To Kill A Mockingbird; Passage to India; Atonement

[YeahCorvid]

More then first two than the third, but:

does anyone but me think it is problematic that two novels treated as canon and often taught to teenagers have false rape accusations at their centre? And set up their being discredited as central to racial justice?

It's not the books per se that I'm taking issue with, but their centrality in how we teach literature and, by extension, culture.

It's part of how white men see racism as a real problem, and sexism as a silly made up one. (not that no one is racist, or that perceiving and critiquing racism in art and culure has made it go away. It;s just that it's something that white men feel good about being woke about racism but not sexism)

percypig thanks for that. That's interesting; it must have been an edict just for england? Weird.
This from DFE:
^at least one play by Shakespeare
 at least one 19th century novel 2
 a selection3 of poetry since 1789, including representative Romantic poetry
 fiction or drama from the British Isles from 1914 onwards^

I'm an English Lit lecturer. I loath TKAM not for its content, more for its unreliable narrative - it's a shit book touted as 'my favourite novel' by those that don't read.
*two penneth added

Make of that as you wish, sisters

My heart bleeds for the lack of exciting, contemporary literature on the curriculum. It's a crying shame and demonstrates a gross lack of creative nurturing. It's downright lazy to keep peddling the same, rusty old tales to young people when there's a whole world of imaginative dynamite out there. Teachers! Go rogue! Throw in some Bukowski, and Annie Prouxl's "55 Miles To The Gas Pump". And watch the class go wild...

@Sicario exactly x

"My main bugbear is being raped being used as a lazy backstory so the writers don’t have to spend too much time on developing rounded female action or justice characters. Like women would just be the usual wives and mothers blah characters unless they’ve been raped."

This is spot on.

The only book I've read (that I can remember) where rape is used as a genuinely interesting narrative device and not the lazy use that Golden and other describe is Apple Tree Yard (where the main character cannot report a rape because she is embroiled in an affair at the time, which would come out during the police investigation)

I came on to say The Color Purple, which I might try and re-read with fresh eyes - after doing it for A level I was sick of it but I think I would probably get more out of straight read of it now. I do remember feeling very sorry for Mayella in TKAMB. Could do with re-reading that too probably!

I want someone to do a Wide Sargasso Sea on TKAMB and re-write it from the point of view of Mayella.

In Atonement Lola falsely accused Robbie of rape, but she was raped, just not by him.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a rare example of showing the impact of rape on a woman's life.

In films the only male rape I can think of is in Pulp Fiction.

I deliberately didn't include The Kite Runner as the rape victims were preadolescent boys. (Same for Oranges and Sunshine? I haven't seen it). The victims in Sleepers were quite young too. It's quite unusual for adult men to be rape victims in books and on film, especially if they are the hero or Everyman protagonist the viewer imagines himself as. The Shawshank Redemption is a good exception.

Fair point, powershower - I did wonder about that myself. (Yes, the victims in Oranges and Sunshine are children. It's worth a watch. David Wenham and Hugo Weaving are excellent as the adult survivors, both reacting in very different ways to what was done to them.)

I wonder if part of it is sheer terror at the thought of contemplating it. I read a report recently suggesting that male-on-male rape as a war tactic was probably much more common that often realised (figures coming out of some of the conflicts in central Africa, I think), because the stigma was so huge men wouldn't talk about it at all after the event.

The everyman protagonist point is an interesting one. IIRC, in the film, the rape isn't seen through the eyes of the hero (we see the run-up to it from his perspective), it's reported after the fact by Morgan Freeman's narration, so there's a distance, both of time, and of point of view, that isn't there typically for female rape scenes.

I'd forgotten about Pulp Fiction. The raped character is a tough guy but also a bad guy, or at least an opponent of the tough Everyman good guy (Bruce Willis' character). Tarantino liked being edgy but he was not edgy enough for the man who had played John McClane and was playing a similar hero character to actually be the rape victim in the film, only threatened with it and able to fight his way out and save the day before they finish raping the other guy and start on him. Because the male viewer identifies with Bruce Willis' character and it would never do to interrupt their happy fantasy with the thought of what it would actually be like to be raped.

