Date of Award
1992
Publication Type
Master Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
Communication Studies
Keywords
Sociology, Social Structure and Development.
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This thesis presents a socialist feminist perspective on the ideology contained in Ann M. Martin's girls' fiction series, The Baby-sitters Club. An introduction to The Baby-sitters Club, and to the marketing process involved in series of its type, is followed by an overview of the development of the concepts of ideology and hegemony, with emphasis on Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall. Through textual analysis of the feminist materialist vein, 50 Baby-sitters Club books are examined under the following themes--Female friendship and female rivalry, Family situations and older women, Gender relations, sex and romance, Work, play, pastimes and entertainment and Race and class. In each theme, the books include seemingly "progressive" elements, including girls in successful group enterprises, working women and a multi-racial set of characters. However, the theory of logical typing, with the elements of contradiction and paradox, is used to identify the hegemonic structures in the books--hegemonic structures designed to help keep the system of capitalist patriarchy in place. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 31-04, page: 1608. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1992.
Recommended Citation
Thorpe, Kim., "Nurturing naivete: "The Baby-sitters Club" as a hegemonic text (Ann M. Martin)." (1992). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2894.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/2894