Chapter XLIV: Huck and Jim Move on, Women in Tow

For those interested: An essay I wrote defending feminist readings & criticizing 19th century gender ideologies in Twain's novel and Chopin's short story. From the perspective of Huck and Jim having a debate.

Chapter XLIV: Huck and Jim Move on, Women in Tow   

     A small raft, piloted by a lively young boy in torn denim and the large man standing over him, tumultuously rolls over waves created in a sudden storm. C’mon Jim, says the boy to the man, pointing to a houseboat they see at the side of the river. They find the houseboat empty and Jim asks the boy where the lady of the house might be.
      “Jim, ain’t you read the story wrote about us? And ain’t you paying attention to this ‘Storm’?” says the boy.
      Jim responds: “Why no, what of it and what’s this storm got to do with where the women are? Storm like this and they ought to be more home than when the sun’s a-shining.”    
      “There’s no sense in that, Jim. Listen, Mr. Mark Twain wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn mainly about men and boyhood, but he don’t withhold giving attention to the absurdity of ‘female roles.’ And I wasn’t talking about this storm, but “The Storm,” a short story by Kate Chopin. Even in the male-driven novel by Twain, female agency shows through Judith Loftus and Miss Watson and, in Chopin’s “The Storm,” an arguably more feminist story, 19th century ideologies rear their heads even though Calixta shows more female agency outright. It’s like floating down a wide river so as no one can see you in the dark versus trying to be hidden in a narrow channel with other boaters.”
      “Well, shucks, Huck, you’re sure sounding ‘sivilized.’ That’s mighty difficult things you’re saying.”
      “You bet they are,” grins Huck, beginning rapidly until Jim tells him to, “explain ‘em slow-like.”

      “In Huck Finn, Judith Loftus, a female playing a male game, uses her logic, meta-awareness and self-determination to elevate herself above gender ideologies. I thought I had her right fooled in my girl get-up, but Mrs. Loftus set up her own tricks and called me out saying, “Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the needle; and I contrived the other things just to make certain” (168). Unlike Tom’s Aunt Sally, who is wholly fooled by similar deceptions, Loftus uses reason, a characteristic associated with men, to see through my girlish clothes. She is, in fact, the only female character to take part in some form of fraud, and without repercussions. The Grangersons and Sheperdsons both had corpses at the end of their lies and the Duke and the King were tar’d and feather’d! Even I got stricken with guilt after my ploys with you, Jim. But Mrs. Loftus got away with it, showing her subversion of the binary that males are, by nature, logical and women emotional.
      “Why, Judith Loftus even acknowledges gender dichotomies when she tells me the ‘proper’ way to act as a lady. After being caught, she teaches me to not, “hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it…And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tip-toe, and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff…like a girl…” (168). Her meta-understanding (‘How do you meet an understanding?’ Jim inquired.) of the absurdities of gender roles, seen in how she addressed the various ‘correct’ and ‘lady-like’ ways of performing tasks, shows her complexity amongst other flat characters in the novel. Before she outed me as a boy, she threw her own stone at a rat and, “said ‘Ouch!’ it hurt her arm so” (166). Of course, she was only putting on face, an example of Mrs. Loftus’ awareness and long-lasting fraud: acting like a woman should in the presence of men. It occurs to me now that she was also dominate over her husband. She told me, about my secret, that she’ll, “keep it; and what’s more, I’ll help you. So’ll my old man, if you want him to” (167). What an implication! That she or I, at the time dressed as a woman, could make a man do something on our behalf.”
      “Huck, I reckon she was the logical female that also figured where we was, on Jackson’s Island (165), but if she was so self-determined and showing ‘female agency,’ how come there’s no fuss at her being forced to pretend and be confined to the house?”
      “I was getting there, Jim, hold your horses. The other ladies in the novel juxtaposed with Mrs. Loftus are the complaint. Aunt Sally, when Tom and I got rats in the house and she caught sight of them, “she was standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her” (292-93). Put them rats next to Loftus’ rats and there’s the frustration of an able-bodied woman being helpless. Let me get to Miss Watson to explain. Watson, at the beginning of the novel, is the very embodiment of 19th century gender ideologies. This is reflected in how she tried, and failed, to teach me to be proper and teach me about heaven, “…the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever” (132). Clearly a product of the ideologies embedded in her, her views about religion are the same as hers in position to men. Watson never puts up a fight, and even the judge gives custody of me to my father before her and the widow. But it’s mostly her role as a teacher of ‘civility’ and as a follower that shows her subscription to the engrained beliefs.
      “Now, Jim, follow me closely on this: If Miss Watson and the other abundance of female characters are all flat in that novel, with the exception of Judith Loftus, what of Miss Watsons’ final action? When you was about to get shipped off back to slavery, we learned that “Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will” (307). A flat, female character gained depth in that moment, and, more importantly, illustrated her own power to act according to her own will (a clever play on the word “will“). Her final action, associated with Jim being in constraints, like herself, shows a symbolic death of the docility and passivity of the female. Showing her ability to cause a drastic change, be an active role, to the story reconciles the inability of Judith Loftus as a functioning character and the novel’s sense of female agency. Meaning, Miss Watson’s “will” speaks of a freeing of gender constraints on behalf of all the women in the novel because it is done without the overseeing of men.”

