Chance?
(Mis)Guided Adult Interference
in Romeo and Juliet
Mark A. Lewis

The fearful passage of their death-marked love

And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
—Chorus, The Prologue

Probably since the play was first performed in the mid-1590s, debates
over who is the most to blame for Romeo’s and Juliet’s tragic ends have
proliferated, from the theater public to literary scholarship to secondary
English language arts classrooms. Some argue for the feud between Lords
Montague and Capulet, some point to the hotheadedness of Mercutio
and Tybalt, and some look to the weakness of Prince Escalus. However,
an oft cited argument places the responsibility squarely on the decisions
and actions of Juliet and Romeo themselves. In particular, the argument
relies upon the age of the protagonists as the underlying reason, namely
that they were simply too young for such reckless and forbidden love. In
other words, their tragic end is based upon “adolescent” indulgence and
immaturity (cf. Cox, 1976).
However, this age-based argument is a much more recent perspective
on the play because the stage of life we commonly label “adolescence”
has only been viewed in these primarily pejorative ways for the last 120
years or so. Prior to Stanley Hall’s sturm and drang characterization of
people typically aged 12 to 18—which he promulgated in the first two
decades of the 1900s—people were typically divided into childhood and
adulthood (cf. Lesko, 2012; Tait, 2012). As well, many societies and
cultures had specific ceremonies or rituals to demarcate when a person
moved from childhood to adulthood. In 1500s London, people in their
late teen years were more often viewed as adults, often working, able
to get married, and participating civically; they were even tried as adult
criminals as early as age 12 (Orme, 2003). Therefore, it is more likely
that Shakespeare was not preoccupied as much over the age of his pro-
tagonists as contemporary readers and educators are today. For example,
Juliet is 14 but Paris clearly understands that to be a perfectly acceptable
 Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet 19
age for marriage and motherhood—12 was the typical age of consent
in the time of Shakespeare—as he argues that “younger than she are
happy mothers made” (Act I, Scene II) when Lord Capulet encourages
him to wait two more years. Of course, Lord Capulet also changes his
mind about waiting two years later in the play. It should also be noted
that the ages of Romeo nor any of the other youthful characters are ever
mentioned in the play.
Thus, grounding an argument for who is to blame for Romeo and
Juliet’s tragedy on their age seems to ascribe contemporary, often stereo-
typical, notions that circulate publicly about adolescence onto the play,
rather than what the story actually reveals. Indeed, as my opening quota-
tion from the prologue reveals, it seems that Shakespeare considered the
“parents’ rage” as the central driving force of the entire plot. With these
ideas in mind, I set forth in this chapter to read the play with a youth
lens analysis (Petrone, Sarigianides, & Lewis, 2014) as a way to answer
the question of who carries the onus for the “star-crossed” lovers’ demise
from a different perspective. Prior to describing my findings, I review
pertinent literature to frame the chapter. Then I close with some implica-
tions for teachers.

Divergent Perspectives of Adolescence and Youth

A primary focus in scholarship examining and interpreting Romeo and
Juliet has been on the age of the lead characters, as well as their friends
and rivals. In particular, scholars have attempted to tease out how the
characters’ relative age influences their behaviors, decisions, relation-
ships, and, ultimately, their fate (Changizi, Pourgiv, & Latifian, 2016;
Prusko, 2016; Schwaber, 2006). In this brief literature review, I begin by
presenting scholarship employing psychoanalytic frameworks grounded
in a developmentalist perspective of adolescence, which relies upon con-
temporary Western understandings of what it means to be an adolescent.
After discussing a cultural consequence of such analyses, I explain the
theoretical framework for my interpretation of the play, which signifi-
cantly departs from this previous scholarship.

Psychoanalytical Perspectives of Romeo and Juliet

Writing in the mid-1970s, Marjorie Kolb Cox opened her essay on the play
in Psychoanalytical Review claiming that the story is about the “impact
of adolescence” on Romeo and Juliet as they attempt to react to internal
and external struggles (1976, p. 379). She then proceeds to explain how
internal adolescent processes, as opposed to external realities, explain the
motivations and desires of the characters. Namely, that Romeo’s seclusion
and wavering of romantic interests stems from the “upsurge of sexual feel-
ing” due to the internal changes related to his age (p. 381); that Tybalt’s
20 Mark A. Lewis
tendency toward dueling reveals how adolescent passion can be extreme
and deadly; that Romeo and Juliet rebel against their parents’ desires due
to an inherent adolescent need to detach themselves from their parents;
and that Romeo’s and Juliet’s final suicidal decisions reflect adolescents’
tendency to leap into action without thought of consequences. This psy-
choanalytical interpretation, based upon a developmentalist model of
adolescence and youth, became a primary framework for other scholars
through the end of the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first
century.
For instance, this influence can be seen 40 years later in Changizi et al.’s
(2016) post-modern psychoanalytical analysis of Romeo and Juliet (in
which they cite Cox). They focus on several developmentalist psychologi-
cal aspects of adolescence, relying upon post-structuralist conceptions,
a theory that primarily responds to the problematic creation of bina-
ries through the concrete naming of objects, such as an adult-adolescent
binary that always places the adult as primary and more desirable.
Describing the play as a “tragedy of adolescence” (p. 89), they employ
limerence, a psychological term referring to romantic feelings that are
involuntary to the actor, in their analysis. They argue that Romeo’s seem-
ingly rapid shift in romantic feelings from Rosaline to Juliet is based on a
supposed adolescent tendency to idealize love and objectify the subject of
their feelings. Further, they posit that adult interference works to intensify
adolescents’ romantic feelings, explaining why Romeo and Juliet resist
and rebel against their parents’ wishes, which apparently is named the
“Romeo and Juliet effect” in social psychology (Driscoll, Davis, & Lipetz,
1972, as cited in Changizi et al., 2016). Social psychologists use this term
to identify the underlying reasons for the behaviors of adolescent couples,
particularly an “unhealthy” increase in romantic feelings, in response
to parental interference in their relationship. Their analysis, then, leads
them to the conclusion that the play is an example of a “failed adolescent
rebellion against parental authority and a failed process of individuation”
(p. 93), and, therefore, a “tragedy of adolescence.”
Prusko (2016) argues that Romeo and Juliet are examples of adolescents
resisting outside norms—namely that they should be enemies because of
their familial backgrounds—and define themselves through their private
conversations and actions without adult supervision. She argues that the
tension and conflict between Juliet and her parents over her impending
marriage to Paris provides an “extended exploration of the teenaged sub-
ject” (p. 119). This exploration works under the assumption that youth
desire privacy away from adult interference, which, she argues, can be
highlighted by focusing on the multiple private scenes in which Romeo
and Juliet engage throughout the play. She also examines what she identi-
fies as the private language of the couple, which she characterizes as prone
to storytelling, word play, and evasiveness. In a final example, Schwaber
(2006) examines the sexuality of the young characters and determines
 Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet 21
that, since they are “youngsters with rushing feelings and grownup bod-
ies” (p. 299), their affair is frenetic and they have a need for romantic
certainty. As this scholarship begins to reveal, if one begins an analysis of
Romeo and Juliet with the lens that the story is about adolescence under-
stood through a developmentalist paradigm, then it seems inevitable (or
star-crossed) that any analysis would lead to a conclusion that the young
characters are misunderstood by adult characters, rebellious, violent, and/
or sexually preoccupied.

