Grace and Dorothy: Collisions of Femininity and Physical Activity in Two Early Twentieth-Century Book Series for Girls

Abstract

Dorothy Dixon and Grace Harlowe, featured characters of two early twentieth-century book series for girls, were initially represented as skilled, confident young women negotiating femininity through traditionally masculine adventures. As each series developed, the nature of their active participation diminished. These adventure stories may be interpreted as symbols of feminine resistance to cultural assumptions of masculine superiority in skilled physical activity. I argue that these female characters support, through their continuous iterations of femininity, the ideological attribution of maleness to physical skill and adventure.