Fictions of Female Education in the Nineteenth Century

Fictions of Female Education in the Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Jaime Osterman Alves
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135842469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Seeking to understand how literary texts both shaped and reflected the century's debates over adolescent female education, this book examines fictional works and historical documents featuring descriptions of girls' formal educational experiences between the 1810s and the 1890s. Alves argues that the emergence of schoolgirl culture in nineteenth-century America presented significant challenges to subsequent constructions of normative femininity. The trope of the adolescent schoolgirl was a carrier of shifting cultural anxieties about how formal education would disrupt the customary maid-wife-mother cycle and turn young females off to prevailing gender roles. By tracing the figure of the schoolgirl at crossroads between educational and other institutions - in texts written by and about girls from a variety of racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds - this book transcends the limitations of "separate spheres" inquiry and enriches our understanding of how girls negotiated complex gender roles in the nineteenth century.

Fictions of Female Education in the Nineteenth Century

Fictions of Female Education in the Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Jaime Osterman Alves
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135842469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Seeking to understand how literary texts both shaped and reflected the century's debates over adolescent female education, this book examines fictional works and historical documents featuring descriptions of girls' formal educational experiences between the 1810s and the 1890s. Alves argues that the emergence of schoolgirl culture in nineteenth-century America presented significant challenges to subsequent constructions of normative femininity. The trope of the adolescent schoolgirl was a carrier of shifting cultural anxieties about how formal education would disrupt the customary maid-wife-mother cycle and turn young females off to prevailing gender roles. By tracing the figure of the schoolgirl at crossroads between educational and other institutions - in texts written by and about girls from a variety of racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds - this book transcends the limitations of "separate spheres" inquiry and enriches our understanding of how girls negotiated complex gender roles in the nineteenth century.

Transforming Girls

Transforming Girls PDF Author: Julie Pfeiffer
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496836286
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence explores the paradox of the nineteenth-century girls’ 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’ 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’s essentially good nature neutralize the girl’s own anxieties about maturity. These 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—a category that continues to engage and perplex us—from 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’ book is always a movement towards less sexist, less restrictive images of girls. Drawing on forgotten bestsellers in the United States and Germany (where this genre is referred to as Backfischliteratur), Transforming Girls offers insightful readings that call scholars to reexamine the history of the girls’ book. It also outlines an alternate model for imagining adolescence and supporting adolescent girls. The awkward adolescent girl—so popular in mid-nineteenth-century fiction for girls—remains a valuable resource for understanding contemporary girls and stories about them.

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Margaret Fuller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social history
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description


The Odd Women

The Odd Women PDF Author: George Gissing
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1770488286
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
George Gissing’s The Odd Women dramatizes key issues relating to class and gender in late-Victorian culture: the changing relationship between the sexes, the social impact of ‘odd’ or ‘redundant’ women, the cultural impact of ‘the new woman,’ and the opportunities for and conditions of employment in the expanding service sector of the economy. At the heart of these issues as many late Victorians saw them was a problem of the imbalance in the ratio of men to women in the population. There were more females than males, which meant that more and more women would be left unmarried; they would be ‘odd’ or ‘redundant,’ and would be forced to be independent and to find work to support themselves. In the Broadview edition, Gissing’s text is carefully annotated and accompanied by a range of documents from the period that help to lay out the context in which the book was written. In Gissing’s story, Virginia Madden and her two sisters are confronted upon the death of their father with sudden impoverishment. Without training for employment, and desperate to maintain middle-class respectability, they face a daunting struggle. In Rhoda Nunn, a strong feminist, Gissing also presents a strong character who draws attention overtly to the issues behind the novel. The Odd Women is one of the most important social novels of the late nineteenth century.

Romantic Education in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Romantic Education in Nineteenth-Century American Literature PDF Author: Monika M Elbert
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317671783
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
American publishing in the long nineteenth century was flooded with readers, primers, teaching-training manuals, children’s literature, and popular periodicals aimed at families. These publications attest to an abiding faith in the power of pedagogy that has its roots in transatlantic Romantic conceptions of pedagogy and literacy. The essays in this collection examine the on-going influence of Romanticism in the long nineteenth century on American thinking about education, as depicted in literary texts, in historical accounts of classroom dynamics, or in pedagogical treatises. They also point out that though this influence was generally progressive, the benefits of this social change did not reach many parts of American society. This book is therefore an important reference for scholars of Romantic studies, American studies, historical pedagogy and education.