The “Teening” of Romeo and Juliet

Scholarship with this psychoanalytical perspective has also contributed
to a contemporary understanding that Romeo and Juliet is a play pri-
marily about adolescence, which has had both cultural and educational
consequences. For example, in her analysis of Baz Luhrmann’s cinematic
adaptation of the play, Angela Keam (2006, 2008) identifies how con-
temporary adaptations and interpretations of the play have become
more rooted in White middle-class understandings of adolescent identity.
These adaptations, in her words, have caused a “teening” (2008, p. 39) of
Shakespeare’s work with a late twentieth-century veneer. In other words,
she argues that this phenomenon has resulted in an appropriation of the
play to meet the viewing preferences of the U.S. adolescent, particularly
in the actors that are selected to play the lead characters.
In particular, she interprets Claire Danes’ portrayal of Juliet in
Luhrmann’s film as presenting a “transitory ‘femininity’ that resonates
with the teen female viewer’s own physical and psychological matura-
tion” (2006, p. 11). In this way, Keam argues, Juliet (through Danes)
has the potential to influence—both positively and negatively—female
adolescents’ views of femininity, as well as impact how they negotiate
their own female identity. This “teening” of the play has also affected
the focus and motivation of high school English language arts curricula
in that many teachers use Romeo and Juliet as a cautionary tale for their
adolescent students, namely that poor decision-making has tragic ends,
and, again, to discuss the negative repercussions of adolescent rebellion,
violence, and sexuality.
Colson (2008), for example, concisely outlines how high school cur-
ricula on Romeo and Juliet often functions to control adolescent sexuality
in three ways, which he argues is based upon a Foucauldian perspective
of power. First, the act of adult control of any curriculum focused on the
themes of sexuality present in the play places the locus of power on the
teacher. Second, curricula are used to advance an adult agenda to control
the sexual desires of youth. He argues that the sexual innuendos present
in the Shakespearean language of the play afford opportunity for teach-
ers to raise issues around the taboo of adolescent sexuality, and then use
that opportunity to discourage adolescent sexual thoughts and behaviors
22 Mark A. Lewis
through labeling and stigmatizing. Third, the ultimate outcome of Romeo
and Juliet’s adolescent romance is used as a warning for those that might
desire such a relationship. Of course, this curricular focus firmly relies
upon one of Lesko’s (2012) confident characterizations, namely the
assumption that adolescents are governed by hormonal desires.
Nys (2003) outlines teaching ideas for the play with the goal for adoles-
cents to learn about the link between impulse control and teen violence.
She argues that since Romeo and Juliet are adolescent characters, they have
poor communication skills which lead to their tragic end. She encourages
teachers to create “talk opportunities” for adults to model both thinking
processes and social values, particularly around issues related to impulse
control, peer pressure, and conflict resolution. Another goal of these talk
opportunities is for secondary students to examine their own lives, and
for teachers, in her words, to tell adolescents that they are in the “stage
where they are learning to handle intense emotions” (p. 39) so it is accept-
able for them to communicate with an adult about those emotions. Since
the play contains teen violence, she contends that teachers could use it to
help students understand their own circumstances by relating to the ado-
lescent characters. Of course, such a curricular approach assumes that all
adolescents experience, and perhaps are considering, violence, and, since
they struggle in communicating about those experiences and thoughts,
discussions around the play allow adults to guide adolescents through, in
her terms, catharsis related to experiencing violence.
In this chapter, however, I aim to disrupt these common curricular
approaches present in secondary classrooms that overly rely upon a psy-
chological understanding of adolescence.

