Catching Them Young r

I have, beside me, reports or articles on eighteen research studies about sex stereotypes in children's books. They are almost all on reading schemes as such, but two or three include geography and history primers and one is confined to illustrations in reading schemes and picture story books. They range from research findings of about six to ten thousand words, assessing about sixty books, complete with evidence put forward in statistical tables, to shorter pieces showing reactions to smaller collections of well-known or widely-selling books. They all arrive at basically the same conclusions and as my own, often less detailed, examination of well over a hundred reading schemes and early reading series has shown a similar pattern of findings, I'll just outline the general picture here.

First of all, male characters simply appear much more frequently, both in the text and in illustrations, and appear in more leading roles. Also, everything goes to show that, in these books, girls are more restricted than boys in physical ' activities. Girls tend to hold mummy's hand, to be more attached to the house, to be standing at the bottom of the tree or looking on. Boys range further, with daddy or their friends. They are shown climbing and indulging in interesting and active games. Their clothes are usually less restricting, of course, and people don't bother so much if they get dirty. As far as attitudes go, girls are usually shown as unimaginative, placid, inward-looking, concerned with trivialities, docile and passive. Girls often just are. Boys do - they invent, plan, think about their future careers and are shown as moving into the world. They are confident, outgoing and give instructions (usually to girls).

Toys and games reinforce these basic attitudes. Boys have cars, planes, cranes, mechanical toys, toy weapons of all kinds and footballs. Girls have dolls, dolls, more dolls and then everything to do with dolls - dolls' houses, clothes, tea sets, prams, miniature domestic utensils and, for a change a small ball to bounce or throw (not to kick) and skipping-ropes. When playing games, girls are not to be too boisterous or to shout too loudly.

This is, overwhelmingly, the world of the reading schemes and readers. The vast Ladybird library with its Key Words reading scheme and many follow-up reading books on all sorts of subjects has recently had a face-lift. The children, Peter and Jane, are now often seen in jeans. Nevertheless, although it's true that a very few of the books have always shown sex-role swopping, there's still little difference, either in the text or in the illustrations, as regards stereotyped activities. The children are usually shown as imitating or being introduced to adult roles. For instance, in Things We Do, which is part of the reading scheme, we have, `Jane likes to help Mummy. She wants to make cakes like Mummy. /"Let me help you, Mummy," she says. "Will you let me help, please? I can make cakes like you." / "Yes," says Mummy, "I will let you help me. You are a good girl." / "We will make some cakes for Peter and Daddy," says Jane.' Later, they are in the tree-house: `"Let us have tea here," says Jane. "That will be fun," she says. / "Yes," says Peter, "you make the tea. I will draw. I will draw some flowers."/ "Yes, I will be like Mummy and get the tea," says Jane. "I like to get the tea." ' Peter, of course, is initiated into roles by his father. In the garden, `Peter helps his Daddy to make a big fire. /"I like this work," says Peter./ "It is like play," says Jane.' Her remark is quite unconscious and although she tells Peter to put things on the fire because `Daddy wants a big fire' her role, obeying her father, is to keep the dog away. On the next page, she's told by Peter to keep the dog away as it wants the little boat he's sailing in the rubber paddling-pool. In Happy Holiday, a later book in the scheme, we learn that `Mother ... is not going to be with the children on their holiday. She has to be at home to look after Daddy.'

Breakthrough to Literacy (1970) is a more recent scheme and is about the best available at the moment. However, there's still a booklet called Doctors and Nurses where, true to convention, the boys dress up as doctors and the girls as nurses. The force of this kind of indoctrination is illustrated in The Psychology of Sex Differences (see p. 34) where there's a reference to a four-year-old girl who insisted that girls could only be nurses and boys doctors, in spite of the fact that her own mother was a doctor. Again, Breakthrough to Literacy has a booklet, About the House, which contains a counting rhyme. It begins with :

This same scheme contains a picture book, my mum, which presents stereotyped sex roles, especially the outdated housewife role, to children just beginning to read. The mother is shown successively : sewing; giving milk to the cat; putting lipstick on (a picture repeated on the front cover - see illustration);

taking the small boy to school; opening the door to him when he returns; having tea with him; watching television with the boy and the baby (but knitting at the same time); serving the father's tea; feeding the baby; ironing while listening to the boy read; helping him undress; supervising him while he cleans his teeth; kissing him goodnight; washing up (while father, in the only other picture in which he appears, reclines in an armchair reading the newspaper - see illustration) and, lastly, checking to see that the boy's asleep. The father isn't shown doing any household tasks and doesn't even appear to have any contact with his children. The producers of the scheme, the Schools Council, obviously don't realise the irony of their comment on the inside back cover of the book: `The illustrations in my mum represent life from the five-year-old's point of view, from which each member of the family is seen to have appropriate attention paid to him.' [my emphasis]

After the early stages in reading, many children, if given suitable help and material, will go on to read a great variety of things. This is especially true of girls, who show quicker progress in reading, in general. I think at least one of the reasons for this may be that their active lives, as we've seen, are much more restricted than boys'. Therefore, they tend to live substitute lives, and, increasingly, dream lives through fiction. Doll stories illustrate the point well, I think. On the one hand, girls have now been sufficiently initiated into the mother/housewife stereotype to take it up for themselves (even if only for want of something better) and, on the other, they can live make-believe lives through the dolls.

The many doll stories by Rumer Godden illustrate these points very well.: In Miss Happiness and Miss Flower a quick association is made between the two Japanese dolls of the title and Nona, the little girl with an Indian-tea background, whose mother died when she was a baby and who wasn't asked whether she wanted to come to England. Neither were the two dolls. They all feel lonely, timid and out-of-place. The book is concerned with the making of a Japanese dolls' house but it is Tom, eleven years old, who makes it,

his fourteen-year-old sister Anne and Nona, who's eight, merely acting as his servants. In fact, he's a proper little male chauvinist piglet: `He did not beg Anne, he ordered her. "I wish I were a boy," thought Nona.' A large part of the book consists of conversations between the two dolls. Dolls can converse with each other but can only direct silent wishes at humans. This is the convention Godden keeps to in her doll stories.

We've already seen boy and girl roles contrasted. Impunity Jane, again a doll's name, gives us further insights. Here, the doll is passed down through the generations in a family. From the start, she'd longed to have adventures in the world and envies the brothers of two of her girl owners as they can do this. Then, Gideon comes. He's the main `real life' boy character in the story and he wants to do all sorts of exciting things, such as putting the dolls' house up a tree. His cousin, Ellen, won't let him. Impunity Jane, though, who's been excited by the life of adventure proposed by him, but turned down by the humdrum Ellen, transmits thoughts to him (as he's the right kind of person) and he steals her. They have adventures together till Gideon is caught, with Impunity Jane on him, by a gang.

[Two drawings 'My mum is pretty' (looking in a hand-mirror, and 'I her her in the kitchen' as she does the washing-up.- caption `my mum' in two of her roles delightful

They call him a 'sissy'. He has the inspiration of passing Impunity Jane off as a 'model', joins the gang and the doll has more adventures with them. Then, Impunity Jane has to wish Gideon to take her back, as she was stolen. However, Ellen gives the doll to Gideon and Impunity Jane rides on his bike, as his `mascot', goes about in his pocket and has adventures as before. Here, the girl reader, identifying with the doll, can lead a fantasy life, although at one remove and even then only through the boy. His is furtive interest in the doll should also be noted.

The use of dolls for the reinforcement of `feminine' sex-roles is seen quite clearly in another story by the same writer, The Dolls' House :

In fiction for the very early years, we saw the cage being built. More and more now, women will take the task upon themselves, in fiction as in life. Most grow up believing that the role society has set out for them is a 'natural' one, innate and inborn. This process, by which the oppressed takes on - internalises - the attitudes of the oppressor, is a well-known one and we'll see it working strongly when we come to consider class and race. In the rest of this chapter, we'll be looking more closely at the construction of the cage.

