Children's Literature

Drawing on her own reading history, her devotion to nineteenth-century girls' books, overseas research opportunities, and her affinity for German texts and German culture, Julie Pfeiffer offers an analysis of the "Backfisch" tradition of girls' books that will have broad appeal. While Backfisch books offer conventional endings and patriarchal, heterosexual constraints, they nonetheless delineate space within female adolescence where heroines may explore beyond their familial boundaries, benefit from the protection and wisdom of female mentors, and learn habits, skills, and conventions that will enable them to succeed in their adult lives. These books center and respect the adolescent girl, emphasizing the value of her coming-of-age process. Neither family stories nor orphan stories nor bildungsromane, Backfisch books "reveal another strand in the development of the girls' book, one in which girls are loved, protected, and expected to function independently of parents and siblings" (12). Pfeiffer focuses on eight novels published between 1853 and 1885, four German and four American, with Louisa May Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl (1869), Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did (1872), and Johanna Spyri's Heidi (1880/1881) perhaps the most well-known by twenty-first-century readers. In them, she finds "a context from which we can recover understudied early novels for girls, novels that portray adolescence not as a space marked by hormonal distress and social alienation, but as a period that is solemn and significant" (43).

In her first chapter, "Defining the Backfisch," Pfeiffer delineates the genre's protagonist. Drawing from G. Stanley Hall's reference to the Backfisch in his essay on "The Budding Girl" (1909) as someone who is "no longer a little girl, but by no means yet a young woman, … something quite unique and apart" (42), Pfeiffer finds it helpful to draw from German language and German conceits because English "lacked a popular and consistent term for female adolescence until the beginning of the twentieth century. German texts name both the adolescent girl [the Backfisch]… and her short but crucial period of development [the Backfischzeit], … calling our attention to a shared German-American generic structure in girls' fiction of the 1850s, '60s, '70s, and '80s" (43). The texts used to exemplify Pfeiffer's argument in [End Page 199] this chapter include two German novels, Clementine Helm's Gretchen's Joys and Sorrows (1877 translation of an 1863 text) and Eugenie Marlitt's Das Heideprinzesschen (1871), translated in 1872 as The Little Moorland Princess, along with two American novels, Elizabeth Prentiss's The Flower of the Family (1853) and Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl (1869). Pfeiffer sketches the way that the heroines in these texts are given opportunities to focus on development toward "a mature identity" (36). Pfeiffer must provide enough summary of these novels that are to varying degrees unfamiliar to twenty-first-century readers to promote her argument. In some cases, more context would be welcome, and there could be more cohesiveness between chapters. And readers who do know the texts might want to quibble with Pfeiffer's readings. Might Alcott's Grandmother Shaw, for example, play more of a role as mentor than Pfeiffer acknowledges? Such responses indicate that Pfeiffer's argument is engaging and accessible, and that readers have the tools to be able to find their footing within the discussion.

Chapter 2, "The Romance of Othermothering," "examines mothering as a communal enterprise, drawing on the Black feminist concept of 'othermothering' to explore how the Backfisch encounters support outside of the home" (36). These novels end in heterosexual marriage and motherhood, but prior to their conclusions, "the romantic focus is on relationships between women" and men "are peripheral or absent" (65, 66). Generally, mothers are also absent, placing the Backfisch under the care of nonbiological female mentors (66), a trait that Pfeiffer traces back to Sarah Fielding's The Governess (1749). The Backfisch's "emotional connections, her gift giving, and her sense of finding a place in the world," then, "are tied to relationships with other girls and women" (67). In this, Pfeiffer is consistent with other social historians who have acknowledged the influence that an adult mentor other than a parent might have on the ability of an adolescent (male or female) to transition successfully into adulthood. Pfeiffer emphasizes that the mentors in these works typically are "single, adult women who are financially, socially, and intellectually independent" (68); interestingly, in the American novels Pfeiffer addresses, the adult mentors tend to be spinsters, whereas the German mentors tend to be widows (71). Drawing from the work of scholars including Patricia Hill Collins, who coined the term "othermothering" in connection with practices in many Black communities (68), Pfeiffer addresses texts about White, middle-class girls and women such as Faith Gartney's Girlhood (1863), Gretchen's Joys and Sorrows, The Flower of the Family, and An Obstinate Maid [End Page 200] (1898). These American and German works of the 1850s to the 1880s (expressly not identified as "novels" by their authors, perhaps due to cultural assumptions about the weight or tone of the novel on both sides of the Atlantic [71]) include explicit addresses to readers that promise proper guidance and support, including peer-mentoring. As Pfeiffer argues, although "the final plot resolution comes with an engagement or marriage, emotional closure comes when readers see the heroine has learned to mother others, that she is herself a successful othermother" (80).

