Beverly Lyon Clark – författare

In 18th through 20th-century British and American literature, school stories always play out the power relationships between adult and child. They also play out gender relationships, especially when females are excluded, although most histories of the genre ignore the unusual novels that probe the gendering of school stories. When the occasional man wrote about girls schools-as Charles Lamb and H. G. Wells did-he sometimes empowered his female characters, granting them freedoms that he had experienced at school.Women who wrote about boys'' schools often gave unusual emphasis to families, and at times, revealed the contradictions in the schoolyard code against telling tales or presented competing versions of masculinity, such as the Christian gentleman versus the self-made man. Sometimes these middle-class white women projected their sense of estrangement onto working class and minority women. Sometimes they wrote school stories that were in dialog with other genres, as when Mrs. Henry Wood wrote a sensation story or, like Louisa May Alcott, they domesticated the boys school story, giving prominence to a female viewpoint.

In 18th through 20th-century British and American literature, school stories always play out the power relationships between adult and child. They also play out gender relationships, especially when females are excluded, although most histories of the genre ignore the unusual novels that probe the gendering of school stories. When the occasional man wrote about girls schools-as Charles Lamb and H. G. Wells did-he sometimes empowered his female characters, granting them freedoms that he had experienced at school.Women who wrote about boys'' schools often gave unusual emphasis to families, and at times, revealed the contradictions in the schoolyard code against telling tales or presented competing versions of masculinity, such as the Christian gentleman versus the self-made man. Sometimes these middle-class white women projected their sense of estrangement onto working class and minority women. Sometimes they wrote school stories that were in dialog with other genres, as when Mrs. Henry Wood wrote a sensation story or, like Louisa May Alcott, they domesticated the boys school story, giving prominence to a female viewpoint.

Raising key questions about race, class, sexuality, age, material culture, intellectual history, pedagogy, and gender, this book explores the myriad relationships between feminist thinking and Little Women, a novel that has touched many women''s lives. A critical introduction traces 130 years of popular and critical response, and the collection presents 11 new essays, two new bibliographies, and reprints of six classic essays.The contributors examine the history of illustrating Little Women; Alcott''s use of domestic architecture as codes of female self-expression; the tradition of utopian writing by women; relationship to works by British and African American writers; recent thinking about feminist pedagogy; the significance of the novel for women writers, and its implications from the vantage points of middle-aged scholar, parent, and resisting male reader.

Raising key questions about race, class, sexuality, age, material culture, intellectual history, pedagogy, and gender, this book explores the myriad relationships between feminist thinking and Little Women, a novel that has touched many women''s lives. A critical introduction traces 130 years of popular and critical response, and the collection presents 11 new essays, two new bibliographies, and reprints of six classic essays.The contributors examine the history of illustrating Little Women; Alcott''s use of domestic architecture as codes of female self-expression; the tradition of utopian writing by women; relationship to works by British and African American writers; recent thinking about feminist pedagogy; the significance of the novel for women writers, and its implications from the vantage points of middle-aged scholar, parent, and resisting male reader.