First, we'll examine some early but still very widely-read books which could be described as girls' fiction of the more domestic kind (Louisa M.Alcott, Susan Coolidge) before going on to later work dealing with fantasy and actual roles (Noel Streatfeild, Grace Allen Hogarth). Enid Blyton, who wrote stories of every type, will have a chapter in Volume 2 to herself.

Nearly all the stories have, as a prominent character, a girl who is, in the course of the story, made to conform. This is the tomboy, the one who nearly gets away, but who gives the reader a good run for her money. If we are to believe the writers, these girls are eventually reconciled to their roles and even brought to prefer and love them. It doesn't seem to happen much in real life. In this section, I want to emphasise four themes (or main supports, perhaps, keeping the cage in mind) which constantly appear - in different ways, maybe, and in varying degrees of importance, but always used to bring about the required end. They are : physical movement and deportment; speech; role-enforcement and dress and, lastly, there's the reward for conformity, the gilt on the cage.

Alcott's Little Women first came out in 1868-69 in the United States and has been going strong ever since, together with the continuations of the story. Here's the significantlynamed Jo, an early tomboy, at the beginning of the book. Meg, her sister, is remarking that the four of them are :

'Jo does use such slang words observed Amy, with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug. Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle.

When Meg, her elder sister, continues to lecture her, Jo retorts, `It's bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boys' games and work and manners ! I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy'. The girls are bored but accept their lot, except for Jo, but she knows what's happening. `I'm not nice' she says. She's the only one, however, to relieve the general boredom (their main topic of conversation seems to be dress) and even makes advances to the boy next door. Amidst endless preaching, lecturing and moralising amongst them, we have Mrs March, their mother, laying down the law :

This is the gilt on the cage. Mrs March also emphasises the suppression of the emotions in girls, especially anger. This is, in fact, Jo's especial fault. Jo also exclaims, `Christopher Columbus!' an expression frowned upon and, furthermore, runs - but sister Meg is on hand to reprove her: `You have been running, Jo; how could you? When will you stop such romping ways?' Jo is the one we identify with and this is exactly the point, because they wear her down in time so that, eventually, her father, returned home after his army service and a period in hospital, can say,

Jo is still not quite cured, though, so a greater punishment awaits her. Her Aunt Carrol had originally intended to take Jo on a trip to Europe but finally decided that Jo's `blunt manners and too independent spirit' were too much and so chose the `more docile' Amy. You can be sure Jo learns her lesson in the end. Furthermore, the lesson was translated into fourteen languages.

Towards the beginning of Little Men, Alcott's continuation of the history of the family, we have a neat distinction made between male and female sex roles in descriptions of Demi and Daisy, twins, and children of Meg and her husband, John. First, Demi :

She waits on her brother, as well. Their small cousin, the golden-haired little Bess, radiates sweetness and light, especially when visiting the school now run by the grown-up Jo and her German professor husband. Even Nan, the tomboy of the school, tries to behave herself when Bess is there, though we are told, `To be sure, she felt a little like a wild bird in a pretty cage at first, and occasionally had to slip out to stretch her wings in a long flight, or to sing at the top of her voice, where neither would disturb the plump turtle-dove Daisy, nor the dainty golden canary Bess.' It's very interesting indeed to note that the imagery is that of a birdcage.

In Jo's Boys, the last of the family sagas, a girl at the college now run by the family says, speaking of George Eliot, `It must be so splendid to know that one has such power, and to hear people own that one possesses a "masculine intellect"

These books are competently written and skillfully constructed. The values and attitudes so untiringly put forward in them, however, leave a lot to be desired. I can never see much in the argument which `makes allowance' for the period when a book was written. If books are read now - and these are certainly very widely read indeed - then surely we have to apply contemporary standards in evaluating them. It would, in any case, be difficult to make any allowances for the kind of indoctrination examined here. There are too many sly digs at feminism, scattered throughout the books, for us to excuse Alcott of unawareness. She knew what she was doing.

At what seems to me to be the climax of Jo's Boys, and maybe that of the whole series even, a toast is called for at the end of the family theatricals at Plumfield, the College endowed by Laurie. The toast is, `Mother, God bless her P and I feel this is what Alcott has been moving us towards, all the time - a sanctification of motherhood and, of course, more gilt on the cage.

Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did came out - again a United States publication - a few years after Little Women. If Jo had a painful lesson to learn, Katy's is still harder. Her family has no mother but mothers can serve a purpose, dead or alive. Usually, the more crude this type of literature is the higher the rate of parent mortality, especially amongst mothers. This is to increase the girls' burdens and increase their possibilities of suffering. At the beginning, we read that `Katy tore her dress every day, hated sewing and didn't care a button about being called "good".' Further, `Katy's hair was for ever untidy; her gowns were always catching on nails and "tearing themselves" ', she had `careless habits' and was often `planning how, by and by, she would be beautiful and beloved, and amiable as an angel'. Then comes the ominous sentence, `A great deal was to happen to Katy before that time came.' Katy is tolerated in her tomboyishness, even encouraged, by her father, but we know it can't go on. The lessons of tidiness and obedience, within a framework of religion, are constantly rammed home, without bringing about the desired effect. Then comes Katy's accident. The children's Aunt Izzy had forbidden them to go on the swing, without saying why. Katy disobediently went on it, fell because it wasn't safe, injured her spine and so was doomed to spending several years in bed, an invalid. The most Coolidge does, so intent is she on preaching obedience, is to say that it was `unwise' of Aunt Izzy not to give a reason for her order. One thing had led to another on the day of the accident but it had begun with Katy breaking a cherished vase her cousin Helen had given her. No one sympathised with her in this and, while there's no loving-kindness for her, we're obviously meant to associate ourselves with her father's viewpoint when he tells her, after the accident, that it was all `Just for the want of the small "horse-shoe nail" of obedience'. Why isn't he angry over what happened? Why isn't Izzy conscience-stricken? To ask a different kind of question, why has this compassionless book been read so widely for over a hundred years? The answer, I think, is in its sentimentality and suffering (or the enjoyment of suffering, which is masochism), with a top-dressing of religion.

Cousin Helen is wheeled on - literally, as she's another cripple. She tells Katy, `God is going to let you go to His school'. The lessons are `the lesson of Patience', `the lesson of Cheerfulness', `the lesson of Making the Best of Things', `the lesson of Hopefulness' and `the lesson of Neatness'. About sixty pages later, Katy has learnt her lessons. Cousin Helen is there again and `she saw the change in Katy's ... face : the gentle expression of her eyes, the womanly look, the pleasant voice, the politeness, the tact in advising the others, without seeming to advise.' Katy, although her wings have been clipped, has become `The Heart of the House'. This is the gilt. A curious note is that it seems to have taken all this to make her `womanly'.

At the appropriately-named `The Nunnery', in What Katy Did at School, the girls eat in silence, for no particular reason, as far as can be seen. However, there's now more specific indoctrination about relations between the sexes. Katy, it appears, doesn't want any kind of fun with boys. It's `unladylike' (a favourite word of hers) to carry on with young men she doesn't know. She gets up a society to stop flirting -`The Society for the Suppression of Unladylike Conduct'. The theme of the misunderstood, unjustly treated girl appears when Katy suffers because of a note she's supposed to have written to a boy. (This is a terrible crime, of course.) Finally, a mistress nails thick cotton over all the study windows so that the girls can't see the boys at the neighbouring school.

In What Katy Did Next, Katy goes on the grand European tour. It is, for much of the time, a glorified travelogue, but we see Katy get her real reward in the prospect of marriage at the end.

