Ashwini Tambe
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042720
- eISBN:
- 9780252051586
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042720.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
At what age do girls gain the maturity to make sexual choices? This question provokes especially vexed debates in India, where early marriage is a widespread practice. India has served as a focal ...
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At what age do girls gain the maturity to make sexual choices? This question provokes especially vexed debates in India, where early marriage is a widespread practice. India has served as a focal problem site in NGO campaigns and intergovernmental conferences setting age standards for sexual maturity. Over the last century, the country shifted the legal age of marriage from twelve, among the lowest in the world, to eighteen, at the high end of the global spectrum.
Ashwini Tambe illuminates the ideas that shaped such shifts: how the concept of adolescence as a sheltered phase led to delaying both marriage and legal adulthood; how the imperative of population control influenced laws on marriage age; and how imperial moral hierarchies between nations provoked defensive postures within India. Tambe's transnational feminist approach to legal history shows how intergovernmental debates influenced Indian laws and how expert discourses in India changed UN terminology about girls. Ultimately, the well-meaning focus on child marriage became tethered less to the well-being of girls themselves and more to parents' interests, population control targets, and the preservation of national reputation.Less
At what age do girls gain the maturity to make sexual choices? This question provokes especially vexed debates in India, where early marriage is a widespread practice. India has served as a focal problem site in NGO campaigns and intergovernmental conferences setting age standards for sexual maturity. Over the last century, the country shifted the legal age of marriage from twelve, among the lowest in the world, to eighteen, at the high end of the global spectrum.
Ashwini Tambe illuminates the ideas that shaped such shifts: how the concept of adolescence as a sheltered phase led to delaying both marriage and legal adulthood; how the imperative of population control influenced laws on marriage age; and how imperial moral hierarchies between nations provoked defensive postures within India. Tambe's transnational feminist approach to legal history shows how intergovernmental debates influenced Indian laws and how expert discourses in India changed UN terminology about girls. Ultimately, the well-meaning focus on child marriage became tethered less to the well-being of girls themselves and more to parents' interests, population control targets, and the preservation of national reputation.
Cindy D. Ness
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814758403
- eISBN:
- 9780814759073
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814758403.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
In low-income U.S. cities, street fights between teenage girls are common. These fights take place at school, on street corners, or in parks, when one girl provokes another to the point that she must ...
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In low-income U.S. cities, street fights between teenage girls are common. These fights take place at school, on street corners, or in parks, when one girl provokes another to the point that she must either “step up” or be labeled a “punk.” Typically, when girls engage in violence that is not strictly self-defense, they are labeled “delinquent,” their actions taken as a sign of emotional pathology. However, this book demonstrates that in poor urban areas this kind of street fighting is seen as a normal part of girlhood and a necessary way to earn respect among peers, as well as a way for girls to attain a sense of mastery and self-esteem in a social setting where legal opportunities for achievement are not otherwise easily available. The author of this book spent almost two years in west and northeast Philadelphia to get a sense of how teenage girls experience inflicting physical harm and the meanings they assign to it. While most existing work on girls' violence deals exclusively with gangs, the book sheds new light on the everyday street fighting of urban girls, arguing that different cultural standards associated with race and class influence the relationship that girls have to physical aggression.Less
In low-income U.S. cities, street fights between teenage girls are common. These fights take place at school, on street corners, or in parks, when one girl provokes another to the point that she must either “step up” or be labeled a “punk.” Typically, when girls engage in violence that is not strictly self-defense, they are labeled “delinquent,” their actions taken as a sign of emotional pathology. However, this book demonstrates that in poor urban areas this kind of street fighting is seen as a normal part of girlhood and a necessary way to earn respect among peers, as well as a way for girls to attain a sense of mastery and self-esteem in a social setting where legal opportunities for achievement are not otherwise easily available. The author of this book spent almost two years in west and northeast Philadelphia to get a sense of how teenage girls experience inflicting physical harm and the meanings they assign to it. While most existing work on girls' violence deals exclusively with gangs, the book sheds new light on the everyday street fighting of urban girls, arguing that different cultural standards associated with race and class influence the relationship that girls have to physical aggression.
Marina Endicott
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628461329
- eISBN:
- 9781626740723
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461329.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This study of Eleanor Porter's Pollyanna offers readers varied insights into her continuing popularity and influence. This chapter highlights the most significant aspects of the Pollyanna phenomenon. ...