Considering Romeo and Juliet Through a Youth Lens

Keam’s analysis of Luhrmann’s adaptation begins to recognize a more
complex understanding of adolescence and youth. First, that youth have
agency in their decisions about how they identify themselves and how
they perceive the realities of adolescence. Second, they are capable of
recognizing how youth are represented in cultural texts, including plays
and movies, and are quite adept at being critical consumers of those
representations. These assumptions undergird an asset-based concep-
tion of adolescence and youth—an essential disposition for imagining an
enhanced interpretation of the adolescent characters’ behaviors, decisions,
relationships, and outcomes.
Further, understanding adolescence as a social construction, in addi-
tion to more developmentalist paradigms proffered by fields such as
psychology and biology, also provides a more multifaceted analysis of
adolescent-adult relationships. By socially constructed, I mean that these
relationships should be viewed as formed primarily by external contextual
factors, rather than solely internal factors. Unfortunately, many adults
 Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet 23
tend to ascribe certain notions of adolescence onto youth, including that
they are hormone-governed, peer-oriented, and should follow a leisurely
progression into adulthood (Lesko, 2012). This adult-gaze is present in
the scholarship I discussed previously, and it is present in how the adult
characters behave toward Juliet and Romeo in the play, as I will illustrate
in my analysis.
My analysis relies upon a “youth lens” (Petrone et al., 2014) which
draws upon critical youth studies scholarship (e.g., Best, 2007; Ibrahim &
Steinberg, 2014; Lesko & Talburt, 2012) that views adolescence as a
social construct and with an asset-based lens. This type of analysis asks
questions about the representations of adolescence and youth in cul-
tural texts, including literature, and the roles and relationships available
to both youth and adults in these texts. These analyses can reveal a
more complicated understanding of youth as individuals, their complex
worldviews, and how adults view youth alters their interpersonal rela-
tionships. For example, Thein, Sulzer, and Schmidt (2013) illustrate a
youth lens analysis through their examination of the two versions of Wes
Moore’s memoir, one marketed for adults and the other marketed for
youth. They found that each significantly differs in how it approaches
the effect society and institutions have on decision-making—in the adult
version these outside forces are significant, in the young adult version
these external forces are less significant than individual choices—which
communicate divergent messages to youth. Sieben (2015) weaves queer
theory with a youth lens analysis of Bill Konigsburg’s Openly Straight.
Her analysis reveals how setting can influence adolescent identities,
such as how interactions on athletic teams—in this case, interactions
related to LGBTQ issues such as fitting into the expected role of an ath-
lete and combatting homophobic slurs—can be interpreted as complex
metaphors for the lives of youth. Finally, I have examined how comics
illustrator’s artful choices characterize youth in both enchanting and
nostalgic ways (Lewis, 2016). As well, I have employed Cory Doctorow’s
technology-based young adult literature to demonstrate the savvy criti-
cal literacy practices of youth (Lewis, 2018), and the tensions between
“being and becoming” adolescent-athletes in sports-related young adult
literature face both in and out of the arena (Lewis & Rodesiler, 2018).
For the purpose of my analysis of Romeo and Juliet, I primarily focus
on the roles adults play in what finally happens to the young lovers at
the conclusion of the tragedy.

The Fateful Missteps of Adult Parenting and Mentoring

Once the reader tempers more stereotypical preconceived notions of how
developmentalist paradigms, particularly stemming from psychology
and biology, view adolescence as rooted in rebelliousness, driven by hor-
mones, and irrational (Lesko, 2012), it becomes easier to focus upon the
24 Mark A. Lewis
magnitude of adult characters’ roles in determining the fate of Romeo and
Juliet. To be clear, the lovers make many missteps in how they handle the
trials of their families’ feud and their personal romance. However, a youth
lens analysis reveals that many of their thoughts and actions should be
ascribed to external social forces more than internal strife. In particular,
their parents’ attitudes toward and decisions about their children create
external circumstances that highly influence the outcome of Romeo and
Juliet’s affair. As well, the mentors in the youths’ lives push them into
certain decisions that seal their fate. In order to illustrate this argument,
I begin by describing how the Lords and Ladies Capulet and Montague
create an environment both hostile and untenable for the young lovers.
I then examine the decisions of the Nurse and Friar Lawrence in their
attempts to mentor Juliet and Romeo.

Montagues’ and Capulets’ Parental

(Mis)Guided Behavior
The relationships between teenagers and their parents seem to domi-
nate the concerns of not only parents, but also of psychologists, social
workers, and educators, if not all of U.S. society. The centrality of this
concern can be seen in rhetoric about how problematic single-parent
homes or absentee fathers can be for youth, city officials defending cur-
few ordinances, and school boards apologizing for low test scores. Of
course, such relationships matter, perhaps not at the drastic levels often
heard in such rhetoric, but they do have an impact on the lived experi-
ences of both youth and their parents. Therefore, when reading Romeo
and Juliet, it is useful to pay close attention to the actions and words
of the Lords and Ladies Montague and Capulet in relation to their son
and daughter.
Beginning with the Montagues, early in the play they relate their worry
over Romeo’s recent reclusiveness and his ostensible depression to Ben-
volio. When he asks them if they know the cause of Romeo’s behavior,
they admit that they do not. Although Lord Montague explains that he
has tried to speak with Romeo, and has asked others to do so as well, it
is clear—by the standards of any time period—that he and his wife do
not have a healthy, open relationship with their son. A telling moment
is when Romeo approaches them and Benvolio, he and Lady Montague
leave at Benvolio’s request, rather than staying to at least greet their son.
Yes, Lord Montague is hoping that Benvolio can find out the underlying
reasons for Romeo’s behavior, but it seems odd for them to avoid their
youthful son, especially if they are worried he is depressed. As well, it
should be noted that the reader never sees Lord or Lady Montague speak
with Romeo again.
For the Capulets and Juliet, the discussion and decision about her mar-
riage to Paris is central to their relationship. In the first act, Lord Capulet
 Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet 25
expresses to Paris that he believes him to be a good suitor for Juliet and
encourages him to pursue her:

But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart;

My will to consent is but a part.
And, she agreed, within her scope of choice
Lies my consent and fair according voice.
(Act I, Scene II)