I'm not sure if this is a fair analysis of A Passage to India. If I recall rightly, Adela accuses Aziz of sexual assault (lunging at her, rather than rape) out of confusion and emotional turmoil rather than a deliberate attempt to deceive.

Forster's writing and psychological analysis is much more complex, nuanced and opaque than Harper Lee's and the whole book is about how sexism and colonialism wreck human relationships.

Whereas it's fine for a female protagonist to be raped because
a) films are for male audiences really...who cares what a female viewer imagines or identifies with
b) all women have rape fantasies anyway, right?
c) for women rape is just a bit of unwanted sex and sex is what women are for, right?

Yup, sadly that is exactly how a lot of male writers and directors think about it.

You can tell they feel that way because when you push them, sooner or later they will admit that they believe male rape is worse because... homophobia. (That somehow it's the violation of their, i.e. male, heterosexuality that is the big deal, not the violation of someone's personal integrity regardless of sexuality. Or, as you put it more succinctly they think "sex is what women are for, right?")

This has made me realise that my English lit O and A level books were all Dickens, Hardy, Brintes, Austen and the like - nothing vaguely touching the 20th century and they really turned me off reading ‘literature’.
Not sure that you’ve encourAged me to delve back in! And hadn’t thought about ds reading this sort of stuff now he is at senior school.

Hmm. Will have to think...!

I loved TKAMB and PTI but interesting points raised though both women involved in the false allegations weren’t being vindictive but were “addled” and vulnerable.

Another in the mix of women/gitls msking false accusations (though not rape) is The Crucible - which i love.

@mssilversprings I have never thought of Scout as an unreliable narrator, but I see how she might be.

Did anyone ever watch a series called Treme? One of the characters, La Donna, was brilliant, a strong woman who took no shit. Guess what happened to her? I couldn't watch it after that.

Fermats: "I want someone to do a Wide Sargasso Sea on TKAMB and re-write it from the point of view of Mayella."

That's a brilliant idea!

I’ve not seen Treme but I tried to watch The Americans (main female character raped in episode one, another character raped in episode two) so that went. Loved Dietland until main female character was raped and the whole tone of the show completely changed, so won’t be watching anymore of that and that’s a female show aimed at a female audience ffs. Game of Thrones massively improved when they could ditch the source material and the female characters and extras stopped getting raped (idgaf if it’s historically accurate when it’s a show with dragons and zombies). Jessica Jones was ok because it didn’t just portray the main character as becoming a bad ass because she was raped and it showed the emotional aftermath from her perspective, so it can be done if it’s done carefully.

I like watching popular dramas as they’re engaging enough to not need a huge amount of attention but not massively insulting to my intelligence. The huge amount that have storylines that hinge on women being raped or raped and murdered and children being abducted and murdered is just ridiculous.

Also it seems a bit much if the popular gcse book choices have rape/ false rape accusations in them - out of all the novels that have been written throughout history why pick several with similar themes?

To Kill a Mockingbird is about a real case in which a white woman falsely accused black men of rape. It resulted in a terrible miscarriage of justice. It was a common accusation against black men in the Jim Crow era.

The Scottsboro Boys Case.
maahc.si.edu/blog/scottsboro-boys

In 1906 was the Ed Johnson case. In which a black man accused of molesting a white woman was lynched and hanged by white thugs, also bears similarities to the Tom Robinson case, The crowd of white thugs gather outside the jail as Atticus discreetly guards him. Scout reveals the cowardice and utter idiocy at the heart of racism by her friendly encounter with Mr Cunningham, one of the would be racist thugs.

www.innocenceproject.org/african-american-wrongful-convictions-throughout-history/