So why did I connect so heartily with The Adventures to Tom Sawyer, a book that is, in part, a love letter specifically to boyhood? A book whose main girl character, Becky Thatcher, is a prettily-dressed, well-mannered (minus a few fits of pride and jealousy) symbol toTom of all things good and pure? I connected because I was a girl who clung fiercely to my childhood even as I learned what it meant to grow up, which happens to be a key theme of Twain’s book.Įven at a young age, even before I decided to give writing a shot, Mark Twain had begun to influence my views on storytelling.
All I knew was that in those characters, I found friends. As a kid, I realized that the female characters were marked by not fitting into the gender roles of their time period, but I didn’t truly process that their tendencies and strengths were being labeled as “boyish.” And I certainly didn’t contemplate what that might imply about my own generation’s view of me, a girl who loved climbing trees and wore scabs like badges of honor.
When I was a girl, I loved reading about characters who didn’t shy away from adventures and who sometimes got in trouble: “Soup,” “The Great Brain,” and Tom Sawyer, as well as Caddie Woodlawn, Katie John, Anne Shirley, and Jo March.
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