At this point in the story, it seems that Lord Capulet will only give his
full consent for Paris to marry Juliet if she also gives her consent for
the match. However, his attitude toward Juliet’s agreed upon consent
shifts as the play progresses. As discussed previously, Lord Capulet
also believes the courtship should last two years so that Juliet is older
before she weds. Paris disagrees, perhaps planting the germ of that
possibility in Lord Capulet which might have led to his later change of
mind. Lady Capulet has a different view of this possibility of marriage.
She goes to see Juliet to discuss the matter, and it quickly becomes clear
that she and her daughter disagree about marriage, as Juliet quickly
tells her that marriage is an “honor I dream not of” (Act I, Scene III).
Just as quickly, Lady Capulet attempts to persuade her daughter to
change her mind:

Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you

Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are already made mothers. By my count
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid.
(Act I, Scene III)

Lady Capulet had Juliet at a similarly young age, and she reminds her that
“ladies of esteem” in Verona are already mothers, indicating that young
pregnancies are normal for the elite class. Yet, at this point in the play,
she is only encouraging Juliet, and providing her space to make her own
decisions—both about the general prospect of marriage and the suitability
of Paris as a possible husband. It only takes a couple of days, however,
for Lord and Lady Capulet to change their perspectives and to alter how
they approach the subject with Juliet.
As the tragedy unfolds—Mercutio and Tybalt are dead and Romeo
has been banished—the Capulets allow their feelings to overcome their
logical and careful approach to Juliet’s possible marriage to Paris. With-
out consulting Juliet, they discuss the marriage with Paris, and Lord
Capulet determines a date for the wedding 10 days later. While this
practice might have been common during this era, their behavior is in
direct opposition to their earlier behavior of having open conversations
26 Mark A. Lewis
with Juliet about the prospect of marrying Paris and waiting for her to
also agree to marry before acting. When they finally speak with Juliet
about this new plan, it does not go well. Juliet, of course, expresses her
dismay at the decision and politely states that, although she wants to
do her parents proud, she will definitely not marry Paris. At this, Lord
Capulet simply loses his mind:

Mistress minion you,

Thank me no thanking, nor proud me no prouds,
But fettle your fine joints ’gainst Thursday next
To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage!
You tallow face!
(Act III, Scene V)

The list of insults is impressively horrible. He twice tells her that she is a
burden due to her gender, as “minion” and “baggage” had this connota-
tion in Shakespeare’s time. He calls her a criminal since he would have
to “drag” her on a “hurdle,” which is exactly how criminals were taken
to their executions in 1500s London (although that is an apt metaphor
for the wedding to Juliet). Finally, he insults her ashen appearance due to
her appalled reaction by telling her to rid herself of her “green-sickness
carrion” and “tallow face.” This reaction reveals a quite different Lord
Capulet than the one in Act I who favors a more careful approach and
tells Paris that he needs both his and his daughter’s consent prior to mar-
rying. Both his emotional outburst and his capriciousness are often traits
attributed to adolescence and youth, but in this case Juliet is polite and
measured in her continued refusal of Paris as a suitor, and her parents are
the ones who have lost control of their emotions and who rapidly shift
their decisions. Indeed, their deteriorating relationship with their daughter
is due to their lack of control and rudeness, and not the actions of their
teenaged daughter.
Through their (in)actions, the Lords and Ladies Montague and Capulet
have created an environment in which Juliet, and, in some regards, Romeo
find untenable. First, there is the enduring feud between the families that
makes their love forbidden, thereby causing them to meet and elope in
secret. The feud is also the reason for Tybalt’s anger toward Romeo and
his friends for attending the Capulet party, eventually leading to his death
at Romeo’s hands and the subsequent banishment of Romeo. Second, the
types of relationships they establish, or fail to establish in terms of the
Montagues, with their children as the play progresses creates a milieu
perfect for Juliet and Romeo to feel disenfranchised and make the deci-
sions that they do.
 Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet 27
Seemingly Ulterior Motives of the
Nurse and Friar Lawrence
The Nurse has attended to Juliet’s personal needs since she was born,
hence how Shakespeare chose to name her character to indicate imme-
diately that she began as a nursemaid and is not simply a servant newly
assigned to Juliet. Therefore, it should be clear to the reader that the
Nurse has an intimate relationship with Juliet and serves as both hand-
maiden and confidant. This relationship is confirmed at the conclusion of
Act I when Juliet asks the Nurse to find out the name of the gentleman
that spoke to her at the Capulet party. Once the Nurse returns with that
information, Juliet immediately confesses her feelings toward Romeo as
anyone would to a confidant. The Nurse, however, in her interactions
concerning Juliet’s relationship could be construed as more “adolescent”
than her 14-year-old ward.
As the play progresses, the Nurse uses that confidence in her attempt to
mentor Juliet as she makes decisions about her budding relationship with
Romeo. She begins by attempting to disrupt and delay their relationship
as it grows toward marriage. For example, when she inquires into Romeo
on Juliet’s behalf, she warns Romeo about his supposed intentions to
ensure that he is sincere:

But first let me tell you, if you

should lead her in a fool’s paradise, as they say, it
were a very gross kind of behavior, as they say.
(Act II, Scene IV)

