Gender Bias In The High School Canon Novels

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First, how are most women portrayed in literature? When reading stories of literature with women in it, women are placed in two different categories or types as discuss in Helen O'Hara Connell’s paper Reading Gender Bias in the High School Canon Novels. The first, Connell points out is the most obvious, “silly little girls in frilly dresses” such as Alice from the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and every Disney princess. Connell also goes on to state, if women are not typed as this “silly little girl in a frilly dress” stereotype, they are androgynous or tomboyish, which one can see portrayed by characters such as Madeline from Madeline (Connell 1994). Even more, a girl can be both a “silly little girl in frilly a dress” and a tomboy at

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