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British and American School Stories, 1910–1960 pp 195–235Cite as

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Changing expectations of women’s employment provide the focus for Rosoff and Spencer’s intense reading of stories for girls, specially aimed at a national readership within a transnational framework. Such a reading highlights the complex and shifting tensions between assumed essential aspects of femininity and those constructed within their social, political, and cultural contexts. Sections examine the possibilities of higher education and prospects for paid work as well as expectations that girls would follow a traditional role as wife and mother. The continuance of friendship groups formed at school as characters move into adult worlds provides further focus for insight into the characteristics of femininity that transcend national boundaries.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term ‘reserve army of labour’ originates from Marxist analysis and has been used by feminists to explain why women’s labour remains marginalised within employment policy. Although this use has been subject to critique, and maybe less relevant today, it remains useful for an understanding of gendered workplace practice in the immediate postwar period. See Floya Anthias, “Women and the Reserve Army of Labour: A critique of Veronica Beechey,” Capital and Class 4, no. 1 (March 1980): 50–63.

  2. 2.

    Sheila Rowbotham, A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and The United States (London: Viking, 1997), 7–9.

  3. 3.

    New Careers for Women: The Best Positions, and How to Obtain Them (London: George Newness, 1917).

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 102.

  5. 5.

    Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, accessed 12 July 2010, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1919/71/pdfs/ukpga_19190071_en.pdf

  6. 6.

    Pat Thane, “The Social, Economic and Political Status of Women,” in Twentieth Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change, ed. Paul Johnson (Essex: Longman, 1994).

  7. 7.

    Jo bore 11 children (several in multiple births).

  8. 8.

    Amabel Williams-Ellis, What Shall I Be? (London: William Henemann, 1933), 4.

  9. 9.

    Louise Tilly and Joan Scott, Women, Work and Family (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978; New York: Methuen, 1987), 215. Citations are to the Methuen reprint.

  10. 10.

    Stephanie Spencer, Gender Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), chapter 5. See also Kay Clifford, Career Novels for Girls (Birmingham: Mirfield Press, 2018).

  11. 11.

    For example, married women could claim any benefits as a result of their husband’s national insurance contribution. Single women paid a lower insurance rate and could ‘opt out’ on marriage.

  12. 12.

    Eleanor Rathbone, The Disinherited Family: A Plea for Endowment of the Family (London: Arnold & Co., 1924).

  13. 13.

    Selina Todd, The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class (London: John Murray, 2014), 211. See Penny Tinkler, Stephanie Spencer, and Claire Langhamer (eds), Women in the 1950s: A New Look (London: Routledge, 2017).

  14. 14.

    Amabel Williams-Ellis, The Art of Being a Woman (London: Bodley Head, 1951).

  15. 15.

    Ross Davies, Women and Work (London: Hutchinson, 1975), 100.

  16. 16.

    Penny Tinkler, “Girlhood in Transition? Preparing English Girls for Adulthood in a Reconstructed Britain,” in When the War Was Over: Women, War and Peace in Europe, 1940–1956, ed. Claire Duchen & Irene Bandhauer-Schofffmann (London & New York: Leicester University Press, 2000), 68.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 68.

  18. 18.

    The books were widely available in public libraries and in both grammar and secondary modern schools, and in public libraries. Chatto and Windus archive, University of Reading.

  19. 19.

    John Newsom, The Education of Girls (London: Faber & Faber, 1948).

  20. 20.

    Johanna Alberti, Beyond Suffrage: Feminists in War and Peace, 1914–1928 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989).

  21. 21.

    Caitriona Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens: Domesticity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1928–1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016) and Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1989).

  22. 22.

    Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, revised edition (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 1.

  23. 23.

    “Employment Level – Women,” derived from “Employment-population ratio,” Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, accessed 3 August 2018, https://data.bls.gov/

  24. 24.

    Susan M Hartmann, “Women’s Employment and the Domestic Ideal in the Early Cold War Years,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 86.

  25. 25.

