Girls Who Persist: Girls, Literature for Girls, and the Politics of Persistence

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Senate Rule XIX stipulates that “No senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator” (“Senate Fistfight”).

² The rule McConnell claimed Warren violated is Rule XIX. It is worth nothing that the rule was created in 1902, when, from the Senate floor, John McLaurin, the Junior Senator from South Carolina, called the state’s Senior Senator Ben Tillman a liar. Tillman punched McLaurin in retaliation. The chamber descended into chaos as the members tried to separate the two. Following this altercation, both men were censured, and the Senate created rule XIX, which states, “No senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator” (“Senate Fistfight”).

³ We refer to Alice of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Jo March of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Anne Shirley of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, and Cassie Logan of Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

⁴ In the dedication page to the 2017 picture book, Chelsea Clinton makes direct reference to “Nevertheless, she persisted” by stating that the text is “Inspired by Senator Elizabeth Warren and in celebration of all women who persist every day.”

⁵ In their Introduction to The Girls’ History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth-Century, Forman-Brunnell and Paris cite Lucy Larcom as an example of such a girl. As a child, Lucy lived in a small Massachusetts town, where she attended school and helped her mother care for the home and her younger siblings. When her father died, her mother was “unable adequately support her children at home,” and she moved the family to Lowell, Massachusetts. She opened a boarding house while “Lucy left school to become a factory worker at a textile mill,” while continuing to help her mother run the boarding house (1). We include this example to emphasize that girls have long been expected to support their families, both through domestic work in the home and through paid work outside of the home.

⁶ In these first three traits, “pious, submissive, and virtuous,” we refer to virtues extolled by the “Cult of True Womanhood,” a concept developed by historian Barbara Welter that specifically applies to women and girls in the nineteenth-century United States. However, along with others who study girls and girlhood, we contend that girls all over the globe are often expected to uphold these virtues in some form or another.

⁷ We refer to Pecola Breedlove of The Bluest Eye and Sula Peace of Sula, both adult novels that feature girl protagonists by Toni Morrison. We also refer to Starr Carter of The Hate U Give and Bri Jackson of On the Come Up, both by Angie Thomas; Jane McKeen of Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation duology; Liz Lighty of Leah Johnson’s You Should See Me in a Crown; Julia Reyes of Erika L. Sanchez’s I’m Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter; Talin Kamani of Marie Lu’s Skyhunter; Ash of Malinda Lo’s titular novel; Penelope and Hex of Francesca Lia Block’s Love in the Time of Global Warming; Rue and Katniss of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games Trilogy; and Bugz of Wab Kinew’s Walking in Two Worlds.

⁸ Rather than using her surname, we refer to Malala by her forename. Although we recognize that doing so is problematic, we use the same rationale that NPR managing editor Mark Memmott articulates: namely, that minors are usually referred to by their first name, and that since Malala was fifteen when she was shot in 2012, reporters following AP’s style at the time referred to her as “Malala.” She is no longer a minor, but Memmott observes that “One major reason not to change yet is that she’s known as ‘Malala’ around the world.”