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This study of Eleanor Porter's Pollyanna offers readers varied insights into her continuing popularity and influence. This chapter highlights the most significant aspects of the Pollyanna phenomenon. These aspects include the ideological and political implications of Pollyanna's gladness, the constructions of girlhood, the Christian motifs, and national identity. Setting these issues in different contexts proffers a richer insight into the varied cultural manifestations of Pollyanna. Pollyanna's consciousness of her own deep sadness and her need for gladness saves the book from sentimentality.Less
This study of Eleanor Porter's Pollyanna offers readers varied insights into her continuing popularity and influence. This chapter highlights the most significant aspects of the Pollyanna phenomenon. These aspects include the ideological and political implications of Pollyanna's gladness, the constructions of girlhood, the Christian motifs, and national identity. Setting these issues in different contexts proffers a richer insight into the varied cultural manifestations of Pollyanna. Pollyanna's consciousness of her own deep sadness and her need for gladness saves the book from sentimentality.
Jennifer Higginbotham
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748655908
- eISBN:
- 9780748684397
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748655908.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters argues for a paradigm shift in our current conceptions of the early modern sex-gender system in England, challenging the widespread assumption that the category ...
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The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters argues for a paradigm shift in our current conceptions of the early modern sex-gender system in England, challenging the widespread assumption that the category of the ‘girl’ played little or no role in the construction of gender in early modern English culture. Girl characters appeared in a variety of texts, from female infants in Shakespeare’s late romances to little children in Tudor interludes to adult “roaring girls” in city comedies, and this monograph offers the first book-length study of the way the literature and drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constructed the category of the ‘girl.’Less
The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters argues for a paradigm shift in our current conceptions of the early modern sex-gender system in England, challenging the widespread assumption that the category of the ‘girl’ played little or no role in the construction of gender in early modern English culture. Girl characters appeared in a variety of texts, from female infants in Shakespeare’s late romances to little children in Tudor interludes to adult “roaring girls” in city comedies, and this monograph offers the first book-length study of the way the literature and drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constructed the category of the ‘girl.’
Nazera Sadiq Wright
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040573
- eISBN:
- 9780252099014
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040573.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Long portrayed as a masculine endeavor, the African American struggle for progress often found expression through an unlikely literary figure: the black girl. Drawing on heavy archival research on a ...
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Long portrayed as a masculine endeavor, the African American struggle for progress often found expression through an unlikely literary figure: the black girl. Drawing on heavy archival research on a wide range of texts about African American girls, this book explores the phenomenon of black girlhood. It shows that the figure of the black girl in African American literature provided a powerful avenue for exploring issues like domesticity, femininity, and proper conduct. The characters' actions, however fictional, became a rubric for African American citizenship and racial progress. At the same time, their seeming dependence and insignificance allegorized the unjust treatment of African Americans. The book reveals fascinating black girls who, possessed of a premature knowing and wisdom beyond their years, projected a courage and resiliency that made them exemplary representations of the project of racial advance and citizenship. The book asks why black writers of the period conveyed racial inequality, poverty, and discrimination through the lens of black girlhood; why black writers and activists emphasized certain types of girls; what tropes can be identified in the early literature of black girlhood; and where these girlhood tropes originated. It examines how black girls were represented in the earliest extant examples of the black press and it examines the first writings of black women about girlhood during the antebellum era. In doing this and more, the book documents a literary genealogy of the cultural attitudes toward black girls in the United States.Less
Long portrayed as a masculine endeavor, the African American struggle for progress often found expression through an unlikely literary figure: the black girl. Drawing on heavy archival research on a wide range of texts about African American girls, this book explores the phenomenon of black girlhood. It shows that the figure of the black girl in African American literature provided a powerful avenue for exploring issues like domesticity, femininity, and proper conduct. The characters' actions, however fictional, became a rubric for African American citizenship and racial progress. At the same time, their seeming dependence and insignificance allegorized the unjust treatment of African Americans. The book reveals fascinating black girls who, possessed of a premature knowing and wisdom beyond their years, projected a courage and resiliency that made them exemplary representations of the project of racial advance and citizenship. The book asks why black writers of the period conveyed racial inequality, poverty, and discrimination through the lens of black girlhood; why black writers and activists emphasized certain types of girls; what tropes can be identified in the early literature of black girlhood; and where these girlhood tropes originated. It examines how black girls were represented in the earliest extant examples of the black press and it examines the first writings of black women about girlhood during the antebellum era. In doing this and more, the book documents a literary genealogy of the cultural attitudes toward black girls in the United States.
