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Abstract
This dissertation analyzed 34 recommended American adolescent romance novels written from 1942-1982 to determine how ideologies of adolescent femininity were constructed through the interplay of form and content. Using models from semiotics and reproduction theory, relationships between romance, femininity, power and control were analyzed.
Three codes acted as units of meaning: romance, beautification and sexuality. Romance produced definitions of femininity with beautification and sexuality articulated through romance. It became the transforming experience that brought heroines to womanhood, giving them strength and status while endowing their lives with meaning. Romance stimulated interests in beautification which sexually objectified the heroine while providing occasions for distinct forms of feminine work involving consumption. Beautification was linked to reproducing a division of labor in which heroines were situated as consumers of goods, homemakers and outside of the workforce. The code of sexuality was based in fidelity to a single boy with mature sexual relationships problematic in later novels.
Analysis of narrative structure disclosed a close relationship between ideologies of femininity produced through the codes and the construction of the feminine narrative subject. Narrative structure was organized through a system of oppositions in which the good/bad and weak/strong pairs generated the model of femininity extolled in the novels. This hinged on the "good girl" whose esteem was maintained by filial obedience and adherence to traditional romantic conduct. Conflicts occurred in the novels of 1960-1970 as heroines were caught between adherence to traditional sexual codes, boyfriends' pressures toward genital relationships and heroines' demands for increased autonomy.
Meaning and structure remained very constant although the aforementioned tensions were responses to historical and political currents within the society in which these novels were written and published.
The family and romance are major areas where much of the reproduction of gender occurs while being the locus of intense control over women. Ideologies of femininity in the novels had economic and ethnic underpinnings locatable within the life experience of the new middle class. While this study shows that curricular materials are important in actively shaping traditional social identities, they are also sites where tensions are played out.
