What Katy Read focuses on a much neglected area of literary criticism: literature for girls. Written by women for children, such texts have been doubly marginalized by the critical establishment. Shirley Foster and Judy Simons use twentieth-century feminist critical practice to open up fresh perspectives on popular fiction for girls written between 1850 and 1920. The study analyses both American and British novels for girls which have acquired 'classic' status, from the domestic myth to the school story, and considers their scope and influence in providing role models for girl readers.

What Katy Read: Feminist Re-Readings of ‘Classic’ Stories for Girls (Feminist Re-Readings of Classic Stories for Girls, 1850-1920)

Foster, Shirley

Teen & Young Adult

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Focusing on the ways in which female novelists have, in their creative work, challenged or scrutinised contemporary assumptions about their own sex, this book's critical interest in women’s fiction shows how mid-nineteenth-century women writers confront the conflict between the pressures of matrimonial ideologies and the often more attractive alternative of single or professional life. In arguing that the tensions and dualities of their work represent the honest confrontation of their own ambivalence rather than attempted conformity to convention, it calls for a fresh look at patterns of imaginative representation in Victorian women’s literature. Making extensive use of letters and non-fiction, this study relates the opinions expressed there to the themes and methods of the fictional narratives. The first chapter outlines the social and ideological framework within which the authors were writing; the subsequent five chapters deal with the individual novelists, Craik, Charlotte Bronté, Sewell, Gaskell, and Eliot, examining the works of each and also pointing to the similarities between them, thus suggesting a shared female ‘voice’. Dealing with minor writers as well as better-known figures, it opens up new areas of critical investigation, claiming not only that many nineteenth-century female novelists have been undeservedly neglected but also that the major ones are further illuminated by being considered alongside their less familiar contemporaries.

Victorian women's fiction: Marriage, freedom, and the individual

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Barnes&Noble Books

Victorian Women's Fiction: Marriage, Freedom and the Individual

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Victorian Women's Fiction (Routledge Library Editions: Women, Feminism and Literature)

Victorian Women's Fiction: Marriage, Freedom, and the Individual (Routledge Library Editions: Women, Feminism and Literature)

Reference

Routledge

Croom Helm

From eccentric, to cautious, to conventional, An anthology of Women's Travel Writing aims to challenge stereotypes of women travelers by presenting a range of possible forms of writing and new archetypes of female travelers. These diverse writings also attempt to confront the textual problems which result from both writing and traveling as a woman, such as the depiction of other women, the representation of spatial relations, and the relationship to the adventure hero narrative.

An Anthology of Women's Travel Writing

Mills, Sara

Manchester University Press

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.

What Katy Read: Feminist Re-Readings of Classic Stories for Girls, 1850-1920

Children's Books

Simons, Judy

University Of Iowa Press

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