ABSTRACT
This chapter unpacks the cultural connotations and meanings associated with Darger’s resource material. By exploring this material (comic strip, advertising, and coloring book imagery), Darger appropriates not only the visible attributes of girlhood but also its visual constructs that produce cultural meanings. This inquiry contends that Darger fabricates a particular notion of littleness—a blend of romantic Victorian childhood, girl saints, and floral Marian tropes—from such popular characters referenced by Darger in his art and writings: Shirley Temple’s “The Littlest Rebel,” “Little Eva” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, or “The Little Flower of Christ.” Purity and innocence surface in the first two exemplars of girlhood while virtue and self-sacrificing qualities link to the girlish nature and humble floral metaphors of Saint Thérèse. Likewise, the etymology of the name, “Vivian” is also explored and contextualized within the traits of Darger’s Vivian Girls.
