Seeking to understand how literary texts both shaped and reflected the century »s debates over adolescent female education, this book examines fictional works and historical documents featuring descriptions of girls » formal educational experiences between the 1810s and the 1890s. Alves argues that the emergence of schoolgirl culture in nineteenth-century America presented significant challenges to subsequent constructions of normative femininity. The trope of the adolescent schoolgirl was a carrier of shifting cultural anxieties about how formal education would disrupt the customary maid-wife-mother cycle and turn young females off to prevailing gender roles. By tracing the figure of the schoolgirl at crossroads between educational and other institutions – in texts written by and about girls from a variety of racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds – this book transcends the limitations of ‘separate spheres’ inquiry and enriches our understanding of how girls negotiated complex gender roles in the nineteenth century.
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