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this book examines fictional works and historical documents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.
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