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Rough Maria and clever Simone: some introductory remarks on the girl in Australian history

2010; Routledge; Volume: 34; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14443058.2010.519313

1835-6419

Melissa Bellanta,

Gender Roles and Identity Studies

Abstract This article is intended as an introduction to a special issue of this journal entitled ‘The Girl in Australian History’. It suggests that there is a need for more historical work which focuses specifically on girls and girlhood in an Australian context and offers a number of reasons for this: (1) because relatively little of this work has been produced thus far; (2) because such work will enrich and challenge current perspectives on Australian history; and (3) because the interdisciplinary field of girl studies will benefit from more contributions by historians. Ultimately, the aim of this article is to encourage further conversations between Australian historians and other scholars interested in girlhood today. Keywords: histories of girlhoodgirl culturegirl studiesAustralian history Notes 1. Penny Chapman (Producer) for Chapman Pictures, My Place, Series 1, Australian Broadcasting Commission, 2009. This 13-episode series premiered on ABC 1 on 4 December 2009 and afterwards screened once a week, and was then repeated from 22 April 2010. It was also screened on ABC 3 in 2010. For further information about the series, see the ABC3 website: www.abc.net.au/abc3/myplace/ , accessed 1 July 2010. For the book, see: Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins, My Place, Sydney, Walker Books, 1988. 2. Catherine Driscoll, Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory, Columbia University Press, New York, 2002; and ‘Girls today: girls, girl culture and girlhood studies’, Girlhood Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2008, pp. 13–32. For select examples of Driscoll's upcoming work on girls, see: ‘Rethinking girls’ studies: a review of Angela McRobbie's The Aftermath of Feminism’, Australian Feminist Studies, forthcoming; ‘Girl culture and the Twilight franchise’, in Anne Morey (ed.), Twilight: Essays on Genre, Adaptation and Reception, Ashgate, Aldershot, forthcoming; ‘Becoming a country girl’ in Mary Celeste Kearney (ed.), Mediated Girlhoods, Peter Lang, New York, forthcoming. 3. For Harris’ monographs, see: Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century, Routledge, New York and London, 2004; and Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005 (written with Sinikka Aapola and Marnina Gonink). See also her edited collections: Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism, Routledge, London and New York, 2008; and All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity, Routledge, London and New York, 2004. For select examples of her other published work on girls, see: ‘In a girlie world: tweenies in Australia’, in Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh (eds), Seven Going on Seventeen: Tween Studies in the Culture of Girlhood, Peter Lang, New York, 2005, pp. 209–23; ‘Young Australian women: circumstances and aspirations’, Youth Studies Australia, vol. 21, no. 4, 2002, pp. 32–7. 4. Kerry Carrington with Margaret Pereira, Offending Youth: Sex, Crime and Justice, Federation Press, Sydney, 2009, pp. 55–75; Carrington, Offending Girls: Sex, Youth And Justice, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1993; Carrington and Andy Bennett, ‘“Girls mags” and the pedagogical formation of the girl’, in Carmen Luke (ed.), Feminisms and Pedagogies of Everyday Life, State University of New York (SUNY) Press, Albany, 1996, pp. 147–66; Carrington, ‘Cultural studies, youth culture and delinquency’, in Rob White (ed.) Youth Subcultures: Theory, History and the Australian Experience, National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies (NCYS), Hobart, 1993, pp. 27–32; Christine Alder and Anne Worrall, ‘A contemporary crisis?’, in Alder and Worrall (eds), Girls’ Violence: Myths and Realities, SUNY Press, Albany, 2004, pp. 1–20; Christine Alder and Margaret Baines (eds), And When She Was Bad?: Working With Young Women in Juvenile Justice and Related Areas, NCYS, Hobart, 1996. 5. On the significance of the ‘girl power’ slogan during the 1990s, see: Hillary Carlip, Girl Power, Warner Books, New York, 1995; Shelley Budgeon, ‘“I'll tell you what I really, really want”: girl power and self-identity in Britain’, in Sherrie A. Inness (ed.), Millennium Girls: Today's Girls Around the World, Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Lanham (MD), 1998, ch 5. For good overviews of the field of ‘girl studies’ as it stands today, see Driscoll, ‘Girls today’; and the introductions to Harris, Aapola and Gonink, Young Femininities and Harris, All About the Girl. On the rise of girl/hood studies as a field in the 1990s, see: Marion de Ras and Mieke Lunenberg (eds), Girls, Girlhood and Girls’ Studies in Transition, Het Spinhuis, Amsterdam, 1993. For some foundational texts published earlier than the 1990s, many of which were associated with Angela McRobbie, see: McRobbie and Jenny Garber, ‘Girls and subcultures’, in Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds), Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, HarperCollins Academic, London, 1976, pp. 209–22; McRobbie, ‘Working-class girls and the culture of femininity’, in Women's Studies Group, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, Women Take Issue: Aspects of Women's Subordination, Hutchison, London, 1978, pp. 96–108; McRobbie and Trisha McCabe (eds), Feminism for Girls: An Adventure Story, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1981; McRobbie and Mica Nava (eds), Gender and Generation, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1984. See also the historical works from the 1980s in n. 7 below. 