Guiding Modern Girls: Girlhood, Empire, and Internationalism in the 1920s and 30s by Kristine Alexander

Abstract

Reviewed by: Guiding Modern Girls: Girlhood, Empire, and Internationalism in the 1920s and 30s by Kristine Alexander Stephanie Spencer Alexander, Kristine – Guiding Modern Girls: Girlhood, Empire, and Internationalism in the 1920s and 30s. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017. Pp. 283. When the pupils of Eleanor Brent-Dyer's fictional Chalet School ask their headmistress permission to start a Girl Guide Company in Jo of the Chalet School (1926), she observes "the Guide movement gives you a big outlook, and strengthens one's idea of playing the game" (p. 261). Support for the movement in a series that focused on shared values between girls of different nationalities demonstrates both the universal appeal of the movement and its popularity. It was taken as axiomatic in the series that the addition of a Guide Company enriched a community and promoted values of international citizenship, thrift, and female domesticity. The rapid rise in the popularity of the Guide movement after its foundation in 1909 by Robert Baden-Powell by the 1920s had generated a membership of more than a million girls in more than 40 countries. The emphasis on international cooperation also reflects the peace aspirations of the League of Nations after the First World War. Although such aspirations were compromised after 1945, the Guide movement retained its popularity despite profound changes in constructions of girlhood. Kristine Alexander examines the movement at the height of its popularity and also goes some way to explaining the tenacity of its appeal in the post-war world. Alexander's meticulous research focuses on Canada, Britain, and India and analyzes the organization using a range of sources, including scrapbooks and diaries from those involved in the day-to-day activities. It offers an introduction to the movement and a detailed exploration of the emphasis on housekeeping, motherhood, and matrimony, alongside preparation for citizenship and international sisterhood. Alexander teases out the tensions inherent in the racial and classed hierarchies that can make the topic an awkward one for examining concepts of girlhood in the mid-twentieth century. It complements research by Tammy Proctor and Sian Edwards and reflects the increasing interest in the Guiding phenomenon in histories of youth culture. The book is sustained by a "multi-sited ethnography" that explores girls' agency and the way that they interacted with ideas of femininity that both transcended nation and were a product of racial and class hierarchies within their borders. Alexander offers an insight into the problems associated with researching organizations that have been the subject of criticism for promoting and prolonging imperial mentalities. She discusses the gatekeeping by the archivists of the organizations and the deliberate culling of material that might have compromised the carefully constructed representations of universal sisterhood. Five thematic chapters focus on familiar aspects of Guiding that are nuanced by regional differences. Unsurprisingly a chapter is devoted to the promotion of homekeeping, [End Page 663] mothercraft, and matrimony, detailing ways in which girls interacted with the gender conservatism associated with the movement. She argues that Guiding also created space for those who rejected traditional ideals. One of the strengths of the book is that the movement is not seen in isolation from contemporary events; membership in India was complicated by issues of child marriage with many girls leaving between the ages of 12 or 13. Alexander emphasizes how in Canada and Britain the emphasis on self-discipline and the drawing out "natural" mothering instincts counteracted concerns over the irresponsibility of the "modern" girl as she emerged in popular culture in the 1920s and 1930s. Women in Canada, Britain, and India were increasingly enfranchised over the period, and Alexander discusses the preparation for active citizenship that was inherent in Guiding. Citizenship is understood as a set of practices rather than the rights and responsibilities model identified by Alfred Marshall. She draws out the tensions between models of training that effectively promoted a "familial and tolerant British dominated global empire" (p. 85) and local assertions that Guiding was fundamentally non-political. Alongside the emphasis on intellectual education for citizenship, Guides were encouraged to be prepared to deal with a wide range of accidents to counteract assumptions of female weakness in the face of adversity. Alexander uses diary entries...