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.

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.

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

Person who Ransome based his books on.

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!).

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

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.

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.

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

Dark!!!

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

F

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

another kick-ass female character (though probably politically incorrect nowadays) was Missee Lee

Missee Lee and Peter Duck are metafiction. IIRC they were written by Titty, but could have been Captain Flint/Uncle Jim.

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.

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

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.

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.

Walter the Softy?

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

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

Missee Lee is an alumna of Newnham, IIRC.

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!

I wouldn't say Eustace is particularly sensitive. Self-absorbed, yes. But he's well up for trying to bully the only person on the ship who is smaller than he is, and the fact that Reepicheep turns out to be equal to the situation doesn't excuse him.

Titty is short for Titania

Joey in the chalet school.

I don't think Nancy and Peggy needed to want to be boys; they were growing up amongst family and friends who gave girls a good deal of freedom to do the same things as the boys were doing, and when that is interfered with (by the Great Aunt), they find ways of both keeping the peace and circumventing her. They don't seem to be plagued by internalised misogyny, they just recognise that some people have tiresome ideas about what girls shouldn't be allowed to do.

Only in the film and that was a mistake, misunderstanding. She’s Titty because of a poem about a Tittlemouse. It’s not her real name. Just like Baby Vicky isn’t Victoria, she’s Bridget, she just looked like an old Queen Victoria.

Tom Gay in the Chalet School. Brought up to be a 'gentleman' and goes by the name Tom instead of her girly name which she hates.

Horse-mad Bill in Malory Towers - in the same book as mannish horse-mad teacher Miss Peters.