Disciplines of Virtue: Girls' Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Vallone's approach is broad and eclectic, personal and idiosyncratic. The book is "framed" by chapters on institutions, starting with an exploration of eighteenth-century England's Magdalen Hospital for penitent prostitutes and the feminine ideal of charity, and ending with a discussion of the Florence Crittendon Homes for unwed mothers in late-nineteenth-century America, and the ways in which these were imbued by an ideal of "corrective domesticity." In between there are all kinds of riches: considerations of conduct manuals, novels and tracts, and a particularly interesting chapter on the social meanings of dowry, "the jewel of chastity," and the "bride-price" of girls in the marriage market. The style is richly allusive and sometimes playful, making insightful suggestions and connections which will certainly act as a stimulus to the thinking of other scholars. Her writing crafts links between what on the surface might appear a rather disparate collection of topics and the overall impression is of a well-integrated book.

The emphasis on the shaping and containment of femininity leads the author to metaphors of anatomy, jointing and dismembering. She lights on the culinary injunctions of Hannah Woolleys's The Gentlewoman's Companion (1675) in this context, from which a particularly memorable passage serves as an introduction to Chapter Two:

In cutting up all manner of small Birds, it is proper to say, Thigh them; as thigh that Woodcock, thigh that Pidgeon; but as to others say; Mince that Plover, Wing that Quail, and Wing that Partridg, Allay that Pheasant, Untach that Curlew, Unjoint that Bittern, Disfigure that Peacock, Display that Crane, Dismember that Hern, Unbrace that Mallard, Frust that chicken, Spoil that Hen, Sauce that Capon, Lift that Swan, Rear that Goose, Tire that Egg.

It might have been equally appropriate to envisage the shaping and containment in terms of corsetry: young women being trained into feminine shapes through bones, tight-lacing and stays. A propos of this, Disciplines of Virtue has an attractive dustjacket: an elegantly profiled portrait of a young girl set against a background of fleshy, corset-coloured pink.

The book makes a bold attempt to highlight the cultural foundations of girlhood in two countries over two centuries. Vallone sets herself tasks which differ from those marked out by more traditional social historians, who might perhaps be keen to establish representativeness, and to document and analyse variation and social change. But this book can be recommended to all those interested in gender, adolescence and social history: it can be read with both profit and pleasure.

Carol Dyhouse University of Sussex, England

COPYRIGHT 1996 Journal of Social History
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning