Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence by Julie Pfeiffer

Abstract

Reviewed by: Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence by Julie Pfeiffer Morgan Foster Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence. By Julie Pfeiffer. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2021. x + 198 pp. Paper $30, cloth $99. Literary scholars have long discussed the history of books, but few have delved into the research done by Julie Pfeiffer in Transforming Girls. Her focus on nineteenth-century German and American girls' literature immediately separates her work from other scholarship examining girls' books, making this essential to scholars and others interested in adolescent literature, literary studies, book history, children's literature, girls' books, and more. [End Page 456] Pfeiffer focuses her work on Backfischliteratur, the German word referring to literature of the Backfisch. Literally, a Backfisch is a fish too small to be sold at market but too large to use as bait, and they were thus thrown into a boat's "back." Over time this word began referring to "the liminal status of a girl in her teens" and was used to "highlight the category of female adolescence" (13). It is a word, Pfeiffer explains, that appeared frequently in German girls' books throughout the nineteenth century, and she uses it to examine the "paradox of the nineteenth-century girls' book," which both focused on adolescence as a time of freedom and exploration in a girl's life while preparing her for marriage and life in a "patriarchal framework to be happy" (4). From there, Pfeiffer investigates a number of nineteenth-century German and American girls' novels and how they approached adolescence by category: the moral tale, the family story, and the orphan novel. Propelling her inquiry is a comparison of adolescence in nineteenth- and twentieth-century girls' books. Much of the Backfisch literature Pfeiffer cites described adolescence as a time of creativity, growth, and exploration. Young women left their country homes to be mentored and looked after in the city by "Othermothers" or various women they mets along their journeys. Pfeiffer reminds readers that teenagers were often viewed as a "vessel for anxieties about wild teenagers . . . rather than as a metaphor for transformation and growth" (25). Backfisch books offered an alternate way of modeling adolescence, one that helped the girl reader to find her place in her community in a way where she is supported and nurtured. Intimate relationships between the Backfisch and other women were encouraged and are the focus of much of the literature examined by Pfeiffer. As she points out, the focus on same-sex relationships is curious, since much of the Backfisch's experiences were meant to make her a good wife and mother. Over time, however, especially into the twentieth century, the Backfisch was allowed less room for exploration and mistakes: her adolescence became less of a protected time and instead something to endure or suffer through. This shifting idea of adolescence had implications for girls in real life and in literature, a compelling point that Pfeiffer returns to throughout Transforming Girls. An extensive and perhaps overly long introduction to both the Backfisch and the book overall will help all readers understand the terms she uses. Pfeiffer defines not only concepts, such as the Backfisch, that may be new or less familiar to readers, but also how she uses concepts such as girls' books. Her writing is accessible for many readers, and chapters are organized into several sections. Images from original texts appear throughout; they don't add much but are enjoyable to look at, as many of the books are out of print. Brevity is one of [End Page 457] Pfeiffer's strengths; her economy of language is impressive—at under two hundred pages, she packs an incredible amount of information into each chapter. My only quibble is her conclusion, which is overly brief at five pages. In it, she points to new ways of understanding contemporary girls' books and devotes much of the space to analyzing three examples of the Backfisch in them, making the conclusion seem even more rushed given the new information that readers are getting. Nonetheless, Transforming Girls is a remarkable example of scholarship that points to new ways of understanding girls' books and adolescence in fiction, as well as...