Girls' School Stories, 1749-1929

Girls' School Stories, 1749-1929 PDF Author: Kristine Moruzi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415830409
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
As part of the ongoing project of retrieving women writers from the margins of literary and cultural history, scholars of literature, history, and gender studies are increasingly exploring and interrogating girls' print culture. School stories, in particular, are generating substantial scholarly interest because of their centrality to the history of girls' reading, their engagement with cultural ideas about the education and socialization of girls, and their enduring popularity with book collectors. However, while serious scholars have begun to document the vast corpus of English-language girls' school stories, few scholarly editions or facsimile editions of these novels and short stories are readily available. Girls' School Stories in English, 1749-1929, a new title from Routledge and Edition Synapse's History of Feminism series, provides a vital resource to cater to this growing critical interest. This unique collection answers the important need to balance the historical record of canonical literature for young people in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century with popular fictions that had wide, devoted, and--following the emergence of school-series fiction--ongoing readerships. Moreover, existing scholarship has not yet explicated the connections between the British genre and its adaptation to colonial and American readerships, and one of the functions of this collection is to document the evolution of the girls' school-story genre in Britain to pinpoint the development and contestation of its signature tropes, and to trace the refinement and reproduction of these elements in Canadian, Australian, and American print cultures. The six volumes in the collection cover the years 1749 to 1929, a temporal span designed to demonstrate the origins of the genre and its development throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras. It concludes with works from the 1920s that coincide with a peak in the genre's popularity. And the thematic, rather than chronological, organization of the set allows users easily to compare and contrast (across time and place) school-story conventions and attitudes with issues such as women's higher education. Volume I ('Moral Education') of the set draws attention to some of the earliest school stories published for girls in the eighteenth century, many of which situated moral improvement and rationality as the primary purpose of girls' education. Early stories, such as Dorothy Kilner's Anecdotes of a Boarding School; or, An Antidote to the Vices of those Establishments (1790), which is reproduced in full, were especially influenced by religious imperatives. While the overtly religious nature of these texts declined throughout the nineteenth century, the girls' school story continued to present a strong moral code based on honour and selflessness, which is shown in an excerpt from Canadian Ethel Hume Bennett's novel, Judy of York Hill (1922). The girls' school story is typically one of transformation, in which the protagonist learns to conform to the rules and codes of school life. Volume II ('The New Girl'), therefore, focuses on the generic conventions associated with a new student arriving at school, in which the girl does not initially understand or comply with the expectations of teachers and peers. While it presents examples that adhere to the model of successful transformation, this volume also reproduces some striking instances where this trope is subverted. It includes the full text of noted school-story author L. T. Meade's Wild Kitty (1897), which depicts a 'wild Irish girl' protagonist who is unable to be tamed by the English school environment, as well as a story from the Australasian Girls' Annual, 'Vic and the Refugee' (1916), in which the new girl is revealed to be a spy. Volume III ('Unruly Femininity') concentrates on girls who are disobedient, impulsive, or who are fun-loving 'madcaps'. It contains the full texts of Mary Hughes' The Rebellious Schoolgirl (1821), which is distinctive as one of the first sympathetic portrayals of a girl who has yet to understand and abide by the rules of the school, and Evelyn Sharp's The Making of a Schoolgirl (1897), which complicates some of the school-story tropes. Nonetheless, many of these school stories are heavily invested in defining a feminine ideal, as we see in a later short story, 'Teddy Versus Theodora' (1910). In addition to defining a feminine ideal, many schoolgirl heroines take their family and school responsibilities seriously, as markers of their desire to be good and to succeed academically. Volume IV ('Duty and Responsibility') demonstrates the ways in which girl heroines can have different expectations and attitudes towards their families, their studies, and their friends. The novel that is reproduced in full in this volume, Elsie Jeanette Oxenham's The Abbey Girls (1920), is the foundational text produced by one of the most popular writers of girls' school stories and was the basis for dozens of further books. It emphasizes the rewards that issue from sacrifice, with the heroine passing up a scholarship to allow her cousin to attend school, only to receive an inheritance at the novel's closure that allows her also to enrol at the school. A girl's responsibility to her country is particularly evident in an excerpt from Angela Brazil's The Patriotic Schoolgirl (1918), in which the students are encouraged to consider how they can help national war efforts. The formation of friendships and the pleasures of school life, such as sports and games, become hallmarks of the genre from the late nineteenth century. Volume V ('Friendships and Fun') exemplifies the enjoyable aspects of schoolgirl life that some protagonists metafictively describe reading about in school stories, but also provides examples of the way that relationships among girls can be infused with jealousy or hostility, such as in the excerpt from the 1874 Little Pansy: A Story of the School Life of a Minister's Orphan Daughter. Louise Mack's Teens: A Story of Australian Schoolgirls (1897), which is reproduced in full, is regarded as the first Australian school novel and focuses on the development, and testing, of a strong friendship between high-school girls Lennie and Mabel. The collection's final volume ( 'Higher Education and Women's Rights') demonstrates how the genre presented debates about women's suffrage and higher education to a girl readership. The college story replicated many school-story conventions, but also grappled with questions of family and public opposition to university education for women. This volume includes the complete novel, An American Girl, and Her Four Years in a Boys' College (1878) by Olive San Louie Anderson, a member of the first class of female students at the University of Michigan. As the genre was more prominent in the United States, two American college short stories are also reproduced, as well as extracts from a British example, L. T. Meade's A Sweet Girl Graduate (1891). School stories by their nature were largely supportive of girls' education but, nevertheless, in some of the extracts selected for this volume, they show ambivalence about issues such as women's suffrage. By making readily available materials which are currently very difficult for scholars, researchers, and students across the globe to locate and use, Girls' School Stories in English, 1749-1929 is a veritable treasure-trove. The gathered works are reproduced in facsimile, giving users a strong sense of immediacy to the texts and permitting citation to the original pagination. Each volume is also supplemented by substantial introductions, newly written by the editors, which contextualize the material. And with a detailed appendix providing data on the provenance of the gathered works, the collection is destined to be welcomed as a vital reference and research resource.