Chapter 3, "Converting Girls into Women," traces the way that the Backfisch tradition draws from the sentimental novel, with the proviso that for Backfisch heroines, "conversion is rooted in domestic labor rather than prayer" (95). While some critics of the Backfisch stories see them as reinforcing stereotypes, Pfeiffer suggests that "these books also expose the work of doing gender and provide strategies for 'undoing gender'" (99). The texts Pfeiffer concentrates on here include Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World (1850) as a representative sentimental novel (95), along with Gretchen's Joys and Sorrows and Faith Gartney's Girlhood. Pfeiffer reminds readers that "[t]he focus [in the Backfisch novels] is on becoming a woman rather than on becoming a Christian" (96). Comparing Ellen Montgomery's journey with those of Gretchen and Faith, which Pfeiffer deems more playful (102), she nonetheless highlights important similarities in the way that all three "are organized around a plot structure that moves from loss to learning to transformation to reward" (102). "Backfisch heroines," as Pfeiffer observes, "do not need to construct a moral code for themselves; they simply need to figure out which authority figures are to be trusted and then take on the moral framework provided by those more expert adults" (103). The sentimental heroine may spend a great deal of time and energy practicing self-negation in the service of Christian piety; however, the Backfisch generally has an intact spirituality already, and her challenges lie in learning how to run a household and meet social expectations. Additionally, Backfisch novels "portray femininity itself as a conversion experience that follows a similar pattern to religious conversion and that holds similar possibilities for failure" (114). There is a heightened realism in the depiction of everyday life and work in these novels (115). Significantly, the adolescent learns to work in proximity to adults, rather than in isolation from them.

Chapter 4, "The Backfisch and Fantasies of Growth," "explores resonances between the domestic model of the Backfisch's journey [End Page 201] and the larger project of nation-building and teaching whiteness" (38). Intriguingly, Pfeiffer suggests that "novels about adolescent girls became best sellers in the second half of the nineteenth century in Germany and the United States rather than in other Western countries because both countries were engaged in a process of unification rather than expansion" (118). Her focus texts for this chapter are What Katy Did, The Little Moorland Princess (1872), and two political speeches: Otto von Bismarck's "Blut und Eisen" ("Blood and Iron") speech from 1862 and Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address. Drawing from the work of Jennifer Drake Askey, Anne Scott MacLeod, Joe Sutliff Sanders, and others, Pfeiffer considers the essential role of the Backfisch within the larger concept of nation-building and citizenship: "the stability of the nation depends on the work women do in the home and in training each other" (122). Further, "narratives of adolescent development provide another point of entry into nineteenth-century anxieties about national growth" (123), and readers of Backfisch novels "might have seen the pain of war, like the pain of adolescence, as necessary to change and maturity" (127). As in other chapters, Pfeiffer wants to find the most constructive reading of her genre, arguing that while the Backfisch might be seen as reinforcing borders, "the two heroines I discuss here demonstrate that girls in these novels also serve as border crossers. That they can be acknowledged as successful women despite these crossings indicates that the girls' novel questioned as well as reinforced fictions of nationalism" (133). Her examples include Katy's predilection for befriending people across racial, ethnic, and class differences, as well as Lenore's journey to acceptance of her Jewish heritage. "The Backfisch novel," Pfeiffer writes, "thus exposes both the illusion of national coherence and the ways self and other are entangled" (138).

Chapter 5, "The Homesick Heroine," addresses the messiness of female adolescence, focusing on tropes of homesickness and nostalgia before considering how Heidi serves as transition from the Backfisch tradition to the twentieth-century girls' book. In Heidi, "[t]he playful, experimental Backfisch period is replaced by an environment of neglect in which the girl must cultivate relationships in order to survive" (142). Considering the etymology and nature of homesickness and nostalgia, Pfeiffer posits that the Backfisch novel positions readers "to see homesickness as a childish emotion to be overcome, not as a dangerous symptom of the adult nostalgia for childhood" (150). Though many critics have addressed Heidi's place in the canon, "the novel's debt to the already existing genre of girls fiction has not been described" [End Page 202] (156). After Heidi, according to Pfeiffer, "the children's book takes on the sentimental model of the girl child in danger and makes it her work to fix her world" (156).

