Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History

339 Pages·2008·1.97 MB·English

by  Michelle Ann Abate

Tomboys

Tomboys
A Literary and Cultural History
M A A
ICHELLE NN BATE
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia
Michelle Ann Abate is an Assistant Professor of English at
Hollins University.
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1601 North Broad Street
Philadelphia PA 19122
www.temple.edu/tempress
Copyright © 2008 by Temple University
All rights reserved
Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abate, Michelle Ann, 1975–
Tomboys : a literary and cultural history / Michelle Ann Abate.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59213-722-0 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-59213-722-9 (alk. paper)
1. American fi ction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. American
fi ction—20th century—History and criticism. 3. Sex role in literature.
4. Girls in literature. 5. Women in literature. 6. Sex role—United States—
History. 7. Girls in motion pictures. 8. Women in motion pictures.
9. Sex role in motion pictures. I. Title.
PS374.S46A23 2008
813'.3093522—dc22
2007050234
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: From Antebellum Hoyden to Millennial Girl
Power; The Unwritten History (and Hidden History) of
Tomboyism in the United States ix
1 The White Tomboy Launches a Gender Backlash:
E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand 1
2 The Tomboy Becomes a Cultural Phenomenon:
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 24
3 The Tomboy Matures Into the New Woman:
Sarah Orne Jewett’s A Country Doctor 50
4 The Tomboy is Reinvented as the Exercise Enthusiast:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland 72
5 The Tomboy Becomes the All-Americanizing Girl:
Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! and My Antonia 97
6 The Tomboy Shifts From Feminist to Flapper:
Clara Bow in Victor Fleming’s Hula 120
7 The Tomboy Turns Freakishly Queer and Queerly Freakish:
Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding 145
vi / Contents
8 The Tomboy Becomes the “Odd Girl Out”:
Ann Bannon’s Women in the Shadows 171
9 The Tomboy Returns to Hollywood:
Tatum O’Neal in Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon 195
Epilogue: The Tomboy “Comes Into the Light”;
Transformations to White Feminism, the Emergence of
Whiteness Studies and the End of Racialized White Tomboyism 221
Selected Bibliography 241
Works Cited 261
Index 289
Photographs follow page 144
Acknowledgments
Tomboys have been variously viewed as icons of feminist defi -
ance, symbols of juvenile delinquency, and precursors of sexual
deviance. These classifi cations have proved especially reso-
nant, for the process of conceptualizing and completing this project
routinely involved a wide range of defi ant, delinquent and even deviant
behavior, from the gender delinquency of my own tomboy childhood
to my deviant absence at various social gatherings because I was busy
researching and writing these pages. To all of those who have spent
years living with, apologizing for and especially nurturing my various
forms of aberrance, I send my love and gratitude.
To my partner and co-conspirator, Rachel MacKnight, I owe special
thanks. Your boundless patience, kind criticism and thoughtful under-
standing provided the gentlest sounding board as I struggled to articu-
late these ideas. For your humor, intelligence, love and companionship,
you will always be my fi rst and best honorary tomboy.
I am indebted to many readers, colleagues and friends who have
helped shape and sharpen these ideas along the way. First of all, to
my committee at the City University of New York Graduate Center—
David S. Reynolds, Wayne Koestenbaum and Marc Dolan—under
whose direction this project began as my doctoral dissertation: the
knowledge part of these Acknowledgments comes from each of you.
I would also like to thank Hollins University for its support of my
project, as well as my colleagues there; I feel very fortunate to be in the
viii / Acknowledgments
company of such talented teachers and skilled scholars. I want to extend
special gratitude to University librarians Joan Ruelle, Amanda Hurst,
Renée McBride and Maryke Barber, who skillfully tracked down countless
references and whose good cheer brightened many long days spent in front
of my computer. I am also grateful to Lisa Marie O’Quinn for her skill and
patience while photographing many of the tomboy objects and artifacts
presented in this manuscript. Likewise, I am deeply appreciative of Emily
Faye Jewett, whose diligence researching and obtaining copyright permis-
sions for the use of these items, some obscure and decades old, saved me
many headaches and hassles.
I wish to offer special thanks to several people who provided invalu-
able help with specifi c chapters: Pauline Kaldas, Kenneth Kidd and
Rhonda Brock-Servais for their insightful readings of the Introduction;
Kenneth Kidd, Katherine Capshaw Smith and several anonymous readers
at the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly for their engaged anal-
ysis of an article version of Chapter One; Anne K. Phillips and Chris-
tine Doyle, along with two anonymous reviewers for the Alcott-themed
issue of Children’s Literature, who provided many helpful comments on a
journal essay about Chapter Two; Cheryl Fish for her wise and important
feedback on Chapter Three; Rachel Adams for her wonderfully valuable
comments about Chapter Seven; Eric Tribunella, who provided excellent
pinpoint critiques of some of the material in Chapter Nine; Philip Nel,
whose wisdom and encouragement came at a crucial point in the fi nal
stages of revision; and Mick Gusinde-Duffy along with the anonymous
readers at Temple University Press, who offered support as well as many
valuable suggestions about the manuscript.
Finally, to my grandmothers: Lorraine B. Hunt, who has looked forward
to the publication of this book with great excitement and anticipation, and
Emma Violet Schwelle (1912–2000), for whom this volume unfortunately
comes too late. Through the brave examples of your lives, you have been
my fi rst and best teachers of delinquency. Thank you for your continued
love, guidance and encouragement. You have shaped my life in more ways
than you will ever know, and I dedicate these pages to you both.
Introduction: From Antebellum Hoyden
to Millennial Girl Power
The Unwritten History (and Hidden History) of
Tomboyism in the United States
In the second chapter of Women and Economics, Charlotte Perkins
Gilman argued, “The most normal girl is the ‘tom-boy’—whose
numbers increase among us in these wiser days,—a healthy young
creature, who is human through and through; not feminine till it is
time to be” (29). By the time Gilman penned her famous meditation on
gender and capitalism in 1898, tomboyism as both a cultural phenom-
enon and literary convention had become ubiquitous in the United
States. As historian Frances Cogan has illustrated, an alternative and
more physically active code of conduct emerged for women during the
mid-nineteenth century. Dubbing this phenomenon “Real Woman-
hood,” she argued, “This popular ideal advocated intelligence, physical
fi tness and health, self-suffi ciency, economic self-reliance, and careful
marriage . . .” (Cogan 4). Echoing these sentiments, Martha Banta
has asserted that these behaviors helped establish a new paradigm of
behavior for the American girl by the dawn of the twentieth century:
the vigorous, athletic and even muscular “Outdoors Pal.”
As tomboys emerged in American culture during the nineteenth
century, they also became a fi xture in its literature. Joining the ranks
of literary icons like the “fallen woman” or the male “rake,” boisterous
female fi gures appeared in popular narratives like Elizabeth Stuart
Phelps’ Gypsy Breynton (1866) and Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did
(1872). Most famous among these was Jo March from Louisa May
Alcott’s 1868 classic Little Women. The appeal of this topsy-turvy