Abstract
Rosoff and Spencer draw attention to an innovative transnational analysis of girls’ fiction spanning 50 years of changing political, social, and cultural context in Britain and America. They highlight the complex relationship between constructed and essential notions of femininity presented to young readers in terms of sociability, responsibility, domesticity, authority, and possibility. Series fictions provide a rich source for an analysis of girlhood that crosses disciplinary boundaries of history, education, and cultural studies. The authors identify how the genre offers insights into the power dynamics of friendship that are so central to young readers’ lives.
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Notes
- 1.
Chris Harris, “The family in post-war Britain,” in Understanding Post-War British Society, ed. James Obelkevich & Peter Catterall (Routledge: London & New York, 1994), 45.
- 2.
There has been continuous interest in the genre by scholars of girlhood since the 1980s. The British books have been the subject of most research, but as Chap. 2 highlights, this discussion has been taken up by scholars of American girls’ literature.
- 3.
Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Girls (London: The Women’s Press, 1992), 5.
- 4.
Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays. By an Old Boy (Cambridge: Macmillan & Co., 1857).
- 5.
L.T. Meade, A Sweet Girl Graduate (London: Cassell & Co., 1891) and L.T. Meade, The Rebel of the School (London; Edinburgh, W. & R. Chambers, 1902).
- 6.
See, for example, The Leader of the Lower School (London: Blackie & Son, 1913) and For the School Colours (London: Blackie & Son, 1918).
- 7.
Blyton wrote the St. Clare’s series, set in another school and published between 1941 and 1945.
- 8.
Louisa M. Alcott, Little Women and Good Wives (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1868) and Little Men, Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1871).
- 9.
Susan Coolidge, What Katy Did and What Katy Did at School (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873).
- 10.
Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean, College Senior (New York: A. L. Burt, 1922).
- 11.
Seth Lerner, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History, from Aesop to Harry Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 275.
- 12.
Elinor Brent-Dyer, editorial letter, in Chalet Club News Letters, 16 May 1967, 67 (Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2016).
- 13.
See Stephanie Spencer, Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) for a discussion of the role that editors and publishers played in directing the authors of the 1950s career novels. Acceptability for the library market was key to the success of teen fiction.
- 14.
“Certificate of Death – Josephine Chase,” City of Philadelphia, File no. 20142, Registered no. 3768, 1931 and “Youths’ Author Dies at 46,” New York Times, 11 February 1931, 22. The date of birth provided here comes from the age indicated on the death certificate (48 years old), in contrast to the age (46 years) indicated in the obituary.
- 15.
“Who Wrote These Books,” Aunt Claire Presents, http://auntclairepresents.com/, accessed 13 July 2018. See also the new edition of Grace Harlowe’s Plebe Year at High School (published as Grace Harlowe’s Freshman Year at High School), ed. ‘Aunt Claire,’ (Astoria, NY: Laboratory Books, 2017), followed by Grace Harlowe’s Second Year at High School (Astoria, NY: Laboratory Books, 2018).
- 16.
“Colver, Alice Mary (Ross),” Contemporary Authors, volumes 69–72 (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978), 142 and “Colver, Alice Mary (Ross) Obituary,” Contemporary Authors, volume 161 (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978), 82.
- 17.
Hilary Clare, “Bruce, Dorothy Morris Fairlie [Dorita Fairlie] (1885–1970).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/55196
- 18.
W. Bruce Leslie, “Creating a Socialist Scout Movement: The Woodcraft Folk, 1924–42,” History of Education 13, no. 4 (1984): 299, https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760840130404
- 19.
Esther Breitenbach and Valerie Wright, “Women as Active Citizens: Glasgow and Edinburgh c.1918–1939,” Women’s History Review 23, no. 3 (January 2014): 401–420, https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2013.820602
- 20.
Eva Lofgren, School Mates of the Long-Ago: Motifs and Archetypes in Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s Boarding School Stories (Stockholm: Symposium Graduale, 1993), 94–100.
- 21.
Elinor Brent-Dyer also employed the same device; see Ruth Jolly, “A Change for the Better” for a more detailed description in the introduction to the Girls Gone By edition of The Chalet School and Barbara.
Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School and Barbara (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1954; Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2014).
- 22.
