On The Taste And Distinction Of Cultural Codes In George’s Mother

Stephen Crane’s slum novel George’s Mother belongs to the companion piece of Maggie,A Girl of the Streets. The novel mainly describes George from a self-reliant worker to a member of street gangs. His mother tries to protect him with the help of religion but dies in the end. Most of the current researches analyze George’s Mother from the perspective of ethical issues, class warfare, or compare with Maggie, considering its satire strong and theme profound. These comments illustrate cultural significance of the whole work, however, the interpretation of cultural significance of different groups is far from enough. Consequently,this paper intends to interpret three kinds of cultural codes in George’s Mother on the basis of taste theory.Pierre Bourdieu holds that taste is a cultural sign, associated with people’s place in society, and it is a means of distinction and the main undertaker of class identity. Based on it,this paper tries to probe into cultural codes — George’s mother’s “church”, street gang’s“saloon” and George’s “newspaper”, which are divided by Hall’s decoding mode. The lens of cultural codes indicates dominant distinction, subversive distinction and coordinated distinction. Cultural codes represent different class taste on the one hand; they embody the significance of class distinction, status distinction and gender distinction of American middle class and underclass in the 19 thcentury on the other.The thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter one excavates dominant white middle-class cultural code—“church”, which reflects the implication of class distinction. It reveals mother’s religious taste. Although her chase of white middle-class distinction is futile,mother’s quality threatens white middle-class masculinity. Chapter two analyzes subversive underclass cultural code—“saloon”. Street gangs speak highly of underclass cultural code,which stands for violent taste and the goal of highlighting masculinity of lower class to realize status distinction. Chapter three interprets coordinate cultural code — “newspaper”between the above two cultural codes. George’s ambivalent taste proves that he is assimilated into mainstream ideology, which illustrates ideological control of ruling class. Reading newspaper reappears George’s yearning for white middle-class distinction, but he is mired inunderclass distinction, which demonstrates that it comes to nothing to construct ideal masculinity with fusion of two kinds of cultural codes.Standing in the position of white middle-class, Crane shapes taste and distinction of three groups. George’s Mother indicates that white middle-class’ masculinity belongs to mainstream masculinity, which is still under threat from class and gender dimensions.However, it is necessary to reflect on themselves for white middle-class in crisis.