Before leaving these two authors, who, between them, establish most of the main themes of girls' fiction, it's both interesting and bewildering to consider a statement by Gillian Avery in her recently published book, Childhood's Pattern. Of Alcott and Coolidge, and after especially mentioning What Katy Did, this writer comments, `Both these American authors succeeded in showing simple, kindly goodness without directly

advocating any particular code of conduct.' I suppose it would be possible to argue about the word `directly' but I just can't imagine how anything could be more direct without leaving the fictional form altogether - in which case, of course, the teaching would be far less powerful. This is, however, typical of most writing on children's fiction.

Heidi, by Johanna Spyri, must have a mention here because it's still a 'classic', after nearly a century, very widely read and still going strong. More than that, Heidi's a kind of female Little Lord Fauntleroy, if that isn't too much to imagine, and she brings the little-ray-of-sunshine idea of girls right to the fore. The story says that it's much better to be up on the mountain in God's good sun and fresh air, with toasted cheese and goat's milk for food, and hay to sleep on, than to live with good, rich people and their (largely nasty) servants in Frankfurt. God looks after everything and Heidi is His skipping for joy, or brave little suffering angel, who melts the crusty heart of an old recluse. Everything is homely and cosy and everything turns out marvellously in the end, even though God does leave the rich people, through their charity, to supply certain unexplained wants amidst the idyllic mountains. It makes you weep.

Heidi is a link between books which are realistic, however much reality is manipulated and stories which are clearly aimed at fantasy. Since girls in general are so severely conditioned and repressed and so turned in upon themselves, they fall victims to fantasies in consequence. In Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes, the aptly-named Fossils (all orphans) are brought up in a family of the three-servant-poor category (the book was first published in i936) and go to the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training. It's run by `Madame' Fidolia who's presented as gracious, talented and immediately inspiring respect. Obviously, however, she's a person sickeningly obsessed with her own self-importance. Petrova Fossil is the tomboy. She's interested in cars and other `masculine' pursuits. In the book, there's a never-ending concentration on dress

and a preoccupation, as in other Streatfeild books, with knickers. It's very important that all clothes should be respectable and just right for the occasion. (Party Frock, a lesserknown book, is expressly concerned, throughout, with the manufacturing of an occasion on which a young girl, during the second world war, can wear a frock and shoes sent to her from the USA.) Ballet Shoes also gives a good example of a feature very important in girls' fiction - we get the development of an in-group with its own special language and practices. Here, of course, the in-group is centred on ballet and there's an argument, lasting about two pages, between the girls about whether a certain dance sequence was a 'pas de chat' or a 'capriole'. Really, it's the ending that gives the game away. It's the dreams and fantasies this writer is after, as we leave the Fossils headed for a glamorous future. Pauline's a success in films and accepts a Hollywood contract, Posy's to study ballet under a great `maitre' and Petrova's going in for flying and cars. At least, she's allowed to do this, which is a good thing but her object is to get the Fossil name into the history books and make it famous and in this she's clearly aligned with the others.

The Circus is Coming, by the same writer, begins with the sentence `Peter and Santa were orphans.' In the last sentence of the first chapter, we are told that their guardian dies. They decide to run away to their Uncle Gus who works in a circus. Although Peter does all the planning and makes all the decisions, the efficient Uncle Gus, once they find him, does make it plain that some of the things they did were not very sensible. However, he puts it down to the fact that they were brought up by their Aunt Rebecca. Gus is by no means a stereotype. He can sew, darn, cook and look after himself in all respects. No doubt this, and many other positive features in Streatfeild's books, are due to the fact that she went to great trouble to get her details right. Her stories are always well-researched. (Blyton, for instance, wouldn't have known what this meant.) It's a pity that Streatfeild settled for the dreams. In this book, the children join the circus at the end.

Curtain Up is almost a sequel to Ballet Shoes but with the addition of a boy. Also, the family is in the two-servant-poor category (the book was first published in 1944.). Their poverty is constantly stressed. In this story, the emphasis is on theatre so the reader is involved in the stage-training side of the `Madame's' Academy. Of course, the glamour of the theatre is stressed and there's a seemingly endless preoccupation with clothes again. Petrova is now a ferry pilot and in correspondence with Mark, the boy in this book, who isn't happy at the Academy. Before going off to a boarding school as a step towards his ambition of joining the navy, he gives a revealing view :`I think the Academy is all right for girls, it isn't all right for boys at all.'

In Thursday's Child, Streatfeild settles very firmly on some `feminine' themes but doesn't seem to be so much at home until she turns to the glamour of the entertainment world towards the end. This change in focus, I think, is why the structure of the story - normally a strong point with this writer - has so many flaws. At several points, it's simply difficult to believe what you're being told. The themes are like the ones in girls' comics, only not so crude. Margaret Thursday is a foundling fostered in a family of the one-servant-poor category. (The book was first published in 1970.) In the first paragraph, the reader learns that Margaret sometimes forgets that skipping is `a crime'. When, one year, her mysterious annuity fails to arrive, she has to be sent off to an orphanage where her first meal consists of stale bread, margarine, one ounce of cheese and a bottle of water. The Matron has the very best of food, we learn later, and rewards tell-tales with extra food. She sells the clothes the children bring with them and dresses her charges in dingy rags. This doesn't go down well with Margaret, who is no ordinary orphan, as she keeps on reminding us: `I was found on a Thursday on the steps of the church with three of everything of the very best quality.' `Everything', you must understand, means clothes. In this sub-Dickensian setting the agony is piled on. The Matron says of Margaret, `She has a proud air,

she must be humbled' and later, when Margaret has committed some small misdemeanour, Matron adds, `It will take time before she is moulded to our shape' whereupon Margaret gets `ten strokes' on each hand. Margaret cannot bear the thought of the fine clothes she's brought with her being sold, so when she decides to run away, she has to find them and take them with her, including the `drawers edged with lace'. Along with her two friends, Peter and Horatio, she escapes aboard a barge and is told that the bargewoman wears three pairs of flannel knickers in the winter. The three children suffer terribly pulling the canal barge in the rain. Meanwhile, the local aristocrats are sorting out the wicked Matron. Eventually, the three children join a travelling theatrical troupe and the two boys are given parts in a dramatised version of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Lavinia, who was put into service with the aristocrats while her two younger brothers, Margaret's friends, were sent to the orphanage, is discovered to be the grand-daughter of Lord Delaware. At the end, Margaret decides she'll become a famous actress. Again, the book has good points, not least the character of Margaret herself but it's a pity that this resourceful and determined girl can only escape from convention into dream.

Before leaving this section, I want to consider another example of recent fiction, mainly because it presents such an all-round stereotype of what is often thought of as `female' psychology, but also because the central figure is an older girl and the story has obvious links with women's popular fiction. As a May Morning by Grace Allen Hogarth is about Jenny, a seventeen-year-old, and her problems. The first chapter shows her as a sex object of the type found in Woman's Own fiction. This is a variety for juniors, though. Concern soon centres largely on jenny's hair and her `Beauty Expert' (not fairy) godmother insists on a hair-do at an exclusive salon. Then, she has to have a dress and shoes as well. She loves Ben, the boy from the United States her brother John had brought home for the half-term holiday the previous summer. Ben had said to jenny, `Gee, you're cute, kid' and this was apparently enough.

