Teachers appear as characters in a wide range of literary writing—including novels such as Jane Eyre (1847), Good-Bye Mr. Chips (1934), and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1962); short stories such as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820), “Wings” (1919), and “The Children’s Story” (1963); plays such as Love’s Labours Lost (1595), Three Sisters (1901), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947); memoirs such as The Thread That Runs So True (1949), To Sir, With Love (1962), and The Water Is Wide (1972); and children’s books such as the Magic School Bus series (1986–2001), the Miss Malarkey series (1995–present), and the My Weird School series (2004–present). These literary depictions of teachers—whether real or fictional—can provide valuable insights into the ways in which the teacher identity is constructed within our society. Furthermore, because such literary works are widely disseminated throughout society, they not only reflect what people think about teachers, but they can also actually help to shape these perceptions.
Some of the more common themes that emerge from literary depictions of teachers include the following: teacher as nurturer, teacher as subversive, teacher as conformist, teacher as hero, teacher as villain, teacher as victim, and teacher as outsider. In some instances, a single teacher may simultaneously possess multiple identities, whereas in other instances, he or she may be transformed from one identity to another as the story progresses.
Teacher As Nurturer
Many teachers are depicted as caring, understanding, compassionate, and benevolent leaders in their classrooms—including Anne Shirley in Anne of Avonlea (1909), Ella Bishop in Miss Bishop (1933), Miss Temple in Jane Eyre (1847), Rick Braithwaite in To Sir, With Love (1962), Laura Ingalls in These Happy Golden Years (1943), Mr. Chips in Good-Bye Mr. Chips (1934), and Pat Conroy in The Water Is Wide (1972). These teachers tend to be respectful toward their students and work hard to provide them with sustenance for their intellectual growth. They also value the formation of relationships with students and the importance of building a sense of community within their classrooms.
Perhaps this kind of teacher is best exemplified by Ella in Miss Bishop (1933), a novel about the life and career of a college English teacher. Ella quickly establishes a reputation for being a friendly, hard-working, and gifted teacher who steers her students toward their passions. Her nurturing also extends to her personal life, as she cares for her sick mother for nine years, and also selflessly rears her cousin’s newborn orphaned daughter whose father had actually been Ella’s fiancé before the cousin had seduced him away from her. Illustrating her eternally optimistic nature, Ella names the little girl Hope.
Teacher As Subversive
Subversive teachers resist “the system” or the status quo of teaching in some way, sometimes openly rebelling and other times quietly proceeding with unsanctioned activities outside public view—often at the risk of being fired. For instance, the teacher might deviate from the approved curriculum, or teach the students to be critically aware of their taken-for granted assumptions about the world in a way that challenges strongly held belief systems or existing structures of power.
Examples include Mary Logan in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), who is fired from her job as a seventh-grade teacher in rural Mississippi during the 1930s for teaching her students about the systemic structures that undergird racism; Joe Robert Kirkman in Brighten the Corner Where You Are (1990), who is called before the school board for disciplinary action after teaching evolution in his high school science class; Anna Vorontosov in Spinster (1958), who literally burns her workbook in order to free herself from its control; and Mr. Anderson, the art teacher in Speak (1999), who is reprimanded for not grading his students’ work.
Undoubtedly, however, the most well-known example of a subversive teacher is Jean Brodie, a progressive educator in a conservative school in 1930s Scotland, who systematically molds her students after her own interests and desires to create an identifiable clique of girls within the school known as “Brodie Girls.”
Teacher As Conformist
In contrast to the subversives, conformist teachers unthinkingly conform to the system, fully accepting the conditions of their work and of society at large without critical examination. They serve as agents of hegemony within their communities, continually and unknowingly reinforcing the status quo.
One teacher who fits into this category is Miss Crocker in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), who whips Little Man and Cassie because they refuse to accept tattered old textbooks that were previously owned by White students. Miss Crocker cannot comprehend the reason for their behavior and instead views it as a simple act of defiance that must be punished.
Another teacher is Miss Dove in Good Morning Miss Dove (1947), who is so formal, so routinized, and so unchanging that she personifies the system itself. Laura Ingalls in These Happy Golden Years (1946) is also a conformist. Although sympathetic as a character and well-liked by her students, she nonetheless dutifully accepts the system without question, remaining naively unaware of the moral, social, and political implications of her work.
Teacher As Hero
Some teachers are cast as heroes. They may heroically respond to a crisis in a way that protects or saves others, or they may become heroes by taking a strong moral stand in the face of adversity. In My Face to the Wind (2001), Sarah Jane Price is a young teacher who reacts courageously to save the lives of her students when their poorly constructed schoolhouse collapses during a blizzard. Similarly, in Blackboard Jungle (1954), Rick Dadier bravely stops a student from raping another teacher and later performs another heroic act when he disarms a knife-wielding student who attacks him in his classroom.
