ABSTRACT
Doughty Terri Judith Rowbotham describes the late nineteenth-century shift in the British feminine ideal as a movement away from the 'Household Fairy' to the 'Home Goddess'. On reviewing representative serials, a case can be made for seeing girls' empire adventure stories as potentially more than what Kimberley Reynolds, in reference to the Girl's Own Paper (GOP), calls a 'placebo' to neutralize the impact of the New Woman. Bessie Marchant has come to be known predominantly as the pioneer of the girls' empire adventure story. The emergence of a market for empire adventure stories grew in part from the growth of literature about emigration for women. Emigration promoters also ennobled the domestic work of the lady-helps and other female settlers by depicting it as heroic, a form of empire-building. For girl readers who would never leave England, Marchants empire adventure stories offer fantasies of female empowerment rooted in a transformed understanding of what women's roles could be.
