Graphic Girlhoods: Visualizing Education and Violence by Elizabeth Marshall (review)

In this slim but high-impact volume, Elizabeth Marshall examines a number of graphic texts—some written for girls, some written about girlhoods—in order to construct a complex, compelling argument about the role of violence in girls' education. Focusing primarily on texts from the United States and Canada, she argues "that violence is a key element of the girl's education, and that this curriculum, and resistance to it, circulates in familiar storylines and images across visual culture, especially in texts for or about the girl" (4). The intersection of graphic texts, pedagogies of girlhood, and feminist lenses for reading allows Marshall to maintain a narrow focus while creating space for sometimes surprising insights about works ranging from "Little Red Riding Hood" variations and Nancy Drew manga to women's auto/biographical graphic memoirs. The result is an incisive, inspiring text that will prove valuable to scholars of children's literature, girlhood studies, and graphic narratives.

Her introduction poses three questions: "How is the schoolgirl made legible through violence in graphic texts of girlhood? What knowledge (sic) about girlhood and violence are under erasure within mainstream images and scripts about the schoolgirl? In what ways has the schoolgirl been pictured in graphic narratives to communicate feminist knowledge, represent trauma, and/or testify about social violence?" (7). As these questions indicate, concerns about (in) visibility inform much of this study, but Marshall also gives equal—and crucial—attention to the ways in which visual representations of the schoolgirl can act as a form of resistance to structural violence.

The text is divided into two parts, "Cultural Pedagogies of Girlhood" and "Resistant Schoolgirls." Opening with Alexis O'Neill's The Recess Queen (2002), chapter 1 establishes that many depictions of mean girls depend on problematic and often regressive assumptions about girls' aggression. Later in the chapter, Marshall turns to Fanny Britt's Jane, the Fox, and Me (2013), Patricia Polacco's Bully (2012), and Rachel Renee Russell's Dork Diaries series (2009–present)—all of which have been identified by educators as anti-bullying resources—to interrogate what she calls a "pedagogy of kindness," which essentially demands that mean girls achieve redemption through friendship and ignores the larger systemic issues that pit girls against each other in the first place. To highlight the larger implications of such representations, she looks to Eleanor Estes's The Hundred Dresses (1944) and Jacqueline Woodson's Each Kindness (2012) as illustrated texts that "acknowledge intersectional identities, and that exclusionary behaviors often stem from an intolerance of difference" (23). Marshall concludes this chapter with a consideration of how the mean girl has been marketed to girl readers, noting that one implication of such representations is the rendering of the school as a neutral space rather than an institution that itself embodies discrimination and oppression.

This first chapter captures the book's scope and spirit exceptionally well, highlighting the ways in which Marshall will bring into conversation a variety of genres and texts, including not just children's literature but also works intended for older audiences and cultural discourses about girlhood. Likewise, her discussion of the pedagogy of kindness anticipates the ways in which she will return to and frequently trouble the concept of pedagogy throughout the book, reinforcing her contention that the lessons schoolgirl characters learn in these illustrated texts become manifest in the lived experiences of girl readers in a variety of often very harmful ways.

Chapters 2 and 3 shift their focus somewhat, investigating stories that are not necessarily representations of the schoolgirl but nonetheless play influential roles in the educational and reading experiences of many contemporary girls. "Nice White Girls: Violence and Racial Masquerade in Nancy Drew" examines the famous girl detective as a white savior figure, highlighting the xenophobic attitudes of the series from the depictions of yellowface in mid-twentieth-century installations to problematic treatments of the racial Other in more recent graphic novels. While the connection to the schoolgirl figure becomes a bit tenuous here, this chapter offers an...