This document summarizes a presentation about Grace McCleen's novel "The Land of Decoration". It discusses the plot of the novel, focusing on the main character Judith and her creation of an imaginary land. It then analyzes how the novel presents messages about family values, social values, and ecofeminism. The presentation argues that Judith's imaginary land represents her personal awakening to ecofeminist ideas and the connections between the oppression of women and nature.

1. A Manifesto on Values:
Grace McCleen’s The
Land of Decoration
2014 TCLRA Conference
Shifting Paradigms in Children’s Literature
Yi-Wei Evan Chin
Tamkang University
2014/11/08

2. Outline
• Introduction
• Part I. The Land of Decoration
a. The Plot
b. A Room of Her Own
• Part II. A Manifesto on Values
a. Family Value and Social Value
b. Ecofeminist Manifesto
• Conclusion
• References
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3. Introduction
• The Land of Decoration is a novel
written by a British woman writer
Grace McCleen and published in
2012.
• It won the Desmond Elliot Prize,
was shortlisted for the National
Book Award, and won the Betty
Trask Award in 2013.
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4. Grace McCleen
• She reads English at
Oxford University then
completed an M.A. at
York.
• She is inspired by many
great writers, such as
Franz Kafka, Ernest
Hemmingway and
Virginia Woolf.
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5. I. The Land of Decoration
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6. Trailer
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7. a. The Plot
• In The Land of Decoration, there is
heroine in ten-year-old Judith
McPherson, a young believer who
sees the world with the clear Eyes of
Faith.
• Judith's world is under threat. She is
bullied by her classmate Neil Lewis.
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8. • Then her father makes the decision
to continue working when the union
at his factory goes on strike, and all
manner of pestilence is unleashed
upon them, and their life really does
become one of hellish persecution.
• Judith created the Land of
Decoration in her bedroom –the
Promised Land.
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9. b. A Room of Her Own
• Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own:
All I could do was to offer you an opinion
upon one minor point — a woman must
have money and a room of her own if
she is to write fiction; and that, as you
will see, leaves the great problem of the
true nature of woman and the true
nature of fiction unsolved. (5-6)
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10. II. A Manifesto on Values
• Values are guides that shape the
members of a society in appropriate
and acceptable to think, feel, and
behave. Values are the foundation
upon which civilizations, societies,
communities, families, and
individuals are built.
(Jim Taylor, 27)
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11. a. Family Value and Social Value
• In the part of “A Secret”, Judith says she has a
secret that her father doesn’t love her. She says
the reasons are:
• He doesn’t like looking at me.
• He doesn’t like touching me.
• He doesn’t like talking to me.
• He is often angry with me.
• He is sad because of me. (62)
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12. • Judith was born in a single-parent
family, and she lives with her father
John in a mountain valley and in a
devotional way.
• In fact, Judith didn’t understand her
father is not good at expressing his
love and emotions. Basically, this is
the difference between mother and
father, and it depends on femininity.
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13. b. Ecofeminist Manifesto
• In the section of “Why I Will Not Live
Very Long”, Judith says:
I think it’s good, because polar bears are
starving and trees are dying and if you
put a plastic bag in the earth it will never
go away and the earth has had enough
of plastic bags. And because in the new
world I will see my mother (16).
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14. • The ecofeminist Val Plumwood
denfines that Ecofeminism has
contributed a great deal both to
activist struggle and to theorizing links
between women’s oppression and the
domination of nature over the last two
decades.
• This is why I argue that Judith’s
personal myth is a kind of ecofeminist
experience and awakening because
“the Land” Judith creates is not only
her own sacred place, but is also
linked to the natural world.
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15. Conclusion
• McCleen uses a kind of myth to rebuild
the social value and to show how the
little girl and her devout father
struggle while facing the cruel realities
of social persecution.
• Gloria Steinem says “We need to raise
boys like we raise girls,”—thus blessing
“girl” behavior as the norm, and boy
behavior as aberrant.
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16. Conclusion
• A Family-value should reward your children
for acceptance of engagement with the
culture with love, respect, validation, self-
expression, and autonomy.
• I suggest Plumwood’s solution that
“breaking down the dualism must involve
remaking the relationship so as to remove
the features of denied dependency.” (123).
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17. References
• Jung, Carl G. Psychological Types. London: Routledge, 1989. Print.
• Kristeva, Julia. The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1986. Print.
• Lukens, Rebecca J. A Critical Handbook of Children’s Literature.
7th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2003. Print.
• McCleen, Grace. The Land of Decoration. New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 2012. Print.
• Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. New York:
Routledge, 1993. Print.
• Taylor, Jim. Your Children are under Attack: How Popular Culture
is Destroying Your Kids' Values, and How You Can Protect Them.
Naperville: Sourcebooks, 2005. Print.
• Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Penguin, 2000.
Print.
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