Jenny is extremely self-conscious about her appearance, her thoughts are constantly turned inward - in fact she's a good example of the so-called `female' characteristic of narcissism. Jenny moons over her looks, lack of money for fashions, lack of letters from Ben (now back in the USA), lack of real success at the local school and lack of understanding at home. Her state of mind isn't very surprising, perhaps, when we learn her father's attitude. John, one year older, is at a public school :`it would kill their father if his only son didn't go to Oxford. It didn't matter so much about jenny because she was a girl and, anyway, she had a good chance for a scholarship if only ... she could get down to work, and give up dreaming and wasting time.' She's falling behind in her school work largely because she goes to help in a family where the mother has just died. John is the thoughtless, extrovert, banging, lustily-singing public school boy, quite sickeningly pig-headed and insensitive. Jenny knuckles under miserably and apologises when she gets fed up with this lout and says something. Oh, how she suffers - and she has a good right because she's thoughtful and sensitive, if in a restricted sense, and is therefore put upon by people such as her brother and father. She's forever crying. She helps to look after three cases of measles and, of course, runs the risk of getting it herself but, she says, `For the first time in my life, I've been needed.' Eventually, it dawns on jenny that Ben was never very serious about her anyway and, at about the time when this happens, she's very much struck by seeing a local lad, Arthur (hitherto scorned), in his full-dress officer's uniform. Clothes again! - but he had, in addition, `grown up' we're told. At the end, jenny is reconciled to her lot and the homely Arthur.

Now that the main supports of the cage are visible, we can turn to look at some of the detailed structuring in two genres of girls' fiction, school stories and horse stories

The girls' public (which means `private') school story has a long history, longer than that of boys. It looks as though it will outlive the boys' story, too. It's strongly represented in girls' comics where stories centring on `exclusive' and `posh' schools seem to be going as well as ever. There's no parallel in boys' comics. All schools are agents of conformity and while this is strong in boys' school stories, as well, there are important differences between the two developments. Girls' school stories are more inward-looking, even, than those for boys. The menace from outside isn't an important element in the girls' stories although a gypsy does look in on Dorothy Kilner's boarding school, mentioned below, and causes quite a flutter. Girls aren't vicious and aggressive, but rather petty and spiteful, and, as anyone might expect, there's little emphasis on leadership in girls' stories, nor on any attitude that has much to do with the world outside.

In The Governess: or, the Little Female Academy, which was published at least as early as 1749, the author, Sarah Fielding, sets out her objectives in the dedication. She says that `The Design of the following Sheets is to endeavour to cultivate an early Inclination to Benevolence, and a Love of Virtue, in the Minds of young Women.' Moreover, she says that `their True Interest is concerned ... in keeping down all rough and boisterous Passions . . . to arrive at true Happiness, in any of the Stations of Life allotted to the Female Character'. This seems familiar enough.

So does Martha, the girl `Sensible of the terrible consequences of sin' in Dorothy Kilner's Anecdotes of a BoardingSchool ( t 790?). Martha is the misunderstood, wrongly accused but very good girl who suffers amidst the petty meannesses and deceits, writes home and only gets a sermon in reply. The subtitle of the book, an Antidote to the Vices of those Useful Seminaries, is interesting because it points up a feature still widespread in the education system : the school, by its repression, creates problems which it then further suppresses, the whole resulting in a cycle of violence.

The remarkable Mary Wollstonecraft, although her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women was first published as long ago as 1792, speaks with the voice of a modem feminist and, as far as schools are concerned, sees through it all. She speaks of the:

In spite of the early start, girls' school stories didn't really get established until the present century. As always, it's necessary to remember the importance of the Education Act of 1870 and, in the case of girls, the great vogue the more domestic type of story, dealt with in the last section, had in the later part of the nineteenth century.

Angela Brazil is mainly responsible for the establishment of the girls' school story of modern times. She wrote about sixty novels, nearly all of them school stories and many set in the `Manor House School'. Her success may seem surprising as the stories tend to be boring and trivial, like her life, to judge from her autobiography. However, we have to remember that the stories are aimed at girls of about ten to thirteen or so and that, by this age, most girls are reconciled to their lot.

The Madcap of the School was first published in 1917. The edition I read was published in 1972. Raymonde ('Ray' to her friends) is the `madcap' but she and her group, `the Mystic Seven' are usually caught out at their tricks. She does, however, get the better of the French mistress. Miss Gibbs, another teacher, is noted as a progressive but is unpopular, not least because she watches girls outside the school premises, from her room, with a telescope.

In An Exciting Term (the contents seldom justify the promise held out by the titles) there's much more on physical restraint both in and out of school. Here, it's a public day school where there are classes in `Drill and Deportment' :

As part of the school uniform is a bright scarlet hat, the girls are very conspicuous. You may be relieved to know that they can `let off steam' in the playground. You may be surprised to know, also, that this book, which I borrowed from the local public library, had 31 dates stamped in it between the first, 27 April 1973 and mine, 28 January 1976.

Within the general framework, other school story writers stress different aspects. Of the more than ninety titles by Elsie J.Oxenham, most are school stories of which Tomboys at the Abbey is a good example. Here, amidst the general larks and the cricket (there are several cricket-playing schools) it's interesting to note fairly strong emotional attachments between girls expressed in an open way, though this strand had always been present to some extent, for instance in Brazil's unluckily-named Bosom Friends. In Tomboys at the Abbey, it seems strange to note, alongside `Angel' and `Darling', the familiar `old chap' which, together with 'pax', `frightfully sorry' and `jolly decent', shows how so many of these books tend to ape the boys' `public' school stories, while at the same time pointing to the upper-middle-class background.

Moving even higher up the social scale, we find Antonia Forest with her stories about the Marlow girls. Here, the school is clearly seen as part of a wider `county' background. There's a general sense of wealth, with servants, possessions in land, houses with (incredibly) facilities such as a chapel, a gun-room and a hawk-house (complete with merlin). Of course, there's the usual tendency amongst such fictional characters, to present themselves as hard up and the author, insultingly, presents them as such to the reader. One 'stupendicrashingly hard up' family buy a couple of horses - but Mum had to sell her tiara ! The Marlows' school is grimly authoritarian and there's even a `limited' list of books - another bar in the cage - some titles being restricted to Upper Fifths and Sixths. In spite of all this, Forest has received some acclaim and is one of the main school story writers at the moment.

Mabel Esther Allan's Dundonay School in A School in Danger is the least restrictive I've come across, though the class background, as always, is there. Although another very prolific writer, a good many of Allan's eighty or so books are not school stories.

In a type of fiction where enormous output seems to be the rule rather than the exception, Elinor Brent-Dyer is still something of a phenomenon with about a hundred and six titles, virtually all of them school stories, and most of them about the Chalet School which she located in several different places but most characteristically in the Austrian Tyrol. It's a kind of posh finishing-school which has even been patronised by titled people.

In Tom Tackles the Chalet School, we meet the main character towards the beginning of the book: `Tom [a girl, of course] was standing in a manly way, feet slightly apart, hands shoved deep into her coat pockets, head cocked a little to one side.' She had `short, brown hair, cropped and parted at the side, boy-fashion'. Her parents are hoping the school will make her more `feminine' as her 'Pater' has brought her up as a boy. On the other hand, she's promised him to try to be a 'gentleman' but she decides, later on, that perhaps `he hasn't known

many girls who were gentlemen'. As we saw with language in Oxenham's work, things get rather confused, at times, over sex roles. However, what's so interesting about Brent-Dyer's Chalet School is that the girls are so restricted in every way that, in order to create any activity at all, the author is forced to manufacture unlikely accidents and events. About all the girls can do is fall down - in fact, there are four falling or slipping incidents in Tom Tackles the Chalet School which lead to developments in the story. Tom is said to be `jolly decent' once she begins to conform and is pronounced a 'gentleman' at the end.

