Idyll and ideology : a comparative study of British and German popular fiction for girls, 1888-1918

This study is a comparative analysis of British and German popular girls’ fiction from 1888 to 1918. In three chapters, it investigates the ways in which relations between Britain and Germany were reflected and played out in this genre, and how they were presented to a readership of adolescent girls. While the focus of the analysis is on fiction published during the First World War, the timeframe is set wider in order to investigate and evaluate pertinent developments in the genre before the outbreak of the conflict, from approximately 1888, the year when Wilhelm II became King and Emperor of Germany. The study also includes a brief analysis of developments in the genre after the war had ended in 1918. A central contention of this thesis is that the medium of girls’ fiction was used, indirectly, by the largely conservative, patriarchal British and German middle-class societies – which included the publishing industry – to serve propagandistic purposes, i.e. to mobilise girls on the home front, and to encourage the adoption of prefabricated concepts and national stereotypes of the enemy by them. Through their reading, girls in Britain and Germany were subsumed into their nation’s war effort. By embracing and supporting their countries’ justification for war, fictional girls – and girl readers who identified with their heroines – were seemingly afforded more agency than they had been before the War. A closer examination, however, reveals that war fiction for girls actually confirmed and reinforced rather than challenged traditional roles, ensuring that girls’ expectations for action were kept within narrow and strict social structures. Thus, as girls’ patriotic thinking was firmly guided by their reading, so too were their expectations for their futures.

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Tschörtner, Anja

Contributors dc:contributor

• Potter, Jane
• Lea, Daniel

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/4fnj-f898

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:cfb39ae1-efc0-448b-8bf0-bcb530dcccf4:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1