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  • Out of Reach: The Ideal Girl in American Girls' Serial Literature by Kate G. Harper
  • Agapi Theodorou-Shapiro (bio)
Out of Reach: The Ideal Girl in American Girls' Serial Literature, by Kate G. Harper. Routledge, 2020.

In the concluding chapter of her book, Out of Reach: The Ideal Girl in American Girls' Serial Literature, Kate G. Harper questions whether the figure of the ideal girl in series literature has progressed into a more "empowering figure for girl readers" (125) over the course of the twentieth century. The short answer is: not really. The longer answer is more complex and requires additional context. In her last chapter, Harper takes us back to Obama's landmark presidential win, calling out the post-gender and postrace discourses that equated Obama's presidency with ultimate progress, a sign that the US had finally "turned its back on oppression and was embracing equality" (121). In 2016, Harper writes, "what had been obvious to some became clear on a national and international stage—racism and sexism had continued to fester beneath the façade of progress" (121). We all have different fantasies about what this country is. But the idea that US history follows a progressive teleology is one of the most dubious.

Along the same lines, though one might imagine that the figure of the ideal girl in serial literature has been on a track toward greater diversity and empowerment—and some series have certainly made waves in that more progressive direction—all of the series discussed in this book ultimately reinscribe "a predictable norm of white, middle class, able-bodied, heterosexual young femininity" (125). Harper reaches that [End Page 254] conclusion by tracing the genealogy of the ideal girl trope in several popular girls' series: Dorothy Dale, Nancy Drew, Vicki Barr, Cherry Ames, the Baby-Sitters Club, and Sweet Valley High (5).

In the first chapter, "A Girl of Today: Merging Models of Girlhood in Dorothy Dale," Harper introduces the Dorothy Dale series that launched this genre "and paved the way for the serial heroine as ideal girl in American culture" (14). Harper details women's shifting roles at the turn of the century, noting specifically that the Victorian model of "true womanhood" was being complicated by modern tropes of American femininity, a development that alarmed family experts. Additionally, fear-inducing was the discourse surrounding adolescence. Within this framework, adolescents were viewed as lacking reason and in need of firm "discipline and punishment" (17). And of course, parents were especially concerned about girls' sexual behavior.

It is hardly surprising, then, that early volumes of the Dorothy Dale series remained beholden to their Victorian predecessors, celebrating obedience and self-sacrifice rather than adventure and independence (14). Harper reads Dorothy Dale within this cultural backdrop and analyzes the relationship between Dorothy and her friend Tavia as a way to chart the development of the ideal girl figure that emerges in the series. Dorothy and Tavia have different physical appearances and socioeconomic backgrounds: blonde-haired, blue-eyed Dorothy is "a well-bred lady," whereas "dark-haired, brown-eyed" Tavia has less economic power, is socially awkward, and often gets into trouble (22). Harper's close reading reveals the ways in which Tavia's character serves as a foil to Dorothy's, thereby further reinforcing Dorothy's ideal status. Ultimately, however, these two characters merge their best qualities in a kind of middle-ground position between the Victorian and modern conceptions of femininity: through their friendship, "Dorothy sheds her shyness and passivity, [and] Tavia reins in her fiery temper and flightiness" (26). Thus emerges the defining qualities of the ideal girl: "brave and intelligent yet appropriately feminine" (26).

Another element in setting the stage for future girls' series is establishing a recurring theme of Othering those who do not inhabit the idealized standard of white, financially stable, heterosexual femininity. In Dorothy Dale, this kind of exclusionary behavior functions in two ways. Othered characters are either ignored or they are stereotyped: "the surly maid, the greedy counter clerk," the nonwhite immigrant "seeking to infiltrate American society" (26, 28). The contrast between Dorothy, for example, and Othered characters like Viola Green, a girl [End Page 255] with a...

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