Stereotypes and Identity Reflected in Literature

At Issue

Literature reflects the preconceptions, perceptions, and misperceptions of its time, its authors, and its readers. The inextricable relationship between literature and culture reflects the continual clash of ideas, assumptions, values, and worldviews inherent in human society. Fiction, drama, poetry, and exposition mirror and create the stereotypes that individuals, groups, and entire societies hold. Much has been written and debated on different groups’ portrayals in literary works; full-length critical works are devoted to the stereotypes of many different groups. Readers, critics, school boards, and others have challenged the value of particular works of literature accused of stereotypical portrayals. The word “stereotype” itself has different connotations, from simply denoting a type to castigating certain groups. The whole range of possible interpretations can be found in American works.

Background

Characters are sometimes referred to as “static” and “dynamic” or “flat” and “round.” Static or flat characters change little or not at all over the course of a work. Dynamic or round characters change in response to the actions or circumstances. Authors often purposefully employ static characters; to say that a work of literature includes such characters is not to condemn it. However, when such types become merely caricatures, those with a single trait so exclusive that they no longer resemble believable human beings, or when characters conform to an inaccurate stereotype, then such a portrayal negatively affects the value of the work. Authors sometimes employ character types, or stock characters, sometimes atypical ones, and sometimes combine the two—even in the same characters, thus portraying both the universal and the particular.

In literature, readers find two impulses realized in characters: the desire to typify and the desire to individualize. On one hand, authors create characters that the reader, or audience, recognizes from life. These characters represent some personality trait, or habit, or way of thinking that draws a spark of recognition from those observing. In this way, authors attempt to typify, to create characters who parallel a common, or at least recognizable, part of the human condition. On the other hand, authors also attempt to create individualized characters, ones who transcend a simple classification. Human beings do not always behave consistently; they often defy expectations. Therefore, atypical characters can correspond equally well to the human condition.

From literature’s earliest incarnations, authors have employed types of characters in their works. These conventional, or stock, characters appear in Greek and Roman plays, morality and other religious plays, the works of William Shakespeare, and in contemporary fiction, drama, and film. Comedies include such stock characters as the braggart, a character immediately identified by the audience, which then knows what to expect. Greek dramas employed masks for the characters, which identified their primary emotions, thus typing them for the audience. Morality plays include characters named Vice, Good Deeds, and Everyman, denoting a trait among humans, not a particular human being. Melodramas depict battles of good and evil, with such characters as the greedy banker and the virtuous maiden. Some kinds of drama revolve entirely around such types: The comedy of humors follows the belief that the body’s fluids control moods—balanced fluids produced balanced personalities, unbalanced fluids produced unbalanced ones, with stock characters determined by which humor holds sway. While not always so blatant as the genre of humors, all genres have their recognizable types, from the messenger of early drama to the screaming victim of horror films. Other works combine stock characters with well-individualized ones. In Shakespeare’s plays, the fool shares the stage with some of literature’s most memorable, and unconventional, characters. Writers can also begin with a type and transcend it. Shakespeare took the conventional melancholy young man and turned him into Hamlet; J. D. Salinger turned him into Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Harper Lee took the conventions of gossipy neighbors, curious kids, and mysterious neighbors and turned them into Scout, Jem, Dill, Miss Maudie, and Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). No one finds controversy in such uses of stereotype.

However, when authors present caricatures based on assumptions of how different ethnic groups, genders, nationalities, or other groups of people think, behave, or believe, the word stereotype takes on a negative meaning. These portrayals do not represent a universal human trait or type, but how a particular group of people is misperceived.

Examples

Since literary works reflect their times and authors’ views, as times change, the reception of the literature often changes with them. A clear example is Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Huck’s view of Jim, a black man, mirrors the close-minded, superstitious, and hypocritical people whom Twain satirizes in that novel. Subsequent attempts at censorship of Twain’s novels—in schools, curricula, and libraries—stem from objections to the racist language and thought expressed in the novel. Similar challenges of other books stem from objections to sexism, racism, and ethnocentrism. The enduring quality of literary work provides a forum for ongoing reevaluation of cultural views and accepted assumptions. Challenges to current works of literature show that culture is often divided on these issues.

Literary works also create enduring images which, in turn, become synonymous with a type. The expression “poor as the Joads” comes from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and its portrayal of the Depression-era Oklahoma family traveling across the country in search of work. The pejorative expression “Uncle Tom” has its origin in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and its portrayal of the long-suffering, Christian main character. The name “Injun Joe” conjures up a stereotypical image of Native Americans; it comes from Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). The name “Gatsby” conjures up the image of a rags-to-riches, isolated, romantic character from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). The name “Snopes” has become synonymous with the grasping, amoral social climber from William Faulkner’s works. These names, familiar to people who have not read the works as well as to those who have, both derive from and continue society’s views of types of people.

