During the early part of the twentieth century, female adolescents began to challenge the idea of Victorian moral standards in their pursuit for autonomy. In their attempt to redefine their role in society, young women often sought work and amusements outside the family unit resulting in pre-marital sexual relations with men, unplanned pregnancies and criminal activity. Wayward girls were often sentenced to a period of reform within one of two institutions presented in Ruth Alexander’s book, The “Girl Problem”. In this in-depth study of girls who “got into trouble”, Alexander sets out to identify the motives behind their behavior and examine how state-mandated reform was viewed from the perspective of those who were incarcerated as well as those who enforced Victorian standards of female decency.

Much has been written during the latter half of the twentieth century examining female adolescent change and the idea of “new womanhood”. Most of this material centers on emerging patterns of change within the female adolescent culture during the early half of the twentieth century. The “Girl Problem” fits nicely within this genre of feminist study. While most of the contemporary literature on this topic focuses on troubled females within the United States as a whole, Alexander chooses to narrow her research down to focus on a specific geographic area. By doing so, she is able to provide an accurate representation of the typical female adolescent struggling to reinvent a new sense of self in areas of New York.

Alexander makes use of a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, but focuses much of her attention on the unpublished case files of one hundred inmates who had been admitted to the Bedford Hills and Albion reformatories. By doing so, Alexander is able to reveal the various methodologies employed by the reformatories as well as allow the reader to glimpse into the personal lives of several of the girls in her sample. She includes photographs from the respective institutions representing daily life at the reformatories as well as copies of psychological examinations given at Albion at the time of admittance. Alexander uses social geography to examine the role it played in the development of early twentieth century female rebellion by limiting her area of research to a geographic region that was known for its increased population of immigrant, African American and low income families. Although admitting that she could not achieve a “statistically representative study of inmate populations” due to not having access to a complete set of reformatory records from both institutions, Alexander makes a valiant attempt at choosing case files that were heavy with correspondence as well as being representative of young women of different races, ethnicities and criminal backgrounds.

Alexander brings to life a society in which an unstable economy mixed with growing tension in the household resulted in “young women participating in the life of the street in a manifestly unguarded manner”. The author argues that in demanding a return to “feminine standards”, parents and reformatory administrators often produced in their daughters increased displays of rebellion rather than acquiescence. Alexander emphasizes the influence that an unstable family unit had on the reluctance of young females to conform. She provides evidence of correspondence between families and inmates that was often in need of censoring by reformatory personnel to “weed out negative comments or discouraging subjects”. A downside to this type of censorship, Alexander argues, is that it “offered young women and their families no opportunity to discuss or mend their troubled relations”. By describing the dissolution of families through economic hardship as well as the challenges that faced young women while institutionalized, Alexander allows the reader to better understand the factors contributing to increased female rebellion.

The author attempts to maintain neutrality throughout the book, defending the “incorrigible” girls that were sent to the reformatories as well as their families and those who were in charge of bringing the girls back to a state of being that better represented the Victorian standards of the day. However, she often portrays the young women in her sample as victims of a society changed by urbanization and industrialization. She gives numerous examples of how little families contributed to the moral growth of their daughters as well as the limitations faced by the reformatories while attempting to reinstate feminine virtue.

Alexander’s rich descriptions of how desperate female adolescents were for social change allow the reader to develop a feeling of empathy for these girls and identify with their plight. She argues that one often focuses primarily on the delinquent behavior of young females during the early twentieth century rather than allowing their actions to be representative of the social changes occurring in the United States during that time. The “Girl Problem” provides an insight into the personal lives of young women who, in the process of “reconstructing a new sense of self”, fell victim to a society that was still stuck in Victorian modes of thought. Alexander excels not only in her explicit identification of the roles reformatories played in dealing with the “girl problem”, but in her attempt to explain how race, gender, ethnicity and familial disadvantage worked together to contribute to the delinquency of young women in early twentieth century New York. ( )