Förklädda flickor: könsöverskridning i 1980 - Åbo Akademi

One possibility is to give the girl more masculine qualities, which in
this study has been observed as a tendency during the 1980s, and is
even visible in the beginning of the 1990s. The thesis puts forward an
ideological criticism but could, beneficially be developed to include
heterology, in other words a study of otherness. It is difficult to avoid a
discussion where the categories of class and ethnicity do not play a role
in the portrayal of girls. The underlying gender ideology that is staged
in the depiction of girls does not happen in isolation, but exists in
combination with other traits.
To summarise, this study is a further development of previous
research into literary representations as girl types, as well as into
submission and protest intrigues associated with the representation of
girls. Previous research has been modified with the help of
narratological analysis that elucidates the narrator’s perspective as a
decisive role in the portrayal of girls. By observing the characteristics of
the carnival in a larger context, the study shows that literary
representations of girls also functions according to certain
conventionalities. Such assertions are of importance with regard to how
the stories can reasonably end and also result in the endings being
questioned. In the novels duplicate endings, classical resolutions,
thematic and psychological rounding off occurs; all of which clearly
demonstrate the dynamic aspect of the depiction of girls.
This study does not isolate the 1980s; on the contrary, it
interprets the cross-dressing phase in relation to girls’ stories and the
disguised girls of formula fiction, as well as setting the eighties in
relation to the previous decades. The discussion also incorporates the
direction in which the portrayal of girls was heading after the 1980s by
touching on representations such as witchcraft and girlpower. The
research could constructively be expanded to review the portrayal of
girls and boys during different decades in order to investigate further
the oscillation between tradition and renewal within this field.
My study has thus been concerned with the attention given in
young adult fiction research to the change in the portrayal of girls,
comparing previous representations of girls as being seemingly passive
with the later depictions of girls as seeming to have agency. In the
cross-dressing novels, if anything the effect has been the reverse with
regard to the development of the girl’s characters; certainly, they are
active and highly assertive, but mainly when they appear as boys. Thus,
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