Reading

You go, girl

by Laura A. Siegel

Meg Murray was my hero. Thirteen years old, she wears glasses, explains trigonometry to boys, travels to far-off planets via tesseract, and rescues her father and brother from the forces of evil. I must have read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time -- in which Meg starred -- seven or eight times.

But I also read Little Women -- where the smart and interesting sister, Jo, is always getting in trouble, while the model sister, Beth, is unbearably virtuous and sickly and good until she finally, mercifully, dies. And I read Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, Little House on the Prairie -- all with heroines who are spunky and bright, but always struggling to behave and become proper girls. Ideal girls -- in these books that are still widely read today -- charm and enchant with their goodness and sacrifice. The best ones die on their 11th birthdays, smiling sweetly, surrounded by family and halos of light.

Young Deborah O'Keefe loved all those books. Long after she'd grown up and raised three sons, she read them all again. Although she still found herself crying at Beth's saintly death, O'Keefe reacted very differently to these books than she had as a girl. Now she reveals their not-so-hidden morals in Good Girl Messages: How Young Women Were Misled by Their Favorite Books, published this spring by Continuum Publishing. O'Keefe spoke recently with the Phoenix.

Q: What are the best-known books for girls that perpetuate these stereotypes?

A: The two most universally responded to are the Alcott books, especially Little Women, and Nancy Drew [books]. Nancy Drew is certainly at the far end of the scale of being lively and independent. But she's extremely modest and dependent on her father. She's out of school, but there's no indication she would do anything professional. She goes around having lunch with her chums, going shopping, so of course she has time to solve mysteries. She always disclaims her usefulness and says, Oh, that was just coincidence that I was able to find burglars.

Jo March [of Little Women] is the most tragic case. She's considered a feminist hero, but she does give up her writing to get married and help her elderly husband run the boys' school. She is responsible for her sister Beth's death, because she let her go into a house where typhoid was raging even though Beth hadn't had it and she had. Ever after that, as Beth takes years to die, she feels terribly guilty. It does seem to say that a girl with a passionate nature and a strong will will do terrible things and must be controlled.

Q: Do girls still read books like these?

A: The books that have appeared since 1950 have changed enormously. They show girls who do not have this kind of ambivalence and passivity. But girls are still reading the old books. There are some that never went out of print. More obscure ones are coming back into print. I wouldn't tell parents not to let their girls read these books, but it's good to read carefully and ask questions. It's good to know what's really in them.

Q: How do these stereotypes persist in today's media?

A: They're still there. People are more aware of these issues, and so more money is being made if you're not too gross with your stereotypes these days. So you do get Pocohontas and Mulan. Books are probably better [when it comes to] stereotypes now than television and movies.

Q: Is Meg of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time -- who saves her brother, her father, and the universe -- the perfect heroine?

A: Yes. When she's out on the evil planet, in order finally to rescue her brother she has to change enough to let her love for her brother give her strength, and not entirely let her anger and her tough fierce side take over. The old pattern that I am distressed at shows the lively and argumentative girl always changing her personality and learning to fit in and not rock the boat. This is a different kind of change. She's not giving up her basic self, she's just seeing the other side that she has.