Companions and Villains
Reading about Boys in Early Twentieth-Century Girl Scout and Camp Fire Girl Series Fiction
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Abstract
This article examines boy characters in early twentieth-century girls’ scouting fiction. These series, marketed using the names of the recently established girls’ organizations, supported female empowerment. They also included important boy characters: brothers, companions, villains, and bullies. The first three types are exemplars of what boys’ workers envisioned as middle-class manhood: youthful wildness and spunk channeled into habits of hard work, self-reliance, and intelligence. These boys would also recognize girls as near-equal partners at a time when marriage norms were becoming more companionate. Rural bullies and ethnic villains, by contrast, provide warnings about boys who do not develop manly self-control. Girls’ series helped shape how modern girls thought about their male peers, including what girls would and would not accept in their relationships with boys.
Contributor Notes
Jennifer Helgren is Chair and Professor of History at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where she teaches US history and women's history. She is the author of The Camp Fire Girls: Gender, Race, and American Girlhood, 1910–1980 (2022) and American Girls and Global Responsibility: A New Relation to the World during the Early Cold War (2017); the coeditor of Girlhood: A Global History (2010); and the author of several articles on US girlhood. Dr. Helgren earned her PhD from Claremont Graduate University in 2005. Email: jhelgren@pacific.edu