In American literature, stereotypes prove as diverse as the country itself. Willa Cather’s immigrants, James Fenimore Cooper’s Native Americans, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s New Englanders, Bret Harte’s Westerners, William Faulkner’s Southerners, Ernest Hemingway’s expatriates all derive from and create categories, or types, of Americans. Many critical works explore the portrayals of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Catholic Americans, and so on. Gender stereotypes—the expectations and assumptions of gender behavior—receive scrutiny also, as do issues of sexual orientation. Critics have examined genres, time periods, and authors for their depiction of certain groups.

The impulses to typify and to individualize confront individual characters and readers as well as authors. All categories raise issues of identity and identification: how people see themselves and how others see them. Self-identity and identification create different crises for the characters, the first coming from within and the second coming from without. Huck Finn identifies with the white Southerners around him, Nick Carraway (in The Great Gatsby) with the rich around him. Huck faces a crisis of identity when he goes against his society’s dictates. He has gone along with the stereotype for slaves that his society presents him; when dealing with Jim, however, the stereotype proves false, and Huck must decide between his allegiance to his society or his allegiance to Jim, leading to his powerful decision to “go to Hell” rather than betray Jim. Nick Carraway begins the novel by appreciating the “consoling proximity of millionaires.” Although he is not one of them, he identifies with them to a certain extent and eagerly anticipates his opportunity to interact with them. By the end of the novel, when Tom and Daisy have proven themselves anything but consoling, Nick goes back home to escape such careless people as Tom and Daisy, who smash up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money, letting other people clean up the mess. In these two examples, reality differs from the stereotype, creating conflict for the characters who initially accept the stereotypes.

Other characters struggle with their identification by others: Bigger Thomas, in Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), confronts the white world that stereotypes him—an African American man—as savage, heartless, and intellectually inferior. This identification influences his thoughts, his fears, and his actions. Bigger cannot simply ignore the prevailing societal stereotype, regardless of how inaccurate it may be. Hester Prynne, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), confronts the Puritan society that views her solely as a sinner, sentencing her to wear a visual reminder of her sin for all to identify. Hester must carve out her own existence within the isolation and condemnation forced on her. Celie, in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982), confronts the male world, which views her as property and nothing more. She must struggle against a society that allows her no freedom—physically, intellectually, or emotionally. In these works, readers see the great toll that stereotypes take on those who are stereotyped.

In the above examples, readers get the point of view of the characters who must endure others’ misperceptions. The authors are consciously confronting the effects of these identifications. Examples abound of authors using similar stereotypes with no attention paid to their accuracy or their effects. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a stereotype of Native Americans is put forth with no challenge. Injun Joe, the villain of the novel, is greedy, heartless, and decidedly evil. The narration attributes this personality to his ethnicity. The narrator reports, and Injun Joe reports, that his evil blood makes him do evil things. In this novel, Twain accepts a stereotype without challenge, attributing Joe’s evil to biological causes. This portrayal is quite different from a type representing the human condition; in a negative stereotype, assumptions about a particular group create an insupportable cause-and-effect relationship. The assumptions made about Joe open doors into the human experience, both Twain’s and the readers’, and lead to examination of stereotypes. The portrayal of Injun Joe shuts that door.

Implications

Literature continues and creates stereotyped views of others. Literature provides a complex, implicit interweaving of types and stereotypes. Readers must distinguish between typifying that makes comparison to universal human experience and stereotyping that identifies others based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and all the other classifications that culture recognizes. To resist typifying leaves literary characters who bear little resemblance to human beings. However, to anticipate behavior, values, and attitudes based solely on identification with a particular group misrepresents human experience.

To condemn stereotypes in literature ignores the larger societal context in which they occur. Symbols exist in literature because they exist in the mind; human beings create symbols as representatives of things important to them: A flag stands for a country, for example. Likewise, stereotypes exist in literature because they inevitably exist in human understanding. Writing off Twain’s message in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of racist language ignores the antiracist theme of the novel, just as writing off complaints about the novel ignores the stereotypes in it. Approaching the novel as fertile ground for thought, discussion, and reexamination of cultural assumptions, strengths, and weaknesses brings the issues and attitudes of society out of the pages and back into the culture from which they came.

Bibliography

Graff, Gerald, and James Phelan, eds. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Case Study in Critical Controversy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. The text of the novel, along with selected critical essays on the controversies about the novel.

Hart, James D. The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. A reference work, with entries on authors, titles, literary terms, literary history, etc.

Holman, C. Hugh, and William Harmon. Handbook to Literature. 5th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1986. An introduction to literary terms and concepts.

Scholes, Robert, et al., eds. Elements of Literature: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. An introduction to literature, with discussions of history, genres, and structure.