Tomboys

Michelle Ann Abate is an Assistant Professor of English at Hollins University.

“An ambitious and exciting book that examines representations of what could be considered tomboys, in U.S. fiction and film, since 1859. The scope is impressive: Abate has done a great deal of archival research to unearth the titles she examines and cites many relevant theoretical and critical texts.”-Beverly Lyon Clark, Wheaton College

• Acknowledgements Introduction: From Antebellum Hoyden to Millennial Girl Power; The Unwritten History (and Hidden History) of Tomboyism in the United States 1. The White Tomboy Launches a Gender Backlash: E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand 2. The Tomboy Becomes a Cultural Phenomenon: Louisa May Alcott's Little Women 3. The Tomboy Matures Into the New Woman: Sarah Orne Jewett's A Country Doctor 4. The Tomboy is Reinvented an the Exercise Enthusiast: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland 5. The Tomboy Becomes the All-Americanizing Girl: Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and My Antonia 6. The Tomboy Shifts From Feminist to Flapper: Clara Bow in Victor Fleming's Hula 7. The Tomboy Turns Freakishly Queer and Queerly Freakish: Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding 8. The Tomboy Becomes the "Odd Girl Out": Ann Bannon's Women in the Shadows 9. The Tomboy Returns to Hollywood: Tatum O'Neal in Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon Selected Bibliography Works Cited Index Photographs follow page 144