ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE: A GENDER READING

Gender criticism is an approach to literary analysis that builds on the earlier work of feminist critics and draws on later work by gay and lesbian critics and by scholars in the newly developing field of men’s studies. The basic assumption of gender studies is that while some aspects of maleness and femaleness may be biologically determined, social gender roles—masculinity and femininity—are learned and reflect specific cultural beliefs and specific social or historical contexts (Bressler 270).

Bringing the ideas of gender analysis to Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine complicates any idea that this novel describes a universal theme of initiation or maturation and leads the reader to question how the novel presents the issues of what it means to be a preadolescent boy in a Mid-western town in the 1920s.

The family in Dandelion Wine is an extended family: several generations live, if not in the same house, close to each other. Doug, his brother Tom, and his father and mother live together, but close by is the boarding house where Doug’s great-grandmother, grandmother, and grandfather live with various boarders. Other family members apparently live close by.

From the start, the novel makes clear that its central journey is one toward masculine maturity: Doug and Tom go with their father into the woods. This male journey into the woods, or wilderness, is a traditional theme in American literature. The woods, or the wilderness, around “civilization” are a domain inhabited by wild or untamed animals. The Ravine in the novel is another kind of wilderness, a more threatening place that only the “older boys” go to. Doug’s mother is not a part of this journey, nor is she described as knowing what results. Later, Doug and his male friends Charlie and John run through the Ravine, while Tom stays at home with their mother. The mother and the young boy go to the Ravine when she worries about her son, but Tom’s perception of the danger in the Ravine is removed when Doug returns. Neither mothers and girls, nor younger boys go into the Ravine. Women who go into the Ravine are menaced by a monster-killer called the Lonely One; one woman is killed, and her body is found in the Ravine.

The family and social structures of Green Town reflect the traditional model of sharply defined gender roles. Chores are designated as either for women or for men: women, like Doug’s grandmother, do the cooking, while the grandfather, helped by the boys, makes dandelion wine. The sexes often separate for social gatherings: men smoke cigars, while ladies go to the movies together. The wives and mothers tend to stay at home, but all family members mingle on the porches in the evenings.

Women characters are always identified by their martial status. While there are a few bachelor characters, they are not identified as such, just called by their names. The children, with the exception of Tom, a younger boy, tend to play in groups segregated by sex.

Women who step out of traditional roles may suffer negative consequences. When Miss Fern and Miss Roberta run over Mr. Quartermain in their electric car, they retreat quickly to the attic of their house, but Doug saves them from public humiliation. Women like Miss Lavinia Nebbs or Miss Elizabeth Ramsell (the woman whose body Lavinia finds in the Ravine), who insist on going outside despite rumors of the Lonely One, risk death.

In terms of narrative time and the importance of the male characters, the novel focuses on the masculine world. That focus is shown most strongly in the portrayal of the Lonely One. When Tom and his mother go to the Ravine to search for Doug, she mentions that the Lonely One is around and that nobody is safe (41), although the Lonely One apparently kills only women. Lavinia Nebbs rejects the idea that the threat of the Lonely One should stop her from attending the movies, but she soon finds the body of his latest victim and is menaced herself. She kills an intruder in her house, but the boys’ reaction to her act is disappointment. In one of the few times Tom joins Doug and Charlie, the three boys mourn the disappearance of the Lonely One, whose absence will turn their town into “vanilla junket” (178). Only when Tom convinces them that the man killed is just a tramp, on the grounds that the real Lonely One wouldn’t look like a normal man, do the boys return to their gleeful excitement over a serial killer menacing their town.

In a novel so concerned with the idea of death and its effect on human beings, a serial killer is thought of and enjoyed like a scary but thrilling movie. While the boys say they don’t really wish Lavinia Nebbs had died in her house, the deaths of the women the Lonely One killed do not seem to be as real as the other deaths in the book, although Doug is affected by his near exposure to the Lonely One (he was in the Ravine at about the same time Elizabeth Ramsell was killed). In the terms of a gender reading, Dandelion Wine does an excellent job of showing the initiation and maturation of a man in a traditional patriarchal culture, but its theme is not universally applicable to everyone, especially to women.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962):

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