Julie Pfeiffer, "Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence\xa0(UP of Mississippi, 2021) explores the paradox of the nineteenth-century girls\u2019 book. On the one hand, early novels for adolescent girls rely on gender binaries and suggest that girls must accommodate and support a patriarchal framework to be happy. On the other, they provide access to imagined worlds in which teens are at the center. The early girls\u2019 book frames female adolescence as an opportunity for productive investment in the self. This is a space where mentors who trust themselves, the education they provide, and the girl\u2019s essentially good nature neutralize the girl\u2019s own anxieties about maturity.\nThese mid-nineteenth-century novels focus on female adolescence as a social category in unexpected ways. They draw not on a twentieth-century model of the alienated adolescent, but on a model of collaborative growth. The purpose of these novels is to approach adolescence\u2014a category that continues to engage and perplex us\u2014from another perspective, one in which fluid identity and the deliberate construction of a self are celebrated. They provide alternatives to cultural beliefs about what it was like to be a white, middle-class girl in the nineteenth century and challenge the assumption that the evolution of the girls\u2019 book is always a movement towards less sexist, less restrictive images of girls.\nDrawing on forgotten bestsellers in the United States and Germany (where this genre is referred to as\xa0Backfischliteratur), Transforming Girls offers insightful readings that call scholars to reexamine the history of the girls\u2019 book. It also outlines an alternate model for imagining adolescence and supporting adolescent girls. The awkward adolescent girl\u2014so popular in mid-nineteenth-century fiction for girls\u2014remains a valuable resource for understanding contemporary girls and stories about them.\nJulie Pfeiffer is a professor of English at Hollins University. She is editor of\xa0Children\u2019s Literature,\xa0the annual of Children\u2019s Literature Association.\nRenee Garris\xa0is a professor of Humanities in Virginia. She teaches the Humanities as a discipline as well as hosts authors on this network as well as the Performing Arts channel.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies