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.

pollyhemlock · Today 17:22

One example I can think of is Noel Bastable in E. Nesbit’s Treasure Seekers books.

I read then and do you know, I can't remember a single thing about them!

Yes. It's more helpful I think to look at characters to don't conform to sex-role stereotypes, not because they're 'girly' or 'boyish' but because they are rounded human beings (or just beings, in the cases of Sniff and Piglet) learning to be themselves and be interested in the world without an expectation that they should conform.

Though Katy remains very strong-minded while also being recognisably and notably ladylike.

Particularly once Cousin Helen got at her.

Dick Callum is an interesting one. In the light of what we know nowadays, I suspect he is neuroatypical in some way. But he's completely accepted by the others as just Dick being himself and moving to the beat of a slightly different drum.
And girls can be pirates (and how!), and Dorothea takes the lead, unchallenged, when there's some sleuthing to be done ; and at the same time Susan is not despised for her more traditionally female focus, indeed her practicality and planning is recognised as essential for the adventures.

The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, Gene Kemp, 1977. You don’t find out Tyke’s sex until right near the end.

Love that I recognised Johnny and Dorry straight away! You could argue that Katy was too boyish and active and had to be punished by her injury. Remember her dream about “Love or Pain” as the great teachers?

Great thread OP.

Hmm, who is this list for?! Stop vandalising literature!
What are "boyish girls"? George went to a girls school, slept in the girls caravan and was told to stay home whilst the boys went off at night. She just wanted the freedom Julian & Dick had.

Tyke Tyler! I read it when it was published and didn’t guess the twist until I was told it in the book. When I read it to my DD she asked me straight away if Tyke was a boy or a girl as the text doesn’t say.

Carrie in Goodnight Mister Tom pushes against sexist expectations, by wanting to get a secondary education instead of preparing to be a wife and at the end by wearing boy's shorts to ride a bicycle.

Neither of these things seem 'boyish' at all by today's standards but she is a good character for talking with children about how gendered roles have oppressed women and girls and how they are complete nonsense (if they weren't they wouldn't change over time).

I don't think it's surprising that there are fewer boy characters who want to be treated like girls, because sexism is like that, isn't it. Boys have historically had much more freedom, opportunities and frankly more fun. Not surprising that girls would want that, but there's little reason for a boy to want to live a more restricted life. Not that millions of working class boys haven't had horrible childhoods, but it would never have been better for them if they were girls.

Walter Blythe? I always wondered if he was gay but he gets killed off so nobody knew...

Did anyone else read Mog and the Rectifier as a kid? Same era as Tyke Tiler. Mog was the leader of a gang of boys & the twist at the end of the first chapter (I think) was that she was revealed to be a girl when an angry teacher used her full name.

I don't have any examples from 20th century children's literature as that wasn't part of my upbringing.

I suggest the reason that boyish girls are more acceptable than girlish boys is that being male is The Good Thing, so it's OK if little girls aspire to be boyish, but boys who act girlish are turning away from The Good Thing, shamefully.

I suppose you could also argue that strong capable women are beneficial to society - as anyone who grew up around farms will tell you!

Or as in the old Music Hall/faux folk song says, which always makes me smile:
For she's a fine big strong lump of an agricultural Irish girl.
She neither paints or powders, and her figure Is all her own;
She can hit that hard you'd think 'twas the kick of a mule you got
The full of the house of Irish love is Mary Ann Malone.
'Girlish' boys were OK if they were just 'studious' rather than effeminate and went in for the priesthood...

I'm enjoying reading all your examples from books!

I think it's been written that the Susan character was necessary from a story telling point of view to make it more believable that the adults would let them all tramp off. (And may have been partially based on AR's second wife as she enabled his sailing).

One thing I love about Swallows and Amazons is the variety of personalities of the children, boys and girls.

With Dick, there's a bit where Dorothea is carefully watching Captain Flint because she knows that sometimes adults react wrongly to him. I feel for her because she is always comparing herself to the others like Susan and Nancy when she's so different to them. Maybe that's the point, that it's self discovery and acceptance for who you are rather than conforming to someone else's model. Apparently Arthur Ransome struggled his whole life with feeling inadequate.

Janet in Diana Wynne Jones’s Charmed Life, and Polly in the same author’s Fire and Hemlock, at various points. DWJ also has a number of male heroes who are very interested in their own clothes and appearance (though otherwise conform to traditionally male patterns), and some like Cat Chant who are quite passive and dreamy.

I can’t remember if someone has said Maria Jones from the Box of Delights, but she’s my favourite “boyish” girl in children’s literature of all time for sheer swashbuckling panache!

Are Nancy and Peggy boyish? I'd say they were sailors, pirates, campers and reluctant wearers of dresses.

But they never express an interest in being a boy - exasperation that they are expected (by, say, their Great Aunt) to behave like ladies. But they don't behave like boys.

They do have fun and do things that idiots would say are boyish things. But only idiots would say that.

George (Famous Five) did want to be a boy - but only insofar as it meant that her life would be a lot less hemmed in and full of domestic chores.

etc etc
(Good call on Fotherington-Thomas, though, whoever it was)

I recently read Tony Curtis’s memoir of making Some Like It Hot and he talks about how the male characters in drag for most of the movie was incredibly controversial at that time. The idea that men might see women, find them attractive and then realise they had inadvertently been attracted to a man was so scary in those times that the studio was worried it would incite violence in the cinemas. This was the US of the late 1950s, director Billy Wilder had been in Berlin in the 1930s and to him drag wasn’t remotely controversial. Just wanted to add that as we think about why “boyish” girls were more prevalent than “girlish” boys - girlish boys were far more challenging in a homophobic society.

Also, Dinah in Enid Blyton’s Adventure series although her boyishness mainly meant fist fights with her brother. I remember one of the girls liked doing the domestics but can’t remember if it was Dinah or Lucy-Ann.

Yes, the clothes they preferred to frocks they called their ‘comfortables’ - that was the point, clothes they could be comfortable sailing etc in.
Apart from Susan and Peggy being the cooks (but then, the most famous ships cook is Long John Silver!) the main inequality I can think of is the real one that the girls hadn’t been taught Latin or ‘stinks’ unlike the boys.

Except that Peggy being cook is just necessity. It's not an inequality of sex as her captain is her sister.

Dorothea trying to keep house is funny. And it's not so much that she's the girl, just that Dick would be even more useless.

We don't think that. It's the authors at those times who imply it. We recognise them as girls going against feminine stereotypes being girls. And similarly for the boys.

Nicola & Rowan Marlow, with their brother Peter trying desperately to be all boy despite being clearly a rather sensitive type & not particularly cut out for a naval career.

Another Enid Blyton one - Darrell Rivers from Malory Towers. Hot-tempered in the early books but, by the time she got to the final term, she was off to university. She was intelligent, sporty and a leader, well, Head Girl...

I don't think Nesbit thought Noël was feminine, it's Oswald Oswaldsplaining in the light of what he thought Victorian/Edwardian manhood should be, making himself ridiculous (but believable) in the process.

I don't think any of the good authors thought people should grow up to be conformist for the sake of conforming, though they might have approved of some measure of social convention.

There were quite a few of them in Malory Towers & St Clare’s. Mainly Bill, of course, and Miss Peters, but also ‘strapping’ sporty girls like Mirabel Unwin & Amanda Chartelow.

That's very true It's been a while since I read the books but those names bring back memories!

The Naughtiest Girl In The School - Blyton again. Although I think Elizabeth mellows towards the end like so many of these examples...

Really struggling to think of examples for the boys...