Ruth Nicole Brown
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037979
- eISBN:
- 9780252095245
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037979.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This book examines how Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths, or SOLHOT, a radical youth intervention, provides a space for the creative performance and expression of Black girlhood and how this ...
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This book examines how Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths, or SOLHOT, a radical youth intervention, provides a space for the creative performance and expression of Black girlhood and how this creativity informs other realizations about Black girlhood and womanhood. Founded in 2006 and co-organized by the author, SOLHOT is an intergenerational collective organizing effort that celebrates and recognizes Black girls as producers of culture and knowledge. Girls discuss diverse expressions of Black girlhood, critique the issues that are important to them, and create art that keeps their lived experiences at its center. Drawing from experiences in SOLHOT, the book argues that when Black girls reflect on their own lives, they articulate radically unique ideas about their lived experiences. The book documents the creative potential of Black girls and women who are working together to advance original theories, practices, and performances that affirm complexity, interrogate power, and produce humanizing representation of Black girls' lives. In doing so, this book expands on the work of Black feminists and feminists of color and breaks intriguing new ground in Black feminist thought and methodology. Emotionally and intellectually powerful, the book combines theory with creativity to show how the creative helps to theorize, and how theory can be enacted through creativity.Less
This book examines how Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths, or SOLHOT, a radical youth intervention, provides a space for the creative performance and expression of Black girlhood and how this creativity informs other realizations about Black girlhood and womanhood. Founded in 2006 and co-organized by the author, SOLHOT is an intergenerational collective organizing effort that celebrates and recognizes Black girls as producers of culture and knowledge. Girls discuss diverse expressions of Black girlhood, critique the issues that are important to them, and create art that keeps their lived experiences at its center. Drawing from experiences in SOLHOT, the book argues that when Black girls reflect on their own lives, they articulate radically unique ideas about their lived experiences. The book documents the creative potential of Black girls and women who are working together to advance original theories, practices, and performances that affirm complexity, interrogate power, and produce humanizing representation of Black girls' lives. In doing so, this book expands on the work of Black feminists and feminists of color and breaks intriguing new ground in Black feminist thought and methodology. Emotionally and intellectually powerful, the book combines theory with creativity to show how the creative helps to theorize, and how theory can be enacted through creativity.
Edmund L. Drago
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823229376
- eISBN:
- 9780823234912
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823229376.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter discusses the after-effects of Civil War on marriage customs and girlhood in South Carolina. It cites the reprint of Enquirer's “Something for the Girls,” as it warns girls to put a high ...
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This chapter discusses the after-effects of Civil War on marriage customs and girlhood in South Carolina. It cites the reprint of Enquirer's “Something for the Girls,” as it warns girls to put a high price on themselves when choosing a husband. Difficult as always, the war made it harder for parents and educators to monitor the young, who were smitten with romantic patriotism. Younger girls were participating too early in courting and other premarital rituals.Less
This chapter discusses the after-effects of Civil War on marriage customs and girlhood in South Carolina. It cites the reprint of Enquirer's “Something for the Girls,” as it warns girls to put a high price on themselves when choosing a husband. Difficult as always, the war made it harder for parents and educators to monitor the young, who were smitten with romantic patriotism. Younger girls were participating too early in courting and other premarital rituals.
Sarah Projansky
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814770214
- eISBN:
- 9780814764794
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814770214.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
As an omnipresent figure of the media landscape, girls are spectacles. They are ubiquitous visual objects on display at which we are incessantly invited to look. Investigating our cultural obsession ...
