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

[SaltPorridge]

George in "The Famous Five", Enid Blyton

Peter in Malcolm Saville's books set in Shropshire

Nancy and Peggy in Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome

Petrova in "Ballet Shoes", Noel Streatfield

Please add more/ discuss/ disagree etc.

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

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.

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

I'm not sure that's accurate picture of current society, but one of the reasons I started the thread is that I do think there is a tendency to think that it's a new, modern idea to rebel against stereotypes. It's an early 20th century idea, so it's positively antique. It should have matured into a normality by now.

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).

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.

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.

Well said @TheOtherRaven

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!)

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.

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.

In general I do think there is a cynical strategy around marketing toys and clothes coded for sex. What happened with Lego was more nuanced. iirc they tried to get girls to play with old style lego, and the girls wandered off. When they offered special pink lego, and "lego friends", the girls played with it. My observation is that most little girls do show less interest in lego, and technical lego than boys do. I observed that as a little girl and as an adult I see very few female engineers after several generations of "women in engineering" schemes.
I don't know that girls don't absorb expectations very very early, but even so, there do seem to be some innate preferences.

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

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. 😉

I've always loved how in several Enid Bltyon books there are random single middle class women living alone who appear to act as the community social services and just randomly take in and care for any child who happens to appear having been, say, living on an island for a few months without any grown ups.

And everyone's fine with this. 😂 They always have a suitable bedroom ready and waiting.

With their generation being one of many unmarried women due to WW1, yes, there would have been many around but they seem a bit 'useful' in the way of Tolkien's eagles.

Mind you there's that lovely bit in The Clifton House Mystery which was 1970s on tv, where the children discover at bedtime that their wardrobe is concealing a hidden room with a dead body in the bed (it is a skeleton), and draw this fact to their father's attention, who more or less says 'yes, very interesting, we'll talk about it tomorrow, goodnight' and leaves them to it. A father to rival the Swallows and Amazons one!

I don't know that girls don't absorb expectations very very early, but even so, there do seem to be some innate preferences.

My cousin told me that her daughter’s favourite colour was green until she started nursery & all the girls wanted the pink cup.

Lego might have observed girls after they had internalised those expectations. (Early 21st century iirc).
20th century writers would have observed children (and adults) within a less polarised context, especially post WW1.
Post-covid writers have a weirdly distorted context to work from.

"But why doesn't he just say yes?"
LOL
Before trusting your 7yo and your 10yo with your 12yo and 15yo, probably best to get a reality check from other parent.
Bc this is actually Coniston without lifejackets not the corporation reservoir with a safety boat.
I am intrigued to know what the real Swallows were allowed to do.
In the seventies many kids had far more freedom than children do now, but it didn't extend to sailing unsupervised.

@SaltPorridge Swallows and Amazons was pre war. So 90 years ago or so.

My Dad (95 and a lifelong dinghy sailor) says life jackets didn't really come in until the 50s earliest. He says it was realistic the children were allowed off sailing on the lakes at that time.