Many adults believe children are outside of history. But literary studies today give us good reason to respect children's contributions to cultural work. Intrigued by the empowering aspects of literature, especially as it has operated within the women's movement, I enlisted the help of a sixth grade teacher with the project I am going to describe. Mostly, I wanted my college students to experience the possibilities of the dialogic classroom. Along the way, I engaged in dialogue with myself too.

	I'll begin with a story familiar to us all, and show you how some readers used The Secret Garden and The Great Gilly Hopkins as a way to confront oppression and alienation, and to construct variations on the metanarrative of individualism. My key premise is that we are now witnessing and contributing to a paradigm shift rooted in both the rational enlightenment of the eighteenth century that recognized individual rights, and in the passionate enlightenment of subsequent eras that are extending those rights to marginal groups, to all those who are "other" than the cultural norm of the eighteenth century, propertied, white males. During my talk, I will draw on the perspectives of three generations: my own, my students' and my colleague's students. Though I did not know the world of Burnett, my parents did; thus, we span the same twentieth century and, to a certain degree, the culture that produced the novels and produced us as readers of them: the culture that resists the silencing of the oppressed or colonized. First, the basic story.

	THE METANARRATIVE

	A child is born in difficult circumstances to a wellborn mother who is not capable of providing nurture; because of that, both mother and child are trapped, or boxed in, by a potentially destructive force. Fortunately, humble people or animals who do know how to nurture/rescue the child and prepare it for adulthood. Then, there is a test, or a quest, a confronting of the destructive force. And finally, the hero--for of course I'm telling the hero narrative that defines our culture --the hero attains a rightful place as ruler, savior, or sage. This story, of Hercules, of Moses, of Jesus, of Arthur, of the Ugly Duckling, of Pinocchio, of Max and his wild things, is very familiar (Purves). You have the basic stages of the story on your handout: the journey of the hero.

	Besides being familiar, the hero story is resonant. It works as a organizing framework of grid, as is verified by Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Northrop Frye (to name a few of the thinkers who find this story to have enormous explanatory power). I enjoy thinking about this metanarrative as it coincides with children's books; but I enjoy even more finding the spaces between the lines of the pattern. So interesting are those spaces that they allow room for the twentieth century to happen as we talk about literature. As participants in this historical age, we may ask: why is the mother "noble" or "wellborn" but unable to sustain the life of a child? Why does the hero need the "common people" or even animal helpers to make up for the mother's entrapment? What happens to her when the hero inherits the kingdom? Why are the heroes of the familiar narratives generally boys who grow up to be kings, conquerors, and even gods? Does anything about the story change if we have a girl born to a similarly situated mother? What if the mother and daughter, or son, aren't from the "wellborn" class? What if the "box" or "trap" is a race, class and gender oppression left untouched by one person's rescue and triumph?

	We've done a good deal of speculating about this. Cinderella, Jo March, Harriet the Spy, and Pippi Longstocking often make us wonder these things, and quite profitably. But suppose we think the narrative tells a story we want to change. Perhaps we ask why bad mothering often is used to explain a bad society. Or perhaps we don't think the narrative suitably values the incoherent trajectories of human life and identity. If that's the case--acknowledging the claims this powerful framework has on our minds while wishing to elude it because it explains too much, reimposes too much--then we're in the situation of readers who question metanarratives, who value fragmentation,who engage with social needs while thinking of history, art, and self. We are in the situation of feminist critics.