6. Michelle Fine, ‘Sexuality, schooling and adolescent females: the missing discourse of desire’, Harvard Education Review, 1988, vol. 58, no. 1, pp. 29–51; Fine and Sara McClelland, ‘Sexuality education and desire: still missing after all these years’, Harvard Education Review, 2008, vol. 76, no. 3, pp. 297–338; Marjorie Harness Goodwin, The Hidden Life of Girls: Games of Stance, Status, and Exclusion, Blackwell, Oxford, 2006; and ‘Girls’ games’ in Claudia A. Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh (eds), Girl Culture: An Encyclopaedia, Greenwood Press, Westport (CT), 2007, pp. 474–7. For examples of work by education specialists, see Pamela J. Bettis and Natalie G. Adams (eds), Geographies of Girlhood: Identities In-Between, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah (NJ), 2005; and by geographers, see: Claire Dwyer, ‘Contested identities: challenging dominant representations of young British Muslim women’ in Tracey Skelton and Gill Valentine (eds), Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Culture, Routledge, New York, 1998, pp. 50–65. 7. For good examples from the 1980s, see: Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London and Boston, 1981; Felicity Hunt (ed.), Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850–1950, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1987; Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal, Croom Helm, London, 1982; and Kathy Peiss, ‘“Charity girls” and city pleasures: historical notes on working-class sexuality, 1880–1920’, in Kathy Peiss, Christina Simmons and Robert A. Padgung (eds), Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1989, pp. 57–69. For notable historical work on girlhood published since 1990, see: Miriam Formanek-Brunell, Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialisation of American Girlhood 1830–1930, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993; Claudia Nelson and Lynne Vallone (eds), The Girls’ Own: Cultural Histories of the Anglo-American Girl, 1830–1915, University of Georgia Press, Athens (GA), 1994; Ruth M. Alexander, The “Girl Problem”: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900–1930, Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press, 1995; Sally Mitchell, The New Girl: Girls’ Culture in England, 1880–1915, Columbia University Press, New York, 1995; Mary Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920, Duke University Press, Chapel Hill (NC), 1995; Penny Tinkler, Constructing Girlhood: Popular Magazines for Girls Growing up in England, 1920–1950, Taylor and Francis, London, 1995; Lynne Vallone, Disciplines of Virtue: Girls’ Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995; Joan Jacob Brumberg, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, Random House, New York, 1997; Meg Sommersal, Working-Class Girls in Nineteenth-Century England: Life, Work and Schooling, St Martin's Press, New York, 1997; Mary Jo Maines, Brigitte Søland and Christina Benninghaus (eds), Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History, 1750–1960, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2000; Brigitte Søland, Becoming Modern: Young Women and the Reconstruction of Womanhood in the 1920s, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000; Pamela Cox, Gender, Justice and Welfare: Bad Girls in Britain, 1900–1950, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndsmills (Hampshire), 2003; Jane Hunter, How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003. See also the contributions of historians such as Tani E. Barlow, Timothy Burke, Barbara Sato and Miriam Silverberg to Alys Eve Weinbaum et al. (eds), The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity and Globalisation, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2008; and Jennifer Helgren and Colleen Vasconcellos (eds), Girlhood: A Global History, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (NJ), 2010. 8. For relevant Australian histories of education, see: Coral Chambers, Lessons for Ladies: A Social History of Girls’ Education in Australasia, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1986; Geoffrey Sherington, R. C. Peterson and Ian Brice (eds), Learning to Lead: A History of Girls’ and Boys’ Corporate Secondary Schools in Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1987; Marjorie Theobald, Knowing Women: A History of Women's Education in Nineteenth-Century Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996. (There are also plenty of histories of individual private girls’ schools such as S.C.E.G.G.S. (Sydney) and Brisbane Girls Grammar, but there is not space to outline these here). For select histories of childhood which touch on girlhood, see: Jacqueline Kent, In the Half Light: Life as a Child in Australia, 1900–1970, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1988; Penelope Hetherington (ed.), Childhood and Society in Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands (WA), 1988; Jan Kociumbas, Australian Childhood: A History, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1997; Penelope Hetherington, Settlers, Servants and Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth-Century Western Australia, University of Western Australian Press, Nedlands (WA), 2002. For relevant histories of the family, see: Kereen Reiger, The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernising the Australian Family 1880–1940, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985; Michael Gilding, The Making and Breaking of the Australian Family, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1991; Ann Larson, Growing up in Melbourne: Family Life in the Late Nineteenth Century, Australian National University, Canberra, 1994; and Anna Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families, 1800–2000, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 2000. 9. There is a huge scholarship on the historical treatment of children deemed wayward or at risk, only some of which can be mentioned here. I refer firstly to works whose key focus is on girls or femininity: Margaret Barbalet, Far From a Low Gutter Girl: The Forgotten World of State Wards: South Australia 1887–1940, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1983; John Ramsland, ‘“A place of refuge from dangerous influences”: Hobart Town Industrial School for Girls, 1862–1945’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 71, 1985, pp. 207–17; Lynette Finch, The Classing Gaze: Sexuality, Class and Surveillance, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1993; Shurlee Swain with Renate Howe, Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995. A survey of other more general work on this topic appears in: Shurlee Swain, ‘Derivative and indigenous in the history and historiography of child welfare in Australia’, Parts One and Two, Children Australia, vol. 26, no. 4, 2001, pp. 4–9; and vol. 27, no. 1, 2002, pp. 5–9. Swain's current project on the history of adoption in Australia (a project conducted with Marian Quartly and Denise Cuthbert) will also produce relevant work in this field. For examples of work on the Stolen Generations, see: C. Edwards and Peter Read (eds), The Lost Children, Doubleday, Sydney, 1989; Heather Goodall, ‘“Saving the children”: gender and the colonisation of Aboriginal children in New South Wales, 1788–1990’, Aboriginal Law Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 44, 1990, pp. 6–9; Peter Read, A Rape of the Soul So Profound: The Return of the Stolen Generations, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1999; Haebich, Broken Circles; Doreen Mellor and Anna Haebich, Many Voices: Reflections on Experiences of Indigenous Child Separation, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2002; Christine Cheater, ‘Stolen girlhood: Australia's assimilation policies and Aboriginal girls’, in Helgren et al., Girlhood: A Global History, pp. 250–67. 10. Beverley Kingston, My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann: Women and Work in Australia, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1975; Margaret Bevege, Margaret James and Carmel Shute (eds), Worth Her Salt: Women and Work in Australia, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1982; Jackie Huggins, ‘“Firing on in the mind: Aboriginal women and domestic servants in the inter-war years’, Hecate, 1878–8, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 5–23; Desley Deacon, Managing Gender: The State, The New Middle Class and Women Workers 1830–1930, Oxford University Press, Oxford, London and Melbourne, 1989; Edna Ryan and Anne Conlon, Gentle Invaders: Australian Women at Work, 2nd ed., Penguin, Ringwood, 1989; Raelene Frances, The Politics of Work: Gender and Labour, 1880–1939, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 1993; John Ramsland and Mark St Leon, Children of the Circus: The Australian Experience, Butterfly Books, Springwood, 1993; Diane Kirkby, Barmaids: A History of Women's Work in Pubs, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 1997. See also the work on prostitution, outlined in n. 11 below. 11. Again, there is only space to give suggestive examples of Australian work on feminine sexuality in history here. These are: Kay Daniels, ‘The flash mob: rebellion, rough culture and sexuality in the female factories of Van Diemen's Land’, Australian Feminist Studies, 1993, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 133–50; Penelope Hetherington and Phillipa Maddern (eds), Sexuality and Gender In History: Selected Essays, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands (WA), 1993; Gail Reekie, Temptations: Sex, Selling and the Department Store, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1993; the chapters on femininities in Marilyn Lake and Joy Damousi (eds), Gender and War: Australians At War in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 1995; Joy Damousi, Depraved and Disorderly, Female Convicts, Sexuality in Colonial Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Melbourne, 1997; Susan Magarey, Passions of the First Wave Feminists, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2000; Lucy Chesser, Parting With My Sex: Cross-Dressing, Inversion and Sexuality in Australian Cultural Life, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2008; and Angela Woollacott, ‘Gender and sexuality’, in Deryck M. Schreuder and Stuart Ward (eds), Australia's Empire, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2008, pp. 312–35. On the history of Australian prostitution, see: Kay Daniels (ed.), So Much Hard Work: Women and Prostitution in Australian History, Fontana, Sydney, 1984; Elaine McKewon, The Scarlet Mile: A Social History of Prostitution in Kalgoorlie, 1894–2004, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley (WA), 2005; and Raelene Frances, Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2007. 