The Girl`s Own, Cultural Histories of the Anglo-American Girl, 1830-1915

In the controversy over female sexuality and behavior she played an especially significant role, because she embodied the potential for either virtuous attention to duty - as wife/mother or spinster/sister - or depraved independence and sexual freedom. Unlike other examinations of Victorian girlhood, this collection is particularly distinguished by its combination of literary and cultural history in its discussion of both British and American texts and practices. Among the topics addressed are the nineteenth-century attempt to link morality and diet; the making of heroines in biographies for girls; Lewis Carroll's and John Millais's iconographies of girlhood in, respectively, their photographs and paintings; genre fiction for and by girls; and the effort to reincorporate teenage unwed mothers into the domestic life of Victorian America