Out of Reach by Kate G. Harper (review)

OUT OF REACH. The Ideal Girl in American Girls' Serial Literature. By Kate G. Harper. Series: Children's Literature and Culture. Routledge, 2020, 144 pages. ISBN: 978-0-367-33081-1

Out of Reach identifies "the ideal girl as white, wealthy, able-bodied and presumably heterosexual" (30). The author, Kate Harper, demonstrates how the "trope of the ideal girl" continues to flourish through repetition, resisting disruptive changes in the evolving society. Serials for children are built on the replication of the same basic concept in every story.

Harper follows the "ideal girl" throughout the twentieth-century girls' serial literature in the United States. The first chapter starts in 1908 with a reading of Dorothy Dale, followed by Nancy Drew in the 1930s and '40s, and Vicki Barr with Cherry Ames representing the '50s and '60s. The last two chapters discuss The Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High from the 1980s. Despite the stories spanning almost one hundred years and thus bearing witness to major societal changes in terms of gender roles and civil rights, Harper argues that the alterations to the "trope of the ideal girl" have been minimal. The author illustrates how the girls depicted increasingly go out on adventures or start working. However, these options are always stabilized within the realm of the safe, the domestic, and the decidedly feminine—such as working as babysitters.

Harper offers thoughtful readings of the shift from blatant racist and stereotypical portrayals of people of color in connection to poverty and criminality in Dorothy Dale to the tokenism of a few characters of different ethnicities in The Baby-Sitters Club. These changes, no matter how great, prove of little importance in terms of the position of the "ideal girl" in the novels. Girls of color or girls with disabilities represent the Other through which the centrality of the main white, well-to-do, able-bodied character is continuously reiterated. The study further confirms Susan Douglas's (1994) central paradox of girlhood—the tension between the constructions of femininity as domestic and passive and, Americanness as independent, strong, and brave (56).

The quick turnaround of serial literature for children depends on ghostwriters, who put new books on shelves at top speed. The study draws out the ways capitalism and consumerism play an increasingly crucial role in the stories themselves. Girlhood is constructed as inherently defined by consuming, shopping, and spending money, which the main character(s) never seems to lack. Girls who do not enjoy the comforts of the suburban middle-class life are again relegated to the role of the opposing, even threatening Other.

Harper articulates the danger of exclusion and misrepresentation of difference in girls' serials. "Despite the fact that the ideal girl only exists as a constructed image, her continued presence impacts our expectations of lived girlhood" (2). The study critically engages with the stories, developing an argument grounded both in the literary texts and in the thoughtful connections to the possible impact on the girls outside the book. The author delivers her arguments through lively language with a touch of humor. The conclusion takes a look into the twenty-first century by identifying the continuation of the ideal girl trope in two of the latest Disney princess films, Brave (2012) and Frozen (2013).

Many of the stories analyzed in this volume have received new film and TV adaptations in recent years—such as The Baby-Sitters Club series released on Netflix in July 2020. These are sure to win over a new generation of readers, but also to spark further scholarly interest in this area of literature for children. In a world where the rights of women and girls have to be constantly reasserted, the critical points Kate G. Harper presents in Out of Reach could perhaps bring about positive change in the publishing strategies of girls' series.