ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relationship between English and the ways in which identity was constructed around issues of gender. It was impossible not to notice in the readings on gender issues that the key words of ambiguity and conflict recurred when discussing girls and schooling. Schools present girls with conflicting and ambiguous messages about what is required of them. Schools were sites where the dominant ideology of patriarchy was perpetuated. This was achieved in part through the gendered construction of girls’ identity; conflicting messages about identity were part of this process. The construction of women in literature, and the construction of women as readers, is a very powerful weapon in the construction of female roles. The suggestion is that the girl should be positioned as the active constructor of meaning in a text; in the construction of meaning in the text, she is concomitantly active in the construction of her own gender identity.
