Open AccessHorse and Class in True Grit
Author(s) -
Jerry D. Leonard
Publication year - 2019
Language(s) - English
DOI - 10.7311/pjas.13/1/2019.03
Subject(s) - grit , ideology , narrative , character (mathematics) , focus (optics) , marxist philosophy , class (philosophy) , reading (process) , sociology , literature , aesthetics , art , philosophy , epistemology , linguistics , politics , law , psychology , mathematics , political science , social psychology , physics , geometry , optics
This essay returns to Jane Tompkins’ original theory of horses in her 1992 book West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns as a means of analyzing Charles Portis’ 1968 novel True Grit, a work which Tompkins does not address. Arguing for a Marxist ideology critique of True Grit with a focus on the main character (and narrator) Mattie Ross and her horse named Little Blackie, the essay offers a critique of Tompkins’ idea of the “material presence” of horses in American Western narratives.