History 476

Spring 2007

Devine

 

Study Questions for Mary Odem, “Teenage Girls, Sexuality, and Working-Class Parents”

 

  1. Many historians have argued that working-class attitudes about female sexuality were far less strict than those of middle-class Protestant reformers.  To what extent does Mary Odem’s article support or refute this view?

 

 

  1. What factors – economic, ethno-cultural, religious – drove working-class parents to exercise strict control over their daughters’ sexuality?

 

 

  1. How did the “double standard” reveal itself in working-class attitudes about sex?

 

 

  1.  How did the urban environment, changes in the economy, and the availability of “cheap amusements” contribute to the weakening of traditional limitations that working class families and communities had put on adolescent girls?

 

 

  1. Why did working class families turn to the courts to control their daughters?  What had their daughters done that forced parents to take this step?

 

 

  1. What does Odem mean when she says that working-class adolescent girls were far from the “helpless victims” portrayed in reformers’ accounts?

 

 

 

Study Questions for Ruth Alexander, “Going Around With a Bad Crowd of Girls”

 

  1. What factors could lead a young working class woman to “rebel” and become a “delinquent”?

 

 

  1. What role did the “urban-industrial-consumer environment” play in facilitating and focusing adolescent girls’ rebellion?  How did a girl’s family life also contribute to the desire to rebel?

 

 

  1. What were the values of “domestic ideology”?  How did they contribute to the notion of “Victorian girlhood”?

 

 

  1. Alexander refers to working class girls “reinventing female adolescence.”  What does she mean by this phrase?  What did this process entail?  How did the new “female adolescence” differ from Victorian girlhood?

 

 

  1. Why was the “reinvention of female adolescence” a more difficult process for working class girls and the daughters of immigrants than it was for middle class and wealthy girls?

 

 

  1. Why were poor and working class parents so concerned about their daughters’ desire for more freedom and independence?

 

 

  1. Why could achieving social independence from one’s family be a double-edged sword for many young women?

 

 

  1. Why did some young women end up being prostitutes?  Was this by choice or by coercion? Or a little of both?