Disciplines of virtue
Subtitle: girls' culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
By: Lynne Vallone.
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New Haven
Language: eng
Number of pages: 230
Subjects: Teenage girls in popular culture -- United States -- History.; Teenage girls in popular culture -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.; Teenage girls in popular culture -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
Description: In British and American representations of girlhood during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, adolescent girls were viewed both as figures of adornment and as creatures in need of refuge, rescue, and reform. This engrossing book investigates such portrayals of girlhood by analyzing children's and adult's literature, conduct manuals, religious tracts, institutions for wayward girls, as well as social practices and phenomena, including the dowry system and the domestic science movement.

Employing the methods of feminist theory and cultural studies, Lynne Vallone examines the historical and social production of girls' culture in Britain and America - from eighteenth-century English asylums for penitent prostitutes and rescue homes in late nineteenth-century America to such social and legal practices as marriage settlements in which the upper-class girl's "jewel" of chastity enhanced her bride-price.

Vallone's study also brings new insights to a wide range of literature concerning female adolescence, offering in-depth readings of Pamela and Little Women, as well as works by Jane Austen, Frances Burney, Sarah Fielding, and Hannah More.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-226) and index.