Mr. Chips, from Good-Bye Mr. Chips (1934), acts as a more subtle hero when he calms his students by continuing to teach a lesson on ancient Rome in the midst of a German bombing raid during World War I. With bombs exploding around the school, he wryly insists to his students that the noisiest things in life are not always the most important. In another example, Mary Logan in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976) acts heroically when she organizes an African American boycott of the local hardware store whose White owner is the main source of racial conflict in their town.
Teacher As Villain
Many examples exist of teachers who are depicted as villains. They may be obnoxious, arrogant, authoritarian, cruel, spiteful, sinister, self-serving, or physically or verbally abusive toward their students. One example is Mr. Warrick in The Schoolmaster (1968), who does many positive things for the people of the small Trinidadian village where he is hired, but he also exploits them for his personal financial gain and rapes his seventeen-year-old assistant, causing her to commit suicide.
Another example is Holofernes in Love’s Labours Lost (1595), who is vain, arrogant, confusing, superficial, abusive toward others, and lecherous toward women. In addition, he tends to speak in heightened language using extensive alliteration and forced puns to demonstrate his verbal dexterity, and he frequently intersperses English and Latin in ways that leave the people around him confused.
Other examples of villainous teachers include Kantorek in All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Mr. Dobbins in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1875), Mrs. Gorf in Sideways Stories From Wayside School (1978), Miss Scatcherd in Jane Eyre (1847), Mr. Phillips in Anne of Green Gables (1908), Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series (1997–2007), and Mr. Neck in Speak (1999).
Teacher As Victim
Victimized teachers are oppressed or defeated in some way by students, administrators, their communities, or sometimes the profession itself. They may be downtrodden, pitiful, or pathetic, and they may feel totally overwhelmed by the demands of their work. Some are literally the victims of specific attacks targeted against them, whereas others are victimized more figuratively by the overall conditions they encounter in their jobs.
For example, when Wing Biddlebaum in “Hands” (1919) is falsely accused of molestation by a “half-witted boy,” the boy’s father beats him and he narrowly escapes being lynched. Similarly, in The Children’s Hour (1934), two teachers are falsely accused of being lesbians by a disgruntled student, causing them to lose their jobs and destroying them financially. Margaret Narwin in Nothing but the Truth (1991) also loses her job following a minor conflict with a student that rapidly spirals out of control, leaving both Ms. Narwin and the student as victims in the process.
In other stories, Ichabod Crane in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820) is victimized by Brom Bones, and Mr. Dobbins, the villainous teacher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1875), is victimized by his students who use a cat, a string, a wig, and a can of paint to play a joke on him while he sleeps. Finally, in Three Sisters (1901), Olga is a teacher who is victimized by the job of teaching itself. In a moment of despair, she remarks that four years of high school teaching have drained her of her energy, left her with a perpetual headache, and aged her prematurely.
Teacher As Outsider
Outsiders are teachers who are different from their students or others in their community. They may feel perpetually alienated in some way—being of a different race, class, culture, ethnicity, or sexual orientation— or they may be border-crossers who successfully transcend these differences.
For example, Anna Vorontosov in Spinster (1959) is a White woman who teaches Maori children in rural New Zealand, and Frank McCourt in Teacher Man (2005) is an Irish teacher working with American children of various races and ethnicities in New York City. Similarly, Rick Braithwaite in To Sir, With Love (1962) is a middle-class African-Caribbean-British man teaching poor White children in east London.
One particularly intriguing outsider is Julia Mortimer in Losing Battles (1970). Julia is an educated White woman who teaches poor White students in rural Mississippi. She is fully dedicated to helping her students gain knowledge that will enable them to transcend the ignorant isolation of their families and to improve their lives, yet her life ends in bitter disappointment as she herself becomes completely isolated from the outside world. Other teachers who may be considered outsiders are Grant Wiggins in A Lesson Before Dying (1997), Ichabod Crane in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820), and Mr. Warrick in The Schoolmaster (1997).
Implications
Through examining the ways in which teachers are depicted in literary works, scholars can gain valuable insights into what it means to be a teacher in contemporary society, and what it has meant in past eras, too. In fact, for distant eras in history, the fictional accounts of teachers that were written at that time often provide rare, firsthand glimpses into the daily lives of teachers that are not readily available from other sources. However, the teachers who appear in literature do more than just reflect past and present societal views of teachers; they can also help to shape these views.
People’s preexisting perceptions of teachers (and the work that they do) are routinely challenged, reinforced, or extended by what they read about teachers in literary works. In addition, such works can serve as tools for the professional development of pre-service, beginning, or experienced teachers by enabling them to think about their work through the vicarious experience of reading about the lives of other teachers.
Bibliography:
- Brunner, D. D. (1994). Inquiry and reflection: Framing narrative practice in education. Albany: State University of New York Press.
- Joseph, P. B., & Burnaford, G. E. (Eds.). (2001). Images of schoolteachers in America. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Keroes, J. (1999). Tales out of school: Gender, longing, and the teacher in fiction and film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
- Richards, J. (1988). Happiest days: The public schools in English fiction. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
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