"Classic" Stories for Girls

ELT 39 : 3 1996 nist" or "women's novels" had labeled them "women characters." Kranidis doesn't comment on her revealing choice of language, but it seems clear that she believes that male authors are incapable of seeing women with a feminist vision; indeed, she claims that, for Realists, the New Woman is not an extension of a committed political agenda but a social phenomenon to be treated literarily as any other subject would be treated. Certainly the position that men cannot be feminists is a defensible one, and it may be true that these particular male novelists do appropriate the figure of the New Woman, to the detriment of feminist efforts to legitimize the reality of women's lives. But one has to be a bit skeptical of Kranidis's generalizations when one realizes that she alludes to Gissing's The Odd Women in a single phrase, admitting that this novel does demonstrate insight into women's concerns. Surely Rhoda Nunn deserves further consideration. As with her treatment of the feminist novels, Kranidis paints with a broad brush, allowing generalizations about the novels to pass for insightful commentary. In many cases throughout Subversive Discourse, Kranidis's overviews are insightful; one wishes that she had provided the same rich analysis of the feminist novels she studies as of the cultural contexts in which they were written. In point of fact, many of Kranidis's arguments about the cultural production of these novels are familiar territory for readers of recent New Historical or Cultural Materialist accounts of the period. Given the need for more study of the novels of these late Victorian women writers, it is to be regretted that Kranidis did not provide us with more of the same. LuAnn McCracken Fletcher ___________ Cedar Crest College "Classic" Stories for Girls Shirley Foster and Judy Simons. What Katy Read: Feminist Re-Readings of 'Classic' Stories for Girls. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. xiii + 223 pp. $19.95 SHIRLEY FOSTER and Judy Simons' book is an important contribution to the study of children's literature, to cultural studies, and to feminist literary studies. The writers embrace a broad theoretical approach, including an interrogation of nationalist perspectives, and offer solid close readings of eight classic girls' stories: Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World; Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain; Louisa May Alcott's Little Women; Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did; E. Nesbit's The Railway Children; L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables; Frances 366 BOOK REVIEWS Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden; and, Angela Brazil's The Madcap of the School. Their readings of the individual novels are their strength and make the book worthwhile. They provide an extremely sophisticated analysis of each novel, refusing to simplify the contradictions manifest in the text. Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt in Feminist Criticism and Social Change (Methuen, 1985) suggest what makes a good feminist critic: Foster and Simons clearly demonstrate this "ability to embrace contradiction." They argue, for example, that each author generally presents gender as socially constructed and culturally learned yet does not reject gender categorization altogether. In each novel, they write, "the narration finally validates acceptance of a dominant moral or social order, even though it may at the same time express coded alternative meanings" (11). This thesis may sound familiar, which is precisely the problem with Foster and Simons work as a whole. While they have contributed to the growing field of criticism on children's, particularly girls', literature, they do not acknowledge their critical inheritance and this is a tremendous weakness in their study. How can readers know that they are receiving a "re-reading" if they are not informed of the traditional readings of these texts? Foster and Simons cite a few studies similar to their own, most notably Gillian Avery's Childhood's Pattern (Hodder & Stoughton, 1975), but refrain from mentioning other full-length critical studies which convey similar messages about the novels in question. Particularly in their section on Charlotte Yonge's message of complacency , they seem greatly indebted to Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig's 1976 volume, You're a Brick, Angela! (Victor Gollancz), which is listed in their bibliography but...