Girl Trouble: Panic And Progress In The History Of Young Women

Description

The history of young women is a history of trouble. Arguments about whether girls have been the victims or the beneficiaries of social change have raged through modern history. This sparkling, panoramic social history takes a close look at the anxieties, horror stories and moral unease that have accompanied changes in girls' lives since Victorian times. It shows the importance of disentangling panic from progress if we are to understand the true story of twentieth century girls.

Reviews

'Carol Dyhouse's Girl Trouble is a brilliant, magisterial and moving account of the changes and continuities in the history of young women from the Victorian period to the present day. Ranging with great assurance across a dazzling array of sources, from court cases to film, popular music and political commentary, Dyhouse shows how the lives of young women and debates over youthful femininity lie at the very heart of modern British history and society. Girl Trouble is intellectually provocative, laced through with wit and acuity, and a model of historical writing. It deserves the widest possible readership.' - Stephen Brooke, Professor of History, York University, Toronto 'Girl Trouble offers readers an accessible and beautifully written history of adolescent girls and young women from the late Victorian era to Cameron's 21st century Britain. Balancing animated accounts of girls' adventures on the cultural scene with sober analyses of the 'moral panics' they caused, Carol Dyhouse has written a thought-provoking book so brimming with stories and insights that it is practically impossible to put down.' - Birgitte Soland, Professor of History, Ohio State University

Author description

Carol Dyhouse is a social historian and currently a research professor of history at the University of Sussex. Her most recent book, Glamour: Women, History, Feminism was published by Zed Books in 2010. Longer term, her research has focussed on gender, education and the pattern of women's lives in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain. Her books include Girls Growing Up in late Victorian and Edwardian England; Feminism and the Family in England, 1890-1939; No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870-1939; and Students: A Gendered History.

Table of contents

Introduction 1. White slavery and the seduction of innocents 2. Unwomanly types: New Women, revolting daughters and rebel girls 3. Brazen flappers, bright young things and 'Miss Modern' 4. Good-time girls, baby dolls and teenage brides 5. Coming of age in the 1960s: beat girls and dolly birds 6. Taking liberties: panic over permissiveness and women's liberation 7. Body anxieties, depressives, ladettes and living dolls: what happened to girl power? 8. Looking back