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GUSN-146561
xvi, 478 p. : ill. ; 24 cm., Publisher's description: Based on an extraordinary array of diaries and letters, this engaging book explores the shifting experiences of adolescent girls in the late nineteenth century. What emerges is a world on the cusp of change. By convention, middle-class girls stayed at home, where their reading exposed them to powerful images of self-sacrificing women. Yet in reality girls in their teens increasingly attended schools--especially newly opened high schools, where they outnumbered boys. There they competed for grades and honor directly against male classmates. Before and after school they joined a public world beyond adult supervisionb7s strolling city streets, flagging down male friends, visiting soda fountains. Poised between childhood and adulthood, no longer behaving with the reserve of b3syoung ladies,b4s adolescent females sparred with classmates and ventured new identities. In leaving school, female students left an institution that had treated them more equally than any other they would encounter in the course of their lives. Jane Hunter shows that they often went home in sadness and regret. But over the long term, their school experiences as "girls" foreshadowed both the turn-of-the-century emergence of the independent "New Woman" and the birth of adolescence itself.
Middle class History 19th century.
Women History 19th century.
Girls History 19th century.
Home economics History 19th century.
Hunter, Jane, 1949-
Daughters' lives and the work of the middle-class home -- Writing and self-culture -- Reading and the development of taste -- Houses, families, rooms of one's own -- Interiors -- Competitive practices -- High school culture -- Friendship, fun, and the city streets -- Commencement.
New Haven : Yale University Press
xvi, 478 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Publisher's description: Based on an extraordinary array of diaries and letters, this engaging book explores the shifting experiences of adolescent girls in the late nineteenth century. What emerges is a world on the cusp of change. By convention, middle-class girls stayed at home, where their reading exposed them to powerful images of self-sacrificing women. Yet in reality girls in their teens increasingly attended schools--especially newly opened high schools, where they outnumbered boys. There they competed for grades and honor directly against male classmates. Before and after school they joined a public world beyond adult supervisionb7s strolling city streets, flagging down male friends, visiting soda fountains. Poised between childhood and adulthood, no longer behaving with the reserve of b3syoung ladies,b4s adolescent females sparred with classmates and ventured new identities. In leaving school, female students left an institution that had treated them more equally than any other they would encounter in the course of their lives. Jane Hunter shows that they often went home in sadness and regret. But over the long term, their school experiences as "girls" foreshadowed both the turn-of-the-century emergence of the independent "New Woman" and the birth of adolescence itself.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [463]-466) and index.
0300092636 (cloth : alk. paper)
Stacks HT690.U6 H86 2002
Northeastern States
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