The conclusion, "Loving Girls, Loving Growth," considers the implications inherent in considering the Backfisch tradition in proximity to readings of contemporary girls' fiction (38). Touching on Virginia Hamilton's Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1982), Guadalupe Garcia McCall's Under the Mesquite (2011), and Nalo Hopkinson's The Chaos (2012), Pfeiffer suggests that these recent and more diverse novels situate their heroines in unsympathetic environments and highlight the adolescents' need for better nurturing. She concludes with the truth that "[t]he messiness of adolescence is not a stage to be outgrown, but one we carry with us, long after the hormones of puberty have done their work" (169), and she reaffirms the power of the Backfisch story to give us tools for thinking about our lives and making the changes that need to be made.

One highlight of the monograph occurs when Pfeiffer addresses the image that graces its front cover. The Fr. Schmidt lithograph "Development of a Backfisch [teenage girl] from a Backfisch [fish]" represents, as Pfeiffer explains, the "effort and moral sculpting" that transforms a fish into a young woman (93). Pfeiffer helpfully unpacks aspects of Schmidt's image, stressing that both fish and girl "are removed from a 'natural' state and manipulated"—which aligns well with her observation that "the Backfisch must be made into a woman rather than developing organically from childhood to adulthood" (95). Elsewhere in the study, readers see numerous images of pages or illustrations from the novels Pfeiffer is discussing. However, there's little discussion of those images. Readers would welcome additional analysis of those images. They are given considerable space, and to justify that inclusion, they deserve greater attention.

Another highlight of the work is Pfeiffer's attention to issues of translation and how they delineate cultural contrasts. She observes that American Backfisch novels "retain more of a religious focus than their German counterparts" (86)—interestingly, in English translations published in North America and other countries, the religious fervor of the text may be heightened beyond what the original text might justify (87). Pfeiffer should be encouraged to delve more deeply into such fascinating considerations of translation.

Pfeiffer seems insistent on the parameters she has erected around the Backfisch tradition. For example, she emphasizes that it is something [End Page 203] other than a bildungsroman because Backfisch books "are framed more narrowly than the Bildungsroman; they emphasize the hard work of adolescence, not the organic growth of an individual over a lifetime" (12). There may be constructive nuance to be teased out in considering these traditions alongside each other. Readers also may find themselves frustrated by Pfeiffer's precise boundaries as they consider other works that might belong in some way to the Backfisch tradition. In chapter five, for instance, as Pfeiffer continues to hone her definition of the genre, she explains why the heroines of familiar orphan stories such as Anne Shirley are not Backfisch. Even there, though, she acknowledges elements of Montgomery's classic girls' novel that align squarely with the Backfisch genre (153): "Anne does acquire mentors, and shapes a community that can allow her a Backfischzeit, but her novel is unlike the traditional Backfisch novel in that it begins with Anne as a child rather than as an adolescent and shifts the responsibility for being loved onto Anne herself" (154). But Anne is eleven when she arrives at Green Gables, and she is certainly, to return to Hall's description of the Backfisch quoted by Pfeiffer in the first chapter, "no longer a little girl, but by no means yet a young woman, … something quite unique and apart" (42). There may be more to discover in relaxing boundaries and exploring generic connections.

Nonetheless, scholars of children's and adolescent literature will welcome Pfeiffer's estimation of how adolescence might be quite different from the way it has been characterized by decades of twentieth-century scholars: not sturm und drang, but a constructive, purposeful, and empathetic phase. Further, her rich cross-cultural analysis of the German and American traditions and her attention to translation issues, especially as less explicitly Christian German texts are readied for English-speaking audiences, is impressive. Throughout, there are lessons to be drawn from the Backfisch tradition for literary scholars, those interested in Girlhood Studies, and anyone who works with twenty-first-century adolescents, especially as those pandemic- and otherwise-afflicted adolescents feel increasingly isolated, unengaged, and unmentored. The Backfisch canon would insist that these young people need safe spaces, caring mentors, and meaningful work—convictions soundly affirmed by Pfeiffer throughout her study. [End Page 204]