Boyish girls and girlish boys in 20th century children's literature

Was my assumption that he was gay (just because it’s heavily implied that he has no interest in the girls around him) although it seemed remarkably modern for 100+ year old young adult fiction!

Missee Lee, with plans to study it at Cambridge iirc.

Missee Lee is an alumna of Newnham, IIRC.

Kate Saunders wrote a book called five children on the western front which is brilliant.

Walter the Softy?

The wonderful thing about all the children in the S&A books is that they don't moan and groan about the hands they've been dealt with. They just get on with life.

I read Missee Lee at the age of 7. I remember vividly not understanding lots of the words, but it didn't matter, because I was entranced by the story and the characters. I did Latin and Ancient Greek at school and went on to do a Classics degree. Arthur Ransome had a hand in that.

Benjamin, the youngest child in the Andrews family in Party Frock (Noel Streatfeild), is an interesting four-year-old. He starts many of his utterances with 'My dear!' Nobody seems even remotely concerned about this.

Eustace in Narnia though is "unmanly" in the same way as villains are unmanly - as a way of encoding queerness and lack of conformity to stereotypes as a destructive and dangerous thing. It's about Empire - you have to be all playing fields of Eton as a Victorian or early 20th C man, you can't be sensitive or squeamish or overly emotional. There's loads written by EM Forster about how stereotypes of race and ethnicity also are about unmanly behaviours so as to show those weird overly feminine ways being controlled and corralled by the conquering patriarchal West.

Eustace is a bit more modern than the victorians and therefore his transformation is more about being forced to feel empathy. But the upshot is still that he becomes braver, less expressive of his own emotions, and a good fighter - so, good uncomplaining male cannon fodder.

And the 'villains' are girls trying to perform their version of hyper-femininity.

Harriet the Spy has many non-conforming characters who aren't anything other than who they are.

Harriet's parents try to wedge her into femininity, as do Janey's, and both girls rebel in different ways.

Sport is forced by circumstance into traditionally feminine roles, which IIRC he reluctantly embraces.

Oops. Frodo? Not very manly, lots of fainting and being carried by tougher men.

F

Dark!!!

I loved Arthur Ransome as a young person (still do), and desperately identified with Titty and the dowsing.

The Sophie Neville link leads through to the folk tale that the real Titty’s nickname apparently came from.

I read it & my mind boggled.

www.worldoftales.com/European_folktales/English_folktale_16.html#gsc.tab=0

Violet Elizabeth Bott in Just William is quite girly (and a pain in the arse!) but wants to join the boys and go off on adventures.

Jinny in the Jinny/Shantih series doesn’t seem interested in anything stereotypically feminine (apart from horses!) and gets up to all sorts. Also in the same series, Miss Tuke and Ken don’t really conform to gender stereotypes either but they’re adults.

Isn’t one of the boys in the Narnia books described as ‘not manly’? Can’t remember which one, possibly Eustace in one of the earlier books.

I never knew that the original for the so english so middle class walker family were actually Armenian!

As a Jewish kid I really did suffer from the lack of diversity in the books I read as a child.

If you love Nesbit J wilson has written a modern version of five children and it.

Ooo, books. Edith Nesbit was just an incredible writer, wasn't she? Blows my mind that Treasure Seekers was written in 1899 (born in 1858, died 1924) and that it seems not unlikely Blyton might have read Nesbit as a child herself. Nesbit's writing is just so fresh - her observations of children and what children like are so acutely observed.

Digressing into the twenty-first century, but a modern writer who has shades of those already mentioned is Fleur Hitchcock. The Yoghurt Plot is brilliant; very similar to Tyke Tyler. Her Cliftoppers series are quite Famous Five-like, but contemporary and with much more even distribution of fun amongst the characters. (Her Shrunk series is my fave but fits less well with the gist of this thread!).

https://sophieneville.net/2015/01/16/titty-altounyan/

Person who Ransome based his books on.

delurking….

Mavis was the real life child Titty was based on:
https://arthur-ransome.fandom.com/wiki/Mavis_Guzelian

I think Titty’s full name in the books is Titania, but I couldn’t swear to it.

Pippi Longstocking!!! Actually got up to add her. Hope no one else got there first!

I don’t think they were fussed about not being taught Latin. Though of course another kick-ass female character (though probably politically incorrect nowadays) was Missee Lee, with plans to study it at Cambridge iirc.

That’s a good point. And all the male chefs, usually French, like Aunt Dahlia’s Anatole.

Not children's books, but books we (mostly) first read when young - what about the menservants who fulfill the nurturing 'wifely' role for various bachelors - Jeeves, Bunter, Lugg, Georges - there's no suggestion any of them are unmanly or that they're gay, but they're great at keeping the place clean, rustling up a snack and generally being indispensable.

It’s a long time since I read the books so I can’t remember if there was ever anything about them actually wanting to be boys, or if they simply wanted to be able to do all the things boys could do.