Teens by Louise Mack

First published: 1897; illustrated

Type of work: Domestic realism

Themes: Friendship, education, and coming-of-age

Time of work: The late nineteenth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Sydney, Australia

Principal Characters:

• Lennie Leighton, a bright thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her middle-class family in suburban Sydney
• Mabel James, her best friend at school, fifteen years old and equally intelligent and talented
• Dr. James Leighton, her wise and loving father, a good provider for the family
• Bert Leighton, her older brother, who likes to tease her but is indispensable as an escort
• Floss, Mary, and Brendaleighton, her younger sisters, ranging in age down to seven, who all love and admire their sister

The Story

At age thirteen, Lennie Leighton has a happy life with devoted parents to look after her. When she wins a scholarship to attend a prestigious girls’ school, it is the biggest event in her sheltered life. Her three younger sisters are thrilled and share vicariously in all of her new experiences.

At first Lennie feels lonely and unwanted. Then she makes friends with a girl named Mabel James. Mabel has also been feeling rejected, but she and Lennie quickly discover that they share many likes and dislikes. They become inseparable: They sit together in class and walk with their arms locked around each other’s waists. Lennie invites her friend home for tea. Mabel is cordially liked by everyone in the family and soon becomes a regular visitor. Mabel’s mother has been dead for five years. She has a father and three brothers, and her family’s male-run domestic affairs are reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ description of Mr. Pocket’s chaotic household in Great Expectations (1861). Yet the unsupervised environment has made Mabel more aggressive and independent than the typical girl.

At school the girls follow the curriculum considered suitable for young ladies in the nineteenth century. They study English literature and composition, arithmetic, French, history, geography, and fancy sewing. Both Lennie and Mabel are inclined to daydream and are chronically behind in their homework. They like to sneak sweets into the classroom and sometimes get caught at it. The only serious trouble Lennie ever gets into, however, occurs when a teacher catches her surreptitiously reading a book entitled The Beautiful Wretch, which sounds far more lusty than it actually is.

Lennie and Mabel have only one falling out—not for any good reason but simply because of hot weather and moodiness. Both are lonely and miserable for days. Finally they are reconciled, as everyone knew they would be, and are happy again.

The two girls create a great stir by starting their own school newspaper; however, a schoolmate launches a rival paper that puts theirs to shame, because her father is a professional printer. The experience of being writers, editors, and entrepreneurs has a sobering effect on the two friends. They buckle down to their studies and achieve spectacular scholastic success.

At the end of the school year, Lennie is stunned and heartbroken to learn that Mabel is being taken overseas. She may not return to Australia for three years. The two girls spend their last night sleeping side by side. Lennie knows that she will never have another friend who will mean as much to her as Mabel. She has learned one of life’s cruelest lessons: that everything changes. She will be a sadder but wiser person as a result of her relationship with her friend.

Context

Teens was originally published in 1897. It is interesting mainly as a historical document, giving an intimate glimpse into the lives of middle-class people, and particularly middle-class girls, in a world without radio, phonographs, television, motion pictures, telephones, automobiles, airplanes, or even electric lights. Social life centered on the family, and it was generally believed that a woman’s place was in the home, where she could find her life’s fulfillment by ministering to her husband and her children.

The novel shows the well-intentioned but relentless social forces that shaped middle-class girls into wives and mothers. They spent almost their entire lives either at home or at school. Their reading was heavily censored; they were shielded from knowledge of many of the realities of life, and particularly from any sexual knowledge. Lennie creates a sensation by being caught reading a book entitled The Beautiful Wretch in class. The middle-aged spinster principal does not even dare to look inside the covers for fear of being contaminated by exposure to the facts of life.

Reading was by far the most common form of entertainment for girls in late Victorian times. It was therefore quite natural that a career in literature might appeal to some individualistic young women, although they were handicapped in comparison to male authors by having so little worldly experience. The modern reader will sense that the object of a young lady’s education in the Victorian era was not only to keep her pure but also to keep her ignorant, so that she would be content with the confinement and dependence that were the housewife’s lot.

Lennie and her friend Mabel are gifted and intelligent, but their talents are not wanted in a “man’s world.” This was particularly true for girls growing up in Australia, which in the late nineteenth century was still very much a British colony with a small population and a narrow infrastructure. Lennie and Mabel would have had a bitter struggle to break out of the mold into which their socialization was designed to shape them. Their friendship gives them courage to pursue their literary interests, but when they are separated, they are in danger of losing faith in themselves and abandoning their literary aspirations. They were born a hundred years too soon.