Adolescent Girlhood and Literary Culture at the Fin de Siècle

Abstract

Aim of the SeriesPalgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture is a new monograph series that aims to represent the most innovative research on literary works that were produced in the English-speaking world from the time of the Napoleonic Wars to the fi n de siécle. Attentive to the historical continuities between 'Romantic' and 'Victorian', the series will feature studies that help scholarship to reassess the meaning of these terms during a century marked by diverse cultural, literary, and political movements. The main aim of the series is to look at the increasing infl uence of types of historicism on our understanding of literary forms and genres. It refl ects the shift from critical theory to cultural history that has affected not only the period 1800-1900 but also every fi eld within the discipline of English literature. All titles in the series seek to offer fresh critical perspectives and challenging readings of both canonical and non-canonical writings of this era.

“A Place Where It Was Acceptable To Be Unacceptable”: Twenty-First-Century Girls Encounter Nineteenth-Century Girls Through Amateur Theatricals and Dance

“…Biological age, education attainments, class, work, marital status, and attitudes of the immediately local community all shaped the construction of the idea of "girl" (Rodgers, 2016, p. 5), and as Kristine Moruzi (2012) and Beth Rodgers (2016) demonstrate, adolescence increasingly offered girls a temporary liminal space to push boundaries and explore possibilities. As the 19 th century drew closer to the First World War, girls and journalists began to reject the "angel of the house" narrative of self-sacrifice in favour of "self-development" (Dyhouse, 2013, p. 42), but anxieties around duty and frailty shifted slowly and unevenly: The late 19 th -century offered opportunities to some girls, but remained a potent time for debate.…”

"Politics for Girls": Representations of Political Girlhood in the Girl's Own Paper and the Girl's Realm

“…11 More recently, Beth Rodgers has highlighted the "extent to which newspapers and magazines helped to bring the modern girl into being through articles, stories and the platform they gave to girls to contribute to such debates." 12 This twofold approach, incorporating periodical content and reader contribution, is helpful. I will therefore focus not just on the forms of politicized girlhood that periodicals presented to their readers but also how readers themselves contributed to these narratives.…”