      “It warms my heart to hear the freeing of chains, Huck. That Mr. Mark Twain should’a spoken more clearly though. He rambles a bit, makes it unnecessarily hidden and confusin’.”
      “That’s where Chopin’s “The Storm” comes into play. After the crashes of lightning and the subsequent flashes of passion between Alcée and Calixta, Calixta looks up at the soon-to-be lover and “the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire” (559). If “female agency” is the power of self-determined action, than desire is a clear signifier of that agency because desire exists solely within oneself, within Calixta. And, more importantly, it is her physical manifestation of this desire in having sex with Alcée that shows action over thoughts. What’s more, when her husband and son return after the storm passes, after the affair ends, she and her family “relax and enjoy themselves…[and] at the table they laughed much and so loud that one might have heard them as far away as Laballière’s” (561). She laughs to show her family that nothing is wrong. She laughs to show herself that nothing is wrong. She even laughs to show Alcée that their act is not something weighing on her mind. Her laughter is a sign that she feels no remorse, no regret, over such a taboo act. If that ain’t heard loud and clear enough, Jim, I don’t know what else would be.”
      “Huck, I recall them stories now, about us and about Calixta. I hope you don’t mind me killing two crippled birds with one gender ideological stone. And apologies for being so adult-like with it, but there ain’t no two ways about saying it. Mark Twain and Kate Chopin couldn’t never escape the ideologies of women as sexual objects and as sexually submissive. The advice Judith Loftus told you when want to act like a girl shows this: “…don’t hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it” (167). The needle, with an oval opening, is a yonic symbol and the thread is obviously a phallic one. She advised that the proper way for a woman to “thread a needle,” or have sex, is to not use the needle as the object (and I do emphasize on the word ‘object’) of action, but the thread that pokes at the stationary needle. It is not the needle’s position to be dominant over the thread, the female over the male.
      “And that poor Calixta. Why, her having sex with Alcée might have shown her female agency, but it’s how she did it that contradicts itself. Kate Chopin, in the text, only describes the physical attributes of Calixta as M’sieur Alcée sees them: her “blue eyes still retained their melting quality,” her “warm and steaming” face, her “lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seed,” her “full, firm bosom,” her “creamy lily” skin and her breasts that “gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips” (559-60). Calixta is portrayed as the object of the male gaze and, even partaking in the sexual act, does not get out from or subvert that gaze. Like her breasts “giving up,” she also falls back into Alcée’s arms and, at the peak of their sexual encounter, “he possessed her” (560). Like Loftus showed with her symbols, Calixta isn’t permitted to be dominant over the male. It’s her ‘place’ to be taken, to surrender, to be possessed by Alcée. And the quiet rebellion of both these ladies against traditional gender ideologies does occur within the confines of their domesticity, just as the authors where in the confines of their own era.”
      “ ‘But hang it Jim, you’ve clean missed the point––you don’t get the point.’
      “ ‘Blame de pint! I reck’n I knows what I knows’”(178).
      The rain stops pattering against their found shelter and the two return to the raft and the calm river. Still, neither of them saw, or see, a sign of a woman at that house.