Rethinking American Girlhood Through Relatable Girls’ Fiction
LuElla D’Amico and Emily Hamilton-Honey, Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls’ Series Fiction in the Twentieth Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
Reviewed Dixie Dillon Lane
My preteen daughter has strong opinions about children’s book series. In order for a series to really take hold in a child’s imaginary life, my daughter argues, it has to be not only enjoyable, but also relatable. For example, her favorite children’s mystery series, the Myrtle Hardcastle books, speaks to my daughter because the heroine “is not one of those kid detectives who can do anything,” as she told me a few weeks ago. Myrtle can’t just do whatever she wants, nor are the adults in her life endlessly accommodating to her sleuthing needs. Her struggles and triumphs are relatable: things may require a little bit of suspension of disbelief on occasion, but as my daughter notes, Myrtle “is limited by being a kid. But she manages to do what she needs to do anyways.”
Scholars LuElla D’Amico and Emily Hamilton-Honey pick up on just this in the introduction to their new edited volume on fiction series for girls, Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls’ Series Fiction in the Twentieth Century. They argue that the hugely popular Nancy Drew series typically dominates our imaginations when we think of fiction series for girls in the twentieth century, but individual girls often added a “but” to their love of the series, saying something to the effect of, “‘I really like Nancy Drew, but the heroine I really identify with is...’” Much like my daughter, girls in the twentieth century often enjoyed Nancy Drew and her charmed character and limitless access to money, cars, and whatever else, but it was other heroines who spoke to them about themselves. D’Amico and Hamilton-Honey, along with the eleven other contributors to the volume, seek to uncover some of these other heroines and examine them for clues about American girlhood in the twentieth century and the types of fiction that both influenced and reflected it.
For a children’s literature-lover like me, the book was a delight to read, full of fascinating perspectives on a variety of series and heroines, from amateur sleuths like Nancy Drew to career girls like “air stewardess” (and later pilot) Vicki Barr. Much like my daughter and her friends, I read voraciously as a child, and so many of the heroines discussed here were familiar; these ranged from my mother’s childhood favorite, Honey Bunch, all the way to the girls of my own generation’s The Babysitters Club series. Yet many of the books and the heroines were also new to me. The volume’s focused explorations of many different kinds of novels, whether detective or career or college or scientific or early-or-late-century, together cover a tremendous range of literary sources on what it meant to be an American girl in the twentieth century – and also what authors, publishers, and marketing firms wanted girls to think it meant.
It is hard to convey the breadth and detail of such a collection in a short review, but it is worth highlighting a handful of chapters, in particular. Jill Hobgood’s exploration of the relationship between fashion marketing to teens and the Betty Wales book series had me fascinated from the beginning and sent me down a long internet rabbit-hole as I looked up Betty Wales dresses. (Since I cannot myself even approach meeting the weight limits applied to real-life air stewardesses and their fictional counterparts, such as Vicki Barr, I will not be attempting to wear a vintage Betty Wales dress myself, alas. Yet another dream crushed by absurd standards in women’s fashion!)
I also especially appreciated Susan Ingalls Lewis’ chapter on girls’ series in the 1920s, which set an important historical foundation for the remainder of the essays and was one of the best-written and most convincing of the chapters, and Hamilton-Honey’s fascinating look at echoes of Progressive fiction in the mid-century Beverly Gray series. Less convincing was the chapter on Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family, whose argument that the series “queered” girls’ fiction struck me as specious at points. The series, whose protagonists are Jewish-American sisters, does offer a fascinating and important perspective on the history of the time; yet even though I understand that the term may be used this way in the gender studies scholarly jargon, I am not at all convinced that this perspective amounts to a “queering” of the narrative or, indeed, a significant challenge to dominant narratives. A stronger claim might be that this series focused on an urban, Jewish family adds to the broader narrative, enriching and complicating it, rather than challenging or queering it. Additionally, the essay’s side points about Taylor’s daughter’s romantic relationships, Taylor’s intentions, or the “queerness” of the character of Henny were inadequately supported.
Other sections of the book, however, do successfully challenge common perceptions on their subjects, and these were among my favorites. In particular, I would note D’Amico and Gregory Eiselein’s essay on Pollyanna and Stoicism, “The Glad Game,” and the final three chapters of the book (by Karen A. Keely, Michael G. Cornelius, and Jill E. Anderson, respectively), which focus on “career girl” novels. D’Amico and Eiselein’s reconsideration of Pollyanna as a stoic rather than saccharine, unbearably optimistic character hits the mark exactly and has transformed how I myself view the Pollyanna concept. D’Amico and Eiselein’s argument depends on their precise, corrective explanations both of Stoicism and of Pollyanna herself, which have changed my own thinking on both subjects.
The three final, career novel chapters of the volume did the same: they challenged my thinking as an American historian about how women and career were viewed in the United States from the 1930s into the 1960s. Keely’s chapter, in particular, made an impression, as it brought to my attention highly successful narratives of women’s work during the 1940s that were not, in fact, war-dependent. The standard historical narrative is that women entered the workforce in droves as part of the “Rosie the Riveter” war effort, and this is true. But Keely’s essay convinced me that the idea of women going into a career as a matter of course, both before and after the war, was more prevalent than I had previously realized, and also related differently to different racial and socio-economic communities. While “Rosie” might have been the dominant thread in women’s wage-work at the time, this other view of women and work was also alive and well, though in the minority. Cornelius and Anderson’s chapters go on to use career girl novels to explore the development of adult identity for women in the middle of the century, as well as to further examine questions of race and socioeconomic class. Together, the three chapters form a strong argument for reviewing our assumptions about women and wage-work in this period of American history.
Indeed, the sign of a good scholarly read is often just this: that it provokes in the reader an interior rethinking of topics that matter both personally and over time. Beyond Nancy Drew provides this provocation in spades, and represents some excellent convergences of literature, history, and gender studies that will engage anyone who wants to learn more about the great meaning and importance of children’s fiction.
For me, it means that I am about to pass this book along to my daughter, who not only likes to read fiction, but likes to read about fiction and generally to look at things from many different angles. I think there is something to introducing her to the idea that fiction has value as more than entertainment, and that even series that are designed merely for entertainment or even for marketing purposes, as many (though not all) of these series were, can offer us opportunities to reflect on past people and their times and even on our present-day selves. I look forward to thinking about this together with her as we both consider the arguments in this fascinating book.
Dixie Dillon Lane is an American historian, an associate editor at Hearth & Field, and a contributing editor at Front Porch Republic. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. You can read more of her writing through her Substack newsletter, The Hollow.
