Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural HistoryTemple University Press, 2008 M06 28 - 328 pages Starting with the figure of the bold, boisterous girl in the mid-19th century and ending with the “girl power” movement of the 1990’s, Tomboys is the first full-length critical study of this gender-bending code of female conduct. Michelle Abate uncovers the origins, charts the trajectory, and traces the literary and cultural transformations that the concept of “tomboy” has undergone in the United States. Abate focuses on literature including Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding and films such as Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon and Jon Avnet's Fried Green Tomatoes. She also draws onlesser-known texts like E.D.E.N. Southworth's once wildly popular 1859 novel The Hidden Hand, Cold War lesbian pulp fiction, and New Queer Cinema from the 1990s. Tomboys also explores the gender and sexual dynamics of tomboyism, and offers intriguing discussions of race and ethnicity's role in the construction of the enduring cultural archetype. Abate’s insightful analysis provides useful, thought-provoking connections between different literary works and eras. The result demystifies this cultural phenomenon and challenges readers to consider tomboys in a whole new light. |
From inside the book
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... first 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 ...
... first 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 ...
... First World War, women were voting, engaging in such formerly masculine activities as smoking and drinking, and even asserting their right to participate in the “male” world of work. Compared with young women only a generation before ...
... first listing in the Oxford English Dictionary defines “tomboy” as “A rude, boisterous or forward boy” and gives the following textual example from 1553: “Is all your delite and joy in whiskying and romping abroad like a Tom boy?” (211) ...
... first to feature tomboys. Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868), Elizabeth Stuart's Phelps Gypsy Breynton series (1866–1867) and Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did (1872) form some of the most poignant examples. As tomboyism grew in ...
Contents
1 | |
24 | |
Sarah Orne Jewetts A Country Doctor | 50 |
Charlotte Perkins Gilmans Herland | 72 |
Willa Cathers O Pioneers and My Antonia | 97 |
Clara Bow in Victor Flemings Hula | 120 |
Carson McCullerss The Member of the Wedding | 145 |
Ann Bannons Women in the Shadows | 171 |
Tatum ONeal in Peter Bogdanovichs Paper Moon | 195 |
The Tomboy Comes Into the Light Transformations to White Feminism the Emergence of Whiteness Studies and the End of Racialized White Tomb... | 221 |
Selected Bibliography | 241 |
Works Cited | 257 |
Index | 281 |