A Brave Little Girl Analysis

The Girls Own Paper was a guiding manual for impressionable young ladies during the late 19th century. It included segments on cooking, cleaning, how to dress, how to look your best, etc. Its focus was on creating and instilling the idea of the perfect woman in its younger female audience to better society. Its male counterpart, The Boys Own Paper, is also instructional and entertaining while appealing to a male audience with stories of adventure, bravery, and how to act with honor and masculinity in various scenarios. Both papers had a similar effect to male and female advertised magazines of today’s era and enforced gender norms on young men and women while ridiculing those who step outside society’s realm of acceptance through a different

The GOP also exemplifies bravery in women in a patronizing way. “A Brave Little Girl” (1880) illustrates this, condescendingly including “little” as a way to devalue the heroine. The girl is brave simply because she has tried to save her governess, who had fallen into a body of water and began drowning. Trying to pull her out, the young lady loses her balance and falls in after her. She yells for help and a workman conveniently passes by and saves both. The story was included in the paper because it insinuates that a woman can have fearless qualities, however, she cannot act on them without a man’s aid. In contrast, the BOP uses the article “Jacques Faubert, The Drummer Boy” (1880) to portray a boy being solemnly brave about dying for his country. His enlistment as a soldier saddens his mother, who is then comforted by the fact that his involvement in the war will bring her honor. At 13 years old he is shot in the head and wounded and meets Napoleon himself, who asks him what he wants to be awarded, to which he responds, “To die in your service, sire.” Eventually he passes away, and it was important that the message was given to his mother that he had died bravely, because any other way would be wrong, according to their values. The ideal being instilled in young men here is that no matter how old they are, they must be prepared to fight and die for their country fearlessly and with minimal