by Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
about Jacqueline Reid-Walsh
Jacqueline Reid-Walsh is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her work combines archival research with children’s literature studies, book studies, juvenilia studies, and girlhood studies. She examines overlooked books in different formats, especially those with movable components. Major publications include her Interactive Books: Playful Media before Pop-Ups (2017) and the following, all cowritten with Claudia A. Mitchell: Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia (2008), Seven Going on Seventeen: Tween Studies in the Culture of Girlhood (2005), and Researching Children’s Popular Culture: The Cultural Spaces of Childhood (2002).
Girlhood
> “Well! WHAT are you?” said the Pigeon. “I can see you’re trying to invent something!” > > “I—I’m a little girl,” said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day. > > “A likely story indeed!” said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest contempt. “I’ve seen a good many little girls in my time, but never ONE with such a neck as that! No, no! You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it.” > > —Lewis Carroll, _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ There is no all-encompassing definition of _girlhood_. Nor is it a static or universal state. In _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ (1865), by asserting she is a little girl, Alice demonstrates the mutability of girlhood. The exchange—concluding with the conflation of Alice with the seductive serpent in Genesis—highlights problematic interrelations between _girl_ and _girlhood_ in Anglo-American culture. According to the _OED_, _girlhood_ has been used from the mid-eighteenth century with overlapping meanings: “the state of being a girl; the time of life during which one is a girl. Also: girls collectively.” The first citation in British literature occurs in Samuel Richardson’s novel _Clarissa_ (1748), where the virtuous heroine,...