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The Performative History of Tomboys in Anglophone Literature Prior to Little Women

This paper examines the expansive history of literary tomboys in the century preceding Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868). Applying concepts from gender performativity theory, it explores earlier and previously overlooked portrayals of tomboys (or, alternatively, "hoydens" or "romps"), especially in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's A Trip to Scarborough (1777), Isaac Bickerstaffe's The Romp; A Comic Opera in Two Acts (1786), Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817), and E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand (1859). Because the tomboy phenomenon emphasizes that gender roles must be learned and can be resisted, tomboy characters are implicitly making a feminist point. As such, in the gap between Austen and Southworth, texts with minor and derogatory mentions of tomboys connect tomboyism with the prevailing anti-feminism of the early nineteenth century. By examining the developmental arc of tomboyism throughout literature and culture, this essay develops a greater understanding of how tomboyism fits within different historical periods and was a fully recognizable type in Britain and America decades before Alcott's Jo March supposedly normalized it in popular culture.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-11048
Date22 June 2023
CreatorsPalmer, Kimber
PublisherBYU ScholarsArchive
Source SetsBrigham Young University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations
Rightshttps://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

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