ABSTRACT
Control over representing the figure of the Chinese girl engaged the interests of American women, Chinese girls, and American girls. Westerners sought to advance their conceptions of Chinese girlhood, more to negotiate and challenge gender expectations for American women than to foster Chinese girls' individualism. The ostensible formula for extending American female authority into global contexts was predicated on western activism and Orientalist submission. In addition to the reality of aggressive conflicts and volatile international politics that characterized Sino-American exchanges, China loomed large in the American cultural imagination. In order to transmit the codes of Christian femininity in an understandable way that was also consistent with children's culture, missionaries and women writers of evangelical literature in the nineteenth century needed resources that carried emotional, social, and economic value for girls. As schoolgirls share their ideas, experiences, and heart talk, their writings revise depictions of Chinese girls.