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As an omnipresent figure of the media landscape, girls are spectacles. They are ubiquitous visual objects on display at which we are incessantly invited to look. Investigating our cultural obsession with both everyday and high-profile celebrity girls, the book explores the diversity of girlhoods in contemporary popular culture. The book addresses two key themes: simultaneous adoration and disdain for girls and the pervasiveness of whiteness and heteronormativity. While acknowledging this context, the book pushes past the dichotomy of the “can-do” girl who has the world at her feet and the troubled girl who needs protection and regulation to focus on the variety of alternative figures who appear in media culture, including queer girls, girls of color, feminist girls, active girls, and sexual girls, all of whom are present if we choose to look for them. Drawing on examples across film, television, mass-market magazines and newspapers, live sports TV, and the Internet, the book combines empirical analysis with careful, creative, feminist analysis intent on centering alternative girls. It undermines the pervasive “moral panic” argument that blames media itself for putting girls at risk by engaging multiple methodologies, including, for example, an ethnographic study of young girls who themselves critique media. Arguing that feminist media studies needs to understand the spectacularization of girlhood more fully, the book places active, alternative girlhoods right in the heart of popular media culture.Less
As an omnipresent figure of the media landscape, girls are spectacles. They are ubiquitous visual objects on display at which we are incessantly invited to look. Investigating our cultural obsession with both everyday and high-profile celebrity girls, the book explores the diversity of girlhoods in contemporary popular culture. The book addresses two key themes: simultaneous adoration and disdain for girls and the pervasiveness of whiteness and heteronormativity. While acknowledging this context, the book pushes past the dichotomy of the “can-do” girl who has the world at her feet and the troubled girl who needs protection and regulation to focus on the variety of alternative figures who appear in media culture, including queer girls, girls of color, feminist girls, active girls, and sexual girls, all of whom are present if we choose to look for them. Drawing on examples across film, television, mass-market magazines and newspapers, live sports TV, and the Internet, the book combines empirical analysis with careful, creative, feminist analysis intent on centering alternative girls. It undermines the pervasive “moral panic” argument that blames media itself for putting girls at risk by engaging multiple methodologies, including, for example, an ethnographic study of young girls who themselves critique media. Arguing that feminist media studies needs to understand the spectacularization of girlhood more fully, the book places active, alternative girlhoods right in the heart of popular media culture.
Deborah Shamoon
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824835422
- eISBN:
- 9780824870638
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824835422.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Shōjo manga are romance comics for teenage girls. Characterized by a very dense visual style, featuring flowery backgrounds and big-eyed, androgynous boys and girls, it is an extremely popular and ...
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Shōjo manga are romance comics for teenage girls. Characterized by a very dense visual style, featuring flowery backgrounds and big-eyed, androgynous boys and girls, it is an extremely popular and prominent genre in Japan. Why is this genre so appealing? Where did it come from? Why do so many of the stories feature androgynous characters and homosexual romance? This book answers these questions by reviewing Japanese girls' print culture from its origins in 1920s and 1930s girls' literary magazines to the 1970s “revolution” shōjo manga when young women artists took over the genre. The book traces the development of girls' culture in pre-World War II magazines and links it to postwar teenage girls' comics and popular culture. Within this culture, as private and cloistered as the schools most readers attended, a discourse of girlhood arose that avoided heterosexual romance in favor of “S relationships,” passionate friendships between girls. This preference for homogeneity is echoed in the postwar genre of boys' love manga written for girls. Both prewar S relationships and postwar boys' love stories gave girls a protected space to develop and explore their identities and sexuality apart from the pressures of a patriarchal society. Shōjo manga offered to a reading community of girls a place to share the difficulties of adolescence as well as an alternative to the image of girls purveyed by the media to boys and men.Less
Shōjo manga are romance comics for teenage girls. Characterized by a very dense visual style, featuring flowery backgrounds and big-eyed, androgynous boys and girls, it is an extremely popular and prominent genre in Japan. Why is this genre so appealing? Where did it come from? Why do so many of the stories feature androgynous characters and homosexual romance? This book answers these questions by reviewing Japanese girls' print culture from its origins in 1920s and 1930s girls' literary magazines to the 1970s “revolution” shōjo manga when young women artists took over the genre. The book traces the development of girls' culture in pre-World War II magazines and links it to postwar teenage girls' comics and popular culture. Within this culture, as private and cloistered as the schools most readers attended, a discourse of girlhood arose that avoided heterosexual romance in favor of “S relationships,” passionate friendships between girls. This preference for homogeneity is echoed in the postwar genre of boys' love manga written for girls. Both prewar S relationships and postwar boys' love stories gave girls a protected space to develop and explore their identities and sexuality apart from the pressures of a patriarchal society. Shōjo manga offered to a reading community of girls a place to share the difficulties of adolescence as well as an alternative to the image of girls purveyed by the media to boys and men.