	FEMINIST CRITICISM AND THE METANARRATIVE

	I will demonstrate what happens when we begin with a traditional narrative of Western culture, subject it to scrutiny from different kinds of readers, and come away with less universalizing, more tentative, and possibly more powerful voices as literary critics. I began with the metanarrative, will move to readers' comments and a theoretical grounding of those comments, and then share with you some things that happened when I read the Burnett and Paterson novels with both the sixth grade class and the college class on children's literature. What I hope we will gain together is a deeper sense of literary criticism as a political tool. While I don't have any simple answer to whether Burnett disinherited Mary, or Paterson punished Gilly, or life has to be unfair, or Mary and Gilly free the lost mother inscribed in a patriarchal and hierarchical culture, I do have a zest for these novels and what readers say and do when reflecting on them. Here are some comments:

	"I don't like the servants in The Secret Garden. Real servants love their own families, not the families they work for."--Dameon, age 11 (an African American boy, Davenport, Iowa). "I still think Gilly is mean and rude...I think her mother is to blame for Gilly's problems. I don't like the ending. I wanted Gilly to go back to Trotter."--Angie, age 11 (a European American girl, Davenport, Iowa). "...with Gilly the males dominated the class discussions, whereas with The Secret Garden the females seemed to respond more often and demonstrate deeper insight. How do you encourage all of the students to read the entire book and keep an open mind?"--Susan, age 20 (a college senior, videotaping my sessions with sixth graders in Davenport, Iowa). "When discourse is responsible for reality and not merely a reflection of it, then whose discourse prevails makes all the difference."--Jane Tompkins, ed., Reader Response Criticism.

	These comments from sixth graders, a college student, and a well know critic, have in common a certain way of reading that, following Judith Fetterley in her analysis of possible subject positions available to women readers of American literature, I will call "resistant." Dameon was a resistant reader of The Secret Garden because he questioned master-servant relationships. Angie was a resistant reader of The Great Gilly Hopkins because she did not accept as a given the legal codes favoring biological parents over foster parents. Susan resisted the genders language processes involved in valuing and circulating books. Jane Tompkins resists the divorce between literature and politics common in literary practices that assume meaning to be inherent in a text and available to those with the "right stuff' as readers.

	Most discussions of language as a social force emphasize its support of established power, especially of male dominance within racist and class- stratified systems of thought. And where children's literature is concerned, the critics often describe the unequal relationship between adults and children as one reason that children's literature is more often than not an oppressive instrument, almost sinister in its didactic reinforcement of conventional culture (Rose). John Stephens, for example, argues that individual responses to texts are often blocked by official ways of reading promoted in school, and that children thus are held captive by ideologies in officially sanctioned texts. (4)

	I wanted to read the two novels with young readers because I was moved by the ways each took on the "woman question," and puzzled by my college students' insistence that children would not be interested in that question even though they themselves shared my concern with it. Burnett, I believed, wrote as a grieving but resistant mother; she restored Colin to life although she had not been able to save the life of her own young son. In doing that, I thought, she drew on a theory of mothering that accepted a division between nature and culture that subjugates women. Though I loved the book, I resisted its construction of Colin as "master" and of Mary as "mistress," even though there is representational truth in that view of social relations. Paterson's book evoked other issues. If Burnett asserted the triumph and loss involved in bringing Colin to life, what was Paterson suggesting about the triumph and loss involved in fostering Gilly? What depictions of race and of class lay behind these stories of the British Empire and of American social life? Weren't both authors bestowing on "peasant characters" like Susan Sowerby and Trotter an inhuman goodness born of class divisions that see property as the measure of individual complexity?

	My wariness about the gender, race and class implications of these books doesn't tell the whole story. For I find both books endlessly suggestive of new meanings--the test we often apply to what we call "literature" in the twentieth century. The very resistances I have described, from children and from adults, arise from our situation as readers in an age shaped by liberation movements, and by modernist notions of alienation. That is, we are aware of history, whether we are ten, twenty, or three times twenty. And we share this century's distrust of authority--we want to construct our own texts, our own selves. Yet- -and this is also a function of life in the twentieth century--we are creatures of the mass media, inexorably impacted by soap opera, newscasts, and other genres.

