An Examination Of Feminism In Later Victorian And Edwardian Children's Literature By Women

Among a wide range of cultural studies and literary theoretical thoughts that has been applied to children's literature criticism, feminist criticism is considered as the new "direction". It gives new value to a popular fictional type created by female writers with subversive heroines in Later Victorian and Edwardian era.These novels produced by women concentrate on young female protagonists and characteristically feminine patterns of behaviour. The texts always concern with female psychological and social development, and the experimentation with subversive configurations of identity. However, with few exceptions, these novels are still generally ignored or assumed to simplistically reproduce conventional format in the same way that they express ambivalent attitude toward gender in patriarchy society. As many children's literature critics suggest, such a genre offers only a more "robust version of the domestic ideal".This paper challenges the conventional understanding of children's literature by these women writers in Later Victorian and Edwardian era as escapist entertainment or culturally conservative propaganda for middle-class girls. It calls for a re-reading of this neglected genre as a vital part of the "first-wave" feminism. To this end, the thesis will analyze, from a feminist perspective, the manifestation and significance of feminist views promulgated in the classic stories, including A Sweet Girl Graduate(1897) by L. T. Meade, The Railway Children(1906) by E.Nesbit, and The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This dissertation would demonstrate that these women writers' provocative opinions about feminine self-development are associated with feminism by concerning themselves with such social issues as female higher education, subversive gender relationships, the value of domestic feminine ideal and the exploration of female identity, etc. Though there are some inevitable ambivalent attitudes reflected in their contradicted figure configuration in the above-mentioned classic stories, this paper would also argue that these women writers demonstrate their hard efforts for female self-emancipation and crucial influences on feminist development even in their ambivalence toward gender in a patriarchy society.