Lorna Hardwick and James I. Porter
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199582969
- eISBN:
- 9780191731198
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582969.003.0012
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Ursula Le Guin's 2008 novel Lavinia tells the story of Lavinia, the Italian princess who had been promised to Turnus, but who becomes Aeneas' prize as he defeats Turnus and takes over Latinum. ...
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Ursula Le Guin's 2008 novel Lavinia tells the story of Lavinia, the Italian princess who had been promised to Turnus, but who becomes Aeneas' prize as he defeats Turnus and takes over Latinum. Lavinia, who is one of the slightest and most overlooked characters from the Aeneid, tells the story of her girlhood, of the events surrounding her marriage with Aeneas, and of Aeneas' death and her widowhood. She finds a voice, not only with which to address readers of the 21st century, but also with which she can converse with the spirit of Virgil and challenge him over his presentation of the Aeneid from so imperial and male a point of view. Le Guin situates these conversations between Lavinia and Virgil in a ‘nowhen’ space, a place out of time, so that on occasion Lavinia, whose fictional existence preceded Virgil's, looks ahead to the birth of her creator. At other times she looks back to the time when she was brought into being at the hands of Virgil, as her creator. This extra-temporal dimension underlines the endless capacity of the Aeneid to create its own futures, to be made new and find a fresh voice asserting its relevance over two millennia later and in a new world on a different continent.Less
Ursula Le Guin's 2008 novel Lavinia tells the story of Lavinia, the Italian princess who had been promised to Turnus, but who becomes Aeneas' prize as he defeats Turnus and takes over Latinum. Lavinia, who is one of the slightest and most overlooked characters from the Aeneid, tells the story of her girlhood, of the events surrounding her marriage with Aeneas, and of Aeneas' death and her widowhood. She finds a voice, not only with which to address readers of the 21st century, but also with which she can converse with the spirit of Virgil and challenge him over his presentation of the Aeneid from so imperial and male a point of view. Le Guin situates these conversations between Lavinia and Virgil in a ‘nowhen’ space, a place out of time, so that on occasion Lavinia, whose fictional existence preceded Virgil's, looks ahead to the birth of her creator. At other times she looks back to the time when she was brought into being at the hands of Virgil, as her creator. This extra-temporal dimension underlines the endless capacity of the Aeneid to create its own futures, to be made new and find a fresh voice asserting its relevance over two millennia later and in a new world on a different continent.
Daniel Thomas Cook
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781479899203
- eISBN:
- 9781479881413
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479899203.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Marriage and the Family
This chapter examines mid- to late-nineteenth-century Victorian middle-class concerns with taste—the child’s taste in particular—and how this notion drew on and wrestled with virtually the same ...
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This chapter examines mid- to late-nineteenth-century Victorian middle-class concerns with taste—the child’s taste in particular—and how this notion drew on and wrestled with virtually the same constellation of tensions evident in the struggles with depravity and salvation regarding the Protestant child. Ever-present and ever-looming child malleability imperilled social reproduction and implicated mothers as those responsible not only for the material well-being of children but, more importantly, for their appropriate disposition toward things and the world of things. Both cases, in this sense, worked toward fashioning a moral architecture whereby the making of social persons, and of consequent subjectivities, guided the counsel imparted on the pages of periodicals. By examining discourses regarding children and taste—particularly, but not exclusive, girls’ taste—it is argued that taste operated in a pedagogical register thought to educate and direct the child toward proper objects and a proper relationship to objects. In this way, taste emplaced materiality directly into the moral education of bourgeois children and offered another way to theorize or otherwise configure the interiority of the child—i.e., to discern and determine the shape and consequences of their wants and desires.Less
This chapter examines mid- to late-nineteenth-century Victorian middle-class concerns with taste—the child’s taste in particular—and how this notion drew on and wrestled with virtually the same constellation of tensions evident in the struggles with depravity and salvation regarding the Protestant child. Ever-present and ever-looming child malleability imperilled social reproduction and implicated mothers as those responsible not only for the material well-being of children but, more importantly, for their appropriate disposition toward things and the world of things. Both cases, in this sense, worked toward fashioning a moral architecture whereby the making of social persons, and of consequent subjectivities, guided the counsel imparted on the pages of periodicals. By examining discourses regarding children and taste—particularly, but not exclusive, girls’ taste—it is argued that taste operated in a pedagogical register thought to educate and direct the child toward proper objects and a proper relationship to objects. In this way, taste emplaced materiality directly into the moral education of bourgeois children and offered another way to theorize or otherwise configure the interiority of the child—i.e., to discern and determine the shape and consequences of their wants and desires.
