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The Price of Deviance: Schoolhouse Gothic in Prep School Literature
- Children's Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 35, 2007
- pp. 102-126
- 10.1353/chl.2007.0002
- Article
- Additional Information
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Preparatory school stories may be read as gothic fictions, subverting the didactic role of children's literature and critiquing schools' function in normalizing or socializing students. In American prep school literature, schools enforce conformity and view independent thinkers as deviants that must be watched, punished, transformed, or eliminated.