Awkward and Awry: Novel Directions for Female Development in Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain

[ 3 ] Ethel’s body dominates The Daisy Chain, but she is never “fixed,” and Yonge depicts Ethel’s narrative of growth through moments where she reflects on and reinterprets her physical self. [...]Ethel’s failed attempts to “to make herself small” and feminine (1:141) seem at odds with the intentionally “dismal face” she presents at social gatherings (2:6). [...]the effect of gender on developmental narratives, which differ for girls and women. [...]unconventional or disruptive ideas of “leaving” and “growing,” to which the hobbledehoy contributes. According to the 1884 definition of “adolescence” in the Oxford English Dictionary, the developmental stage was “ordinarily considered as extending process or condition of growing up… ordinarily considered as extending from 14 to 25 in males, and from 12 to 21 in females,” while research on girls’ periodicals reveals that girlhood was commonly understood to last until twenty-four, and sometimes extended beyond thirty (Rodgers 15-16).