    Louise Barnes Gallagher, Frills and Thrills: The Career of a Young Fashion Designer (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1946), Lee Wyndham, Lady Architect (New York: Julian Messner, 1957), and Harriet H. Carr, Confidential Secretary (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958). Our own copies of the books show that many titles had been in a school library collection.

  26. 26.

    The term “co-ed” derives from the word coeducational and was often used to refer to female high school or college students. See “co-ed,” n. and adj., Oxford English Dictionary, accessed 5 September 2017, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/35638?rskey=3lOnIE&result=2&isAdvanced=false#eid

  27. 27.

    “Co-ed,” Practical Home Economics, December 1960, 14. The issue of Practical Home Economics wrapped around that month’s student edition of the magazine.

  28. 28.

    See subscription coupon, Practical Home Economics, December 1960, 11.

  29. 29.

    “Suggestions for using this Issue of Co-ed in the classroom,” Practical Home Economics, December 1960, 9.

  30. 30.

    “Hi There!,” Co-Ed, April 1959, 5.

  31. 31.

    “Table of Contents,” Co-ed, April 1959, 5. Another 1959 issue is discussed in “Teen ‘Zine Scene: Co-Ed, December 1959,” Embarrassing Treasures, 13 December 2012, accessed 5 December 2014, http://embarrassingtreasures.com/tag/co-ed-magazine/

  32. 32.

    “Home Economist in Action: She Brings Good News,” Co-ed, December 1960, 10 and Practical Home Economics, December 1960, front cover.

  33. 33.

    “Home Economist in Action: She Brings Good News,” 10.

  34. 34.

    “Future Bright,” Co-ed, September 1963, 20.

  35. 35.

    Naomi True, “True to Nursing,” Co-ed, September 1956, 19.

  36. 36.

    Ibid. Joan Foster’s friend Sue plans to become a nurse; Alice Ross Colver, Joan Foster, Freshman (1942; repr. New York: Dodd Mead & Co, 1955), 199. Citations are to the 1955 edition.

  37. 37.

    “The Sky’s the Limit,” Co-ed, October 1956, 19.

  38. 38.

    Claire Gaugher, “Dollars and Scents,” Co-ed, March 1959, 30.

  39. 39.

    Frances Cuthman, “Underwater Sleuth,” Co-ed, April 1960, 22.

  40. 40.

    Alice Ross Colver, Joan Foster, Bride (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1952), 235. Colver also wrote three career novels: Janet Moore, Physical Therapist (1965), Joan, Free Lance Writer (1948), and Susan, Hospital Aide (1964).

  41. 41.

    Ultimately, both Pamela and Jean marry and live close to Dimsie’s home of Twinkle Tap.

  42. 42.

    Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Dimsie Grows Up (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), 22.

  43. 43.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Gay from China at the Chalet School (1944; repr. London: W. & R. Chambers, 1951), 61. Citations are to the 1951 edition. For a discussion of Swanley Horticultural College, see Donald L. Opitz, “‘A Triumph of Brains over Brute’: Women and Science at the Horticultural College, Swanley, 1890–1910,” Isis 104, no. 1 (March 2013): 30–62.

  44. 44.

    Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Dimsie Grows Up, 54.

  45. 45.

    Ibid.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 58.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 67.

  48. 48.

    See Jessie Graham Flower, Grace Harlowe’s Third Year at Overton College and Grace Harlowe’s Fourth Year at Overton College (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1914).

  49. 49.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Jo of the Chalet School (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1926; Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2017), 263–264. Citations are to the Girls Gone By edition.

  50. 50.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Tom Tackles the Chalet School (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1955; Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2017), 175. Citations are to the Girls Gone By edition.

  51. 51.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Gay from China at the Chalet School, 16.

  52. 52.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Mary Lou of the Chalet School (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1956; Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2012), 73–74.

  53. 53.

    Alice Ross Colver, Joan Foster Senior (New York: Dodd Mead and Company, 1950), 134.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., 135.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., 143.

  56. 56.

    Ibid., 210.

  57. 57.

    Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean, Post-Graduate (New York: A.L. Burt, 1925), 84.

