Schoolgirl to Career Girl. The City as Educative Space*

This article explores the way in which the "city" Throughout this article "city" functions both as place and representation. was represented in popular imaginations as the site where the metamorphosis from girl to woman could be achieved in late 1950s England. It uses a socio-semiotic theoretical framework in order to tease out the relationship between the city as an imagined space and the actual experience of living or working in the city. The article draws on material from both interviews and career storybooks for girls. The discourse of the city as representative of sophistication and freedom, at a time when the rules of society were still fairly rigid, is one which occurs in both areas. The city provided a site where girls could grow up away from the surveillance of parents and school. It was an educative space in which boundaries could be challenged and crossed without upsetting the established conventions of gender roles. The notion of the career girl was in its infancy and women were still expected to prioritise their domestic role. After a brief flurry of (relatively) independent living or working in the city, girls could emerge as young women who, having met Mr Right, returned to the suburbs or provinces and conformed to the gender expectations of the time. There was never any suggestion in the novels, or in the interviews, that the period spent working or training in the city was anything other than a transitional phase. The perceived sophistication of city life acted as an informal educative site where girls could learn to be women. They learned to dress properly, work through relationships and grow in worldly wisdom away from the safety of their home environment, to which inevitably they would return.