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  • Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850-1915 by Kristine Moruzi
  • Beth Palmer (bio)
Kristine Moruzi , Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850-1915 (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), pp. xi + 231, $99.95/£55 (cloth).

This monograph seeks to make an important intervention in the study of girlhood in the nineteenth century and does so ably by carefully selecting and marshalling the abundant material on this subject in the periodical press. Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850-1915 was honoured as a semi-finalist in the Robert and Vineta Colby Book Prize for books published in 2012. The prize is judged by scholars who know the difficulties and benefits of working with periodicals, and the recognition of Kristine Moruzi's work is a fitting acknowledgement of its careful methodology and thought-provoking conclusions.

Moruzi takes six girls' periodicals as her subjects and dedicates a chapter to each. The chapters proceed in chronological order, from the first issue of the Monthly Packet (1851-99) to the Girl's Realm (1898-1915), and develop the argument that the "idea of the girl became increasingly central to definitions of femininity in the last decades of the century" (81). Using Charlotte Yonge's Monthly Packet as a starting point works well to set up the debates that continue to resonate throughout the young women's press of the later nineteenth century. Yonge gives the debate over the compatibility of female education, work, and marriage a religious inflection and asserts a Christian "feminine ideal" of duty within a primarily domestic context (20). Although Moruzi states in her conclusion that she has "not tried to develop a narrative of progress," she earmarks Yonge as the most conservative of the editors explored (205). Yonge's editorial stance on domestic responsibilities and Christian self-sacrifice is, however, shown to be contested by her own readers through in-depth analysis of the correspondence section of the Packet.

The short-lived Girl of the Period Miscellany (1869) and widely popular Girl's Own Paper (1880-1907) mark significant shifts away from the pious and domestic model of girlhood. The chapter on the Girl of the Period Miscellany provides an interesting new angle on Eliza Lynn Linton's provocative article and its manifold press responses. Dismissing exaggerated representations of female behaviour by sending them up, the magazine does not take itself seriously. But Moruzi argues that it does make space for new freedoms—particularly physical ones—in its representations of active femininity. The Girl's Own Paper is also shown to link healthy exercise to its widely disseminated representations of girlhood.

In all these magazines, however, Moruzi finds an implicit assumption that girlhood will end in marriage. The spinster is a looming bogeyman in the serial and short fiction published in L. T. Meade's Atalanta [End Page 431] (1887-1898), which works hard to incorporate education into patterns for female life. In the Young Woman (1892-1915), it is venereal disease that acts as an unspoken subtext to debates around marriage and female choice. The magazine's image of girlhood "incorporates Darwinist ideas of reproductive choice into the feminine ideal of marriage and maternity" (142). Young women reading contributions from Sarah Grand and other prominent New Woman writers were expected to exert some control over the future of the human race by choosing whom to marry and reproduce with. Similarly, in the final chapter on the Girl's Realm (1898-1915), the rhetoric of education, empowerment, and emancipation is often tempered by the persistence of motherhood and domesticity as the ultimate desire of young women. The Girl's Realm does not shield its readers from contemporary social and political problems such as those presented by the Boer War and the increasingly militant struggle for suffrage. However, the language of bravery and heroism that Moruzi emphasises as a significant shift in the representation of girlhood is still couched in comparison to a more active male heroism. It is telling that the editor, Alice Corkran, describes the girl of the period as a "fine fellow," as if there is no equivalent feminine phrase to connote courage and integrity (167). The feminine heroism in the Girl's Realm...

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