ABSTRACT
Having outlined the way contemporary, English-language children’s novels developed in India and the diaspora, I now see it as crucial to consider one similarity that extends across the majority of the novels regardless of place of publication: the central role of girl characters. Almost half the texts in this sample focus on girl protagonists or groups of girls, and of the remainder, the majority feature collective protagonists composed of both boy and girl characters, both of which play signifi cant roles in the narrative. This could be considered a disproportionate representation in a culture that has traditionally
valued boys more highly than girls, and it may be due to the fact that these texts are primarily written by women. Of the 55 authors in this sample, 46 are women: they have collectively created 83 of the 101 novels in the corpus. Strictly in relation to numbers, then, it is important to consider the ways that women writers represent Indian girls. Thematically, though, there are more signifi cant reasons to examine the portrayals of girl characters, which are shaped by feminist value systems.
