Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women/ by Carol Dyhouse

• author: Carol Dyhouse
• publisher: Zed Books
• published in: 2013
• language: English

Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women is the latest book by social historian Carol Dyhouse.
Starting with the spectre of white slavery that caused mass-media hysteria at the start of the twentieth century, through the ‘revolting daughters and rebel girls’ of the suffrage movement and the flappers, beat girls and dolly birds of the subsequent decades to more recent events, it charts the fascination and fear that has accompanied young women’s progress towards equality.
Dyhouse’s subject knowledge is obvious from the outset; she is the author of numerous other titles analysing history, education and gender in England from the nineteenth century to today.
But Girl Trouble never comes across as inaccessible or overly academic, and Dyhouse’s enthusiasm and extensive research are just as tangible as her expertise, making the book a vivid, engaging and insightful exploration of the cultural and historical shifts responsible for the changing places, positions and perspectives of young women and those around them in popular society.
From moral panic about girls’ virginity to educational reforms giving them unprecedented access to established institutions like Cambridge and Oxford, to the impact of music, cinema, the media, and much more, Girl Trouble gives a balanced, compelling and comprehensive overview of girls’ turbulent journey through the twentieth century.
In places the pacing is inconsistent, and (as other reviews have observed) in the chapters examining more recent decades, the tone feels more ambiguous and undecided, but overall Girl Trouble is an accessible, important and rewarding read – one I’m sure I’ll be returning to for reference, and which left me with a long reading list and pages upon pages of scribbled names and notes to research further.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. White slavery and the seduction of innocents
2. Unwomanly types: New Women, revolting daughters and rebel girls
3. Brazen flappers, bright young things and 'Miss Modern'
4. Good-time girls, baby dolls and teenage brides
5. Coming of age in the 1960s: beat girls and dolly birds
6. Taking liberties: panic over permissiveness and women's liberation
7. Body anxieties, depressives, ladettes and living dolls: what happened to girl power?
8. Looking back

About the Author:
Carol Dyhouse is a social historian and currently a research professor of history at the University of Sussex. Her acclaimed book Glamour: Women, History, Feminism was published by Zed Books in 2010. Longer-term, her research has focused on gender, education and the pattern of women's lives in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. Her books include Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England; Feminism and the Family in England, 1890-1939; No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870-1939; and Students: A Gendered History.