Children's stories, English -- History and criticism. |
Children's stories, American -- History and criticism. |
Girls in literature. |
Feminism. |
Available:*
Library | Material Type | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Claremont Helen Renwick Library | Book | 823.80992827 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
What exactly is girls' fiction? What makes it distinctive? Do "classic" books for girls promote significant aspects of women's culture in an attempt to bridge the divide between patriarchal realities and the appeal to female individualism? How do they modify or continue the familiar narrative motifs and patterns of their age, and why should such motifs continue to exert an attraction for girls who belong to a very different cultural climate? To what extent can any questioning of the age's gender ideologies operate in such literature, and would contemporary juveniles have picked this up? What problems does girls' fiction raise for the twentieth-century critic intent on recognizing the influential part played by those works in providing values for impressionable readers? By focusing on this much neglected topic--popular fiction for girls--Shirley Foster and Judy Simons answer these questions about the status of girls' literature and its identity as a discrete literary genre.
Written by women for children, girls' fiction has been doubly marginalized by the critical establishment, yet it remains a crucial element in most girls' formative literary experience. In their original and provocative analysis of texts written between 1850 and 1920--including Little Women, What Katy Did, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, The Daisy Chain, The Railway Children, The Madcap of the School, and The Wide, Wide World --Foster and Simons examine what makes a classic and how such texts construct role models which both reflect and subvert contemporary ideologies of childhood.
By applying twentieth-century feminist theory to this body of literature, What Katy Read uncovers a challenging and exciting new dimension to a previously ignored area. Through close readings of these eight North American and British novels, which have had a powerful impact on the development of literature for girls, Foster and Simons consider genres from the domestic myth to the school story, analyze the transgressive figure of the tomboy, and discuss ways in which superficially conventional texts implicitly undermine patterns of patriarchy. Their stimulating and innovative study will be essential reading for students of women's writing and children's literature alike.
Reviews: (2)
Choice Review
Those who remember Jo March, Anne Shirley, and Mary Lennox from their childhood reading will find Foster and Simon's book thought-provoking. But even readers who do not remember these popular girl heroines will be interested in the author's articulate discussion of girls' reading habits and how such reading can be both socializing and subversive. Through close readings of such classic North American and British girls' novels as The Secret Garden, The Daisy Chain, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, and The Wide, Wide World, Foster and Simons focus on this often disregarded area of literature. The authors point out that scholars should study girls' literature with greater care, since such books help to form a "collective cultural inheritance" for many girls. Taking a feminist approach to the texts they examine, the writers create lucid, persuasive argument for the importance of all girls' books, not only the ones studied here. For scholars of children's literature, this book is a must read. But, even more broadly, any person interested in how gender influences reading will appreciate this study. All academic collections. S. A. Inness; Miami University
Library Journal Review
Intrigued that generations of women have read and relished the same juvenile books, scholars Foster and Simons reexamine eight classics of girls' fiction from the perspective of 20th-century feminist critics. Among the British and American titles they scrutinize, those most familiar to present-day U.S. readers include Little Women, The Secret Garden, What Katy Did, and Anne of Green Gables. The texts are analyzed with the aim of defining the genre (fiction written by women for children), explaining the sociohistorical context of the works, and discovering why and how the novels "spoke to their age and continue to speak to today's." This soundly researched study offers insightful and provocative views of literate women and the books they have written and read. Highly recommended for all literature collections.-Carol A. McAllister, Coll. of William & Mary Lib., Williamsburg, Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.