  58. 58.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Peggy of the Chalet School (London: W & R Chambers, 1950), 59.

  59. 59.

    Ibid., 60.

  60. 60.

    The reader is originally introduced to Eustacia as a somewhat precocious only child who had been brought up by her father ‘a learned professor of Greek’ and her mother who was a ‘lady doctor.’ Elinor Brent-Dyer, Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School (1930; London: W. & R. Chambers, 1956), 84.

  61. 61.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Peggy of the Chalet School, 84.

  62. 62.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School Reunion (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1963; Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2004), 68. Citations are to the Girls Gone By edition. However Miss Bubb, the disastrous temporary Head, was also a ‘brilliant classical scholar’ and not an attractive woman in appearance or temperament. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Gay from China at the Chalet School.

  63. 63.

    In 1962, the year before the Chalet School Reunion was published, only 2.5% of girls leaving school attended any university. Higher Education, The Robbins Report (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1963), tables 5 and 16.

  64. 64.

    Val McDermid, Desert Island Discs, 19 July 2013, accessed 12 July 2018, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036tqpl. McDermid said, ‘The library was my second home.’ (21.05 mins) She observed that the Chalet School girls went either to Oxford, the Sorbonne, or the Kensington School of Needlework and that led to her decision to go to Oxford, as neither her French nor her sewing qualified her for the alternatives.

  65. 65.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Gay from China at the Chalet School, 136.

  66. 66.

    Jessie Graham Flower, Grace Harlowe’s Senior Year at High School, or the Parting of the Ways (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1911), 244.

  67. 67.

    Jessie Graham Flower, Grace Harlowe’s Fourth Year at Overton College, 246.

  68. 68.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, The School at the Chalet (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1925), 59.

  69. 69.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Mary Lou of the Chalet School, 114.

  70. 70.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School Reunion, 119.

  71. 71.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Peggy of the Chalet School, 84.

  72. 72.

    Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean, High School Senior (New York: A.L. Burt, 1917), 10.

  73. 73.

    Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean College Sophomore (New York: A.L. Burt, 1922), 14–15. On her return to college, Marjorie wanted to ‘shout a welcome to her first Hamilton friend.’ She says ‘I’ve always loved the campus, Leila…I call it my first friend and the chimes my second.’

  74. 74.

    Jessie Graham Flower, Grace Harlowe’s Fourth Year at Overton College, 237.

  75. 75.

    Ibid., 238.

  76. 76.

    There was a further series published in 1920 that followed Grace Harlowe overseas during World War One: Grace Harlowe Overseas (1920); Grace Harlowe with the Red Cross in France (1920); Grace Harlowe with the Marines at Chateau Thierry (1920); Grace Harlowe with the U.S. Troops in the Argonne (1920); Grace Harlowe with the Yankee Shock Boys at St. Quentin (1920); Grace Harlowe with the American Army on the Rhine (1920); all published by Altemus. However, this series has a different tenor to those discussed in this book and may have been written by a syndicate, rather than solely by Josephine Chase.

  77. 77.

    Jessie Graham Flower, Grace Harlowe’s Problem (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1916), 30.

  78. 78.

    Ibid., 32.

  79. 79.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Rivals of the Chalet School (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1939), 31.

  80. 80.

    Ibid.

  81. 81.

    Ibid. Simone achieves her intention, attends the Sorbonne, teaches maths at the Chalet school and, having married, returns to the Chalet School as Mme de Bersac to help out after an accident puts four senior members of staff out of action. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Gay from China at the Chalet School, 54.

  82. 82.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Gay from China at the Chalet School, 54.

  83. 83.

    Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Dimsie Grows Up, 68.

  84. 84.

    ‘The Robin’ is one of the major characters in the Chalet series and her career is mapped through several books. See Alison McCallum, The Chalet School Encyclopaedia, Volume 2 (Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2014), 116–120.

  85. 85.

    Helen McClelland, Behind the Chalet School (Bognor Regis: Anchor, 1986), 123.

