Evoking Girlhood: Sources

Robyn Katie · Post by **Robyn Katie** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 7:40 am

CJ, I agree, that's partly why I put it in quotes.

But I was trying to convey the average day-to-day mood of someone who's neither enraged, terrified nor numb, just average emotionally: some tension, some enjoyment, irritation, calm, hopes, fears, light-hearted moments, worries, moments of discovery, a taste for fun ...

In other words, a middle-of-the-road personality muddling through, not unduly stressed, like most women (I sincerely hope). As contrasted with the extreme (or, perhaps more correctly, the personality in extremis that appears when problems synergize and force her into the analytic spotlight): the woman who is brutalized, savaged, a wreck, on the edge all the time, the tormented personality.

Carson McCullers was tormented in that way. She's at one end of a very wide scale. I didn't manage to convey that very well. The word "normal" is so loaded, I should remember not to use it.

Gee, I hope I've said this right. It's a hard thing to express.

Love, Robyn Katie

Robyn Katie · Post by **Robyn Katie** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 7:57 am

Amelie-Laveau, thank you for adding comics to the list. They've been a huge influence for me starting with Wonder Woman, Brenda Starr (showing my age here), Betty and Veronica (though I wished they'd throw away Archie and Jughead and focus solely on those sleek two), the women of intrigue in Terry and the Pirates, and heck, even Moonbeam McSwine in Li'l Abner and the impossibly vapid Supergirl -- I seldom even had a glance to spare for the male characters. I imagined myself a comix heroine ... with an impossibly drastic figure like that ...

Though I never owned any romance comics, whenever I found any I'd sneak a peek at them, just as I'd sooner or later get my paws on Mom's Good Housekeeping, Women's Home Companion, etc.

I've never lost that taste. I love girl comics to this day, including Peanut Butter and the amazing Small Wonders. And while I have reservations about Omaha the Cat Dancer (I don't entirely enjoy the strip), gotta wonder what it feels like to switch a long sinuous tail!

Love, Robyn Katie

Anita · Post by **Anita** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:08 pm

Robyn, you and Amelie unearthed an old memory--Apartment 3-G! Three career women living in a Mahattan apartment, with a kindly older professor next door as a sort of father figure. I followed this strip religiously, since it appeared when I was about 10.

I was fascinated by my older sister's life in college dorms at this same time--and I thought Columbus, Ohio, (where Ohio State is located) was Paris and London combined. There was something glamorous about watching older kids "dating," and I think I was identifying with the girl side of it at that time, strange as that sounds to me now. There was still more dressing up for girls in the early sixties.

Apartment 3-G--I can't imagine how the script kept current and "hip" through all that time, but when the original creator died in 1992, the script went on. I've not seen it for 40 years, I'm sure.

Erin L · Post by **Erin L** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 11:16 pm

Reminds me of a clip of dialogue from "The Golden Girls":

Dorothy: Apartment 3-G! Oh, I haven't read that in 20 years!

Blanche: Oh, well then let me catch you up. It is now later the same day...

Connie · Post by **Connie** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:48 am

Apartment 3-G, the only time I read it was when the girls dresses a guy up as a woman.

Connie

Robyn Katie · Post by **Robyn Katie** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 8:37 pm

I had heard of 3-G but never seen it. Checked out a few daily and Sunday strips on Google Image and ...

I'm a fan.

Whee, comix heaven. Thanks for the tip, everyone!

Love, Robyn Katie

April Rose · Post by **April Rose** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 11:15 pm

I started reading George Elliott just because she was a woman writing with a male name, but it turned out she had a lot to say. "Silas Marner" was my favorite. Jane Austin is another writer I like in a similar, but more bemused vein. For me It's a toss up between "Emma" and "Pride and Prejudice".

Whenever I am in a used bookstore I look for romance novels by Georgette Heyer. My favorite is "The Masqueraders" about a brother and sister forced by their fathers intrigue with the failed Bonny Prince Charley to dress as sister and brother in order to escape the wrath of a vengeful King. Of course the girl dressed as a boy becomes the love object. Girls, as usual, have all the luck.

By now you might have guessed, literarily at least, my effeminacy is sort of stuck in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I was born to be "handed up " into a carriage, in my long dress and elaborate bonnet.

In a more modern vein, I like Alice Adams "Superior Women" about Radcliffe girls in the sixties, and "Rich Rewards" about an interior decorator in San Francisco.

And if reality really has to intrude there is the non fiction "The Sewing Circles of Herat" by Christina Lamb, about women surviving intellectually in Afghanistan, and "The Hungry Ocean" by fishing boat captain Linda Greenlaw. Women really are the superior sex. I don't understand why they're not ruling the world.

Erin L · Post by **Erin L** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 10:44 am

April Rose wrote:By now you might have guessed, literarily at least, my effeminacy is sort of stuck in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I was born to be "handed up " into a carriage, in my long dress and elaborate bonnet.

Women really are the superior sex. I don't understand why they're not ruling the world.

I find the juxtaposition of these two statements fascinating, since women of the 18th and 19th centuries were very far from ruling the world, except possibly through what they communicated to their male (ruling) partners in the bedroom and elsewhere.

Hugs,

Erin

Carolynn · Post by **Carolynn** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:56 am

Erin wrote, "I find the juxtaposition of these two statements fascinating, since women of the 18th and 19th centuries were very far from ruling the world, except possibly through what they communicated to their male (ruling) partners in the bedroom and elsewhere."