In Eustacia goes to the Chalet School it's quite clear from the start that Eustacia is to be trained to conform. Furthermore, Brent-Dyer tells us, this is more likely to be brought about in a French or Austrian school, where the girls are brought up `to far less freedom than [in] those of our own country'. `Obedience was the rule at the Chalet School, and they all knew it.' Luckily, there was `something in the Head's voice that was irresistible', the head girl had `something in [her] calm gaze' and the Matron had `something in [her] cold grey eyes'. These somethings all quell the rebellious Eustacia, otherwise there's no knowing what might have happened. However, Eustacia eventually runs away and is thought to be `slightly insane'. She has a terrifying time out in the wilds, is nearly swept away by a river in flood and is finally found unconscious. The treatment isn't over, however. She's painfully ill for a number of weeks, then she must continue to rest in bed for several months and then, I'm afraid, it's the dreaded wheelchair again. That'll teach her. We leave her renamed `Stacie' and vowing to do her best `to be a real Chalet School girl'.

Having seen the physical limitations imposed on girls at the Chalet School, we now need to look at other aspects of language. First of all, Eustacia is told, `We can't have any girl in the Chalet School talking like a - a Bolshevist.' On the other hand, the school has French, German and English days, on which these languages are spoken. Apart from that, however, French and German expressions are scattered about fairly indiscriminately taking the idea of language as the sign of a clique, an in-group, to its extreme.

'Bahnhof' is normally used for railway station, while they have meals called Mittagessen, Abendessen and so on. This, perhaps, is not so extraordinary, given that it's the language of the country but why someone should be said to have a flat `on the fourth etage' or why the Head should say that `Righto !' is not the way for `une jeune demoiselle' to speak is a little harder to understand. This last, in fact, brings us to an extraordinary institution at the Chalet School, the 'slang-box'. The girls are fined for using slang and some `colloquialisms' and have to put money in the box. `Damn', of course, brings a fine while `foul' is a`forbidden expression'. On the other hand, `horrid' is not and, apparently, it's quite all right for them to `work like niggers'. Other expressions frowned upon are `wizard', `smashing', `crumbs' and even `the limit' while `What on?' we're informed, is not `good grammar'. Brent-Dyer herself, however, frequently gets away with weird, basically Latinate expressions such as `ordain' for `say', `to dispose of' meaning `to eat' and a 'modicum' of water, while bears drinking tinned milk become `ursine gentlemen' drinking `viscous fluid'. These last examples are all from Althea Joins the Chalet School. In the same book, the names Len, Ronny, Ted, Jack and Sammy, all applied to girls, carry their own message. (More on language.Ed)

A wider perspective is seen in the work of A.Stephen Tring (a pseudonym for Laurence Walter Meynell), the only male writer I've come across in this genre. In Penny says Goodbye, we have a much broader picture than that provided by `The Meadows School for Daughters of Gentlefolk' (but referred to later as `The Meadows School for Young Ladies') where Penny is `generally considered to be the most human of all the prefects'. Against a very `county' background, reeking of snobbery (and sometimes of fake anti-snobbery) we have a menace introduced - a hermit lives in a wood near the school. Meynell, however, turns the whole thing into a lesson about class assimilation, and here, where, so obviously, the story is used as a vehicle for lessons about class, it's time to move on to the next section where this process comes very much to the fore.

Horse fiction, at least to the extent it exists in this country, seems to be characteristically British, even English. The fact hat the horses are usually used as stalking-horses in class war are will be unavoidable, but here we'll be concerned mainly with the fact that this genre of fiction is read almost exclusively by girls. I can't claim to understand, fully, the love affair between young girls and horses. As regards the usual explanation, t seems to me that there are easier and cheaper ways of obtaining sexual gratification. No, without denying a sexual element, [ think we have to consider a much broader context. In a talk f had recently with a young girl of thirteen or so, who seemed ;o be largely fixated on this type of fiction - but who attended a riding school, too, as the girls in question often do - she stressed aspects such as caring for the horses (or ponies), getting to know them, getting their trust, even 'mucking-out. It was all enjoyable. She also spoke about their size as being important. Without giving undue emphasis to this particular response, I think there are some important clues here and I'm not forgetting the use made of horses elsewhere in fiction, for example, in D.H.Lawrence. A horse will clearly bring out the caring roles which, as we've seen, are fostered in girls. A girl will feel important to be in control of a large animal, she'll feel needed and will, not least, have the opportunity for exciting activity in the open air - all aspects of her life not catered for enough elsewhere. Also, and I think this, as well, must be part of the psychological background, isn't it reasonable to suppose that the girl, unconsciously, sees in the horse a fellow-sufferer, one broken in and trained to fulfil a particular role?

Certainly, in Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, there's a great deal about the sufferings of horses. In fact, the author's main motive was to draw attention to this. Black Beauty has had a good gallop by now. He's lasted nearly a hundred years and he shows no signs of tiring. In 1975, there were eighteen editions in print. However, apart from being a talking horse, Black Beauty is also a stalking-horse and is strongly linked to the modern tradition by a background of class. At the beginning,

Black Beauty's mother tells him he's not to play with nasty, rough horses :`The colts who live here are very good colts, but they are carthorse colts, and, of course, they have not learned good manners. You have been well bred and well born'. He comes, in fact, from a racing family and a better class of horse. Just like members of the lower classes, horses get `places' and `characters' when changing jobs and an ever-present danger is to lose status in the horse-world.

In Collins's paperback series, Pony Parade, there are 23 titles, all fiction except one or two. Sixteen of these titles come from a single family : Christine, Diana and Josephine PulleinThompson, who clearly lead the field at the moment. (Their mother also wrote pony tales.) Granada Publishing are at present offering (to wholesalers) a 'Pony Pack' of 24 best-selling titles from the Panther list, as well as nine separate titles by Christine Pullein-Thompson. An interesting note in the edition I read of Christine Pullein-Thompson's Ride by Night says that the book, along with two other Pullein-Thompson titles, Janet Must Ride and Show Jumping Secret, was published at the request of the London and Home Counties Branch of the Library Association.

A Day to go Hunting by Christine Pullein-Thompson is fairly typical in that, playing on the psychological background already described, it presents a fantasy world, largely to do with social hierarchy. I suspect that most of the girls who read this fiction don't lead the sort of life described in the stories. In this book, the reader is linked to the dream through Angela who's `mad about hunting'. (Her father's in advertising.) We read: `She was a girl guide, and preferred the poorer children of the village to the ones who rode at the local riding school, who were inclined to laugh at Moonlight and think her feeble; she spent most of her week-ends giving lessons on Moonlight to children who had no pony of their own.' What a good girl ! No snobbery about her. Of `the daughter of well-off parents', Tony, we are told, `Sometimes she even wished that her parents were poor, so that she could look after her ponies herself like other children.' The rich have their problems, too.

Mark, another principal character in the story, is a cobbler's son and lives in a council house. He has a 'roan Welsh pony'. You see, anybody can do it. As for the `poorer children' Angela was being kind to, it just goes to show, I suppose, that, however poor you are, there's always somebody `poorer'. The message is that we're all the same, really, and just part of a big family, except for a few eccentric people who are anti-blood-sports and odd ones like Captain Freemantle who boozes and doesn't do his job as `Amateur Second Whipper-in' properly. Lessons for the reader in correct jargon and etiquette continue, fostering the in-group mystique. Of course, this is basically in contradiction with the all-one-family, anybody-can-make-it idea - which gives the game away. Clearly, no matter how much you pretend, you can't have an in-group without an out-group, or insiders without outsiders. Here, even in these slight stories, we can see a basic contradiction of our society - not that this prevents the indoctrination going on. Useful bits of information are to be picked up here, such as, if your father's a farmer, you can wear a crash-cap. Angela was having trouble with a horse early in the book: `She had been told to ride him in a twisted snaffle and running martingale and, though she didn't set up to be an expert, she was certain an egg-butt snaffle and drop nose-band would have been a better choice.' Anyway, the story's about a hunt where they don't catch a fox because the fog comes down and it's all ever so `ghastly' and `beastly'.

