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.

I'd agree. Family member of mine in pre WW1 days used to take a boat out into open seas alone, in fact was sent out to go and fetch dinner. As he left home at 14, he'd have been doing this from a much younger age!

Dad said he only started wearing a life jacket regularly some time in the 60s (when crewed by someone whose FIL had drowned in a reservoir.)

Anne of Green Gables.
Brave, clever and imaginative. A big personality.

But also appreciated the value of hair dye, a wee tipple and an excellent puffed sleeve.

I think so, yes. Before my first DC was born (mid 90s) I scoured the shops for baby clothes fit for either boys or girls - I didn't want space rockets or pink flowers, I wanted leaves and acorns and puppies and ducks. I didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl, I didn't know if any subsequent babies would be boys or girls, and I wanted whatever I bought to be handed down. Also, I wasn't keen on shoving my DC down a track determined by their genitals. It was a struggle then, and it didn't get any better as they grew up.

The same with toys and children's bedding and crockery and so on. You buy the girly stuff for your baby girl, and if your second is a boy, you feel obliged to go and buy the boy's version for him.

££££ all the way.

@RobinHeartella@DeanElderberry@OreganoFlow
A sad but interesting feature of Dear Enemy (1915) is that Sally writes to Dear Enemy about the difficulties in homing boys. Girls are desired and much wanted. She is thrilled when she persuades someone who is adopting a girl to take a boy too. I will try and find the extract where she writes about the popularity of little girls but the impossibility of finding homes for small boys.
It wasn’t easy, even a hundred odd years ago to be a boy. Girls have been far more desirable than boys for a very long time in Western countries.

Not in farming families. When my mother, yet another daughter arrived, the neighbour's suggestion she be fed to the pet dog was a joke tinged with truth.

Yes. Much to do with their predicted usefulness. Girls will cook, clean, keep house, nurse, boys will be physically able to run the land and do the physical labour. As in Anne of Green Gables, where a boy was wanted for adoption less as a child to adopt but as an apprentice to Matthew to take over and run the farm as he grew up.

Going further back in time, to the London street children of Dickens and Kingsley's Water Babies in the 19th century literature, girls and boys could equally pick pocket and go up chimneys, and roles only became more fixed at puberty. Nancy of Oliver Twist says to Fagin about Oliver, who is about nine, 'I thieved for you when I was half his age'. Its the children of the wealthy in those books whose sex matters even at an early age and defines their predicted role: the little girl in the Water Babies and Estella in Great Expectations for example. Anne and George and Titty by the 30s are much freer.

Yes. Much to do with their predicted usefulness. Girls will cook, clean, keep house, nurse, boys will be physically able to run the land and do the physical labour. As in Anne of Green Gables, where a boy was wanted for adoption less as a child to adopt but as an apprentice to Matthew to take over and run the farm as he grew up.

And in all Anne’s previous ‘homes’ she was used as a nanny & maid.

But Fotherington-Thomas is also a terrifyingly good tennis player and can beat pretty much anyone at St Custards.

An extract from Dear Enemy (1915) about rehoming children from an orphanage.

They wanted, of course, a pretty ornament, dressed in pink
and white and descended from the Mayflower. I told them that any
one could bring up a daughter of the Mayflower to be an ornament
to society, but the real feat was to bring up a son of an Italian
organ-grinder and an Irish washerwoman. And I offered Punch.
That Neapolitan heredity of his, artistically speaking, may turn
out a glorious mixture, if the right environment comes along to
choke out all the weeds.

The book reflects the casual racism of the times and some of the ideas about children are unacceptable to us today. However, it is surprisingly perceptive about attitudes to child rearing and the roles of men and women.
The author Jean Webster also wrote, Daddy Longlegs, in 1908. She talks about a young female college student learning about evolution and being told that the Biblical story of Adam and Eve is just a myth.
In many ways the views of Jean Webster seem more enlightened than modern day, USA.

And iirc in adult life he married and had a couple of DC. Molesworth went to visit and reported that one was called Ghislaine or similar. Tippical wet name sumone like him woud use.

In Murdoch Mysteries (which does a lot of weaving actual historic figures in and out of the storylines) George Crabtree met LMM and after getting a chance the read the manuscript of her as-yet-unpublished book, announced with certainty and pride that HE was Anne of Green Gables (orphan, found on a doorstep, imaginative).

@Borrowandmiss I'd forgotten all about Jean Webster's Daddy Longlegs. I'll enjoy going back to it! Thank you.

My copy of Daddy Long Legs is one I borrowed from Hastings Public Library in 1966 (I was 12). Unfortunately our dog ate one of the book’s corners so we had to pay for it. But I got to keep it! Absolutely loved that book . Must have read it about 20 times. But I agree with comments upthread that to a modern eye he appears weird and controlling.

Old Darby's just a nerd really, though, isn't he?

What a great threat! I’m adding the intellectual Atalanta from ‘The Workhouse Child’ and ‘Miss Rivers and Miss Bridges’ - who gets her friend Pansy rather unwillingly involved with the Suffregettes and they throw a brick through the window of number 10 and spend half the night in a prison cell. In ‘Mademoiselle’ they go out at night in Pais, drink alcohol and catch a spy. By Geraldine Symonds.

I'm here blatantly so I’ll remember this thread and can make a reading list from it…
Interesting about Jinny though. She was contrasted with her older sister, who cried a lot and liked baths in the daytime. And her friend Sue, who changed from being ‘boyish’, if that’s the word, like Jinny, to having a professional haircut and eye make-up.
Jinny also got into hot water, as I remember, when she developed a crush on a TV producer (Royce?), and things only improved when she got over it and stopped seeing him in a romantic way.

I went to a girls' secondary school but remember in primary school being inexplicably sent to learn how to sew a French seam one afternoon. I must have done something out of turn - spoken in class, probably. I found knowing how to stitch a French seam very useful later (into making my own clothes - I also play chess, but badly, and used to climb trees).