12. Judith Allen, Sex and Secrets: Crimes Involving Australian Women Since 1880, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990; Jill Bavin (now Bavin-Mizzi), ‘Writing about incest in Victoria 1880–1890’, in Penelope Hetherington (ed.), Incest and the Community: Australian Perspectives, Centre for West Australian History, Nedlands (WA), 1991; Jill Bavin-Mizzi, Ravished: Sexual Violence in Victorian Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney,1995; D. Scott and Shurlee Swain (eds), Confronting Cruelty: Historical Perspectives on Child Abuse, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2002; and Amanda Kaladelfos, ‘Crime and Outrage: Sexual Villains and Sexual Violence in New South Wales, 1870–1930’, PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, 2010. 13. Lesley Johnson, The Modern Girl: Girlhood and Growing Up, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1993; Jill Matthews, ‘Dancing modernity’, in Barbara Caine and Rosemary Pringle (eds), Transitions: New Australian Feminisms, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1995, pp. 74–87; Angela Woollacott, To Try Her Fortune In London: Australian Women, Colonialism and Modernity, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001; Liz Conor, The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2004 (see also Conor's contribution to The Modern Girl Around the World); Jill Matthews, Dance Hall and Picture Palace: Sydney's Romance With Modernity, Currency Press, Sydney, 2005; Kate Murphy, Fears and Fantasies: Modernity, Gender and the Rural-Urban Divide (Peter Lang, forthcoming). For explorations of young women's relationship to romance in the period of heady modernity during the 1920s, see: Katie Holmes, Spaces in Her Day: Australian Women's Diaries of the 1920s and 1930s, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1995; Hsu-Ming Teo, ‘The Americanisation of romantic love in Australia’, in Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake (eds), Connected Worlds: Transnational Lives in Historical Perspective, ANU E-Press, Canberra, 2006, 171–92. 14. A few examples of the many oral histories worth mentioning are: Janet McCalman, Struggletown: Public and Private Life in Richmond, 1900–1965, Hyland House, South Melbourne, 1998; Janet McCalman, Journeyings: The Biography of a Middle-Class Generation, 1920–1990, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic, 1994; Wendy Lowenstein, Weevils in the Flour: An Oral Record of the 1930s Depression in Australia, Scribe, Melbourne, 1981; Jean Scott, Girls With Grit: Memories of the Australian Women's Land Army, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, London and Boston, 1986. 15. Biographies and memoirs have been particularly significant in telling stories of Indigenous Australian girls and women in history. See, for example: M. Kennedy, Born a Half Caste, Canberra, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1985; Glenyse Ward, Wandering Girl, Broome, Magabala Books, 1987; Ruby Langford, Don't Take Your Love To Town, Ringwood, Penguin, 1988; Rita and Jackie Huggins, Auntie Rita, Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994; Marilyn Lake, Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist, Allen and Unwin, 2002. For select examples of other relevant biographies and memoirs, see: Helen Vellacott (ed.), A Girl at Government House: An English Girl's Reminiscences ‘Below Stairs’ in Colonial Australia, Currey O'Neill, South Yarra (Vic.), 1982; Susan Magarey, Unbridling the Tongues of Women: A Biography of Catherine Helen Spence, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1985; and Moira Lambert, A Suburban Girl: Australia 1918–1948, Macmillan, South Melbourne, 1990. 16. For examples of the many youth/girl studies scholars developing these arguments, see Nancy Lesko, Act Your Age! A Cultural Construction of Adolescence, Routledge, New York, 2001; Matthews, Dance Hall, chapter 1; Driscoll, Girls; Maines et al., introduction to Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills; Weinbaum et al., introduction to The Modern Girl Around the World. 17. Frances, Selling Sex, p. 138. 18. Driscoll, Girls, pp. 145–6, 3–4. 19. For a good discussion of this schism see Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, 3rd ed., Routledge, New York, 2002, pp. 56–8. 20. Liz Conor, ‘Blackfella Missus Too Much Proud: techniques of appearing, femininity, and race in the Australian modern scene’, in Weinbaum et al., The Modern Girl Around the World, pp. 220–39. 21. Driscoll, Girls, pp. 35–46. 22. Meaghan Morris, Too Soon Too Late: History in Popular Culture, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1998, p. 2. 23. Bound book of programmes and clippings for the Royal Standard Theatre, Shoreditch, Enthoven Collection, Victoria and Albert Theatre Museum, 1886–7; Reference to tattoos on Norah Swan, Queensland Police Gazette, 3 September 1892, p. 316; Jeanne White, Prisoner no. 211, August 1902, and Annie McColl, Prisoner no. 31, 1903, both in Register of Female Prisoners Admitted, HM Prison, Fortitude Valley, Item 17303, Queensland State Archives, Brisbane. 24. Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 19875; Peiss, ‘Girls lean back everywhere’, in Weinbaum, The Modern Girl Around the World, pp. 347–53. 25. Morris, Too Soon Too Late, p. 5. 26. Weinbaum et al., introduction to The Modern Girl Around the World.