Girls Only?: Gender And Popular Children's Fiction In Britain, 1880-1910

Synopsis

In this study, Kimberley Reynolds sets up parallel studies of boys' and girls' fiction and, drawing on current critical theory, explores the relationship between notions of gender difference and social practice. She concludes that inequalities of power can be reproduced through male and female reading habits established in childhood. Girls Only? also considers the social, historical and economic conditions of the time in relation to the production of works of popular fiction. The breadth of the argument makes it possible to see how publishing practices, established at the end of the last century in response to specific circumstances, have been perpetuated. The result is that children's fiction (a significant proportion of children's experience of language) reconfirms notions of passive femininity and dominant masculinity in its young readers.