Where to from Here?

Emerging Conversations on Girls’ Literature and Girlhood

in Girlhood Studies
Author:
Dawn Sardella-Ayres
Search for other papers by Dawn Sardella-Ayres in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3393-163X
and
Ashley N. Reese University of South Florida

Search for other papers by Ashley N. Reese in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2328-2840
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2020.130104
Keywords:
bildungsroman; domestic realism; gender performativity; genre theory; North America; social action
Restricted access
USD  $22.00
Click here to view the full Terms and Conditions

All currencies in US Dollar

PayPal Logo

Abstract

In this article, we seek to articulate a genre theory-centered definition of girls’ literature, and interrogate its subgenre, the girl's bildungsroman, as contextual, cultural sites of rhetoric regarding girls and girlhood. By exploring English-language North American girls’ literature, we identify it within a framework of genre as social action, tracing the protagonists’ maturation into the socially determined roles of wife and mother. We explore the ways in which the girl's bildungsroman follows a home-away-home model, but with the end result of socially acceptable community integration, rather than the boy's bildungsroman's culmination in heroic independent identity via quests and adventures.

Contributor Notes

Dawn Sardella-Ayres (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3393-163X) completed a 2018 tenure as the Ofstad Guest Scholar at Truman State University, teaching a course on girls’ literature and the girl's bildungsroman in the United States and Canada. She has published on Alcott, Montgomery, Johnston, and Wilder, and researches issues related to gender and race, as well as the Künstlerroman, in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century girls’ texts.

Ashley N. Reese (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2328-2840) is a Digital Teaching Fellow at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on gender and religion in turn-of-the-century North American girls’ books. She is the author of The Rise of Girls’ Literature (forthcoming).

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Girlhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal

Cover Girlhood Studies
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
17
Keywords:
bildungsroman; domestic realism; gender performativity; genre theory; North America; social action
Print Publication Date:
01 Mar 2020
Online Publication Date:
01 Mar 2020
Copyright:
© Berghahn Books 2020

  • Abel, Elizabeth, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland, eds. 1983. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Alcott, Louisa May. 1868–1869. Little Women. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

  • Alcott, Louisa May. 1870. An Old-Fashioned Girl. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

  • Alcott, Louisa May. 1875. Eight Cousins. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

  • Auerbach, Nina. 1978. Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Baym, Nina. 1993. Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–70. (2nd ed.) Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Blanchard, Amy E. 1906. The Four Corners. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs.

  • Burnett, Frances Hodgson. 1905. A Little Princess. New York: Scribner's.

  • Burnett, Frances Hodgson. 1911. The Secret Garden. New York: Stokes.

  • Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge.

  • Cadogan, Mary, and Patricia Craig. 1976. You're a Brick, Angela! A New Look at Girls’ Fiction from 1839 to 1975. London: Victor Gollancz.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Carpan, Carolyn. 2009. Sisters, Schoolgirls, and Sleuths: Girls’ Series Books in America. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

  • Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  • Clasen, Tricia, and Holly Hassel. 2017. “Introduction.” In Gender(ed) Identities: Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children's and Young Adult Literature, ed. Tricia Clasen and Holly Hassel, 1–8. New York: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Coolidge, Susan. 1872. What Katy Did. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

  • Devitt, Amy. 1993. “Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept.” College Composition and Communication 44 (4): 573–586. https://doi.org/10.2307/358391

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Foster, Shirley, and Judy Simons. 1995. What Katy Read: Feminist Re-Readings of ‘Classic’ Stories for Girls. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Giffen, Allison, and Robin L. Cadwallader. 2018. “Introduction.” In Saving the World: Girlhood and Evangelicalism in Nineteenth-Century Literature, ed. Allison Giffen and Robin L. Cadwallader, 1–15. New York: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Griswold, Jerry. 1992. Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America's Classic Children's Books. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Johnston, Annie Fellows. 1895–1912. Little Colonel series. Boston: L.C. Page.

  • Lovelace, Maud Hart. 1940–1955. Betsy-Tacy series. New York: HarperCollins.

  • Lovelace, Maud Hart. 1942. Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill. New York: HarperCollins.

  • Lovelace, Maud Hart. 1943. Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown. New York: HarperCollins.

  • Lovelace, Maud Hart. 1947. Betsy was a Junior. New York: HarperCollins.

  • Lovelace, Maud Hart. 1950. Emily of Deep Valley. New York: HarperCollins.

  • Lovelace, Maud Hart. 1952. Betsy and the Great World. New York: HarperCollins.

