From Birdwomen to Skygirls: American Girls' Aviation Stories (review)

Fred Erisman's lively and engaging study explores girls' aviation novels within the context of the evolution of the aviation industry. These technological formula stories "strove to present, explain, and interpret the marvels that twentieth-century technology was bringing about" (p. 7). What makes the girls' novels so interesting, as opposed to the boys' books, are the often conflicting messages they conveyed, messages embedded "in a matrix of shifting American attitudes towards the place of women in the greater society" (p. 14). His study documents the intersection of the aviation industry-and women's place within it—with its popular representation. He finds that a set of stories that began as a celebration of female flyers eventually evolved into stewardess stories as the plane became more technologically sophisticated and the country more conservative in its imposition of gender roles.

Girls' aviation novels originated in 1905. Partly inspired by early women pilots such as Harriet Quimby and Matilde Moisant, these books featured young women who flew planes and understood the technology that supported such flight. Contemporary concerns of the aviation industry such as flight stabilization, he points out, find expression in the plots, linking female prowess to mastery of flight technology. After a World War I hiatus—women pilots are not represented in either World War I or World War II—Amelia Earhart's success spurred new interest in such stories, showcasing young women at the controls who could equal the skill of any man. These women study aviation and understand what makes a plane fly.

Erisman sets these tales against an interesting discussion of both Earhart and the further advances of flight technology in the 1920s and '30s. He acknowledges what these books do not: "the star turns such as Earhart's career were open only to a privileged few and access to the specialized non-piloting tasks was difficult if not impossible to attain" (p. 127). By the late 1940s, few women remained in the aviation industry, pushed out by popular opinion, the Depression, war, and technology. "Aircraft were becoming more complex," requiring "new flying skills that many considered beyond women's reach" (p. 128). As commercial aviation began to dominate, bigger planes lacked "any form of hydraulic or mechanical 'boost' for the control systems and offered an ideal opportunity for commercial pilots to attack women's physical prowess" (pp. 128-29). Thus, developments in the industry shaped the way women were represented within it.

So, when the series books resumed after World War II, women were relegated to the role of stewardess; while a few still retained piloting skills, saving airplanes when the male pilot was incapacitated, the genre gradually evolved into the travails of professional flight attendants. These women may have been considered members of the flight crew, but their primary duty was the traditional womanly nurturing and serving, not flying. Any other role in commercial aviation was largely closed to them, and the series novels died out in the early 1960s.

Erisman provides good details of aviation history and general history as the backdrop for the evolution of these texts. One could have hoped for a little more in terms of women's history, however. His description of the New Woman, for example, seems undertheorized and oversimplified. Also lacking is a nuanced discussion of the extent to which such books mirror, reflect, and/or shape their cultures. He sometimes reads them as fairly transparent comments on their times, though he does note the discrepancy between the fantasies and adventures of these fictional flyers and the lives of the majority of young women. He provides considerable detail about the planes and the technologies used to fly them. But this is more a book for the general reader than the advanced scholar. While the details of aviation history and technology provide a fascinating backdrop to the world of girls' fiction, it's unclear if the author opens new avenues in those fields. Rather, his strength is...