Dinny Gordon: Proto-Feminist

Anne Emery, a very popular author of 37 young adult novels, some of which were Junior Literary Guild selections, published four books about one of her most beloved characters, Dinny Gordon, between 1959 and 1965. Widely available in school and public libraries when they were published, these novels are still attainable in some libraries and in inexpensive paperback reprints. Girls have found Dinny appealing because she is intelligent, independent, motivated, and funloving. They also enjoy reading about her teen problems, her friendships, and her romantic entanglements (Contemporary Authors [online] "Anne Emery"; Image Cascade Publishing Catalog [online]). While only one of the Dinny Gordon books was published during the 1950s, one can argue that Emery is a transitional author whose work provides a bridge between the 1950s presentation of family life as portrayed in the television series Ozzie and Harriet and the mid- to late-1960s career-oriented lifestyle advocated by Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and other leaders of the newly developing women's movement. The family structure in all of the Dinny Gordon books is 1950s, but Dinny's hopes and dreams of a nontraditional profession and delaying marriage are unusual for the times. The family consists of two loving parents, two children, and a stay-at-home mother. The Gordons do not live in suburban tract housing, but they have a large, comfortable, older house. Each of the girls has her own spacious bedroom where she may entertain her girl friends. The house is also large enough that they and their friends of both sexes can enjoy themselves in semi-privacy (Emery, Dinny Gordon, Freshman, hereafter, Fresh. 21-22; Encyclopedia of World Biography [online], "Gloria Steinem"; Evans 277-79; Rollin 155-56). Dinny's father is a history professor who teaches in a small college town located 30 miles northwest of Chicago. Mrs. Gordon does not work outside the home and is quite happy with her situation. She is far from the 1950s martyr mothers whom Wini Breines depicts in Young, White, and Miserable. With Dinny's help, and occasionally with assistance from Dinny's older sister, Roxie, she does all of the cleaning and cooking. Typical of any era, Dinny and her friends experience a fair amount of teenage angst, but they are not as disaffected as the 1950s girls whom Breines studied. In the 1950s and 1960s when consumer spending was high, especially among teens, the Gordon girls are taught to have a work ethic and live modestly (Breines 58-59, 73, 77-78; Palladino 101-02; Rollin 155-56). There are four Dinny Gordon coming-of-age novels: Dinny Gordon, Freshman (1959), Dinny Gordon, Sophomore (1961), Dinny Gordon, Junior (1964), and Dinny Gordon, Senior (1965). In these tales, Emery presented new and exciting possibilities for her young readers. She believed that girls could plan to enter nontraditional careers, that they were not doomed just because they were not conventionally beautiful, and that those who were studious could nevertheless attract interesting men. It is uncertain whether Emery considered herself a feminist at the time when she wrote the Dinny Gordon books. Clearly, however, she provided a series that contained feminist themes. Indeed, Dinny Gordon, Freshman was published four years before Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), a book whose debut Sara Evans regards as one of the key events in the "reemergence of feminism" (Evans 275-76). The Dinny Gordon series must have resonated with girls who were independent, highly intelligent, and insecure about their physical appearance. Dinny does not always follow the crowd, but nevertheless she shares the normal teenage desire to "fit in." Although she loves the study of Latin and some day wants to learn Greek, she is reluctant to tell her friends how she feels. The narrator defines her approach: What "everybody does" and "they say" meant little to Dinny. But she liked people to think well of her, and if she had to be different she preferred to be inconspicuous about it. …