	One of the things I try to do as a feminist critic is to examine the workings of capitalism on the media, and on the construction of self. Without claiming we can be outside of capitalism looking in, or critical of the media without being shaped by it, I do value the processes by which we call signs and symbols into question. Let's call on these processes now, by noticing how the two novels have been marketed recently, and viewing some examples of how book covers designed by sixth grade readers and college readers get at some of the spaces between the lines of the hero grid. Rather than analyzing the texts to produce definitive readings--or even following the written texts to suggest reasons for responses, as we did with both classes, my purpose here is to invite you into a response-based practice that asks us, as it were, to pivot from world view to world view as we continue the work of constructing ourselves as human beings.

	THE BOOK COVERS

	Here are the book covers I showed to both sixth grade and college readers. First, are the covers of two editions of The Secret Garden. Both editions appeared in 1987.

	Slide 1: The Oxford World's Classics edition uses a cover designed by Charles Robinson for the Heinemann edition (1911). Mary is poised in pinafore, finding the "knob of a door." The cover, like several others for this book, focuses on the girl before she enters the garden, just as she moves from alienation to wholeness, and well before Colin's story unfolds. For the college students, the absence of the robin was a distortion, since Mary is pictured alone, unaided, in her discovery. For the sixth graders, this cover evoked more varied reactions; many thought the garden, not the promise of the garden, should be pictured. Others wanted Dickon and Colin represented; I even missed Ben Weatherstaff and Susan Sowerby. I suggest that each of these reactions may be tied to readers' life experience and developmental perspectives as they are to skill or lack of skill in reading; and that current ideologies of gender, age, and class informed our wishes and made possible certain distancing from the ideology of romantic individualism inviting the reader into the book. Slide 2: The Dell Yearling cover draws from a Hallmark presentation on American television. Of all the book covers we studied in the project, this was the least favorite of any group. The sixth graders in particular were offended by the contrived scene about Christmas which appears nowhere in the book, and thought--again--the garden important for a cover design. The somber tone of the picture seemed unsuited to what they believed to be a book with a happy ending. The college students--who in their own imaginary film scripts had shown an alarming willingness (I thought) to eliminate Colin from the story entirely-- were quite intrigued when I described the ending of the Hallmark film: Dickon dies in war, and Mary and Colin get married. While I found a certain mimetic truth in this--working class men die in war, money marries money, and at least Mary inherits the manor along with Colin, neither the younger nor the older students liked this way of "writhing beyond the ending." Most sixth graders thought Mary or Dickon the hero of the book, and in both classrooms I found myself resisting my own resistance to Colin in order to suggest empathy with Burnett's experience and world view. The handout Susan made about the "secrets of the Secret Garden" proved helpful in building empathy for Colin, for Burnett, and for the historically didactic Hallmark film, at least temporarily. That is, for a while the students and I entertained other visions than our own. As we know, other filmmakers and the playwright Marsha Norman have found this book suggestive of yet other readings. Meanwhile, I am left to ponder Colin's unpopularity with my college students, who usually want "equal time" for both boys and girls. As they engage with a reading I have already made--that Colin displaces Mary--I circle back to wanting Burnett's mothering to be acknowledged, the woman writer to speak in culture. Slide 3: The Avon Camelot cover, 1978, of The Great Gilly Hopkins shows Gilly messing up. Her bubble breaks. Slide 4: This cover, initially, seemed more subtle and evocative of the text when I encountered its successor on the Harper Trophy edition, 1987. Slide 5: But in this case, the student responses have more or less moved me away from the sadness of Gilly's story to the hope inherent in her bravado. Extended discussion of this cover, and comparing it with covers drawn by the two classes, evokes a certain pleasure in this image. Gilly, backed against a wall (or trapped and boxed in, as the students recognized) is, like Mary on the Oxford edition cover, poised at the start of a life-altering experience. Whether that experience defeats her is, I think, left open by the cover, if not by the book. For I continue quite certain that Paterson constructs Gilly as resistant heir to at flawed culture she will change. Here I engage, I suppose, in my own romantic individualism. The wed of imagery, culminating in Gilly's continued ties to Trotter after she returns to the sexist, racist and class-biased affluence that produced her as a foster child of the state, seems to support optimism about Gilly-as-hero in my reading of the text.