In another of Christine Pullein-Thompson's horse tales, a family is desperately in need of £500 in order to buy a pack of hounds which, otherwise, are likely to be separated. It's quite impossible to imagine the problems some people have.

Janet Must Ride by Diana Pullein-Thompson gives us another example of a link with an ordinary girl. Janet, in love with horses and from the town, has taken a 'living in as family' job. She's exploited in typically insensitive fashion by the Claudes, a four-horse family, and has to struggle to get every Sunday afternoon off and one whole week-day a month. On the other hand, Miriam, one of the daughters, is to take a year's holiday before beginning to study hotel management.

However, after Miriam breaks her wrist, Janet gets a lucky chance to ride in the `One Day Event', and wins second place. At the end, she's going to move up in the horse world to be more of a trainer than a groom. Her `continental theories on equitation' haven't hindered her, as might have been feared at the outset. (There'll be more to say, later, about tests authors devise for their fictional characters to decide whether they should move up in a social hierarchy.) Apart from horse-jargon here, there's a lot of the 'dreadfully-awfully' and 'terribly-frightfully'.

In Show Jumping Secret by Josephine Pullein-Thompson the interest centres on a gradual build-up to a win in showjumping. It adds little to the general picture that has been built up by now. Budding experts may like to know that it's possible to have an Italian, a French or a South American seat. However, it's interesting to note that a lame boy is the main character this time. He qualifies to compete at Harringay at the end. The competitive element, while there, is nearly always submerged, so it's instructive to have a look at it, while taking in one or two points about style at the same time. We read, `perhaps, one day, I should start winning and if one could only win a prize at every other show one would more or less pay one's way; at least one would at the big shows and they were the expensive ones.' Later on, we have, `by the time one's had the fun one no longer cares whether one has a prize or not'. Apart from the gross over-use of the word `one' in these passages, simply as a question of style, I want to draw attention to the middle-class and academic use of the word - as a pronoun, instead of `I' - because such a use is a means whereby personal ideas and beliefs are passed off as being generally held. The author writes `one', meaning `I' but the reader is meant to understand `everyone' or, perhaps, `everyone whose opinion matters'. Lastly, the two passages quoted, taken together, illustrate another, and basically British contradiction : competing, but not caring about the outcome (or pretending not to)

Before leaving horse fiction, I want to make two points about Judith Campbell's work. Firstly, anybody interested in seeing an example of the genre, stripped down to the barest conventions, should read Four Ponies. For sheer wish-fulfillment, I've never come across anything quite like it. Secondly, her non-fiction books, The Queen Rides and Anne Portrait of a Princess fill in an important part of the picture and show which way the wind's blowing.

Alongside novels for girls, there exists a whole host of publications all basically peddling the same ideology : comics for girls; teenagers' picture stories and magazines; later, novelettes of the `true romance' or `confession' type - and on into adulthood with the women's magazines. All, of course, are backed by advertising and the mass media. Those studying literature will come across the ideal types of women (at least, from the point of view of most men) : Penelope, Griselda, and Kate from The Taming of the Shrew. We've seen a few small shrews tamed already. However, as is usually the case, the best insights are gained from works that are considered by academics to be less valuable as literature but which are more widely read. Bestsellers appealing particularly to women - such as George du Maurier's Trilby, The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy, and The Sheik by Edith Maude Hull - have much to tell us, especially the last-named which was made into an enormously popular romantic film with the idol, Rudolph Valentino, in the name part. This book - and its success - are most revealing.

At the beginning, we learn that the beautiful and virginal Diana Mayo, brought up `as if she was a boy', is going to make a trip into the desert unchaperoned. There are many hints and forebodings that she'll meet sexual danger there, but she, with her tigerish, unconquered spirit, laughs off such fears. In next to no time, she's being chased, on horseback, across the desert by an Arab who eventually snatches her from her saddle. She's angry `against the man . . . who had dared to lay his hands on her, and those hands the hands of a native. A shiver of revulsion ran through her.' He forces her to obey him and when she gets a good look at him she sets her eyes on `the handsomest and cruellest face she had ever seen'. This is the Sheik. He rapes her (between chapters two and three) and tells her `what I want I take'.

For her part, `she had touched the lowest depths of degradation', while he is `arrogant', `dominating', `authoritative' and `barbaric'. In a long-drawn-out passage, he breaks in a furious horse that no one could manage and reduces it to submission, while she looks on. This is obviously symbolic but, in case anybody might have missed the point, the reader is told, `as he broke them so would he break her'. `You must realise that my will is law' he tells her. Out of fear, she agrees to obey him and is now completely subjected to his will. By page 93 - he has been raping her consistently all this time - he's become `a baffling personality' and `an enigma' while she `had become a woman through bitter knowledge and humiliating experience'. She's had a tough time of it - just in order to become `a woman', apparently - but then she was very headstrong and rebellious. Her breaking-in was bound to be hard. Nevertheless, the whole process isn't over, as she soon runs away. He catches her and now she knows she loves him although he's `an Arab, and to him a woman was a slave'. As far as he's concerned, he loves a manfriend of his with `the love passing the love of women'. More desert adventures follow. She's kidnapped and Ahmed (first names now) recovers her, getting wounded in the process. We then discover he's the son of an English earl by a noble Spanish lady ! Well, on the one hand, she couldn't be expected to fall for an Arab. On the other, what a way for the English aristocracy to behave ! The race problem had to be solved somehow, though, even at the risk of having it both ways. Now, he just ignores her and this is her real degradation. (These are depths below the `lowest depths' which were reached much earlier in the book, if you remember.) `He had made her nothing, she was his toy, his plaything, waiting to be thrown aside.' Having brought her to this, he loves her, we find out not long afterwards, but his love dictates that he should send her back to England as it's not much of a life for a woman out there. (This bit is very English.) After she tries to shoot herself, however, he decides to keep her. The reader is left to presume that they both lived happily ever after. Perhaps, as sadist and masochist, they did.

I've thought it necessary to summarise this novel because, although taken to fantastic extremes, the basic structure is there of the woman and, to some extent, the man our society creates.

It's been necessary, from time to time, to have a close look at the language of the stories we've been examining. Now, I'd like to focus more strongly on language itself, but from the point of view of sexist implications and stereotyped sex roles.

Men hate women, and it's because of women's sexuality. You've only got to look at the language. We can range from the downright offensive : `bitch', `bag', `slut', `hussy' (from 'housewife'!), `jade', `whore', `cow', `slattern'; to the commonly used, not so offensive, `bird', `tart', 'bint', `chick'; to terms suggesting triviality, such as `filly', 'floosie', 'popsie', `poppet', `chit', 'giglet' and `flibbertigibbet'; to words usually preceded by the expressions `a piece (or a bit) of' such as `fluff', `crumpet', `stuff' and `skirt'. Of course, there are offensive words for men, but it would be hard to draw up a list as long, even, as this short and selected one and it wouldn't have the same meanings. The words noted above, being mostly slang, change frequently. A glance back, however, to words now little used, or obsolete, shows the same pattern: 'doxy', 'trull', `drab', `strumpet', `trollop', 'quean', `bawd' and `harlot' all have associations with prostitution, or, at least, a sexual freedom not generally thought of as being suitable for women. `Bawd' was applied originally to either a man or a woman and `harlot' only to a man but these terms were eventually shifted over onto women. Often these words will be accompanied by other words and phrases, such as `flighty', `loose', `of easy virtue', `light', `wanton' or `lewd' - or these will simply be applied to an ordinary word like `woman'. `Buxom', which originally meant anyone meek and docile is now applied only to women and in a sexual sense.

