The Clubwomen's Daughters: Collectivist Impulses in Progressive-Era Girl's Fiction, 1890-1940 (Garland Studies in American Popular History and Culture)

During the nineteenth-century, American women discovered that they could gain access to traditionally-male spaces such as the college campus, the playing field, and the political Woman's Suffrage Organization, the National Colored Women's Association, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Eager to pass on this strategy to the next generation of young women, Progressive-era clubwomen authors created narratives that featured community-minded protagonists who worked alongside their peers to achieve empowerment and self-actualization. Chapters One and Two trace the development and aims of the clubwomen's movement and include an analysis of the movement based on issues of race and class. They describe the economic factors that led culturally conservative book publishers to put aside their personal beliefs concerning women's rights in order to cash in on the lucrative girls' fiction market, and they analyze the way that young girls used their purchasing power to demand fiction that mirrored their desires for peer interaction and for access to the public realm. Chapters Three through Six demonstrate that each successive wave of progressive-era girls' fiction--from the college novel in the 1910s to the scouting novel in the 1920s to the detective novel in the 1930s--features heroines who move further into the public realm and who gain increasing autonomy and self-esteem in the process. Finally, a comparison of the lives of young readers to those of their fictional counterparts demonstrates that girls' fiction had a significant impact on its intended audience, encouraging them to create or to join peer groups and to strive for success beyond the traditional occupations of housewife and mother. Authors discussed include Christina Catrevis, Jessie Graham Flower (psued. of Josephine Chase), Frances E. W. Harper, Emma Dunham Kelley, Irene Elliot Benson, Laura Lee Hope (psued. of Lilian Garis), Carolyn Keene (psued. of Mildred Wirt Benson), and Margaret Sutton.

The author provides an interdisciplinary cultural study of the evolution of Progressive-era girls' peer groups, their representation in popular girls' fiction, and the influence of these communities, both real and fictional, upon young women's lives during the years leading up to the Second World War. The writers featured in this volume were the first generation of "New Women," whose ability to enter traditionally male spaces such as the college campus, the playing field, the wilderness, and the office was facilitated by their membership in women's clubs, political and religious organizations, and athletic teams. Eager to promote the idea that same-sex group activities would lead to female empowerment, these clubwomen targeted young girls as their intended audience and developed an idealized fictional portrait of female cooperation that girls could replicate in their own lives. By adding to our knowledge of girls' cultural history, the author gives voice to a segment of the population that was, and still is, at the center of society's debates concerning the appropriate roles for girls and women. Authors discussed include Louisa May Alcott, Emma Dunham Kelley, Laura Lee Hope (psuedonym for Lilian Garis), Carolyn Keene (pseudonym for Mildred Wirt Benson), and Margaret Sutton.

Booknews

Via examining such literature as Helen Dawes Brown's (1886) and Kelley-Hawkins' role model fiction for African-American girls from an American studies' perspective, Tarbox traces the clubwomen's movement that spawned some f the earliest works of adolescent fiction to validate public female communities as transformative agents. The author examines the movement's literary, charitable, social, and suffrage activities that made it part of the cultural landscape by the latter half of the 19th century. She concludes with the current trend to revitalize the collectivist impulse in such fiction as Maureen Holohan's series. Based on a dissertation at Purdue U. (date unspecified). Her present affiliation is unclear. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This book examines the evolution of Progressive-era girls' peer groups, their representation in popular girls' fiction, and the influence of these upon young women's lives during the years leading up to the Second World War.