Her warning could be interpreted as only representing her care for

Juliet, but it could also be interpreted as her first attempt to thwart
Romeo’s advances by scaring him off. This latter motive becomes more
apparent as she praises County Paris to Romeo as a suitor, a “good
soul,” and a “properer man” than Romeo; and disparages Juliet’s view
of Paris as a “very toad” just a few moments after her initial warning.
Upon her return to report back to Juliet on Romeo’s intentions, she
attempts—rather juvenilely—to delay informing Juliet what she discov-
ered by claiming that she was too tired and “out of breath.” She then
tries to undermine Juliet’s feelings again by naming her decision to pur-
sue Romeo as a “simple choice” and claims that Juliet does not know
“how to choose a man.” The Nurse also insults Romeo’s appearance by
claiming that his face and other looks are “not to be talked on,” and
characterizes him as “not the flower of courtesy” (Act II, Scene V). Her
final attempt to delay the marriage is to persuade Juliet that she does
not need to see Friar Lawrence immediately. Of course, she ultimately
acquiesces. In this way, the Nurse acts with traits often associated with
28 Mark A. Lewis
adolescence by modern audiences, thereby putting into question who
the adult actually is in this relationship.
Perhaps the most egregious act by the Nurse toward Juliet is her deci-
sion to support Lord and Lady Capulet’s decision to force the marriage to
Paris. Once Romeo is banished from Verona, she changes her mind about
what would be best for Juliet—despite her previous assistance in helping
Juliet meet secretly with Romeo, visit Friar Lawrence, and get married.
After the Capulet parents inform Juliet of their decision to marry her to
Paris and leave, Juliet turns to the Nurse and exclaims, “O God! O Nurse,
how shall this be prevented?” (Act III, Scene V), clearly thinking that her
mentor remains supportive. The Nurse, however, responds with surprising
advice based on her previous actions:

I think it best you married with the County.

O, he’s a lovely gentleman!
Romeo’s a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
I think you are happy in this second match,
For it excels your first,
(Act III, Scene V)

She once again denigrates Romeo, calling him a dishrag or something

easily tossed aside, and praises Paris, claiming that he could best an
eagle in his majestic looks. Moreover, she asserts that this feeling has
always been in her heart, as any astute reader of the play would under-
stand. In this scene, she reveals her true self to Juliet—that she is more
conniver than mentor. As a manipulator, she also represents how adults
have a desire to control youths’ decisions and actions, particularly
around love and sex (Lewis & Durand, 2014; Trites, 2000). As well,
the Nurse’s actions illustrate how adults have trouble with honest
mentorship with youth because of their diminished views of adoles-
cents’ ability to make sound decisions about their futures. Of course,
Juliet understands this lack of transparency and seeks the Friar’s advice
instead—a disastrous decision.
Juliet’s decision to seek out Friar Lawrence turns disastrous not because
she made another “bad” decision due to her age, but because he turns out
to be another adult wanting to manipulate youths for his own agenda.
His adult manipulation is witnessed when Romeo approaches him about
performing the marriage ceremony. At first, the Friar questions Romeo’s
veracity of feelings toward Juliet, primarily because of his seemingly rapid
shift in romantic feelings away from Rosaline. Romeo confirms that he
is now truly in love, not because of some adolescent mercurialness but
because he has learned what love feels like if it is returned in favor. At
 Adult Interference in Romeo and Juliet 29
this confession, the Friar agrees to assist in the ceremony, but not for the
sake of love but for Verona:

In one respect I’ll thy assistant be,

For this alliance may so happy prove
To turn your households’ rancor to pure love.
(Act II, Scene III)

The Friar does not really believe that Romeo’s feelings are fully real-
ized, as he calls him a “young waverer” and warns him to be “[w]isely
and slow. They stumble that run fast.” Yet, rather than counseling him
further about moving slowly in order to ensure that his feelings hold
over time, he decides that the marriage might end the Montague-Capulet
feud, thereby using Romeo for his own ends. Yes, once the Friar makes
his decision to wed the couple, he has become complicit in the affair;
and, therefore, must assist Romeo to escape Verona when he is ban-
ished and assist Juliet to fool her parents. One might argue these actions
reveal that he understands they are truly in love, but his actions in the
remainder of the play demonstrate that he makes these decisions in his
own best interests.
His first selfish action is to help Juliet fake her death when she comes to
him asking for counsel concerning her problem—she is already married to
Romeo but her parents are insisting on her marrying Paris. She claims she
is ready to take her own life rather than succumb to her parents’ wishes.
He tells her that, yes, “it wilt undertake/A thing like death to chide away
this shame,” (Act IV, Scene I) implying to Juliet that since her honor is
at stake, he will help her with finding a solution through (a fake) death.
Considering his role as the adult in this situation, one would think that
he would advise Juliet to admit her “mistake” to marry Romeo. However,
since he too would be viewed as complicit in furthering the affair, his
decision is perhaps more about his desire to maintain his status in the
community than it is to assist Romeo and Juliet. His decision begs the
question of whether it is adults who always make the “best” decisions.
The latter argument is fortified by the role he plays in confirming Juliet’s
fake death and by chastising the Capulets for their sadness in her death.
Finally, his actions in the closing act confirm his apparent inability to take
responsibility for his own actions. Upon hearing others coming to visit
the tomb where Paris’s and Romeo’s dead bodies lay, he immediately runs
away and leaves a rather vulnerable Juliet alone:

I hear some noise.—Lady, come from that nest

Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep.
...
Come, I’ll dispose of thee
30 Mark A. Lewis
Among a sisterhood of holy nuns.
Stay not to question, for the watch is coming.
Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay.
(Act V, Scene III)

The Friar’s desire to run is reprehensible, but his desire to “dispose” of

Juliet in a nunnery is worse. In other words, rather than confessing his
own sins to all of Verona, he would rather hide evidence of his complicity.
Again, this reveals his mentorship and guidance to be false in terms of
helping them and is more about his attempt to manipulate the young lov-
ers to aid his ever-changing agenda. Moreover, as part of his connivance,
he describes death much differently to Juliet than he does when chastising
the Capulets over Juliet’s death for not being consoled that their daughter
had moved to “above the clouds, as high as heaven” (Act IV, Scene V).
The Friar, like the Nurse, throughout the play demonstrates his desire to
control youths’ thoughts and actions.

