A world apart: female adolescence in the French novel from 1870 to 1930

This is the first book-length study of female adolescence in the French novel of this period. It analyzes representations of the "world apart" of female adolescence in selected novels from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the nineteenth century, several factors contributed to the shaping of a new social category for young women, which then gained increasing attention from writers. Art and life echoed one another, as novels about female adolescents created a social stir, and incited further discussion about the proper role for young women in French society.

In this book, the author considers key novels of female adolescence from the period as a means of understanding the concerns and desires they embody. Examining these novels thematically and chronologically, Dr. Gale traces shifting social values and sexual roles and examines the ways in which various artistic, intellectual, or literary influences of each period shape its portraits of female adolescence. Novelists create their young female characters as French society undergoes parallel transformation. In this sense, female adolescents represent, for the novelists, the possible futures of France.

Many of the novels analyzed in this study enjoyed mitigated success in France when they were first published, and are all but forgotten today. Societal conditions gave female writers secondary status and repressed the expression of subversive ideas regarding young women. These novels mark the birth of French interest in the documentation and shaping of young female experience through literature. Literary portrayals of the unique space of female adolescence reveal hopes and fears concerning the future, gender relations, social institutions, and a country's place in the world.

This work will be particularly useful to scholars and students working on youth, coming-of-age novels, gender studies, cultural history, and/or French studies, but will also interest a general audience. It contributes to recent interest in adolescence by providing a pertinent cultural, historical, and literary perspective. The book covers relatively unexplored territory in French studies, but also creates links to related fields such as cultural studies, the history of women, and gender studies. A World Apart illuminates both the grounding of female adolescence in a specific historic and cultural setting and the timelessness of adolescence as a literary and social theme.