Anonymous - "Little Cinderella"

John Lewis Burckhardt - "Travels In Arabia"

D. J. Medley - "The Church and the Empire"

Erasmus Darwin - "The Botanic Garden"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

A Houseful of Girls

S >> Sarah Tytler >> A Houseful of Girls




With regard to Rose, she would have to submit to be more or less Harry
Ironside's charge till she painted and sold such 'stunning' pictures
that she could afford to look down on his paltry aid. What, not allow
him to assist his own sister-in-law, when he was so thankful to think
that she might be like a sister in the meantime for his poor little Kate
to fall back upon? Why, the girls could go on making a home together at
his good friend Mrs. Jennings's, till it was right for Kate, after she
was old enough to choose, to cast in her lot with him and Annie,
supposing the colony prospered. His heart was already in that strange,
far-away region, which, with all its mysteries and wonders--ay, and its
terrors--has such an attraction for the young and high-spirited, the
typical pilgrims to a later New England.

And what did Annie think of this march stolen upon her, this attempt to
extort a yard where she had only granted an inch of favour? Perhaps she
was dazzled by what would have repelled many another woman, in the
primitive, precarious, exciting details of the life of a young colony.
Perhaps her heart and imagination were alike taken by storm when she
thought of the untenanted hospital wards and the patients calling for
her to go over and help them. Perhaps she was simply beginning so to
identify herself with Harry Ironside that what he did seemed her doing.
Anyhow Annie did not say no.

The Miss Dyers remarked oracularly, when the double marriage was
announced in Redcross, that it was just what they had expected. The
observation was somewhat vague, like other oracles' speeches. The
general public of Redcross, including the Careys and Hewetts, were less
indefinite and more cordial in their expression of satisfaction at the
suitable settlement in life of the little Doctor's elder daughters.

Miss Franklin could not be too thankful and pleased that, after all, she
had done no mischief to her cousin Tom by her blunder, and by what had
been her only too personal reproaches and revelations addressed to his
future wife on the night when he was believed to be lying dying. In
fact, if she, Barbara Franklin, had not been conscious of a huge
mistake, with all the deplorable consequences it might have carried in
its train, if she had not thus been kept shamefacedly humble and silent
as to her share in the business, she might have taken credit to herself,
with greater reason than Mrs. Jennings could boast, of having united a
supremely happy couple who were drifting apart. Even if Miss Franklin's
part in it had been played voluntarily and advisedly, she would never
have cause to regret that night's work. For Dora Robinson had no scruple
in being the fast friend and affectionate cousin of her husband's
forewoman. She had no more qualm than she would have felt if Miss
Franklin had never condescended to trade, but had remained within the
bounds of poor gentility by laboriously keeping up her halting classical
music and waning foreign languages, and by continuing a finishing
governess to the day of her death--or rather till she was superannuated,
and had to retire to a too literal garret.

"Oh! Jonathan"--Mrs. Millar could not resist a long-drawn sob on the
great day of the double marriage--"it is all very well to say Annie has
got a good husband--a fine disinterested young man, certain to be
distinguished in his profession, you tell me. I believe that, and am
very thankful for it. How could I bear the parting otherwise? But to let
our eldest, our prettiest, and wittiest, with her warm heart and
untiring energy--'the flower of the flock,' as people used to call her
when the children were young--go out to Africa, it may be to meet
unheard-of trials, like your poor Aunt Penny, it may be never to see our
faces again----" Mrs. Millar could say no more.

"Hush! hush! Maria; you must be reasonable--you must take the bad with
the good," enjoined the little Doctor from his arm-chair. "Why, you are
making as much commotion as you did when Annie said she would be a
nurse. Is an hospital ward at home so preferable to an hospital ward in
the dark continent, which is ceasing to be dark? Its sun is only too
blazingly bright, its river plains too teemingly fertile, its mountains
too grand even in the grander monotony of its deserts. There is gold in
its dust, and its rocks are glittering with diamonds. But, thank God,
that is not all. It is the great country for which Livingstone was
content to spend his life, where the Moffats made the wilderness blossom
like the rose, and Colenso won the wild heart of the Zulu to trust him
as a brother. You will have Dora and Tom next door to you, and Rose and
'little May' will be constantly coming and going. As for Annie and
Harry, how can you tell that their special gifts would not be wasted
here, as I have often thought hers would have been if she had continued
only a pretty, sprightly young lady, and not grown up into an hospital
nurse!"

"Perhaps you are right, Jonathan," answered his wife meekly, coming
round, as she did now more than ever, to his side of the question.

"Do you think Sir John Richardson's daughter, Bishop Selwyn's wife,
missed the highest calling she was capable of when, instead of
presiding over a pleasant country-house or a fine London drawing-room,
she consented with all her heart to be landed on an island in Melanesia,
and left among the native converts to help to prepare the Malay girls
for confirmation? Her husband was away in the meantime in his missionary
yacht on his noble enterprise, ready to take her off the island on his
return, and not fearing to trust her in the interval to their God whose
work she was doing," argued the old man, with a note of something like
exultation in his voice. "Annie and Harry are not going out to Africa,
as my Aunt Penny and poor Beauchamp of Waylands went to Australia in the
days of the earlier squatters, entirely for their own hand, and because
they cannot help themselves, since there is nothing left for them to do
here. Our children are going to render gallant service on which their
talents are well bestowed, of which we shall always be proud to hear.
They are, as I told you before, our hostages in the carrying out of the
great purpose of the Almighty Ruler of the universe, by which light is
to take the place of darkness, and good of evil, from the rivers even to
the ends of the earth."


THE END.

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