Uhmm, what about Queen Victoria? At the ht. of the British Empire, she did indeed rule much of the world, and had the reputation that gave it;s name to Victorianism!

Erin L · Post by **Erin L** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:45 pm

True, Carolynn, but a rather flaring exception to a rather universal rule, don't you think?

April Rose · Post by **April Rose** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 6:33 am

Erin, you are very perceptive. Elliott, an accomplished scholar as well as a novelist, was obviously aware of the limits to female hegemony when she chose to publish under a male name, even though she was writing fiction about human social relations.

The pattern runs through my own life. I consider myself a strong feminist. I applaud the strides made by Justice Ginsburg, Secretary of State Clinton, Sally Ride, Danica Patrick and so many other modern women. Yet, I am most content when I am at home doing the housework or cooking in a dress and apron I've made myself.

Human nature is endlessly fascinating. But weren't those carriages just the most romantic things?

Robyn Katie · Post by **Robyn Katie** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 6:51 am

As a strong feminist too, yet very much a homebody, it seems to me we often fail to acknowledge how wide a range of desires women have (and also men), in other words, people are just plain totally diverse, and good for them.

There are guys who dote on cooking, cleaning, wearing an apron ... curling up with a magazine under a perm ... There are gals whose greatest desire is to be a CEO ... or win the Itidarod (sp?), or play second base in the major leagues, or explore by air like Amelia Earhart (and hopefully survive) ... etc.

In other words, in any list of "things I wanna be," no matter what the goal, you could substitute "girl" for "boy," "woman" for "man" or vice versa, and there'd be lots of us for whom that would be true.

Really women and men both vary across the entire scale in what they love to do. The point is to make sure every last one of them have the freedom to do whatever it is, no matter how cliche-breaking it is.

The mistake we make is to treat housework, for instance, as drudgery and second-rate, and not see the appeal in it for some of us (not me, actually, but that's what makes horse races). Life is open wide; we just have trouble believing that everything is extraordinary, just like the Zen masters tried to whack into our thick heads.

Oops, sorry, didn't mean to make a sermon of it. And now, sisters and brothers, if you will all open your books to page 232 ... that's 232 ...

Do you remember Grandma's Lye Soap ... etc.

Love, Robyn Katie

Absaroka · Post by **Absaroka** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:19 am

Forgot about the comics. I have a friend who used to write a comic strip. It was called Hothead Paisan. It was funny in a bloodthirsty way. Amelie you might like it. Anyone else here ever heard of it?

Absaroka

Robyn Katie · Post by **Robyn Katie** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:27 am

I know, I'm thread-creeping my own thread, but while we're on the subject ...

For all Apartment 3-G fans, and fans of comix portrayals of women in general, I have found a stunner of a history on the web, illustrated with lots of strips and especially Sundays, called

The Look of Love: The Rise and Fall of the Photo-Realistic Newspaper Strip. Here's the url for the first of many pages:

http://profmendez.tripod.com/html/photo2.htm

It deals almost exclusively with great women's comic strips, using lots of examples, so you can glut yourself on cool comix as you read. It has two whole pages on Apt. 3-G and tons more. Here's some of what it covers, with multiple pages for most of them (Memory Lane):

Alex Raymond's women, including those of Rip Kirby, Flash Gordon, etc.
The Heart of Juliet Jones (a favorite of mine)
On Stage
the women of Ben Casey
Apartment 3-G
the women of Ken Bald (Dr. Kildare, Sun Girl, and the excellent Judd Saxon)
Modesty Blaise (whew!)
60s girls in comix art and book covers (includes a Nancy Drew comic and diverges into advertising and pinup art)
the "most romantic," 13 Rue de l'Espoir
the women of Secret Agent X-9
and don't neglect the "Sources" page, which has several more fine strips

It's a feast of gorgeous and sensitive portrayals of women. And one of the best net sources for Apartment 3-G strips and Sundays since joshreads.com went down.

Love, Robyn Katie

Robyn Katie · Post by **Robyn Katie** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 6:05 am

Concerning George Eliot, her life is fascinating. Her biography (I think by Andre Maurois) is an extraordinary read -- a woman who decided to take the world as she imagined a man would, as freely as possible, not letting circumstances or expectations stand in her way.

In her novels though, it seems to me she suppressed her female experience to write from a male point of view. Sure, her "female perceptions" (for want of a better term) came through, but not very clearly.

That's a problem with 19th century women novelists: they tried to overleap the limitations of their tightly confined social role by imagining themselves male heroes, even exaggerating the male point of view. So we get Daniel Deronda instead of Danielle (imagine what that would have been like). Emily Bronte threw herself into Heathcliff, though fortunately she left a partial portrait of Cathy, too. The one novel that really tackles the life of an intelligent woman of the times is Jane Eyre, and that's flawed by Charlotte Bronte's lack of experience when she wrote it.

On the lighter side (and somewhat earlier) there's Fanny Burney's Evelina, saucy and delightful. I had barely heard of it, but found it at a book sale, and it's quite a bouncy read from one female viewpoint.

None of the above, of course, are "intimate and personal" in the modern sense. So in my quest for authentic female inner experience I'm still not finding a great deal.

I do agree that some of the best is found in books like Judy Blume's and Sharon Creech's -- sharp, funny, entertaining looks at adolescent girls in transit from childhood to womanhood.

Still looking for more suggestions, though!

Love, Robyn Katie