Mobility and the Public Roles of Girls And

To “make things move, somewhere”: Mobility and the Public Roles of Girls and Women in Popular Girls’ Novels, 1900-1920 by Sabrina Mark A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2020 by Sabrina Mark i Abstract This dissertation examines a number of popular girls’ novels in relation to their time of publication in the early twentieth century, a time when women of Canada, Britain, and the United States were experiencing increased involvement in the public sphere; these novels are: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903); A Little Princess (1905); The Secret Garden (1911); the Pearl Watson trilogy (Sowing Seeds in Danny [1908], The Second Chance [1910], and Purple Springs [1921]); Anne of Green Gables (1908); Anne of Avonlea (1909); Pollyanna (1913); and Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Drawing on theories of female mobility and feminist geographies, I explore the presentation of fictional girls and women in these novels as engaged in public matters. I argue that the novels depict them exploring and pushing the boundaries of what their roles in the public sphere could be while also delimiting the borders within which their involvement is acceptable. In chapter one, I establish physical mobility’s integral role in constituting the model girl, a girl who can embody the qualities that make her a valuable member of the nation. Chapter two explores the girls’ use of physical mobility to spread visions of national identity within local communities. The third chapter contrasts rural spaces with urban ones and links physical mobility with social mobility; girls’ ability to promote domestic comfort through upward social mobility and easy physical movement is impinged in urban settings. Chapter four takes up the movement from girlhood to womanhood and the similarities in girls’ narratives are juxtaposed with the varied unconventionalities and masculine powers available to women. In chapter five, I shift from the fictional to the historical to examine how two of the authors, Nellie L. McClung and L.M. Montgomery, navigated gender expectations and their own relationships to the public sphere, constructing personas that would circulate in public and moving between private and public spaces. ii Acknowledgements So many people have helped me throughout this long and sometimes arduous journey. I am incredibly grateful for the support and assistance of my advisor Dr. Pam Perkins, whose help throughout the entire process of both this dissertation and degree has been invaluable. Her careful reading and insightful feedback made this dissertation infinitely better than it would have been otherwise. My heartfelt thanks also go to Dr. Vanessa Warne and Dr. Adele Perry, at the University of Manitoba, and Dr. Cecily Devereux, at the University of Alberta, who made up my committee. In their meetings with me and their reports, they provided encouragement, asked probing questions, and gave me much food for thought, both for the present dissertation and its future forms. Many thanks go to the wonderful support staff in the Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media, Anita King, Darlene McWhirter, and Marianne Harnish, as well as the Graduate Chairs throughout my time in the department, Dr. Vanessa Warne, Dr. Glenn Clark, and Dr. Lucas Tromly, who have helped me jump through all the hoops at the right times. My friends Melanie Braith, Karalyn Dokurno, and Kasey Morgan also have my thanks for their productive scholarly discussions, generous emotional support, and general good fellowship. Lastly, I would also like to acknowledge the receipt of a University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship, which funded the first three years of my program. iii Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, whose constant and unwavering support made it possible, and to my puppy Pistol, who was there for almost all of my extensive university career but could not quite make it to the end. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv Introduction: The Girl Question.......................................................................................................1 Chapter One: For the Good of the Nation: Mobile Model Girls in The Secret Garden and Pollyanna .......................................................................................................................................17 Chapter Two: Promoting a Shared Vision: Localized Movement in Pollyanna and Anne of Avonlea ..........................................................................................................................................45 Chapter Three: Home Creation and Urban Critique: Mobile Domesticity in the Pearl Watson trilogy, A Little Princess, and Pollyanna Grows Up .....................................................................68 Chapter Four: Growing Up and Being Grown Up: Freedom, Power, and Mobility in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Anne of Green Gables ...............................................................................95 Chapter Five: The Public Lives of Nellie L. McClung and L.M. Montgomery ..........................122 Conclusion: The Afterlife of Early Twentieth-Century Gender Ideologies ................................152 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................160 1 Introduction: The Girl Question Rebecca Randall, Sara Crewe, Anne Shirley, Pearl Watson, Mary Lennox, and Pollyanna Whittier are names that, for many, bring to mind old-fashioned girlhood, quaint and idyllic, as depicted in works of domestic fiction or girls’ literature. This impression is rooted in the fact that these fictional girls act as carriers of cultural ideology, embodying values from the societies that form their historical context: the predominantly Anglo, white, and middle-class culture of Canada, Britain, and the United States in the early twentieth century. The novels featuring these girl protagonists reflect the concerns of their time, in particular what was known as “The Woman Question,” a discourse “about the nature and role of woman” (“Woman”), stimulated by changes to women’s positions in society throughout the nineteenth century. The widespread interest in what the proper role for girls and women might consist of manifested itself in a proliferation of cultural and literary figures during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Eliza Lynn Linton’s “Girl of the Period,” the “New Woman,” the “New Girl” that Sally Mitchell describes, and the “Flapper,” as well as the female characters in novels like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Sowing Seeds in Danny. While a wide variety of issues are encompassed within “The Woman Question,” this dissertation takes as its focus, using the lens of mobility, the role of girls and women in the public sphere as imagined by women authors of popular girls’ novels in the first two decades of the twentieth century. These novels are Kate Douglas Wiggin’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903); Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911); Nellie L. McClung’s Pearl Watson trilogy (Sowing Seeds in Danny [1908], The Second Chance [1910], and Purple Springs [1921]); L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908) and Anne of Avonlea (1909); and Eleanor H. Porter’s Pollyanna (1913) and Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Early twentieth-century gender roles continued to be influenced by the Victorian ideology of separate spheres that governed upper- and middle-class gender convention, divorcing private from public and feminine from masculine. Richard D. Altick describes the imagined feminine ideal as one constructed through the appropriate occupation of particular spaces: “Her place was in the home […] and emphatically not in the [masculine] world of affairs” (54). But, to some degree, girls and women never stopped engaging in the “world of affairs” and by the time Wiggin, Burnett, Montgomery, McClung, and Porter wrote their best-selling novels, a number of 2 societal changes had taken place that made female involvement in the public sphere much more visible than in the previous century. Girls and women were entering in increasing numbers arenas considered public, such as institutions of higher education; taking up careers in a variety of new professions, such as office work; and participating in political campaigns for women’s rights, including women’s suffrage. In these campaigns, they could be seen in public spaces lecturing, protesting, and even proposing legislation. Eventually, unlike previous generations, the Anglo, white, middle-class girls of Canada, Britain, and the United States who read about their fictional counterparts in the early years of the twentieth century would, upon reaching adulthood, have the ability to vote in national elections, since the

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