Companions and Villains

This article examines boy characters in early twentieth-century girls’ scouting fiction. These series, marketed using the names of the recently established girls’ organizations, supported female empowerment. They also included important boy characters: brothers, companions, villains, and bullies. The first three types are exemplars of what boys’ workers envisioned as middle-class manhood: youthful wildness and spunk channeled into habits of hard work, self-reliance, and intelligence. These boys would also recognize girls as near-equal partners at a time when marriage norms were becoming more companionate. Rural bullies and ethnic villains, by contrast, provide warnings about boys who do not develop manly self-control. Girls’ series helped shape how modern girls thought about their male peers, including what girls would and would not accept in their relationships with boys.