행상인, 돌팔이, 무법자의 문학적 재현과 교육적 함의: 『구덩이』에 나타난 19세기 미국의 인종, 젠더, 계급

Peddler, Empiric, and Outlaw Character Representations and Their Educational Implications: Highlighting Race, Gender, and Class Issues of the Nineteenth-Century America in Louis Sachar’s Holes

This study examines how the literary representations of peddler, empiric, and outlaw stereotypes in Louis Sachar’s Holes highlight race, gender, and class issues of nineteenth-century American society. Historically, peddlers’ popular images were shaken between swindlers and hard-working salesmen throughout the nineteenth-century America; the institutionalization of medical training after mid-nineteenth century turned folk medicine practitioners into unbelievable empirics (or quacks); the myth of famous outlaws in the Far West led to the popularization of masculine ideal. In the Sam and Kate episode, the stereotypical images regarding peddler, empiric, and outlaw are appropriated to the externalization of latent race, gender, and class issues. And such transformations of peddler, empiric, and outlaw stereotypes are in line with the socioeconomic changes in nineteenth-century American society. In addition, the Sam and Kate episode’s historicizing manner reveals the intricate inter-relational ties between, race, gender, and class issues across the different time-space episodes in the entire novel.