<p>This dissertation defines
the literary genre of the American school story for girls from approximately 1845
to 1910. While recent critical studies have examined the American common school
story or the women’s college novel, no scholar has surveyed the genre of
American school stories for girls in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Instead, the British school story tradition, such as the <i>Tom Brown’s School Days</i> series and twentieth-century girls’
boarding school stories such as those by Angela Brazil, has overshadowed the American
genre. I also argue that the study of the girl’s book has focused on domestic
(family) stories over the school story. By defining the American school story
for girls, this project fills a critical gap and argues for how the school
story is an important subgenre of the girl’s book that depicts the
nineteenth-century girl in an educational environment with new personal and
professional opportunities. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The
first half of the dissertation provides a genre and historical overview, while
the second half consists of case studies of specific
educational sites and types of experience. The first chapter provides a
guiding definition of the school story and examines its subgenres. I split the
school story into the following subgenres: the common story school, the
seminary or boarding school story, and the college novel, and describe their
common tropes and characters. The second
chapter details the history of American women’s education and provides relevant
examples of fictional school depictions. In chapter
three, I analyze girls’ seminary (boarding school) schools including <i>The Boarding-School Girl</i> (1848) by Louisa C. Tuthill, <i>Hester Stanley at St. Mark's</i> (1882) by Harriet Prescott Spofford, and <i>Betty Baird</i> (1906) by Anna Hamlin Weikel. This chapter argues for the religious,
personal, and professional goals that motivated the girl characters to attend
school, and how the fiction depicted society’s expectations for these girls.
Finally, chapter four examines three Vassar-focused college novels,
specifically the first two books in <i>The
</i><i>Three Vassar Girls </i>series (1883-1892) by Elizabeth W. Champney and Julia A. Schwartz’s <i>Elinor’s
College Career </i>(1906),
to argue that the college experience created networks to help further the lives
of women, while also working to maintain homogeneity. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/9107963 |
| Date | 13 August 2019 |
| Creators | Brittany A Biesiada (7042811) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/School-Time_for_Girls_The_Depiction_of_Female_Education_in_Late_Nineteenth-Century_American_School_Stories/9107963 |
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