Helen McClelland, “Dyer, Elinor Mary Brent (1894–1969).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/48278
- 23.
Helen McClelland, Behind the Chalet School (Bognor Regis: Anchor, 1986).
- 24.
Ibid., 128.
- 25.
Ibid., 131–2.
- 26.
For example, Isabel Quigley describes girls’ school story writers as ‘silly, childish and insubstantial’; see Isabel Quigly, The Heirs of Tom Brown: The English School Story (London: Chatto & Windus, 1982), 218. For the feminist perspective, see Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Women: Growing up in the Girls’ Story (London: Women’s Press, 1999).
- 27.
By the late 1990s, nearly 100,000 Chalet paperbacks were still being bought annually. Helen McClelland, “Dyer, Elinor Mary Brent (1894–1969).”
- 28.
Toby Watkins, “History and Culture,” in International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, ed. Peter Hunt, volume 1 (London: Routledge, 2004), 85.
- 29.
Claire Lidbury, “Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School Series: Literature as an Historical Source,” Children’s Literature in Education 44, no. 4 (December 2013): 345–358. Lidbury makes this argument with reference to the presentation of dance and physical education in the Chalet books.
- 30.
Helen McClelland’s Behind the Chalet School discusses the similarities between the Margaret Roper School and the Chalet School, 137–40 and 143–146.
- 31.
Claire Lidbury, “Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School Series: Literature as an Historical Source,” Children’s Literature in Education 44, no. 4 (December 2013): 345–358.
- 32.
Claire Lidbury, 354.
- 33.
“Johns to Geoffrey Trease,” in Geoffrey Trease, Tales out of School: A Survey of Children’s Fiction (London: Heinemann, 1964), 80–81.
- 34.
David Rudd, “Theorising and Theories: The Conditions and Possibility of Children’s Literature,” in International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, ed. Peter Hunt, volume 1 (London: Routledge, 2004), 29–43.
- 35.
Ibid., 33.
- 36.
Ibid., 34.
- 37.
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text. Roland Barthes: Essays Selected and Translated by Stephen Heath, 142–147 (London: Hill & Wang, 1977; London: Flamingo, 1984). Citations are to the 1984 edition.
- 38.
David Rudd, “Theorising and Theories,” 37.
- 39.
Ibid., 38.
- 40.
Angela Brazil, My Own Schooldays (London: Blackie & Sons, 1925), 149. Brazil explains to her readers that her own experience of school did not include the games, clubs, and acting that were a part of her stories.
- 41.
Gill Frith. “‘The Time of Your Life’: The Meaning of the School Story,” in Language, Gender and Childhood, ed. Carolyn Steedman, Cathy Urwin, and Valerie Walkerdine (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 132.
- 42.
Ibid., 133.
- 43.
Judy Simons, “Gender Roles in Children’s Fiction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature, ed. M. O. Grenby & Andrea Immel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 143–158.
- 44.
Ibid.,151.
- 45.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1949).
- 46.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990); Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993).
- 47.
Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, Difference (New York & London: Routledge, 1989).
- 48.
Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880–1930 (London: Pandora, 1985).
- 49.
Ibid., 105. Jeffreys explains that ‘smashing’ involved sending gifts and declarations of love to other girls until their feelings were reciprocated.
- 50.
Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean, Postgraduate (New York: A.L. Burt, 1925), 202.
- 51.
Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Girls.
- 52.
Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Girls, 133. Auchmuty discusses the evolution of the friendship between Miss Wilmot and Miss Ferrars, 126–133.
- 53.
Giulia Calvi, “Global Trends: Gender Studies in Europe and the US,” European History Quarterly, 40, no. 4 (October 2010): 652.
- 54.
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1975), 2.
- 55.
Barbara Caine, ed., Friendship, A History (London: Equinox, 2009).
- 56.
Janice Raymond, A Passion for Friends: Towards a Philosophy of Female Affection (London: The Women’s Press, 1991), 224.
- 57.
Ibid., 4.
- 58.
Ibid., 9.
- 59.
Ibid.
- 60.
Ibid., 218. Raymond’s longer exposition on female friendship will be returned to later in the book.
- 61.
Janice Raymond, A Passion for Friends, 229.
- 62.
Barbara Caine, ed., Friendship, A History, 205.
