Friday, January 13, 2006

I went on a field trip this morning with my kids and their classrooms to see a production of Charlotte's Web at the Keller Auditorium. It was a very nice production of a beautiful story of friendship.

I was wondering though as I was sitting there watching, WHY - when Charlotte is the one doing the amazing things (i.e. writing "some pig" "radiant" and "humble" in her web) is everyone proclaiming that Wilbur (who honestly, does nothing remarkable and is, in actuality, a bit of a simpleton) is such an amazing animal. This story really makes no sense.

If I was to put my hard core feminist hat on, I could probably draw some correlations between the story and the fact that many times it is women who are doing the "real" work while men getting the credit for that work.

There's something there, I think.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well - I wasn't sure if EB White was a pre-movement feminist or not so I went to Harper Collins website (publisher of his childrens books) and found this interview of him discussing the writing of "Charlotte's Web"

"As for Charlotte's Web, I like animals and my barn is a very pleasant place to be, at all hours. One day when I was on my way to feed the pig, I began feeling sorry for the pig because, like most pigs, he was doomed to die. This made me sad. So I started thinking of ways to save a pig's life. I had been watching a big grey spider at her work and was impressed by how clever she was at weaving. Gradually I worked the spider into the story that you know, a story of friendship and salvation on a farm. Three years after I started writing it, it was published. (I am not a fast worker, as you can see.)"

So as you can see - the story was most likely not conceived as feminist allegory.

3:27 PM
Mikki said...

Obviously, you don't get it. I didn't think it was.

I do appreciate the thoughtful research though.

6:27 PM

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