SARAH BILSTON
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199272617
- eISBN:
- 9780191709685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272617.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter begins by citing some definitions of the ‘awkward age’ as stated by various writers from 1850-1900. It then explains how difficult it was to define the awkward age in an era before ...
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This chapter begins by citing some definitions of the ‘awkward age’ as stated by various writers from 1850-1900. It then explains how difficult it was to define the awkward age in an era before theories of adolescence gave maturation a recognizable trajectory and a descriptive vocabulary. It discusses Carol Dyhouse's assumptions and definition of women's awkward age, regarded as the standard point of reference on the history of Victorian and Edwardian girlhood. It then challenges Dyhouse's assumptions by presenting that Victorian writers commonly acknowledged the existence of an awkward age, a developmental interval between childhood and womanhood, and that women's population fictions regularly represented the stage as a phase of relative ‘liberty and choice’. It also explains how girls who are at the transition stage are represented.Less
This chapter begins by citing some definitions of the ‘awkward age’ as stated by various writers from 1850-1900. It then explains how difficult it was to define the awkward age in an era before theories of adolescence gave maturation a recognizable trajectory and a descriptive vocabulary. It discusses Carol Dyhouse's assumptions and definition of women's awkward age, regarded as the standard point of reference on the history of Victorian and Edwardian girlhood. It then challenges Dyhouse's assumptions by presenting that Victorian writers commonly acknowledged the existence of an awkward age, a developmental interval between childhood and womanhood, and that women's population fictions regularly represented the stage as a phase of relative ‘liberty and choice’. It also explains how girls who are at the transition stage are represented.
SARAH BILSTON
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199272617
- eISBN:
- 9780191709685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272617.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter regards the transition to womanhood as a stage performativity and theatricality. It explains that girls in the transition to womanhood were likely to provoke comparisons with the ...
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This chapter regards the transition to womanhood as a stage performativity and theatricality. It explains that girls in the transition to womanhood were likely to provoke comparisons with the actress. It demonstrates how girls are depicted as actresses who have their own roles to perform.Less
This chapter regards the transition to womanhood as a stage performativity and theatricality. It explains that girls in the transition to womanhood were likely to provoke comparisons with the actress. It demonstrates how girls are depicted as actresses who have their own roles to perform.
SARAH BILSTON
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199272617
- eISBN:
- 9780191709685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272617.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter demonstrates that James's The Awkward Age may be placed within a much longer tradition of writing about adolescence and girlhood, a tradition that also comprises an intriguing prehistory ...
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This chapter demonstrates that James's The Awkward Age may be placed within a much longer tradition of writing about adolescence and girlhood, a tradition that also comprises an intriguing prehistory to the famous theories of adolescence advanced by Hall and Freud at the beginning of the twentieth century. It suggests that the interval between girlhood and womanhood had to be bridged in order to explain the process of physical and psychological change that girls undergo during their teens. It demonstrates how a girl's growth, especially during her awkward age, might be affected by the people surrounding her.Less
This chapter demonstrates that James's The Awkward Age may be placed within a much longer tradition of writing about adolescence and girlhood, a tradition that also comprises an intriguing prehistory to the famous theories of adolescence advanced by Hall and Freud at the beginning of the twentieth century. It suggests that the interval between girlhood and womanhood had to be bridged in order to explain the process of physical and psychological change that girls undergo during their teens. It demonstrates how a girl's growth, especially during her awkward age, might be affected by the people surrounding her.
Nazera Sadiq Wright
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040573
- eISBN:
- 9780252099014
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040573.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter examines the first writings of black women about girlhood during the antebellum era, with particular emphasis on the trope of the self-reliant black girl in the face of adversity. After ...
