Critical Lens Expert

In the article, The Controversy Over Gender and Sexuality, the author, Nancy A. Walker argues that women are used as stereotypes in the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In addition, she asserts that these stereotypes oppress women in the text. In this article we get to see how women are seen in society and how all the women in the novel fall under the typical female stereotype in the nineteenth-century.

The stereotypes that Walker points out are that women are in the background of the text; they are not central characters. They usually are maids, crying in the background, or they are role models of what women should be in society. Specifically, they are portrayed as “honest, compassionate, and with a sense of duty”  (Walker 488). Walker concludes that women are looked at lower than men in the text because of their stereotypical portrayal. In the end, the text shows “society’s efforts to oppress” women (Twain 489). Women are also seen as “nagging moralists” (Walker 488).

The reader can see that Walker’s interpretation are true in Huckleberry Finn because women are seen less than what men are and they are treated unequally. Throughout the novel we see that their are not many female characters, and when we do come across a female character they only have a small part. We are also not able to see a woman's perspective in the novel. Whenever a female character is being described we just get to see the way that a male character is describing her. We do not get to see a females point of view or desires because we are usually seeing this through a males point of view. They are also seen as the “virgin” in the text meaning that they are pure honest women. They also fit the “good” character which means that they are dependent, caring, selfness, and good role models. I do think that what the author Nancy argues is correct because all the female characters in the novel fall under that women typical stereotype, they are all considered “good” women, and they want to go to the “good”.