The best midcentury novels about groovy girls & freedom to read when tired of the masculine posturing of On the Road

This novel started it all, creating the character of Gidget who would ultimately appear in three feature films, two TV series, three made-for-TV movies, four more novels, and two novelizations of movies, plus kid cartoons, parodies, songs, and more. Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas is based on the real-life experiences of screenwriter Kohner’s daughter Kathy, who found herself one of very few girls surfing in Malibu. The story is told in the voice of Gidget, nicknamed that because she is a diminutive girl. To be sure, the novel deals with her crush on Jeff, nicknamed Moondoggie, and her burgeoning sexual desire, but the novel does more than titillate. More importantly, the novel emphasizes Gidget’s passion for surfing, and especially the feeling of freedom that surfing provides. In the end, Gidget says her romance with Jeff may have been “a dream” but her romance with surfing is “for real:” “Maybe I was just a woman in love with a surfboard.” This emphasis on surfing marks Gidget as a countercultural and even feminist novel.  

Bonjour Tristesse is an important precursor to Gidget and creates a market for girl-centered books. Françoise Sagan wrote the novel when she was only eighteen years old and the book became a bestseller in both France and America. A first-person narration by a world-weary yet youthful character named Cécile, the story is set in a decadent milieu and engages existential questions of free will and freedom. Cécile and her widowed father are both pleasure seekers who engage in sexual conquests at their summer house. But when Cécile’s father begins a serious relationship with a serious and intelligent woman, Anne, Cécile becomes jealous and conspires to break them up, leading Anne to commit suicide. At novel’s end, Cécile and her father are back to their old ways but she feels a pervasive sadness. 

Chocolates for Breakfast was frequently compared to Bonjour Tristesse and Moore was called “the American Sagan.” Like Sagan, Moore was only eighteen when she wrote the bestselling novel. Written in the third person, it tells the story of a young woman’s sexual exploration and her feelings of depression. Courtney, a child of divorce, moves from her posh Connecticut boarding school to Beverly Hills when her depression keeps her from performing at school. She grapples with her mother, a down-on-her-heels alcoholic actress; explores her sexuality with both a gay male actor and an older straight manager in Hollywood; then relocates to New York where she drifts through cocktail parties, having affairs, until her best friend Janet commits suicide. Like Bonjour Tristesse, the novel flirts with existentialism but ultimately adopts a more hopeful tone as Courtney matures and aims to create meaning in her life.

My Lovely Mamá! parodies the decadence and ennui of Bonjour Tristesse. The narrative toys with the sort of decadence Sagan captures, by having Mathilde believe her mother is having an affair and hence attempt, unsuccessfully, to seduce her mother’s lover. The very funny novel hyperbolizes the world-weariness of Sagan’s characters. “I was terribly immature last September,” Mathilde writes, “I’ve aged a lot since then. Inwardly I’m an old, old woman now.” While it parodies certain tropes of teen girl fiction, My Lovely Mamá! nonetheless gives voice to authentic adolescent feelings, especially about sexual desire. When Mathilde receives a marriage proposal, she opts to keep things open-ended, maintaining her freedom: “I was only seventeen and everything was only just beginning, after all.” 

Louise Fitzhugh’s book Harriet the Spy was published in 1964, a little later than the others on my list. It has a younger protagonist but she is a model of proto-feminist girlhood for me. Harriet is an urban kid from an upper-class milieu with sophisticated taste. She has an imperious nanny who takes her on the subway to an art museum. Her parents are checked-out intellectuals so that Harriet is neglected in the best way, free to roam city streets. She is a tomboy and would-be writer who observes city life and people’s habits, not only in public spaces but by peeping into windows and even sneaking into homes. The narrative punishes her by having her friends discover all the terrible things she writes about them and shaming her.  But she remains a likely writer.