"Exuberant," "creative" and "playful" are not words that typically come to mind when one thinks of Queen Victoria, but, as Texas A&M English professor Vallone (Disciplines of Virtue: Girls' Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries) ably demonstrates, youthful Victoria was notably different from the staid, dignified monarch who gave her name to what has often been viewed as one of the most stolid ages in modern history. By analyzing Victoria's girlhood diaries, drawings and fiction, as well as records of her education and scores of accounts of her childhood, Vallone not only constructs a revisionist account of the princess's youthful persona but also traces the process by which Victoria was molded into the "right" kind of adult: capable of assuming the throne and also a clear embodiment of all that was womanly and pure. Vallone calls this a study of both Victoria and the various ideological imperatives that undergirded early 19th-century child-rearing; the latter achievement is more compelling. Victoria is, in Vallone's account, a fascinating, complex figure. But she also serves here as an example of the way girls' personalities were subject to various social and cultural pressures en route to adulthood. And because Victoria the feminine icon was deemed at least as important as Victoria the ruler, her upbringing had much more in common with those of other girls than one might imagine. Well-researched, and with sophisticated cultural criticism, this sound scholarship will engage the interest of academics and nonacademics alike. Illus. (May)