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This chapter examines the first writings of black women about girlhood during the antebellum era, with particular emphasis on the trope of the self-reliant black girl in the face of adversity. After reviewing representations of black girlhood in early American children's print culture, the chapter turns to some of the first short stories and full-length books by black women that centered on the lives of black girls. Focusing on the work of Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, and Maria W. Stewart along with an abolitionist text imported from England, it considers how black women writers distinguished between youthful girlhood and knowing girlhood to challenge the prevailing attitude on southern plantations that black girls were valuable solely for their future fecundity and economic potential. By revealing the qualities and behaviors exhibited by black girls across literary genres, black women writers showed that black girls were capable of seeking their own fate.Less
This chapter examines the first writings of black women about girlhood during the antebellum era, with particular emphasis on the trope of the self-reliant black girl in the face of adversity. After reviewing representations of black girlhood in early American children's print culture, the chapter turns to some of the first short stories and full-length books by black women that centered on the lives of black girls. Focusing on the work of Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, and Maria W. Stewart along with an abolitionist text imported from England, it considers how black women writers distinguished between youthful girlhood and knowing girlhood to challenge the prevailing attitude on southern plantations that black girls were valuable solely for their future fecundity and economic potential. By revealing the qualities and behaviors exhibited by black girls across literary genres, black women writers showed that black girls were capable of seeking their own fate.
Heather D. Switzer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042034
- eISBN:
- 9780252050770
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042034.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, African Studies
“Embodying Schoolgirlhood,” uses contested accounts of emuratare oo ntoyie, girls’ circumcision, and enkanyakuai, a female social category, to illustrate how schoolgirls’ “developing” adolescent ...
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“Embodying Schoolgirlhood,” uses contested accounts of emuratare oo ntoyie, girls’ circumcision, and enkanyakuai, a female social category, to illustrate how schoolgirls’ “developing” adolescent bodies complicate their performance and negotiation of schoolgirlhood. The chapter illustrates a key tension: schoolgirlhood proceeds as girl-effects logic would predict by destabilizing conventional meanings and rescripting girlhood as a place of possibility for girls who go to school rather than a relatively short life stage that ends abruptly at circumcision, yet this logic cannot account for Maasai schoolgirls’ desire for community identity and belonging. Global and local assumptions about schoolgirls’ abilities to “call the shots” collide with schoolgirls’ actual capacity to do so; both miss schoolgirls’ desire to be independent and to deeply belong as “Maasai” among Maasai.Less
“Embodying Schoolgirlhood,” uses contested accounts of emuratare oo ntoyie, girls’ circumcision, and enkanyakuai, a female social category, to illustrate how schoolgirls’ “developing” adolescent bodies complicate their performance and negotiation of schoolgirlhood. The chapter illustrates a key tension: schoolgirlhood proceeds as girl-effects logic would predict by destabilizing conventional meanings and rescripting girlhood as a place of possibility for girls who go to school rather than a relatively short life stage that ends abruptly at circumcision, yet this logic cannot account for Maasai schoolgirls’ desire for community identity and belonging. Global and local assumptions about schoolgirls’ abilities to “call the shots” collide with schoolgirls’ actual capacity to do so; both miss schoolgirls’ desire to be independent and to deeply belong as “Maasai” among Maasai.
Laura Helen Marks
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042140
- eISBN:
- 9780252050886
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042140.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores pornographic constructions of female sexual agency through the character of Lewis Carroll’s Alice. These films use the Alice narrative to play out fantasies of womanly sexual ...
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This chapter explores pornographic constructions of female sexual agency through the character of Lewis Carroll’s Alice. These films use the Alice narrative to play out fantasies of womanly sexual authority through humor and sadomasochism. These films constitute recuperative projects that rescue Alice from her pawn status and position her as object, subject, and author within the pornographic text. I demonstrate the ways in which cultural understandings of the Alice stories are used by pornographic filmmakers to depict Wonderlands as joyful fantasy spaces for re-visionings of the normative and for developing and directing a particular pornographic female sexual subjectivity.Less
This chapter explores pornographic constructions of female sexual agency through the character of Lewis Carroll’s Alice. These films use the Alice narrative to play out fantasies of womanly sexual authority through humor and sadomasochism. These films constitute recuperative projects that rescue Alice from her pawn status and position her as object, subject, and author within the pornographic text. I demonstrate the ways in which cultural understandings of the Alice stories are used by pornographic filmmakers to depict Wonderlands as joyful fantasy spaces for re-visionings of the normative and for developing and directing a particular pornographic female sexual subjectivity.
Carmel Vaisman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199795437
- eISBN:
- 9780199919321
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795437.003.0009
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
This chapter is concerned with the ways one community of Israeli girls, Fakatsa, employ linguistic repertoires and typographic styles in performing a “girly girl” identity on their blogs. The chapter ...