  • MacLeod, Anne Scott. 1994. American Childhood: Essays on Children's Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Maier, Sarah. 2007. “Portraits of the Girl-Child: Female bildungsroman in Victorian Fiction.” Literature Compass 4 (1): 317–335. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00411.x

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Miller, Carolyn R. 1984. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151–176. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00335638409383686

  • Miller, Carolyn R. 2015. “Genre as Social Action (1984), Revisited 30 Years Later.” Letras & Letras 31 (3): 56–72. https://doi.org/10.14393/LL63-v31n3a2015-5

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Montgomery, Lucy Maud. 1908. Anne of Green Gables. Boston: L.C. Page.

  • Montgomery, Lucy Maud. 1909. Anne of Avonlea. Boston: L.C. Page.

  • Montgomery, Lucy Maud. 1911. The Story Girl. Boston: L.C. Page.

  • Montgomery, Lucy Maud. 1923–1927. Emily of New Moon series. New York: Stokes.

  • Montgomery, Lucy Maud. 1933. Pat of Silver Bush. New York: Stokes.

  • Moruzi, Kristine. 2012. “‘I am Content with Canada’: Canadian Girls at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 4 (1): 119–131. http://jeunessejournal.ca/index.php/yptc (accessed 30 March 2019).

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Nikolajeva, Maria. 2002. The Rhetoric of Character in Children's Literature. Latham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

  • Nodelman, Perry. 1979. “Progressive Utopia: Or, How to Grow Up Without Growing Up.” Children's Literature Association Quarterly: 146–154. https://doi.org/10.1353/chq.1979.0006

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Noomé, Idette. 2004. “Shaping the Self: A Bildungsroman for Girls.” Literator 25 (3): 125–149.

  • Patmore, Coventry. 1854. The Angel in the House. London: John W. Parker.

  • Paul, Lissa. 1987. “Enigma Variations: What Feminist Theory Knows about Children's Literature.” Signal 54: 186–201.

  • Paul, Lissa. 1998. Reading Otherways. Stroud, UK: The Thimble Press.

  • Porter, Eleanor H. 1913. Pollyanna. Boston: L.C. Page.

  • Pratt, Annis (with Barbara White, Andrea Loewenstein, and Mary Wyer). 1981. Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Proehl, Kristen B. 2018. Battling Girlhood: Sympathy, Social Justice, and the Tomboy Figure in American Literature. New York: Routledge.

  • Redmann, Jennifer. 2011. “Doing Her Bit: German and Anglo-American Girls’ Literature of the First World War.” Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (1): 10–29. https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2011.040103

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Reese, Ashley N. 2014. “‘The Veritable Bugle-Call:’ An Examination of Pollyanna through the Lens of Twentieth-Century Protestantism.” In Eleanor H. Porter's Pollyanna: A Children's Classic at 100, ed. Roxanne Harde and Lydia Kokkola, 121–136. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Reynolds, Kimberley. 2011. Children's Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Sanders, Joe Sutliff. 2011. Disciplining Girls: Understanding the Origins of the Classic Orphan Girl Story. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sardella-Ayres, Dawn. 2010. “Scribblers and Story-Tellers: Little Women, Betsy-Tacy, and Harriet the Spy as Girls’ Künstlerromane.” Masters thesis, Hollins University.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Seelye, John. 2005. Jane Eyre's American Daughters: From The Wide, Wide World to Anne of Green Gables a Study of Marginalized Maidens and What They Mean. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Showalter, Elaine. 1991. Sister's Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women's Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Söderberg, Eva, Mia Österlund, and Bodil Formark, eds. 2013. Flicktion: Perspectives on the Girl in Fiction. [In Swedish.] Malmö: Universus Academic Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Stoneley, Peter. 2003. Consumerism and American Girls’ Literature, 1860-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Stratton Porter, Gene. 1909. A Girl of the Limberlost. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.

  • Tarbox, Gwen Athene. 2000. The Clubwomen's Daughters: Collectivist Impulses in Progressive-Era Girls’ Fiction. New York: Garland.

  • Theander, Birgitta. 2017. To Work! Professional Dreams and Working Life in the Girl's Book 1920–65. [In Swedish.] Göteborg: Makadam.

  • Tompkins, Jane. 1985. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790–1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Trites, Roberta Seelinger. 1997. Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

  • Warner, Susan. 1850. The Wide, Wide World. Philadelphia, PA: J.P. Lippincot.

  • Webster, Jean. 1912. Daddy-Long-Legs. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.

  • Wiggin, Kate Douglas. 1903. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

  • Wilder, Laura Ingalls. 1932–1971. Little House series. New York: Harper & Brothers.

  • Wilder, Laura Ingalls. 1941. Little Town on the Prairie. New York: Harper & Brothers.

  • Wilder, Laura Ingalls. 1943. These Happy Golden Years. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 3484 1773 242
Full Text Views 415 48 5
PDF Downloads 298 36 3