Picture Books and Princesses: The Feminist Contribution

PICTURE BOOKS AND PRINCESSES: THE FEMINIST CONTRIBUTION Elizabeth Segal One of the most interesting developments of recent years in children's literature criticism occurred when the forces of social change that comprised the women's movement broke on the quiet shores of the children's book world. The event would be dated for many people by the appearance of the spring 1970 children's books issue of the New York Times Book Review (May 21, pp. 6-7), which contained Elizabeth Fisher's survey of male and female images in current picture books, "The Second Sex, Junior Division." Fisher's findings startled everyone, herself included. She found "an almost incredible conspiracy of conditioning" — conditioning boys to achieve and to express themselves, girls to please. Most startling were her statistics : for instance, three to five times more males than females were represented in the picture books she looked at. Later the same year, writing in the New York Review of Books (December 17, 1970, pp. 42-44), Alison Lurie hailed the folk fairy tales as "one of the few sorts of children's books of which a radical feminist would approve." These two articles ushered in a flood of criticism in the next two years. Nearly every professional and lay periodical, it seemed, printed an article on the subject. Some critics agreed with Fisher and added new evidence to support her argument; almost as many disagreed with Lurie, who proved mistaken in her blithe assumption that radical feminists would approve the old folktales . Many critics merely popularized Fisher's findings for the wider public; a few, using the perspective of feminism to go beyond image-assessing, probed ways in which gender may influence the mysteries of creativity and the complexities of the reader's response. The ensuing decade of feminist criticism had a substantial effect on the creation of children's books as well, comparable to that of Lucy Sprague Mitchell's call in the twenties for picture books about the young child's everyday life and to the critical attention drawn in the sixties to the need for racial and cultural pluralism in children's books. Consciousnesses newly raised, both parents and professionals embraced the feminist cause with fervor and, more important, were willing to pay for books that supplied the newly identified need. In a short time, therefore, publisher's lists began to feature books about active, assertive girls and achieving women. Now that the flood of feminist articles on children's literature has slowed to a trickle and the nature of feminist criticism has become more diverse, it seems an opportune time to take another look at the feminist criticism of the early 1970' s — specifically that treating picture books and fairy tales — and to assess its quality, its contributions, and its limitations . Did the feminist perspective yield insights of enduring critical value? Was it the expression of a narrow interest group, imposing its irrelevant demands on art, engaged in an activity at best peripheral to the central concerns of criticism? The objects of Fisher's and Lurie' s attention — picture books and fairy tales — monopolized feminist criticism of children' s trade books in the early seventies, probably because these were seen as prime socializing influences on the young child. Of the many feminist critiques of picture books in the months following Fisher's article, the two best and most influential were Alleen Pace Nilsen's engaging and eloquent examination of "Women in Children's Literature," which appeared in College English (May 1971, pp. 918926 ) and the extensive study by Lenore J. Weitzman and others, "Sex Role Socialization in Picture Books for Pre-school Children," reported in the American Journal of Sociology (May 1972, pp. 1125-1150). Though these impressive articles were written from the different perspectives of the humanities and the social sciences and consequently differed in style and format, they started with the same assumptions and came to very similar conclusions. Both chose picture books to study because they believed these books most influential in the child's formation of values and attitudes, seeing the pre-school years as the "most impressionable" age. Both articles concentrated on Caldecott Medal books and runners-up (Nilsen reviewed the...