Punishing Misbehaving Adults

Where be these enemies?—Capulet, Montague,
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love,
And I, for winking at your discords too,
Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.
—Prince Escalus, Act V, Scene III

In contemporary young adult literature, it is common for adolescent char-

acters to get punished for their “poor” decisions, thoughts, and actions,
with the definition of “poor” stemming from the gaze of the adult char-
acters (Lewis & Durand, 2014; Trites, 2000). Therefore, it is refreshing
to read a story in which, as Prince Escalus indicates, the adults also get
punished for their poor decisions, thoughts, and actions. Indeed, Shake-
speare’s punishment is acute. Lady Capulet, upon seeing Juliet’s body,
laments that the sight seems like a bell reminding her that she, too, is
on the way to a “sepulcher.” Lady Montague never witnesses Romeo’s
death, as her grief in response to his banishment alone has “stopped her
breath.” Lord Montague also worries that Romeo’s death shows him his
own immortality, and Lord Capulet suffers utter shock at Juliet’s death.
The play concludes with Lords Capulet and Montague agreeing to end
their feud and join together as their children would have. Yet, Escalus
reminds them, and the reader, that their peace is “glooming” and that the
“sun for sorrow will not show his head” as a final punishment for all of
them. This aspect of adult punishment for their responsibility in Romeo
and Juliet does not seem to be highlighted enough in secondary English
language arts curriculum.
Another random document with
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 “Take the bottle and the brush,” replied Woods. “I believe you can
carry this thing along further than I can now. I seem to be at the end
of my rope.”
The Texan put the bottle and the brush in his pocket. Then he
carried Jimmy’s clothes and rifle back to the bedroom.
Making sure that the boy was resting easily, and once more
getting assurance from Uncle Billy that the patient would recover in
due time, the Texan mounted his horse and rode toward town, after
saying good-by to the district attorney.
Alma Caldwell watched him through one of the windows of the
ranch house. He had hardly spoken to her while he was at the ranch,
nor did he turn in the saddle for a backward glance at the place. She
saw his broad shoulders and wide gray hat, rise and fall in easy
undulations, as the Texan’s mount was urged into a gallop toward
Wild Horse.
 CHAPTER IX
SOME DEBTS ARE PAID.