`Chairman', `alderman', `workman', `workmanlike', `craftsman', `craftsmanship', 'needlewoman' and `matron' carry their own messages about who does what, although present-day consciousness in these matters has at least ensured a place for `chairwoman' and `chairperson'. Other jobs are simply thought

of as being done either by men or by women so that it's sometimes necessary to use terms like `woman doctor' and `male nurse' in order to avoid confusion or misunderstanding.

`It's a man's world', some say. It's just as obviously a man's language, though women concern themselves with imagined `correctness' in speech as they've been conditioned to respect authority, usually in an unquestioning way. When a boy, I was only, as I remember, corrected by women in my speech, usually when I expressed myself in broad dialect. Women concern themselves, also, with the proprieties of language. Themselves denied the emotional outlets swearing can provide, women seek to restrain men and children in this respect and men often willingly co-operate ('ladies present!'). Therefore, we have a double standard in language, too, though it's beginning to break down a little now. There are sex differences, in a wider sense, in the use of words and constructions as well and, at the moment, it's only possible to say that a start has been made in studying this interesting question. To see how women are defined, not as themselves, as persons, but in relation to men, and how words and their usage contribute to this, it's only necessary to consider the following as the beginning of an imaginary article in a newspaper: `Pretty, blond Mr Vera Smith, husband of a surgeon, is to stand for the council at the next local elections.' Just as, in `a man's world', women have their allotted place, so, in language, women have their own roles. The Oxford English Dictionary, though, in saying, of `comfy', that it was `originally infantile or feminine' is maybe unconsciously indicating how women's and children's rights are bound up together. And let's not forget that boys suffer as well. It's worse being called a `sissy' than a `tomboy'.

Before leaving the question of sexism in language, I'd just like to mention that there are a lot of positive things that can be done. There are often perfectly acceptable and even simpler alternatives to words and phrases which seem to blot women out of active existence. Why use `forefathers' instead of `ancestors' or `forerunners', why `man-hours' instead of 'work-hours', why the `man in the street' instead of `the average person', why

`the family of man' instead of `the human family'? The subject's too big for me to do much more than touch upon it here. Things are happening, though. Recently, I was surprised to receive, and very impressed to read, a document called Guidelines for Equal Treatment of the Sexes in McGraw-Hill Book Company Publications. It was put out by the large United States firm to alert authors and staff members to sex discrimination in language. It's informed, aware and humane, as well as being full of examples of good and bad practice in this field - in short, it's excellent and can be taken as a model of modern thinking on the subject.

There'll be some who'll argue that we've been looking at a `natural' state of affairs in fiction - that the books are realistic in that they portray girls, and women, as they are. Several questions arise from this. Who (apart from Shakespeare) said that art should reflect life? Has literature no greater function than to reflect reality (whatever that is) or, can it do more than entertain, than pass the time? Personally, if I had such a poor opinion of literature, I wouldn't waste my time on it. No, I think that literature can help to make people more aware of the way society works. Of course, thinking of the girls' fiction we've been examining, the question arises : why, if it's `natural' for girls to be like that, is so much time and effort spent on forcing them? We've seen how most fiction, especially in the domestic and school categories, was concerned with getting girls to conform to roles which, in many cases, they strenuously resisted. What's natural doesn't have to be taught, surely.

What can't be denied is that, in girls' fiction, we've been presented with passivity, masochism and narcissism as `female' characteristics. Freud distinguished them as such but - and this is overwhelmingly the important point - he saw these characteristics as innate, and never examined his own society to see whether there might be an explanation there as to why such characteristics should be so common amongst women. Instead, and starting with an idea of the small family, broadly the same as today's, he saw his theories about women as pointing,

not towards cultural conditioning, but towards inescapable psychological, if not biological, facts. His followers seem to have had fewer doubts than even he had, and it's interesting that there was such a need felt to accept such a grotesque view of half of the human race - or, at least, that part of it which followed the social and economic structure Freud worked within. Briefly, this is the patriarchal structure in which the man is head of the family and property is passed down through the male line, the so-much-desired `son and heir'. Within this system, Freud wove his theory of little girls who would, `naturally' and inevitably develop, by about the age of five, a 'castration complex' and `penis envy'. As so many outstanding feminist writers of recent times have repeatedly pointed out, this makes sense if the penis is regarded as a symbol of male privilege, but the idea that a girl will `naturally' prefer her brother's genitals to her own is perhaps the most male chauvinist idea of all. It's not surprising that she'll envy the power and relative freedom of the male role but it can be seen that this is a socially-conditioned role and therefore, it can be changed.

Although the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Pay Act of late 1975 are not nearly strong enough, they do, at least, reflect changing opinions about relationships between the sexes. But if you look at most fiction for children, you wouldn't think anything at all had changed during the last sixty years or so. Even those who claim that this fiction reflects things as they are will be hard put to it to find, in fiction, many of the five million dependent children who have mothers working outside the home. Two out of five mothers, in fact, work outside the home. In one out of five households, a woman is the chief wage-earner. (Things being what they are, presumably these will nearly all be one-parent families.) Furthermore, of course many men wash up, shop, cook and do housework. , Most fiction written for today's children reflects a situation that has passed.

All this brings us to one of the fundamental questions about human behaviour which can be expressed as `nature' versus `nurture' - what is inborn or instinctive as against what is conditioned by society. Even then, it's worth bearing in mind that sex itself,

usually thought of as a powerful instinct, can, in response to social factors, be inhibited or can take many varied forms, heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality being the three main categories. Now, it's necessary to consider what biological evidence there is for a differentiation between sex roles. In their recently-published book, The Psychology o f Sex Differences, Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin, with admirable thoroughness, have taken into account over 1,400 research studies published since 1965 in their particular field. Most of the experimental evidence can be explained sociologically, as the authors, and no doubt in many cases, the researchers, realise. When it's all sifted, we're left with two findings that have biological links. One is, `There is evidence of a recessive sex-linked gene that contributes an element to high spatial ability.' This isn't saying much, but apparently, some evidence has shown that some human males have a better sense of space, direction and location. Even then, the other elements affecting this ability are not linked to sex. The statement that `Where women are subjugated, their visual-spatial skills are poor relative to those of men' is very revealing and it's followed by, `Where both sexes are allowed independence early in life, both sexes have good visual-spatial skills.' The `recessive sex-linked gene' is scarcely making its presence felt. More important, when we think of sex roles in literature, is the statement, `The evidence is strong that males are the more aggressive sex ... We have argued that the male is, for biological reasons, in a greater state of readiness to learn and display aggressive behaviour, basing the argument in part on studies of the relationship between sex hormones and aggression.' This is based on 94 experiments, 5 of which showed greater female aggression, 52 of which showed greater male aggression, and 37 of which showed no difference between the sexes. But practically all of this information comes from experiments with white, middle-class, United States citizens, the lower age limit of the subjects was two (and a terrible lot of things are learnt by that age), and, lastly, most of the research to do with hormones was carried out on non-human animals.

If we give the point to the 'nature'-lovers - it's human nature, they'll say - would we not have to counteract this drive in the interests of civilisation? I've noted that even the sex drive can be conditioned to take many forms. In fact, the consequence of accepting that men are, by nature, more aggressive must surely be that men should be kept from positions of power.

No, the only activities biologically restricted to one sex alone at the moment, like it or not, are giving birth and suckling. And nothing follows from this, not even that human females are likely to be more `maternal' than males.