  86. 86.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, New House at the Chalet School (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1935; Radstock: Girls Gone By, 2008), 119. Citations are to the Girls Gone By edition. In The Chalet School and The Island, it is noted that Luigia died in a concentration camp.

  87. 87.

    Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean, Postgraduate (New York: A.L. Burt, 1925) 37.

  88. 88.

    Ibid., 64.

  89. 89.

    Ibid.

  90. 90.

    Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean, High School Sophomore (New York: A.L. Burt, 1917), 233

  91. 91.

    Ibid., 20.

  92. 92.

    Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean, Post-Graduate, 29.

  93. 93.

    Ibid., 30.

  94. 94.

    Ibid., 31.

  95. 95.

    Ibid., 32.

  96. 96.

    Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean Macy (New York: A. L. Burt, 1926), 236.

  97. 97.

    See Pauline Lester, Marjorie Dean’s Hamilton Colony (New York: A. L. Burt, 1930), 291–221, for Hal’s plans to build modern houses for the working poor of Hamilton.

  98. 98.

    Penny Summerfield, Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives: Discourse and Subjectivity in Oral Histories of the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998).

  99. 99.

    Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Dimsie Carries On (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), 11.

  100. 100.

    Ibid., 13.

  101. 101.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, The New House at the Chalet School, 44.

  102. 102.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, The School at the Chalet, 13.

  103. 103.

    Alison McCallum, Chalet School Encyclopaedia, volume 2, 78.

  104. 104.

    Unmarried women in Britain were liable for call up from 1941. See ‘The Women of the Second World War,’ accessed 6 August 2018, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-women-of-the-second-world-war, for more information about this process and where women served.

  105. 105.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Lavender Laughs at the Chalet School (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1943), 7–8.

  106. 106.

    Ibid., 12.

  107. 107.

    Ibid., 11.

  108. 108.

    Ibid., 16.

  109. 109.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Gay from China at the Chalet School. Joey refers to Anna as her coadjutor, a term derived from the religious context of a bishop designated to assist a diocesan bishop.

  110. 110.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Shocks for the Chalet School (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1952), 9.

  111. 111.

    Ibid., 12.

  112. 112.

    Ibid., 17.

  113. 113.

    Alison McCallum, The Chalet School Encyclopaedia, Volume 2, 111–112.

  114. 114.

    Mary Truby King, Mothercraft (Sydney: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1934). See Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1946) and Julia Grant, Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998).

  115. 115.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School Reunion, 204–205.

  116. 116.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School and the Lintons (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1952), 183.

  117. 117.

    Alice Ross Colver, Joan Foster Bride, ix.

  118. 118.

    Ibid.

  119. 119.

    Ibid., 16.

  120. 120.

    Ibid., 6.

  121. 121.

    Ibid., 7.

  122. 122.

    Alice Ross Colver, Joan Foster, Sophomore (1948; repr. New York: Dodd Mead & Co, 1953), 28. Citations are to the 1953 edition.

  123. 123.

    Alice Ross Colver, Joan Foster Bride, 101.

  124. 124.

    Ibid., 38.

  125. 125.

    Ibid.

  126. 126.

    Ibid., 71.

  127. 127.

    Ibid., 73–74.

  128. 128.

    Ibid., 233.

  129. 129.

    Ibid., 236.

  130. 130.

    Pierre-Yves Saunier, Transnational History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 117.

  131. 131.

    Ibid., 118.

  132. 132.

    Ibid.

  133. 133.

    Ibid., 119.

  134. 134.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, New House at the Chalet School, 124.

  135. 135.

    Elinor Brent-Dyer, Prefects of the Chalet School (London: W. & R. Chambers, 1970), 171.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arcadia University, Glenside, PA, USA

    Nancy G. Rosoff

  2. University of Winchester, Winchester, Hampshire, UK

    Stephanie Spencer

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  1. Nancy G. Rosoff
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  2. Stephanie Spencer
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Correspondence to Nancy G. Rosoff .

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Rosoff, N.G., Spencer, S. (2019). Possibility. In: British and American School Stories, 1910–1960. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05986-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05986-6_7

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05985-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05986-6

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