The arrival of one additional horseman in the principal street of

Wild Horse was something to attract no attention whatever. Several
hundred riders had arrived at that headquarters of industry and
gossip, ahead of Milton Bertram. Most of them, it is to be said, were
interested in the gossip, rather than the prosaic affairs of the cattle
industry. The news of Jimmy Coyle’s shooting by the masked
horseman had spread fast and far, and men had ridden far and fast
to talk it over.
Only the Texan did not urge his horse at top speed, like the
others, as he entered the town. On the contrary he slackened the
animal’s steady pace a trifle. One might have thought that he had
come in from a distant camp for supplies, and that he would soon be
heading forth again, a slave of the vast region of silences which
binds its victims none the less strongly because they are willing in
servitude.
Perhaps something in the unusual keenness of the Texan’s glance
from one building to another would have told one of his intimate
friends that something out of the ordinary was on his mind. But to the
average beholder he was merely one more cowboy, riding into town,
a handsome fellow to be sure, long of limb, broad of shoulder, and
with a certain supple grace in the saddle that marks the born
horseman. His features, which ordinarily were expressive of the
lightest sentiment that crossed his mind, to-day seemed molded into
a hard mask of determination. His dark eyes, under level brows,
were calm enough, but it would take little, apparently, to light the fires
of anger in them.
Obviously the Texan was undecided just where to stop. He reined
his horse momentarily in front of the hotel and then drove on and
crossed the street to a saloon and gambling place, known as
Laroque’s.
 As he dismounted and tied his horse to a hitching rack that had
little vacant space, the Texan’s motions were deliberate. He made
sure that his horse was securely tied, something entirely
unnecessary, seeing that the well-trained animal would not have
stirred away if the reins had been left trailing. But, while he was
going through the mechanics of making secure his horse’s place at
the rack, the Texan’s mind had leaped ahead, and he was visualizing
Laroque’s place something as follows:
“Let’s see: Eddie Laroque himself will probably be tending bar.
That’s good, because Eddie is no rat, and he will stick when trouble
starts. There aren’t any doors into the room where the gambling
layouts are. The open doorway’s not more than one jump from the
end of the bar. The barroom itself is plenty wide. There’s elbow room
enough for an orchestra of fiddlers let alone a couple of gun fighters.
I guess Laroque’s is as good a place as any.”
With a good-by pat on the white-starred forehead of his horse the
Texan turned toward Laroque’s, mechanically adjusting the guns at
his hips, as he did so. Here again there would have been nothing to
arouse more than passing interest on the part of the ordinary
spectator, for every cowboy, who had entered Laroque’s, had made
that same readjustment of revolvers. It was a fighting man’s country,
and Laroque’s specialized in entertainment for men of that sort.
Eddie’s shutters had been taken down and used so often to carry out
men, who were either dead or desperately wounded, that it was said
that the hinges were being worn out. Laroque himself was supposed
to order his big mirrors by the half dozen, for every gun fight saw one
shattered.
There was a long line of men at Laroque’s bar, as the Texan
entered the saloon, and others were sitting in little groups at the
tables to the right. The Texan instinctively realized that Jimmy
Coyle’s shooting had caused something approaching a revolt in the
Swingley ranks. Hardened as the invaders were and accustomed to
the idea of killing, this shooting of a mere boy and leaving him for
dead was something that went against the grain.
Bertram had no sooner set foot in Laroque’s place than the group
at the first table called him over and inquired about Jimmy Coyle’s
condition. Bertram sat down, but in such a position that he could see
through the open doorway into the gambling establishment.
“Swingley and Hoog are here,”, said one of the cow-punchers,
“and they’re sure as restless as a couple of mountain lions. Likewise
they’ve both been taking on more liquor than common.”
“I know you don’t stand any too well with ’em, Milt, on account of
your quittin’ the command,” observed another puncher. “Onless you
are courtin’ argymint, I advise your seekin’ entertainment elsewhere.”
“I’m here, and I always did like the homelike atmosphere of Eddie
Laroque’s place,” responded Bertram quietly. “I reckon I’ll stay.”
As he spoke, the Texan saw Tom Hoog entering the open
doorway. Though he must have seen the Texan, who was in plain
view, Hoog made no sign, but walked to the bar.
With one foot on the rail, his elbow on the bar, the gunman let his
gaze travel slowly over Bertram, from head to foot. The others at the
table shoved back uneasily. Those who were in the direct line of fire
rose and stepped to one side. The Texan returned the gaze calmly
enough. The men who flanked Hoog at the bar, after a startled
glance around, edged away.
“Texas ain’t produced but few quitters,” said Hoog, in a loud voice,
though apparently he was not addressing anybody. “But, when it
does produce one, he’s all yellow.”
Bertram did not change his expression nor his attitude. Hoog’s
face reddened with sudden passion. As he stood at the bar, his long,
saturnine countenance writhing with hate, more men slipped quietly
out of the room, feeling that the storm could not be delayed many
seconds longer. The gunman stood with one arm resting on the bar,
though he had not touched the glass that had been shoved toward
him by the despairing Laroque, who had already counted another
mirror as good as smashed.
“Push along another glass, Eddie,” went on Hoog. “I’m goin’ to
have a drinkin’ companion. Come on over here, you big feller from
Texas. You never would drink with me before, but you’ve got to to-
day, because I’ve got a special toast fer you.”
Bertram rose slowly and walked over to the bar, beside Hoog, as
calmly as if he had been invited by his most intimate friend. The
bartender shoved the bottle of bootleg toward him, and the Texan
poured out a drink. The spectators noticed that his hand did not
tremble.
“Now pour me a good, stiff drink,” said Hoog, determined to goad
Bertram into an attempt to draw. “I’m tired to-day, and I need a waiter
to pour my liquor for me.”
To the amazement of the onlookers, who had surged quietly away
from; the bar to new positions out of the line of fire, Bertram did as
directed. He filled Hoog’s glass almost to the brim. Even the gunman
was surprised at the obedience to his insulting order. His left hand,
which had been half opened at his side, for Hoog was an
ambidextrous fighter, dropped away from the pistol butt that peered
from the worn leather scabbard at the gunman’s hip.
“Now let’s drink,” said Hoog, jubilant at having humiliated Bertram
before the crowd. “Drink to the State you’ve disgraced—Texas.”
Both men drank, Hoog raising his glass to his lips with his right
hand and tossing off the liquid. As they set down their glasses, Hoog
said: “If there’s any word that’ll make you fight, Bertram, tell me what
it is, and I’ll say it.”
But the Texan apparently did not hear. He had produced the little
bottle of gray powder which the district attorney had given him.
Evidently he had palmed the bottle before he had stepped to the bar,
as he made no move toward his pocket to get it. With the little brush,
which was inserted in the cork, he dusted some of the powder on the
outside of Hoog’s whisky glass.
The gunman, with every one else in the room, was watching with
undisguised interest, as the Texan inspected the glass.
“Goin’ to give us a little parlor magic?” asked Hoog.
Bertram set down Hoog’s whisky glass, carefully refraining from
touching it, where the gray powder showed on the outside.
“Hoog,” he said softly, “that was a long, long time ago when you
got bitten in the right thumb by a rattlesnake, wasn’t it?”
“How do you know I had a rattlesnake bite me?” asked the
gunman, disconcerted at the unexpectedness of the question.
The Texan’s eyes and face blazed into anger. His supple frame
tightened, and his voice came, quick, sharp and electrifying.
 “Because you leave the mark of it on everything you touch, you
prowling hound. You didn’t know it, but you might as well have
signed your name, every time you posted a notice, you masked
assassin. You left your thumb print, with the snake scar on it, on little
Jimmy Coyle’s chaps and rifle. You’ve left it on this whisky glass, and
it’s your confession and your death warrant, all rolled into one. Now,
if you want to fight, draw and we’ll see if I have disgraced Texas.”
Confronted thus suddenly and unexpectedly with evidence of his
guilt, Tom Hoog was a fraction of a second late in reaching for his
weapons. The young Texan had given the gunman a fair chance at
the draw, but Hoog, for the first time in his life, was not equal to the
emergency. Before his terrible guns were out of their holsters two
bullets had been sent from the weapon of the crouching Texan.
Hoog stood for a moment, a wound in either arm, just above the
elbow. His long, sinuous hands were powerless to grasp the
revolvers that had never failed before. Then he fell in a heap on the
floor.
The men, who had prepared to rush from the room at the first sign
of conflict, had not stirred. The fight had developed so unexpectedly,
after every one believed that all signs of trouble were over, that even
the most phlegmatic had been taken completely by surprise.
Leaping over Hoog’s prostrate form the Texan ran through the
open door. At the sound of the two shots the gamblers had ceased
all play. Asa Swingley, who had just started a game at the head of
the room, kicked over his chair and, drawing both guns, had started
toward the barroom. He saw Bertram in the doorway, his smoking
weapons in his hand.
Instinctively Swingley raised both revolvers, but, before he could
pull a trigger, Bertram had “creased” him twice, and the outlaw
leader staggered to a chair.
The Texan, firing from the hip, had disabled the second man even
more quickly than the first.
Sheathing one of his weapons, but carrying the other at a
threatening angle, Bertram turned back to the barroom. “Laroque,”
he said, “see that these two disabled outlaws are properly guarded
until the sheriff arrives.” Then, picking up Hoog’s whisky glass,
Bertram held it out to Laroque. “Here, Ed, take this whisky glass in
the palm of your hand. Careful, now, and don’t touch that powder on
the outside of the glass. That’s state evidence against this assassin,
Hoog, and his employer, Swingley. Put it away in your safe, and the
district attorney will be in here in a few minutes to get it. If you’ve
brushed so much as a speck of the dust off that glass, you’ll be run
out of town. Swingley’s reign is ended in this county. We’re going to
hand these assassins over to the court, and we’ll see that they get
what is coming to them. From now on law and order are going to rule
here.”
Paying no attention to the questions and congratulations that the
men showered upon him, the Texan made his way to the door. As he
untied his horse, he could hear the babel of voices, as the cow-
punchers, with their tongues loosened, began to crowd about
Swingley and Hoog.
 CHAPTER X
THE TEXAN HEARS FROM HOME.