So, there's no foundation, at present, for any of the fierce sex-role^,- indoctrination we've seen in children's fiction. Nor need it go on in life. There's no reason why girls shouldn't play football, climb trees and get dirty, no more than there's any reason why boys shouldn't play with dolls if they want to and take an active interest in cookery. Why shouldn't boys, or men, for that matter, cry? It's a valuable way of releasing psychological tension. And - it should go without saying - all questions of dress and hairstyle are simply conventions. Changes in this area will not come easily - in fact, society will have to be changed radically before roles are de-sex-typed - because that's the aim. The idea that it'll be fine once women can do `men's' jobs and boys can play `girls" games is beside the point. The jobs and games must lose their sex-labels.

Simone de Beauvoir's book, The Second Sex was first published in 1949 and therefore stands at the beginning of the modern stage of the feminist movement. Towards the beginning of this remarkable work, de Beauvoir quotes Aristotle: `The female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities' and St Thomas: `woman is a failed man'. (That certainly simplifies things - women are just sexual deviants.) Here, however, we have pronouncements from the twin pillars of our academic culture - the classical and the Christian. Nor were these writers isolated, but, because of their enormous influence, they were extremely important in establishing a long tradition which has still to be overturned.

In the last few years, good non-sexist books have been published. They still only form a very small proportion of the books available but it's possible to single out a few of the best ones just to give an idea of what can be done.

Starting with the lower age ranges, we have Lotta's Bike by Astrid Lindgren in which Lotta, a determined five-year-old decides, with Bamsie, her toy pig, to steal a bike when she doesn't get one as a birthday present. However, the bike is far too big for her and she careers downhill to land up in Mrs Berg's rosebush. When you know that it was Mrs Berg's bike and that, moreover, Mrs Berg had given Lotta a bracelet, you can judge the moral depths to which this little thief had sunk. However, her punishment had been enough, she repents her wicked ways and in the end gets a second-hand bike, to learn on, for her birthday.

The same author's Pippi Longstocking is very well known by now. Pippi is a delightful and amusing nine-year-old who lives a most unusual life and who continually turns things upside-down. She has an unanswerable logic and is so strong that she can lift her horse over the balcony when she wants to ride. She lives, independently, in her own house.

It's not only a question of having girls as main characters, though that's undoubtedly important. The Thomas series, by Gunilla Wolde, has simple story-lines and simple, and attractive illustrations. Thomas Bakes a Cake, for instance, gives us an example of sex-role reversal which is both heart-warming and enjoyable. And we shouldn't forget that anti-sex-role hero of an earlier generation, Ferdinand the Bull, who liked to lie in the meadow and smell the flowers and so was turned down for the bull-ring.

Still at the picture-book stage, there's The Man whose Mother was a Pirate by Margaret Mahy, with excellent illustrations by Brian Froud. The mother of the respectable little office clerk wants to go to sea again. She loads her silver pistol, polishes her cutlass and gets her son to set off, pushing her in a wheelbarrow, and headed for the coast. In spite of several warnings on the way (balanced by the mother's wonderful descriptions of the sea) they join a ship at last. On their journey, the son loses his primness, the buttons pop off his neat suit, and, at the end, we see him dancing on the beach, barefoot but happily enjoying his freedom.

For a rather older group of readers, say eight or nine years old, there are the Aurora books by Anne-Cath. Vestly, written with great sensitivity and a humane understanding. In Hello Aurora! and Aurora and the Little Blue Car, there's a major role reversal. Aurora's mother practises as a lawyer while her father prepares his doctorate in history at home and looks after Socrates, the baby.. It's true to say that he and his wise and competent little girl, Aurora, really look after one another and run the house. In the first book, there's a lot about the assumptions other people make and the opposition they set up against what they feel to be `wrong', but Aurora and her family take it all in their stride and their good sense encompasses everyone eventually.

For still older children, perhaps about nine to thirteen, there are two of the most outstanding works it has been my good fortune to read in the whole of this study. Although meant for the years when, in many ways, the sexes are furthest apart, I don't see why these books shouldn't be enjoyed by girls and boys too, or anyone else, for that matter.

One is The Whys and Wherefores of Littabelle Lee by Vera and Bill Cleaver. It's a story about a young woman coming to terms with life and its hardships in the mid-West backwoods of the United States. She sees that she's hampered in this simply by being female: `I wonder what fool thought of the idea of putting women in skirts' she says. Beginning as a kind of assistant to her Aunt Sorrow, the herb-doctor, she has to face up to her `whys and wherefores' when her aunt moves out to live with the hermit and she's left to fend for her grandparents. Her grandfather becomes ill and, ultimately, the family is starving and homeless. Littabelle takes a job as a very unqualified teacher and, incidentally, saves a boy's life, but decides that there's `no life in this kind of teaching'. Then, by means of a weird court case, she forces her aunts and uncle who live comfortably in the town, those 'shite-pokes' (she explains that no other term

could possibly describe them) to provide for their aged parents. At the end, the wry, stubborn Littabelle, full of resourcefulness and earthy humour, is left wanting to become a proper teacher. No-one could doubt that she'll make one, and an excellent one. There's a most moving passage-and one of central importance in the book - when she cannot shoot a deer for food and, although called `a sissy girl', she knows there's no going back on what has happened to her :

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George opens with the adolescent Eskimo girl watching a small pack of wolves, because her survival depends on finding out how to get food from them. Almost at the outset, the reader is presented with a new set of values. Looking at the wolves' rituals, Julie (or, to give her her Eskimo name, Miyax) finds out which is the leader :

The book is about a clash of cultures, in fact, about two different ways of life. In the end, Julie decides, sadly, that the day of the wolf and the day of the Eskimo are over.

The Mia books, by Gunnel Beckman, Mia and The Loneliness o f Mia are less outstanding as works of literature, I would say, but then they are on a smaller scale. For young people of about thirteen and over, they deal in an outspoken way with sexual questions teenagers have to come to terms with. However, this is all within a context of relationships. Mia, her parents and her grandmother - and even another generation has to be taken into account while Mia is possibly pregnant - all these are linked by questions of love and responsibility, one generation to another. In the first book, especially, powerful emotions are handled with understanding and realism as when, towards the turning point of the novel, Mia's father tells her that he and her mother are going to try living apart :

It seems to me that Beckman tries to deal with too many very serious problems at once and therefore the overall structure of her work suffers. Her clear-sightedness and honesty, however, compel attention. Here is a writer dealing with the world of today.

Problems of relationships which give an accurate reflection of the society we live in, are also found at picture-book level. Evaline Ness, in Sam, Bangs and Moonshine and Do You Have the Time, Lydia? has written unusual and imaginative stories and illustrated them beautifully. In each case, as main character, there's a very believable, motherless, young girl who grows in maturity as the stories go on. Motherlessness in these stories, it might be noted, is not a cue for suffering but a cause for growth. Rolf Knutsson, in Torkel, has presented the young son of separated parents who lives with his father. Torkel is pictured with a doll and a dolls' house and, at the end, a stray cat follows them and makes its home with the lonely boy. Finally, in the wonderful Grover, by Vera and Bill Cleaver again, a boy of eleven has the terrible task of adjusting to the suicide of his mother. Grover is helped by his friend, ten-year-old Ellen Grae, just as redoubtable as Littabelle Lee, just as much a person and yet quite different. Ellen Grae's parents themselves live apart. A problem such as Grover's might seem, to some people, almost too much to be dealt with in a book for children and, at the hands of writers of less compassion and skill, it could well be. Otherwise, why should any subject be unsuitable for children?

In this chapter, practically all the writers mentioned have been women. In the last section, with one exception, they've all come from the United States or Scandinavian countries.

2. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, New York, Macmillan 1962, p. 3. (The quotations I've used are from Part I. In Britain, Part 2 is published under the title, Good Wives.)

9. Vera and Bill Cleaver, The Whys and Wherefores of Littabelle Lee, London, Hamish Hamilton I974, p. I32.

10. Jean Craighead George, Julie of the Wolves, London, Hamish Hamilton 1973,p.19