Charlotte’s Web: Reproduction and Subversion of American 1950s Gender Ideology

Charlotte’s Web: Reproduction and Subversion of American 1950s Gender Ideology

This essay analyses ambivalent perspectives on E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. The book shows how one human girl character and an anthropomorphised animal character conform to heteronormative behavioural expectations of women, particularly in Charlotte’s taking care of a male piglet who is about to be culled. Such a literary representation closely corresponded to the gender ideology of the United States for middle-class white women in the 1950s. White seems to prepare the little girl Fern to live up to the 1950s’ standards of becoming a caring mother. Spider Charlotte seemingly has the same function within the narrative, showing girl readers what Fern’s life is likely to develop into. At the same time, however, the narrative presents an alternative subversive message with its liminal characters. On a deeper level and with a focus on morality according to ethics-of-care theories, we cannot but notice how minor characters are deployed to oppose the restricting societal norms and values in terms of gender and social class. The insight and success of those deviant characters tell a different tale of exclusion and how to empower oneself. With the main character Charlotte who faithfully follows the societal expectation and the few minor animal characters who open up the subversive potentials, White succeeds in epitomizing the marginalised in society as well as the mainstream ideal of America through the successful portrayal of fantasy-reality mixture. By focusing the dialectic aspects of the novel, I will try to explain the ways in which White has encouraged the child reader to look beyond the obvious and create a space for oneself in a heteronormative world.