However, in his novella “The Pearl”, Steinbeck portrays Juana more sympathetically, although not completely judiciously, as a female character who shows resolution, resourcefulness, wisdom, and foresight par excellence in comparison to her short-sighted and impulsive husband Kino. Glaring schematic differences between male and female characters in his fiction have led some scholars to charge him of misogyny. His female characters often lack fully developed three-dimensional personalities and remain subservient to the desire and plans of the male characters.
As readers, we might also take a step back and wonder whether Steinbeck might himself be guilty of the kind of racial discrimination that Kino attributes to the colonizers, in consistently describing him with animalistic characteristics and by making generalizations about “his people.Since the publication of his first novel “Cup of Gold”, the fictional production of John Steinbeck has remained in focus for literary critics for its diminishing and essentialist portrayal of female characters. By throwing the pearl back into the ocean, it seems, Kino is attempting to free himself of the colonizers’ influence and escape their system of evaluation, to return to his own set of traditions and values.
In the end, dealing in the world of White wealth and medicine leaves Kino and Juana in a worse condition than they set out in: they end up without a son, home, or canoe.
Their oppression is brought increasingly to light throughout The Pearl, as Kino attempts to cooperate with the people who have the power (the money, the expertise) to help his son recover, but are the very same people that traditionally oppress people of Kino’s race. They continue to sing the songs they have inherited from their ancestors, but they also continue to be oppressed as their ancestors were, by white people like the doctor and by people with economic influence like the pearl-dealers. Kino and Juana’s racial heritage both provides them with the grounding force of ritual and tradition and deprives them of power under the reign of European colonizers.
0 kommentar(er)
