| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Jane H. Hunter. How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2002. Pp. xvi, 478. $40.00.
Jane H. Hunter's comprehensive analysis of the changing experiences and outlooks of young, middle-class American women in the decades following the Civil War could be viewed as a prequel to the existing literature on the so-called New Woman, whose lifestyle challenged the conventions of gender and elicited widespread cultural criticism in late nineteenth-century America. Based on her meticulous examination of a range of rich, evocative sources primarily representative of the urban Northeast—diaries, letters, high school newspapers, novels, and prescriptive literature—Hunter discerns the emergence of a "new girl" whose activities and ideas define her as a precursor to the New Woman.	1
Unlike their earlier counterparts, who were expected to devote themselves to the domestic duties assigned to proper young ladies, late Victorian adolescent girls were essentially freed from housework. They read extensively, kept detailed, reflective diaries, and played the piano. These pursuits fostered the expression of selfhood and individuality and the development of a sense of personal taste, but they did not disrupt the equilibrium of the middle-class family. At the same time, growing numbers of middle-class girls were enrolled in coeducational secondary schools, where they consistently outnumbered boys and typically overshadowed them academically. Throughout the nineteenth century, academies and boarding schools had exposed young women to influences beyond those of home and family and fostered intense female friendships that could threaten the supremacy of maternal authority. However, Hunter argues that exposure to the more rigorous educational experiences and the distinctively new peer culture that characterized late nineteenth-century coeducational high schools challenged traditional female culture and gender roles in different and more fundamental ways.	. . .

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