Reading gender in classics of children’s literature: the anthropomorphic representation of gender in Carlo Collodi’s Le Avventure di Pinocchio

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the way in which translation and re-editioning intervene in the representation of the mutable concept of gender in a classic of children’s literature. It explores Carlo Collodi’s Le Avventure di Pinocchio [literally: The Adventures of Pinocchio] (1883) and the first English translation of the novella (1892), as well as selected re-editions and reprints of this translation (1911-2011), focusing on the anthropomorphic characters of il Gatto [The Cat] and la Volpe [The Fox]. Through a comparative analysis of the ways in which gender is constructed through these two characters in the source text, the first English translation, and the re-editions and reprints, this paper foregrounds how the translation process can influence the portrayal of the social construct of gender that is presented to the child reader. The analysis reveals that the first English translation reverts to conventional gendered ideologies that reinforce the model of the androcentric society, an aspect that is absent from the Italian tale. This idea is carried through time in the re-editions and reprints, some of which were published in the twenty-first century after the social construct of gender had arguably become framed differently to how it was regarded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.