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This chapter is concerned with the ways one community of Israeli girls, Fakatsa, employ linguistic repertoires and typographic styles in performing a “girly girl” identity on their blogs. The chapter emerges from a larger ethnography of girls' engagement with new media literacies in the Hebrew-language blogosphere. Fakatsa girls have developed a vernacular Hebrew literation and typographic system in which the aesthetic form of writing is as important as content. It is through this particular style that they are also able to negotiate (or resist) popular stereotypes about them. The chapter contributes to an understanding of the reciprocity between gender identity performance, globalization, language, and new media.Less
This chapter is concerned with the ways one community of Israeli girls, Fakatsa, employ linguistic repertoires and typographic styles in performing a “girly girl” identity on their blogs. The chapter emerges from a larger ethnography of girls' engagement with new media literacies in the Hebrew-language blogosphere. Fakatsa girls have developed a vernacular Hebrew literation and typographic system in which the aesthetic form of writing is as important as content. It is through this particular style that they are also able to negotiate (or resist) popular stereotypes about them. The chapter contributes to an understanding of the reciprocity between gender identity performance, globalization, language, and new media.
Fiona Handyside
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786941787
- eISBN:
- 9781789623239
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941787.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
France has recently produced a series of films by female auteurs that offer a close and sympathetic engagement with girls. This chapter concentrates on two films whose titles draw attention to their ...
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France has recently produced a series of films by female auteurs that offer a close and sympathetic engagement with girls. This chapter concentrates on two films whose titles draw attention to their interest in the feelings and experiences of girlhood: 17 Filles (Delphine and Muriel Coulin, 2011) and Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma, 2014). The directors, through location shooting, their local geographical knowledge, and non-professional actors drawn from the area where the films are set, place their explorations of girlhood into highly specific locations. Such geographical specificity produces and evaluates a distinctive approach towards girls and girl culture, which is usually understood in a more homogenous way. Furthermore, this close attention to geography produces a topographical account of girlhood in which verticality and horizontality, and light and shade, shape varied and distinctive experiences of power and agency for girls.Less
France has recently produced a series of films by female auteurs that offer a close and sympathetic engagement with girls. This chapter concentrates on two films whose titles draw attention to their interest in the feelings and experiences of girlhood: 17 Filles (Delphine and Muriel Coulin, 2011) and Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma, 2014). The directors, through location shooting, their local geographical knowledge, and non-professional actors drawn from the area where the films are set, place their explorations of girlhood into highly specific locations. Such geographical specificity produces and evaluates a distinctive approach towards girls and girl culture, which is usually understood in a more homogenous way. Furthermore, this close attention to geography produces a topographical account of girlhood in which verticality and horizontality, and light and shade, shape varied and distinctive experiences of power and agency for girls.
Ruth Nicole Brown
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037979
- eISBN:
- 9780252095245
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037979.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This concluding chapter features a series of personal letters that underscore the necessity of envisioning Black girlhood differently than it is described on mainstream television; popular magazines; ...
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This concluding chapter features a series of personal letters that underscore the necessity of envisioning Black girlhood differently than it is described on mainstream television; popular magazines; through statistics; and in policies that punish, segregate, and silence. The letters are addressed to people whose love and compassion is a testament to continue this work and who intimately know the necessity of maintaining personal healing while also advocating for the abolition of all forms of Black girl servitude. Moreover, it emphasizes that SOLHOT is not meant to be prescriptive and does not offer itself as a successful model of girl programming. The letters represent a kind of personal meditation that on the sly challenges systemic inequalities, appealing to those who inspire and motivate Black girlhood renewal as a space of freedom.Less
This concluding chapter features a series of personal letters that underscore the necessity of envisioning Black girlhood differently than it is described on mainstream television; popular magazines; through statistics; and in policies that punish, segregate, and silence. The letters are addressed to people whose love and compassion is a testament to continue this work and who intimately know the necessity of maintaining personal healing while also advocating for the abolition of all forms of Black girl servitude. Moreover, it emphasizes that SOLHOT is not meant to be prescriptive and does not offer itself as a successful model of girl programming. The letters represent a kind of personal meditation that on the sly challenges systemic inequalities, appealing to those who inspire and motivate Black girlhood renewal as a space of freedom.
