Cross dressing and gender repudiation - the stories I loved as a kid

Speedblog, by Katherine Burgdorf.

Girls are silly, weak and annoying. Not even subconsciously this has always been my standard worldview. Or am I wrong about ‘always been’? Until about three months ago I just thought I was just born angry, but suddenly it suddenly occurred to me that all the ‘series’ books I’d loved as a kid were all dominated by girls who didn’t want to be girls or, at the very least, girls who gave two fingers up to frills and knitting. Was this the reason I’ve turned out the way I have? Is it why I get annoyed when people announce their pregnancies and engagements, or why women tottering around on too-high heel irritates me so much?

I specialised in post-war British and American fiction...from the 40s up to the 70s. The most important book series in my life was The Famous Five (first published in 1942). I read so many Enid Blyton books I have forgotten most of them but the character George (Georgina as her parents named her) in this series is the ultimate tomboy hero. I didn’t particularly care for Timmy, her dog (I thought he was badly behaved and responsible for most of the group’s life threatening situations) but George and her swimming, rowing, camping and rescue skills, was an idol. She refused to be called by her girl name, and delighted in dressing, talking and behaving like a boy to the extent people thought she was.

The other huge influence on my life was Trixie Belden, a dungaree-wearing girl detective. Trixie was smarter, braver and tougher than any of her brothers or ‘Bob-Whites of the Glen’ club friends. She was selected to be a positive influence on girly girl neighbour Honey, and even with her short sandy curls, freckles and mannish ways she attracted Jim Frayne’s devotion. She also solved all crimes committed in the greater Westchester area from antique theft to fraud and family imposters. In a strange community of prissy millionaire ladies, Trixie was a lion.

In the same vein my other heroines were go getters like Jill Crewe, who rode horses in the fictitious Chatton area, had the respect of military men like Captain Cholly-Sawcutt and set up her own pony club, Nancy Drew (more crime busting) and Ginny, who lived in wild Scotland with her mystical Arab mare Shantih...and hated her frilly sister Petra.

These were the grrrllls of my childhood. If I had to write the sequels to their lives I suspect they all moved to Manhattan and ate their twin-set wearing counterparts for second breakfast (they were all good eaters). I don’t know if they still write characters like this – I’m sure they do – and I’m not saying these women were perfect but when I think about the risk to our lives from hideous boredom, the confines of having kids and all the dreary suburban lives of others, I have no fear for these friends.

Shock confession rocks NTSP: 'Dim' bloke was my literary hero

I have a confession, and it’s not going to be pretty. In fact, good feminists and literary types might want to look away now.

Obelix, of Asterix and Obelix fame, was my childhood literary hero. Yes, you know the one: the stonemason with a taste for xenophobic violence and who, looking back, was perennially dim. His BMI was probably at the ‘morbidly obese’ end of the scale and he had a girl’s haircut. And he wore his trousers too high. And he was French.

Hmmm. I’m not sure I can actually fill the remaining 114 words of this speed blog after that clanger.

But there you have it: I’m a feminist and my childhood literary icon was a man, and not a very inspiring one at that.

I could put it down to my childhood reading list - for reasons I cannot recollect – being short on the classics. No Anne of Green Gables for me. Nor The Railway Children. Or Little Women. Of course, Pippy Longstocking (whose eponymous heroine had a similar haircut to Obelix) was very, very, very cool indeed. She was confident, independent and, best of all, irreverent. But the fact is, for some reason, she didn’t have as much impact on me as that wild boar-scarfing, Roman legionnaire-thumping Gaul. But then I was also quite keen on Pigsy from Monkey, described on Wiki as “a pig monster”, so perhaps I always set the bar low.

Wendy Saunt is a interior designer, writer and art consultant. She lives in London. You can follow her on Twitter @Wendy__Saunt

What might psychology teach us about ourselves and the books we read as children?

Dr Pauline Rennie-Peyton writes in response to our SpeedBlog series on childhood reading....

'There are lots of psychology professionals who support the theory that the stories we read in childhood and the characters we identify with help to form our life pattern in later life.  I invite your contributors to look at their own life pattern and see if they can see links with who they were as children.

'One woman identified with Heidi, the story of a little girl who befriends a little boy with a physical disability that affected his walking.  She was later shocked to find that she was the carer of a husband who was wheelchair bound and resenting it.  

'Another woman had been hooked on adventure stories and wanted to be married to a hero, she did find her outdoor hero in the form of a wildlife photographer and complained that she was stuck at home being the domestic and raising children alone while he went off exploring and having fun.

'What is also difficult to come to terms with is that real grown up life is rarely as exciting as our childhood fantasies.  The male heroes in picture books don't have smelly feet and watch football and the heroines don't suffer from PMT and complain when they don't get enough attention.'

Dr Pauline Rennie-Peyton

Dr Pauline Rennie-Peyton is a Chartered Psychologist specialising in relationships www.renniepeyton.com

*** We would be fascinated to read people's stories or thoughts on these kinds of links, and interested to know what your children are reading now.' ***

Anne and Elizabeth: My headstrong heroes

By Gabrielle Jackson

There were two adventurous young girls I was obsessed with as a young girl myself and I read about them with rapacious enthusiasm.

They were Elizabeth Allen from Enid Blyton’s The Naughtiest Girl in the School series and Anne (with a e) Shirley from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables epic. They were both headstrong but smart, troublesome but kind. I idolised and identified with them both.

Every birthday or Christmas brought the next book in the series and every time I finished one was a time of intense mourning . When Elizabeth finally graduated from the school in which she was the naughtiest, it was time for Anne to come into my life. I was older when I read about Anne and perhaps that’s why – or where – the line blurred between me reading about Anne and thinking I was Anne. Back when being called Gaye was still acceptable, I even insisted on being Gaye with an e.

I gave that up at about the time I began looking for my own Gilbert Blythe. Perhaps it’s time to re-read the Anne series and draw a line  - finally - under me as Anne since I am neither a teacher, nor married (to a doctor), but still as inspired now by her imagination and wit as I was then. 

This post was published as part of Not the Style Pages' SpeedBlog series

Speed blog #4: You are what you read

Speed blog #4: You are what you read.
At a car boot sale on the weekend I found a crate full of books I read as a child...books I'm sure are no longer published and, quite possibly, no longer read. Nevertheless they were books I loved. A few days later it hit me how similar the books I loved as a child were to each other, and how they had quite possibly turned me into the person I am today, good and bad. Is this the same for you?

Does what we read as children have much influence on the sort of people we become? Are our personalities and life decisions shaped by the heros and heroines of childhood fiction? What did you love to read a child and who, in particular, were your female fiction heros?