Uncle Billy Coyle, after having, as he thought, catalogued every

living thing that ranged the hills and plains of Wyoming, had run
across an entirely new specimen. It was the human being in love that
bothered Uncle Billy.
“I’ve studied the effects of loco weed on cows and horses,”
observed Uncle Billy to Alma Caldwell, “but the vagaries of human
beings, who have been attacked by the love germ, are past all
scientific consideration. Now you admit that you’re in love with Milton
Bertram, and that ingenuous young Texan has confided in me that
he thinks more of your lightest word than the council of all the
encyclopedias I have in my library. Yet apparently something seems
to be holding you as far apart as it is possible for persons to get.”
“If you’re going to start on that subject again, Uncle Billy, I’m going
to leave you,” said Alma, flicking disconsolately at a fallen leaf with
her quirt. “I came over to tell you how well little Jimmy is getting
along, and how he took his first horseback ride to-day. I didn’t care to
hear about Bertram.”
“Well, you’ll have to hear considerable talk about him, wherever
you go,” observed the naturalist. “When a young fellow nails two
such gunmen as Tom Hoog and Asa Swingley, and practically ends
the reign of assassination and terror in this part of the State, he is
bound to figure in the general conversation.”
The girl did not reply, and Uncle Billy continued gently:
“If you’re thinking about your stepfather, girl, it’s time I told you
something. Nick Caldwell was a good man in many ways, but in
some other ways he let his greed run away with him. He took good
care of you, which I always held so strongly in his favor that I never
took him to task for some of the things he did which I knew was
wrong.”
Alma looked at the naturalist with startled eyes.
 “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, if it destroys any ideals you may
have had. It does you credit to think so well of Nicholas Caldwell,
and to pay him back so handsomely in loyalty and love for the
material advantages he gave you. But, after all, you may as well
know all sides of the man’s character. Nicholas was a leader among
the cattle rustlers, as has been charged. That much I know, but I also
know that his rustling operations were carried on merely as a blind to
hide larger operations in the interests of the cattle interests. He and
Swingley were in the inner circle which was dominating those great
interests, but they had a personal falling out. Swingley had vowed
that he would kill Nicholas at the first opportunity, on account of their
personal feud, which had developed suddenly, and which not even I
had suspected. When Swingley led his invaders into this county his
first thought was to kill Nicholas Caldwell. That was why he went to
such lengths to burn the cabin on the Lower Powderhorn.
“All this I found out when this young Texan was brought to my
place, wounded. In his clothing I found letters, which he had
evidently taken from the body of Nicholas, just before you and Jimmy
came upon him. I did not scruple to read those letters, because they
concerned my own kin. As soon as he recovered sufficiently to ask
for his clothes and to stir about a little, the young Texan burned the
letters, thinking no doubt that by so doing he would protect Nicholas
Caldwell’s name, and thereby save you from any heartache.”
“But the go-devil,” said Alma. “I was told that he was responsible
for making the machine that was really the cause of my stepfather’s
death.”
“I happen to know that he was not,” replied Uncle Billy. “It is true
that he made such a machine, or rather completed it, under
Swingley’s orders. But Archie Beam told me that the machine was
really the cause of Bertram’s desertion of Swingley’s invaders.
Rather than continue with an outfit that made war in such a way,
Bertram smashed the go-devil which he had just completed, and
then he started alone into the hills. Beam was present when the
machine was smashed, and he tried to dissuade the young Texan
from going to what seemed sure death. The go-devil was fixed up
later, when the invaders’ blacksmith arrived, but Bertram really
caused a great delay in the final attack on the cabin.
 “There is another matter which probably you do not know,” went
on the naturalist. “That is the fact that when he captured Swingley
and Hoog, this young Texan got the men who were actually
responsible for your stepfather’s death. Swingley’s guilt, of course
was apparent, but you did not know that, when the others in the
command were disposed to let Nicholas escape, as he was running
toward the foothills, it was Tom Hoog who was called upon to fire the
fatal shot. Swingley cursed the other cowboys for their purposely bad
marksmanship and commanded Hoog to get the fleeing man. Hoog
aimed deliberately, and it was that final shot which brought about
Nicholas Caldwell’s death.”
Alma Caldwell rose unsteadily. “Then I owe him everything,” she
said. “What a wrong I have done by taking so much for granted!”
“Well,” rejoined the naturalist, “he’s coming now, so you can tell
him, like a good girl.”
But it was the Texan who did the telling. “Alma,” he said, as the
girl came to meet him, and the naturalist discreetly retired to the
companionship of the stuffed specimens in the cabin, “Alma, I’m
going back to Texas. My uncle has written me that he wants to turn
over his ranches to me, as part owner and manager. I never felt
lonesome down there before, but I’m going to this time, unless you
go with me. Can you leave this country, as the wife of one of the
invaders?”
The girl’s eyes smiled into his, as she replied: “I always did like
Texas.”
Then, as his arms went about her, she added: “And Texans!”

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the January 7, 1922

issue of Western Story Magazine.
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