Encouraging Charitable Work and Membership in the Girls’ Friendly Society through British Girls’ Periodicals

This chapter ecplores models of femininity with practical applications for girls outside the home. Moruzi uses the Girls’ Friendly Society as a case study to demonstrate how religious magazines aimed at girls in the 1860s and 1870s supported the work of the charity through the promotion of an idealised form of philanthropic girlhood (dutiful, moral, and virtuous) that readers were encouraged to emulate, irrespective of their class positions. Yet by tracing the promotion of the charity through magazines aimed at girls of different classes, including the Monthly Packet (1851–99), which targeted middle-class girls, and the Girls’ Own Paper (1880–1956), which largely addressed working-class and lower-middle-class girls, Moruzi shows that the specific roles and behavioural expectations assigned to girls were very much aligned with their class. In spite of these tensions, these magazines helped to foster communities of girls bound by common reading materials and active engagement with charitable pursuits.