Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850–1915 by Kristine Moruzi (review)

In the latest installment of Ashgate’s “Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present,” Kristine Moruzi examines Victorian periodicals dedicated exclusively to girls and young women. Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850–1915 tracks print discourses on young womanhood and femininity during a period of significant social change for English women. The author examines multiple, heterogeneous models of girlhood appearing in the pages of select periodicals, in which “girls could be distinctly defined beyond the universalizing tendencies elsewhere in the press” (2). Indeed, the periodicals functioned as sites where editors and readers negotiated the shifting terrain of girls’ future roles as wives, mothers, and public figures. Moruzi reveals that many of the periodicals advanced progressive messages about health and fitness, public engagement, and new opportunities for work and leisure. In so doing, they challenged conventional notions of middle-class femininity. And yet, girls’ periodicals also reinforced older, conservative ideals regulating feminine purity and morality, often within the pages of a single publication. Careful attention to the tensions underpinning discursive constructions of girlhood makes Moruzi’s book a valuable contribution to studies in women’s periodicals, children’s publishing, and the history of adolescence.

Constructing Girlhood features six middle-class girls’ periodicals published between 1850 and 1915 of varying popularity and distributive reach. Proceeding in roughly chronological order, Moruzi organizes each chapter around a single publication and a key archetype as it manifested in the journal: the “Religious Girl” in the Monthly Packet, the “Girl of the Period” in the Girl of the Period Miscellany, the “Healthy Girl” in Girl’s Own, the “Educated Girl” in Atalanta, the “Marrying Girl” in Young Woman, and the “Modern Girl” in Girl’s Realm. By examining the full run of each periodical—ranging between nine months and seventy-six years—Moruzi provides a comprehensive overview of changing views of girlhood over the course of the periodicals’ publications. Moruzi carefully contextualizes each archetype as part of broader sociocultural shifts, linking them to historical developments in women’s education, employment, and public life. For example, Moruzi deftly incorporates Victorian debates on education into an analysis of Atalanta, using it to understand circulating anxieties about the need to reconcile women’s intellectual pursuits with their traditional domestic duties. She reveals that just as new opportunities opened for girls’ education at the fin de siècle, the magazine editors shifted their focus to fashion, highlighting the periodic pitfalls of navigating “complicated girlhood” (137). Moruzi adopts a similar approach in the rest of the book: each chapter functions as a discreet exploration of the particular facets of young women’s experiences in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

With this meticulous methodology, Moruzi foregrounds the many possibilities available to girl readers in pursuit of feminine identities. However, the author resists charting “a narrative of progress” in the advancement of girls’ roles (205). Though there was ostensible growth in opportunities for leisure and work, girl readers often found themselves confined to traditional roles in the domestic sphere upon reaching adulthood. Girls’ periodicals mirrored this reality, and editors often expressed nostalgia for traditional feminine ideals alongside enthusiasm about middle-class women pursuing romance and sport in public life. Moruzi demonstrates how standard periodical features like serialized fiction promoted conservative messages of feminine domesticity, while topical stories more often addressed contemporary issues about women’s shifting roles. This comes to the fore in her analysis of Girl’s Realm, in which editors pitted readers and contributors against each other by encouraging lively debates over issues such as marriage and women’s work. This included a 1911 series on female suffrage featuring Ethel Harrison and Christabel Pankhurst, the latter airing notably militant opinions in an otherwise moderate publication.

Populating Moruzi’s study, then, are not only girl readers but also authors and editors striving to maintain and expand their audience. Personalities like Charlotte Yonge and Alice Corkran proved influential forces in content creation; female managers’ skillful attempts to retain...