Voice, Play, and a Practice of Ordinary Courage in Girls' and Women's Lives

In this article, Annie Rogers explores the etymology of courage, and links the "ordinary courage" of eight- to twelve-year-old girls with an old meaning of the word: "to speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." She then observes how this ordinary courage is lost as many girls reach early adolescence. Her observation is embedded in a newly emerging psychology of women based on empirical studies of girls, which have documented a striking loss of voice, of resiliency, and of self-confidence in girls as they enter early adolescence. These studies have identified this as a time of particular vulnerability and risk in young women's psychological development, as it becomes increasingly dangerous for them to speak their minds truthfully within the context of cultural conspiracies to silence women's knowledge. In order to capture the girls' inner life of feeling, Rogers introduces a "poetics of research," a particular discourse grounded in feminist epistemology and methodology, as well as the voice-centered,relational practice of research she has helped to create.