In the Swedish school one of the tasks is to work against gender stereotypes and towardsequality between the sexes. The purpose with this essay is to present ways of looking atliterature that teachers can either implement in their classroom or use to better preparethemselves, ways for both teachers and their pupils to gain a critical view towards literaturethat can strengthen the work towards such equality. The tools used in the essays are 1) readingprevious scholars’ analysis of the text, 2) the Bechdel-Wallace-Test, and 3) the Gender Stairs.My example text will be Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight from 2007. The results shows that thebook clearly presents stereotypes of males and females, since the male characters in the bookare strong, protective, and active, while the female characters are beautiful, dependent, andpassive. The novel also defends, preserves, and amplifies patriarchal structures. This analysisplaces Twilight as a minus three in Edwertz and Lundström’s Gender Stairs. The novel is thusa good book for teachers to use if they want their students to see a classical example of howgender myths are presented in literature. Showing a classical example of stereotypes inliterature may in turn help the students detect stereotypes, which is one step towards equalitybetween men and women, which is one of the tasks of the Swedish schools.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-31655 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Odot-Andersson, Björn |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och interkultur |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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