- 63.
Ibid., 218.
- 64.
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual”; Pauline Nestor, Female Friendships and Communities: Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); and Blanche Wiesen Cooke, “Female Support Networks and Political Activism: Lillian Wald, Crystal Eastman, Emma Goldman,” in A Heritage of Her Own – Toward a New Social History of American Women, ed. Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 412–444.
- 65.
See, for example, Jessie Graham Flower, Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1920), 99. ‘Miss Briggs is a lawyer, but her sort of law isn’t good on the western front. Besides, she is an accessory both before and after the fact, as she would characterize it.’
- 66.
Rosemary Auchmuty, World of Girls, 6.
- 67.
See G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence. Its Psychology and Its relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education (New York: D. Appleton and Company 1908), Chapter XVII.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Brazil, Angela. My Own Schooldays. London: Blackie & Sons, 1925.
Brent-Dyer, Elinor. Editorial letter. In Chalet Club News Letters, 16, May 1967. Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2004.
“Certificate of Death – Josephine Chase,” City of Philadelphia, File no. 20142, Registered no. 3768, 1931.
Flower, Jessie Graham. Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1920.
Hughes, Thomas. Tom Brown’s School Days. By an Old Boy. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1857.
Lester, Pauline. Marjorie Dean, College Senior. New York: A.L. Burt, 1922.
Lester, Pauline. Marjorie Dean, Postgraduate. New York: A.L. Burt, 1925.
Meade, L.T. Sweet Girl Graduate. London: Cassell & Co., 1891.
“Youths’ Author Dies at 46,” New York Times, 11 February 1931.
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Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In Image, Music, Text. Roland Barthes: Essays Selected and Translated by Stephen Heath, 142–147. London: Hill & Wang, 1977; London: Flamingo, 1984. Page references are to the 1984 edition.
Breitenbach, Esther and Valerie Wright. “Women as Active Citizens: Glasgow and Edinburgh c.1918–1939.” Women’s History Review 23, no 3 (January 2014): 401–420. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2013.820602.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Caine, Barbara, ed. Friendship, A History. London: Equinox, 2009.
Calvi, Giulia. “Global Trends: gender studies in Europe and the US.” European History Quarterly, 40, no. 4 (October 2010): 641–855.
Clare, Hilary. “Bruce, Dorothy Morris Fairlie [Dorita Fairlie] (1885–1970).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/55196.
“Colver, Alice Mary (Ross).” Contemporary Authors. Volumes 69–72. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978.
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De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1949.
Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Frith, Gill. “‘The Time of Your Life’: The Meaning of the School Story.” In Language, Gender and Childhood, edited by Carolyn Steedman, Cathy Urwin, and Valerie Walkerdine, 133–137. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
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Harris, Chris. ‘The family in post-war Britain.’ In Understanding Post-War British Society, ed James Obelkevich & Peter Catterall, 45–58. London & New York: Routledge, 1994.
Jeffreys, Shelia. The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880–1930. London: Pandora, 1985.
“Johns to Geoffrey Trease.” In Trease, Geoffrey. Tales out of School: A Survey of Children’s Fiction, 80–81. London: Heinemann, 1964.
Leslie, W. Bruce. “Creating a Socialist Scout Movement: The Woodcraft Folk, 1924–42.” History of Education 13, no.4 (1984): 299–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760840130404.
Lerner, Seth. Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History, from Aesop to Harry Potter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Lidbury, Claire. “Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School Series: Literature as an Historical Source.” Children’s Literature in Education 44, no. 4 (December 2013): 345–358.
Lofgren, Eva. School Mates of the Long-Ago: Motifs and Archetypes in Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s Boarding School Stories. Stockholm: Symposium Graduale, 1993.
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Raymond, Janice. A Passion for Friends: Towards a Philosophy of Female Affection. London: The Women’s Press, 1991.
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Simons, Judy. “Gender roles in children’s fiction.” In The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature, edited by M.O. Grenby & Andrea Immel, 143–158. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1975): 1–29.
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“Who Wrote These Books.” Aunt Claire Presents. Accessed 13 July 2018. http://auntclairepresents.com/.
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Rosoff, N.G., Spencer, S. (2019). Introduction. In: British and American School Stories, 1910–1960. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05986-6_1
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