32 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture ISSN 1923-1555[Print] ISSN 1923-1563[Online] www.cscanada.net www.cscanada.org Studies in Literature and Language Vol. 10, No. 4, 2015, pp. 32-40 DOI:10.3968/6761 Defying Gender Stereotypes: Juana Eclipsing Kino in John Steinbeck’s The Pearl Sayed Mohammed Youssef [a],* [a] Assistant Professor of English Literature, Department of English Language and Literature, College of Languages and Translation, Al- Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. * Corresponding author. Received 12 January 2015; accepted 10 April 2015 Published online 25 April 2015 Abstract The representation of female characters in the fiction of John Steinbeck has become a topic of scholarly interest as early as his first novel Cup of Gold. His women characters are always drawn as stereotypically far too inferior to men, something that is illustrated through the subordinate, sometimes scandalous, roles assigned to them. This is the reason why Steinbeck has often been stigmatised by a number of critics as a misogynist. Nevertheless, the aim of the present article is to show that Steinbeck defies his usual stereotypical portrayal of women and female roles and takes a lenient, if not sympathetic, stance on women in his novella The Pearl, which can be interpreted as an exception in the Steinbeck canon. This is highlighted right here through examining the character traits of both Juana and Kino in order to show how Kino, the protagonist, does pale in comparison to Juana, whom the author endows with unique wisdom, common sense and resourcefulness juxtaposed to the foolishness, incompetence and acquiescence of Kino. Such qualities as these make of Juana a far stronger and more superior person than her husband in a patriarchal and colonial society in which women have no say. Key words: Chastened; Evil; Patriarchy; Stereotype; Subjugation; Women representation Sayed Mohammed Youssef (2015). Defying Gender Stereotypes: Juana Eclipsing Kino in John Steinbeck’s The Pearl. Studies in Literature and Language , 10 (4), 32-40. Available from: http://www.cscanada.net/index. php/sll/article/view/6761 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/6761 INTRODUCTION For any polished reader of the oeuvre of the American novelist and Nobel Laureate for Literature in 1962 John Steinbeck (1902-1968), the portrayal of Juana in his novella The Pearl (1947) is a real turnaround in his representation and concept of female characters. In analysing Steinbeck’s female creations, women are often given secondary, confined roles to play. To cite one single example, Curley’s wife in Of Mice and Men, the only female character in the novella whose very name is not even given, is reduced to nothing but a piece of property belonging to her husband after whom she is named. This has led some critics to stigmatise Steinbeck as a sexist and a misogynist offering female characters unsympathetic stereotypes. Hart notably argues that portraying women this way has something to do with Steinbeck’s male- dominated and sexist attitude towards women (2004, p.42). Likewise, in her 1975 article entitled “Some fictional stereotypes of women in 20 th century American fiction,” M. R. Gladstein of the University of Texas at Austin reduces Steinbeck, along with Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, to a sexist for his scandalous depiction of female characters. Gladstein goes further to contend that there has been apparent sexism in the award given to him: “The last three American writers to win the Nobel Prize [Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck] represent American male novelists who have been unable either to come to terms with the ‘Otherness’ of the female or to draw convincing portraits of women” (Jewell, 2000, p.107). As early as Steinbeck’s early fiction, more specifically his maiden novel Cup of Gold (1929), along with other works like Of Mice and Men (1937) and Cannery Row (1945), to name but a few, some critics have decried Steinbeck’s negative stereotyping of female characters, since he condones whoredom and speaks of whores with respect, which is considered much appalling. Morsberger speaks of the proliferation of such characters in his fiction and notes that, “whoring seems positively wholesome”