Transforming Girls

Transforming Girls PDF Author: Julie Pfeiffer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781496836298
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence explores the paradox of the nineteenth-century girls' 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' 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's essentially good nature neutralize the girl's own anxieties about maturity. Drawing on best-selling novels in the United States and Germany (where this genre is referred to as Backfischliteratur), Transforming Girls reframes our understanding of the history of the girls' book and provides insightful readings of forgotten bestsellers. It also outlines an alternate model for imagining adolescence and supporting adolescent girls. The awkward adolescent girl-so popular in mid-nineteenth-century fiction for girls-remains a valuable resource for understanding contemporary girls and stories about them"--

From the Salon to the Schoolroom

From the Salon to the Schoolroom PDF Author: Rebecca Rogers
Publisher: Penn State University Press
ISBN: 9780271024912
Category : Women
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
How a nation educates its children tells us much about the values of its people. From the Salon to the Schoolroom examines the emerging secondary school system for girls in nineteenth-century France and uncovers how that system contributed to the fashioning of the French bourgeois woman. Rebecca Rogers explores the variety of schools--religious and lay--that existed for girls and paints portraits of the women who ran them and the girls who attended them. Drawing upon a wide array of public and private sources--school programs, prescriptive literature, inspection reports, diaries, and letters--she reveals the complexity of the female educational experience as the schoolroom gradually replaced the salon as the site of French women's special source of influence. From the Salon to the Schoolroom also shows how France as part of its civilizing mission transplanted its educational vision to other settings: the colonies in Africa as well as throughout the Western world, including England and the United States. Historians are aware of the widespread ramifications of Jesuit education, but Rogers shows how French education for girls played into the cross-cultural interactions of modern society, producing an image of the Frenchwoman that continues to tantalize and fascinate the Western world today.

Schools of Fiction

Schools of Fiction PDF Author: Morgan Day Frank
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192867504
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
In Schools of Fiction, Morgan Day Frank considers a bizarre but integral feature of the modern educational experience: that teachers enthusiastically teach literary works that have terrible things to say about school. From Ishmael's insistence in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick that a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard, to the unnamed narrator's expulsion from his southern college in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the most frequently taught books in the English curriculum tend to be those that cast the school as a stultifying and inhumane social institution. Why have educators preferred the anti-scholasticism of the American romance tradition to the didacticism of sentimentalists? Why have they organized African American literature as a discursive category around texts that despaired of the post-Reconstruction institutional system? Why did they start teaching novels, that literary form whose very nature, in Mikhail Bakhtin's words, is not canonic? Reading literature in class is a paradoxical undertaking that, according to Day Frank, has proved foundational to the development of American formal education over the last two centuries, allowing the school to claim access to a social world external to itself. By drawing attention to the transformative effect literature has had on the school, Schools of Fiction challenges some of our core assumptions about the nature of cultural administration and the place of English in the curriculum. The educational system, Day Frank argues, has depended historically on the cultural objects whose existence it is ordinarily thought to govern and the academic subject it is ordinarily thought to have marginalized.

Neglected American Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth Century

Neglected American Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth Century PDF Author: Verena Laschinger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429513933
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Neglected American Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Verena Laschinger and Sirpa Salenius, is a collection of essays that offer a fresh perspective and original analyses of texts by American women writers of the long nineteenth century. The essays, which are written both by European and American scholars, discuss fiction by marginalized authors including Yolanda DuBois (African American fairy tales), Laura E. Richards (children’s literature), Metta Fuller Victor (dime novels/ detective fiction), and other pioneering writers of science fiction, gothic tales, and life narratives. The works covered by this collection represent the rough and ragged realities that women and girls in the nineteenth century experienced; the writings focus on their education, family life, on girls as victims of class prejudice as well as sexual and racial violence, but they also portray girls and women as empowering agents, survivors, and leaders. They do so with a high-voltage creative charge. As progressive pioneers, who forayed into unknown literary terrain and experimented with a variety of genres, the neglected American women writers introduced in this collection themselves emerge as role models whose innovative contribution to nineteenth-century literature the essays celebrate.