Girls to the Rescue
Young Heroines in American Series Fiction of World War I
Susan Ingalls Lewis author Emily Hamilton-Honey author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:McFarland & Co Inc
Published:25th May '20
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
During World War I, as young men journeyed overseas to battle, American women maintained the home front by knitting, fundraising, and conserving supplies. These became daily chores for young girls, but many longed to be part of a larger, more glorious war effort--and some were. A new genre of young adult books entered the market, written specifically with the young girls of the war period in mind and demonstrating the wartime activities of women and girls all over the world. Through fiction, girls could catch spies, cross battlefields, man machine guns, and blow up bridges. These adventurous heroines were contemporary feminist role models, creating avenues of leadership for women and inspiring individualism and self-discovery. The work presented here analyzes the powerful messages in such literature, how it created awareness and grappled with the engagement of real girls in the United States and Allied war effort, and how it reflects their contemporaries' awareness of girls' importance.
“A meticulously detailed and accessibly written analysis of a broad range of fictional book series about girls in the WW I era…Hamilton-Honey and Lewis conclude that these heroines were far more feminist than those in the following decades…recommended”—Choice
“An intriguing examination of a comparatively underexamined body of literature: girls’ series fiction of the First World War era… This study offers an important new contribution to girls’ studies, among a variety of other disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields”—The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
“This volume provides a detailed analysis of girls' series books that came out during World War I. The authors show the various ways in which the central characters in these stories contribute to the war effort by playing supportive roles on the home front and by participating directly in wartime activities. The authors argue that in some cases the adventurous heroines in these stories provided girl readers with feminist role models.”—Children's Literature Association Quarterly
“This book provides significant, well-researched, and much-needed information about early 20th century America and the role girls’ series fiction of that era played in the changing dynamic of girlhood and young womanhood.”—Diana V. Dominguez, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
ISBN: 9781476668796
Dimensions: 254mm x 178mm x 13mm
Weight: 458g
252 pages