The Awkward Age in Women's Popular Fiction, 1850-1900: Girls and the Transition to Womanhood
by Sarah Bilston
2020-11-24 07:01:39
The Awkward Age in Women's Popular Fiction, 1850-1900: Girls and the Transition to Womanhood
by Sarah Bilston
2020-11-24 07:01:39
This book demonstrates that ''the awkward age'' formed a fault-line in Victorian female experience, an unusual phase in which restlessness, self-interest, and rebellion were possible. Tracing evolving treatments of female adolescence though a host of...
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This book demonstrates that ''the awkward age'' formed a fault-line in Victorian female experience, an unusual phase in which restlessness, self-interest, and rebellion were possible. Tracing evolving treatments of female adolescence though a host of long-forgotten women''s fictions, the bookreveals that representations of the girl in popular women''s literature importantly anticipated depictions of the feminist in the fin de siecle New Woman writing; conservative portrayals of girls'' hopes, dreams, and subsequent frustrations helped clear a literary and cultural space for the NewWoman''s ''awakening'' to disaffected consciousness. The book thus both historicises the evolution and mythic appeal of the female adolescent and works to receive suggestive exchanges between apparently diverse female literary traditions.
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