Educating to Israeli Feminism? A Feminist Reading of Girls’ Illustrations in Israeli Children’s Literature 1948–2019

Abstract

This study examines illustrations of girls in Israeli children’s literature of the years 1948–2019. 54 illustrated books for children in which the image of a girl is at the center were analyzed. The illustrations were examined according to two key periods: 1940s–1976, and 1977–2019. The research findings did not confirm the conventional understanding, which maintains that the literature of the 1940s and 1950s promoted chauvinistic representations while the literature of the late 1970s began to disseminate feminist messages. In each of the two periods examined, ambivalent messages were found connected to the image of the girl. Some of the illustrations fixate on a stereotypical and limited representation of the girl-image, while others promote a panoramic perception of it, presenting girls with a variety of appearances, a broad emotional range, and a dominant place within their environment. The analysis relates to the influence of women illustrators on the characterisation of girls: some illustrate in “two voices,” combining stereotypical illustrations with subversive ones, while others shatter the hegemonic myth of the pretty girl who is tidy and naive, and present girls who break the rules and are often “bad.” The first generation of women illustrators paved the way for the second and the present generation, some of whom continue to speak in “two voices,” while others adopt a feminist ideology.