For Britain and the United States, the 50 years of social, political, and cultural change between 1910 and 1960 included two World Wars and the subsequent anxiety of the Cold War. In this book, we argue that there were, however, some continuities of expectation as to the gendered role that middle and upper class young women would, and should, play that crossed time and place. In his discussion of the relationship between the family and society in postwar Britain, Chris Harris observed, ‘To recognise empirical diversity is not to deny the existence of structural regularities that underlie it and cultural values that inform it.’1 Similarly, this book explores how we can identify gendered norms that underlie the expectations of femininity within two capitalist societies in the early part of the twentieth century. We suggest that the genre of the school and college story offers one way to explore how girls were informally educated into a performance of femininity that was recognisable on both sides of the Atlantic. The popularity of the school and college story offers a rich source through which to examine prescriptions for femininity that were accepted by the reader (who continued to read these books through many editions) and acceptable to the adults who may have purchased the books as presents and allowed them into the home as suitable reading.
The genre has attracted a range of scholars who have examined the formation of femininity in fictions focused on a national readership.2 In this book, we bring together, for a transnational discussion, novels published in two societies that had much in common as well as many differences in their social and political contexts. The stories that we focus on were not intended for a transatlantic audience. Unlike some of the British stories that were widely exported to Australia and New Zealand, they were expected to be read by an audience that was familiar with the school and college structure of their homeland. Although the books were intended for diverse audiences, we argue that we can identify some aspects of femininity that were fundamental to the experience of girls in both geographical regions as they prepared to take their place in adult society. The growing strength of international women’s movements across this period may be better understood if we recognise that, despite national differences, there were commonalities between women that were secured in diverse ways during their adolescent years. One of those ways, we argue, was through the fiction that they consumed as their leisure reading. From the thousands of books published that drew on school and college lives, we have selected series books by four popular authors who took their heroines through their early days at school into adult life. The continuity of these series that followed the main characters from adolescence into adulthood offers a focused subset of school and college stories that enables us to examine how readers would be educated into aspects of femininity. Readers could follow their favourite characters’ growth to maturity, as they became responsible citizens, wives, and mothers, yet retained the ‘essence’ of their younger selves. As Rosemary Auchmuty observed, series stories allow us to ‘observe the authors’ views on a range of topics about women of all ages and at most stages of their lives.’3 The following introduction briefly sets out the origins of the school and college story before explaining our choice of books and authors for this study. It then highlights the three themes that underpin our analysis of the main chapters: the role of fiction, the construction of femininity, and the significance of female friendship. The chapter closes with a summary of the main chapters that demonstrate the multifaceted and complex nature of girlhood in the first half of the twentieth century.
The School and College Story
The emergence of the popularity of stories set in educational settings unsurprisingly runs parallel to the development of formal education in Britain and the United States. In 1910, a 15-year-old girl in Britain might have been at school. If she were middle or upper class, she might have been at home with a governess; if working class, she could have been at work. By 1960, her granddaughter or great granddaughter was approaching the minimum school-leaving age, having benefitted from the 1944 Education Act that provided free secondary education for all. Very few girls would have been educated at home. In the United States in 1910, a 15-year-old girl would have been more likely to have attended public high school, though the likelihood of doing so could also have depended on social class. By 1960, almost all girls attended compulsory education to the high school level.
In Britain, the publication of Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes in 1857, describing school life at Rugby school for upper class boys, is usually recognised as the first of the school story genre.4 The stories of L T Meade in the late nineteenth century were the forerunner of the girls’ school story. Sweet Girl Graduate (1891) tells the story of Priscilla, a girl from a poor background who achieves a place at ‘St Benet’s,’ and The Rebel of the School, published in 1902, is set in a large girls’ day school.5 Themes of friendship, and lessons that snobbery is unacceptable, established the genre that was then developed by Angela Brazil. Brazil (1868–1947) was the first of the widely recognised ‘Big Four’ authors of the girls’ school story in Britain. Brazil’s stories were self-contained novels set in both day and boarding schools that covered a short time span.6 She was followed by Elinor Brent-Dyer (1894–1969), Dorita Fairlie Bruce (1885–1970), and Elsie J. Oxenham (Dunkerley) (1880–1960), with the genre reaching a peak of publication in the 1920s and 1930s. Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers books, published between 1946 and 1951, focused on a girls’ boarding school and the fortunes of Darrell Rivers and her friends as they move up the school and remained popular with readers into the 1960s.7
In the United States, the ‘growing up’ story that established the girls’ genre was Louise Alcott’s Little Women series. Little Women, first published in 1868, followed the March sisters into adulthood with Jo, the central character, maturing from a rumbustious teenager into the matriarch of Little Men.8 Josephine March is a very similar character to Josephine Bettany, the heroine of the later Chalet series by Elinor Brent-Dyer suggesting that Brent-Dyer was fully conversant with the American stories. A second, much read, American series that included a school setting was the Katy books, written by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, Alcott’s contemporary (1835–1905), writing as Susan Coolidge.9 In the books that are the focus of our discussion, the British characters refer to the school story genre, usually suggesting that their ‘real’ school is far superior to the fantasies presented to an earlier audience. In the American series that we discuss here, the desirable traits of femininity lauded by Alcott and Coolidge are developed within the context of the twentieth-century American society that offered more alternatives for young women beyond domesticity.
Setting the plot within the boundaries of school or college enabled authors to focus on the children as emerging autonomous individuals, negotiating their way through the expectations of peers and those in authority without the security of, or interference from, their parents. Even if the reader had no personal experience of the institution of school or college, she was aware of its existence and therefore its potential relationship to the real world. School stories in that context were then more grounded in the real world than, for example, a fantasy island, offering the possibility for the reader to identify more readily with the cast of characters. The number of school and college stories advertised in the back pages of such books as the Marjorie Dean series reflect a growing and continuous consumer demand. The publishers A L Burt suggested further reading of books on their list for ‘clean, wholesome stories … if you have enjoyed reading about the adventures of the new friends you have made in this book.’10 Seth Lerner emphasised the role of the library in his analysis of children’s literature, claiming that ‘The rise of American children’s literature is, to a large degree, inseparable from the rise of the public lending library, and by the 1870s the libraries had become the guardians of children’s reading.’11 Scholars have identified similar growth in the genre in the British press. While this growth establishes a good rationale for an exploration of the construction of femininity in these stories, the sheer numbers pose a problem for the researcher in making decisions about sources. In the next two sections, we explain our rationale for choosing the stories featured in this book and offer short biographies of our chosen authors.
The Novels
Many school and college stories followed Brazil’s formula for setting each book in a different school, over either a school term or academic year. Inevitably, this meant that the characters could not be fully developed and the formulaic new girl, problems, resolution, happy ever after plots, while worthy of note in terms of the seemingly endless demand, do not allow for a more...