	Here the student readings were very instructive. Even though we did careful textual analysis with the sixth graders, focusing on lines that (for me) indicated the finality and necessity of Gilly's life with Nonny, many readers did not move from their insistence that a) this was not a happy ending; and b) Gilly was going to go back to Trotter. Rationales included observations like "Gilly is clever and stubborn; she can't be conquered;" "The laws can change, so children can live with people who love them;" "Katherine Paterson can write a sequel;" and--for many the clincher--"The movie shows Gilly going back to Trotter." While the college students were less resistant to a literal reading of the ending, they mentioned weeping because Gilly could not go back; they were clearly less invested in the metanarrative of Gilly-as-sage than I was. Thus, a book whose ending saddened me (The Secret Garden) pleased the sixth graders, at least the girls, while my liking for the ending of The Great Gilly Hopkins was not shared by them. The college students seemed engaged in midpoint processes: they were less likely to accept a girl's displacement or to deny it. They shared the sixth graders' enjoyment of imagining new scripts, as well as my attention to textual details. They didn't care as much as I did that both Burnett and Paterson wrote from life experience as mothers, with Paterson's valuing of spiritual ties and memory in the formation of character. Resisting any rationalization for removing Gilly from her new family, the students confounded my self-description as cultural critic. They were the resistant; I the colonized: at least that is one possible version of this kaleidoscope of recognitions. What seems most important, though, is that at best a certain empathy between generations might be possible if all three age groups can engage with one another's perspectives. This isn't easy, though, as the drawing for the Gilly Hopkins book covers show.

	Before we look at slides of the student drawings, let me call your attention to the remaining handouts. "What's in a Name?" was Susan's work again. She, an avid reader of Tolkien, was able to teach us that Gilly's name connoted Galadriel, a powerful and nurturing female in The Lord of the Rings, moving in her interpretation beyond Paterson's presentation in the text. Likewise, my interest in minor characters such as Agnes led us to discuss the Rumplestiltskin allusion. Agnes, as it turned out, was a character of great interest to the sixth graders, as I will show you later. I included in your packet a sample of the college students' book cover designs. You'll note the inclusion of all four members of Gilly's foster family, as well as Gilly's alienation: she's behind the screen door, about to share in a discussion of poetry to which all members will contribute. She's thus on the brink of discovery and of escape from her box. In the children's drawing you have, I gave you extremes. A group of girts drew the united family. A group of boys drew Gilly in boxing shorts, and included their favorite word from the book, "Pow!" While Susan was saddened by these extremes, especially by the militant Gilly, I was less surprised and less concerned. I had known about gender role stereotyping much longer than Susan.

	What I would like you to see in some additional slides is that our discourse included, and was affected by, various kinds of resistances that--at least for me--confirmed that the process of sharing responses can open new modes of subjectivity to us, can direct us toward more radical subject positions (Weedon). Let me show you what I mean. These drawings were exchanged between the two classes, along with explanatory writings and responses to one another's work.

	THE GILLY SLIDES

	Picture: The "Pow!" drawing of some of the sixth grade boys is in your handout. Slide 6: Another "Pow!" drawing, by some of the college women, showing Gilly with carefully feminine bows on her gym shoes and surrounded by her clouds of glory; Slide 7: A third androgyny drawing, this also by college women; here Gilly is about to enter the boy's game, using a volleyball rather than a child as object to throw around.

	These pictures set up a conversation about strength. To what extent is it external, to what extent internal? For the boys, Gilly's strength was a pleasure because she taught William Ernest how to fight; for the college women, Gilly's journey toward becoming Galadriel mattered most. All three pictures, I think, show progression in modes of subjectivity evoked by the book. The boys' favorite college drawing was of the shoes; they liked its boldness and they understood the clouds.

	Slide 8: This is the connected family envisioned by some of the sixth grade girls. Slide 9: Here is the problematized, still forming family drawn by some of the college students. Slide 10: Another family drawing by the sixth graders. Asked why Mr. Randolph is missing, they said they ran out of time to put him in, but that perhaps since Trotter and the children lived in their own house, they were not incorrect in leaving him out. ("Pow!" appears in this drawing by boys and girls, too). Slide 11: The last of these family slides, by a group of college women and men, tries to be inclusive and optimistic. Nony, Courtney, and Trotter are all here, as are the teacher and the social worker. Gilly's tee shirt reads, "Love is pulling us apart."

	Again, reading the slides as various takes on the same truth allows us to make room for one another's realities. The last two slides are examples of the sixth graders again validating their own understanding and persuading us that they did, in fact, have something to say. These two slides depict scenes that might have taken place after Gilly left Trotter's house.

	Slide 12: These sixth graders drew Courtney in her swimsuit, and accompanied their drawing with a postcard. It read: "Dear Gilly, How are you? I wish that you were here. I miss you and I know you miss me. I'm sorry you can't live with me. I hope to see you as soon as possible. How do you like living with Nonnie? I love you. Love, Courtney Rutherford Hopkins." When the college students asked about this letter, the sixth grade students responded with no ambivalence that Courtney is still lying, and that she continues to feel guilt for giving Gilly away. Slide 13: This last drawing, of Agnes Stokes, evoked several questions from the college students, especially about the letter in which Agnes describes Trotter hanging up the phone when she called the house to reach Gilly. The sixth graders explained that Agnes was drawn to resemble Rumplestiltskin. The two boys and two girls in this group justified having Trotter hang up the phone on a child because she missed Gilly so much, and they were fairly sure Gilly and Agnes would never meet again. They thus tolerated a loose end in the story, the child who remains unloved; and they added another, the foster mother more human than she seems in the story.

	CONCLUSION

	In the student book covers and the controversy they engendered, all three generations occupied new spaces, at least temporarily. And the youngest group argued most forcefully for its morally incorruptible view: children deserve to live with those who love them. Their disgust with Courtney, initially different from my own wish to understand her behavior, seems to me as careful a reading as any I can give to Paterson's text and to the hero narrative at the heart of it. Just as my own students saw resonant symbolism in the poetry encoded in the text, the younger students saw acute injustice in the narrative form. Just as I saw reconciliation in Gilly's return to her "false" home, my older and younger students saw the contradictions within the hero narrative I was willing to accept, am still willing to accept. I am not claiming superiority for our various readings; once I would have. Now I imagine myself part of an interpretive community, not its lawgiver. And I think my students will successfully resist being know-it-alls because they valued their exchanges with the younger readers. What the younger readers gained from our work I leave to you to decide. Moving among the tensions of "Pow!" "clouds of glory," and the replacement of rajahs by resistance, my students and I together formed a composite of an historical age. If alienated readings are empowered readings, as John Stephens claims, we were empowered by our distances from one another. Whether we chose to close down on Courtney, kill off Colin, or mourn for the marginal mothers in these novels, we had caused each other to live with the ambiguity and audacity of hope. We had all grown up, a little. As Gilly says to Nonnie on the last page of Paterson's novel, "I'm ready to go home now."

	Burnett and Paterson Within an Historical Age Selected Critical Bibliography

	Calahan, James M. et al., ed., Practicing Theory in Introductory College       Literature Courses. Urbana: NCTE, 1991. Fetterly, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American       Fiction. Bloomington: University of Indiana, 1978. Flynn, Elizabeth A. and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, ed. Gender and Reading:       Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1986. Kaplan, Cora. Sea Changes: Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986. Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility of Children's       Fiction. New York: MacMillan, 1984. Steedman, Carolyn et al. Language, Gender and Childhood. London: Routledge       and Kegan Paul, 1985. Stephens, John. Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction. London:       Longmans, 1992. Tompkins, Jane P. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-       Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1990. Weedon, Chris. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. London: Basil       Blackwell, Inc., 1987. --Nancy Huse Professor of English Augustana College Rock Island, IL Lecture materials used with permission of Nancy Huse. Copyright, Nancy Huse, 1995.