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

I'm thinking of the lovely incident early in 'Swallows and Amazons' where the children want to go off in a small boat to camp on an island, and their mother's response is "I'll have to ask your father", which maybe isn't so great. But anyway, he's a naval officer who is away on a voyage, so she sends him a telegram which he picks up at Malta (ah, the days of empire). And he sends the wonderful reply, "Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown". He trusts his wife to understand the message, and his children not to be duffers. And of course it all works out happily. 😉

Lovely idea for a thread op- I'm thinking if I know any more...

Fortunately my dad was of the opinion that everyone needed to learn DIY basics (and read OS maps, and build survival shelters, and light fires) and that a cut or singed finger or two was all part of the experience.

At a similar time and only a year or two older, I was outraged that I and all the other girls had to make an apron in Needlework while the boys went off to make a pipe rack(!) in Woodwork. It's not as if they were more to be trusted with hammers and saws than we were, aged 7 or 8.

It is interesting that for example with Anne and George - you had the very girly girl who liked it, and the girl who openly rebelled against the stereotypes and limits, but as a reader you weren't steered to believe one was right and one was wrong. If anything I used to get exasperated with Anne and want to be George, but both were free to do female in their own way.

Likewise the girls school stories - the heroines were the active, lively, unlimited types, and there were the horse riding nuts, they were all vigorous sports players, the boyish ones were just part of the whole group. If anything you were steered as a reader to look down on the prissy girls or the dramatic and over emotional 'silly' ones, and there was a lot of talk about the ideals of growing up to be a strong and useful woman, resourceful, educated and competent. Common sense was a high value. So was self control and restraint. Multiple stories around learning not to bash annoying girls (although pushing them into swimming pools was sometimes acceptable.)

The boys schools stories I think were older - the days of Bunter, and the others written by the same writing group, there were several, but they were kind of WW1 to WW2. I fondly remember Redwing from old annuals who was the close friend of the school bad boy rebel, sorted him out and provided comfort and stability, I have no idea if the writer had a clue he was writing a gay couple even subconsciously. By the 70s it was Jennings and Darbishire (Darbishire as the side kick but not really feminine at all), but there was Fotherington-Thomas (he is a Gurly) with his curls, skipping around Molesworth. As with Anne, they accepted and liked him and he was often portrayed as actually quite sorted and able alongside the obvious less masculine aspects. (Hello clouds! Hello sky!)

Some of it definitely is. Why let Jane play with brother Peter's Lego when we can sell a second lot that is clearly different, in pastel colours? That's a deliberate marketing choice Lego made.

Well I'm not so sure. I have been a feminist since about 1971 (age 5), prompted amongst other things by Janet and John books (or was it Peter and Jane), where the boy went fishing with his dad while the girl stayed home with her mum and cleaned the house. So 50 years ago I was certainly rebelling against this stereotype!

Do you think the amount of gendered stuff is down to a more consumerist society? So we celebrate Easter, Halloween, Christmas in much more unprecedented ways (ie. buying shit!) and retailers think the more we have, the more people will buy.

For example, Anne from the famous five would have been all over a 'shine bright' t-shirt 🤣 but she had to put up with shorts and a jersey, occasionally a dress.

If anyone hasn't seen it, the letter in Lego from (I think) 1974 is brilliant.

I was also on the GO list! I loved the first/last line quizzes. These days I'm in a group called 'Finishing school' on Facebook which has lots of people who have been around since those days including former CBBers.

Well said @TheOtherRaven

In the 70s girls and boys toys and clothes and activities weren't in my opinion nearly so gendered.

This.

Jeans, shorts, the pressure to wear skirts and dresses as a child was not really there, and girls clothes weren't coded in pastels, twinkly, sparkly, with unicorns and very sexist messages all over them (Daddy's little princess, Kind, other bullshit such as you see all over supermarket girls clothes) There was much less difference between girls and boys clothes for example t shirts and shirts, particularly in tailoring. There were less coded pastimes and toys, the bikes and spacehoppers etc were for everyone, and free time was much more active and outside play based.

The cartoons of the time were a bit grim in terms of girl role models, the heroines in the superhero/space ones tended to be the member of the group who wore pink and whose main role in the plot was to get kidnapped and rescued a lot, but at least she ran around with the male members of the group and was a part of the action.

It was a much freer time to be a girl. Even though other aspects of sexism were at the time much worse.

There was also a strong expectation that girls still in education, in day schools as much as boarders, would not be dating or prioritising relationships with boys. The teens were a time for study, sports, hobbies. School uniforms were utilitarian, hair was short of tied back (or up, after the mid teens), jewellery and cosmetics were banned from school. Some people pushed back about that to a greater or lesser extent, depending on temperament, but it made life much less complicated. We complained at the time, but looking back, we were very fortunate.

I don't think you are quite right.
I think these strong stereotypes have come in recently so they weren't around 50 years ago to be rebelled against.
In the 70s girls and boys toys and clothes and activities weren't in my opinion nearly so gendered. Yes girls who liked more adventurous stuff might be referred to as 'tom boys' but I don't feel that was pejorative, more just an adjective, (and no one attempted to say we were actual boys).

There were things that fewer girls did, that maybe weren't actively pushed/encouraged, but if I wanted to do them, no one said I couldn't. (eg Climb trees, play chess, study maths, play darts).

I feel for Dick. Skinning a dead rabbit is not for the squeamish.

It has just occurred to me - because there was a thread gallery including them on here somewhere random - that Just William probably married Violet Elizabeth Bott, who was a proto-feminist, certainly not putting up with male vagaries and misogyny.

I went to a state school in a not so well off part of the city. This is anecdotal only, but it certainly seemed that our brother school had over-representation of young men who were the first in their families (of any generation) to finish high school. The students were supportive of each other in a way I never saw at other high schools, particularly the way older boys mentored younger.

Maybe not, but he does have Dick feeling sick at skinning the dead rabbit, and Dorothea very apologetic for leaving it to him.

I came across a bunch of stereotypical views in one person at a book fair a few weeks ago. It was suggested I spoke to a book seller who was 'really helpful'. The first thing he said was 'you write poetry' - not 'do you' or 'what do you write'. I have no idea why women are supposed to write poetry (as it happens, I do, but it's not my main frame for writing, which is sci-fi) but I am pretty sure Marlowe, Shelley, Donne, Milton, Chaucer, Langland,Gower, Baudelaire, Goethe, Simonides etc were not women. I can run off as many poets who are women (not going to) but really don't get the poetry writing is for girls thing.
Was cross and said sci-fi, which did not go down too well.
Stereotypes are more alive and kicking now than in the 30s to 50s, stunningly,

That the early twentieth century (and late nineteenth) saw girls like Susan and Titty as being entirely normal makes our own world look outlandishly old-fashioned, as in possibly eighteenth century. Where has the idea come from that girls don't do sports, have to be 'feminine' etc. come from so suddenly?

You're not unfair to Blyton. Her characters tend to be flat. That doesn't mean she lacks the ability to write a readable story or that children are wrong to love the books (late DH enjoyed them - the ones I came across (not in my local library) I liked). They are a good way into enjoying books for children who don't much care for reading.

I’m not sure even as exemplary a writer as Ransome would have had a male character freaked out by the dowsing, though of course Titty very bravely overcomes her qualms.

I've been wondering about that too, @TheOtherRaven . I've even been wondering about boys, if you could get boys' schools where none of the staff had unsavoury motives.

Which is in itself a bit of a reflection on the freedoms and experiences possible for female people in a single sex space.