“I’m not defending her, I don’t think, I’m just saying that I think she was at the end of a long line of …buck-passing, you know?”
The story of All Girls is set at a fictional prep school in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut called Atwater. There are many characters and each chapter, denoted by an annual event at the school, focuses on different girls, their experiences at the school, and sometimes their backstories. The book’s first two chapters set the stage for the book’s central theme as students arrive for the 2015-16 school year. Several signs advertising that “A Rapist Works Here” are planted on the only road that leads to the school. The message is confusing and disheartening, especially for families with little experience with boarding schools. As the story progresses, the girls react to the danger intimated by the signs. Still, the school, steeped in its traditionalist, diehard ways, struggles to acknowledge the story behind the sexual assault victim’s message.
Each successive chapter carefully conveys the pros and cons of the time-tested ritualistic events such as fall fest, vespers, and prom. The author does this through the realistic contemporary conversations, comments, and observations of the astute female students. Each of the featured characters has an opinion. Each wants to be heard and make a statement within the confines of the rules and expectations, but sometimes those rules have to be tested when “enough is enough” of the conventional secrecy of what happens behind closed doors. Although there is some admiration for the time-honored annual events, it is clear how demeaning some of the pageantries are and how so much was designed to maintain women’s place in society as second class citizens. The many voices provide multiple reasons why Atwater and the real institutions it represents need to change.
Of course, this school year just precedes the national MeToo movement. The school year’s events describe both literally and metaphorically why MeToo’s message was so desperately overdue. The author does a great job of showing, not just telling what goes on in traditional school settings where esteemed faculty members’ reputations are treasured. She also outlines how easy it is to protect adults at the expense of students experiencing life-changing moments. Mrs. Brodie, Head of the Atwater School, responds to the former students’ accusation and current students’ concerns as though they are a mere disruption. It is incredible and deplorable, depending on your point of view, how skillfully she downplays the cries for help from the students she purports to serve. Institutional denial is alive and well at Atwater as it becomes publicly known that a faculty member accused of raping a student twenty years ago is still teaching at the school.
The strength of storytelling in All Girls is in the depictions of 2015-16 students using their access to multiple forms of social media as forums to speak their minds and stage unsettling pranks for the adults at Atwater. It becomes obvious that the students can wreak havoc and outsmart faculty and staff members living in the past and using dated means to uphold the school’s integrity and reputation. The students in this story are brilliant and driven to accomplish great things. They can see beyond the age-old expectations for “proper” upbringing, and they show how to employ modern tools to expose both the old-fashioned narrow-mindedness of the faculty and the loopholes in the social-emotional learning that is part of the school’s mission.
I found the story compelling. The author, at times, had me vacillating between sympathizing with students and adults. Many issues are raised about how schools respond to accusations of sexual assault in high school, especially when staff members and their spouses live on campus. Is it always one big happy family? What about the power imbalances? How is trust developed? These are such important questions that are not sufficiently addressed in the nation’s schools. The importance of student concerns and the danger of dismissing them is a pervasive theme. Layden creates articulate teenaged characters whose conversations with each other are replete with the typical coming of age concerns and demands that those living in ivory towers change their views about the women they serve.
Reflecting upon this book, I reacted similarly to Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise. It is tragic when adults condescend to or patronize high school students. It is a cultural travesty when those entrusted with young adults’ teaching and supervision in a boarding school shirk their responsibility to provide guidance and protection. The hopeful outcome that the students at Atwater seek, the intolerance of rape and sexual assault, is something that all modern communities must strive to attain. Ignoring sexual assaults is just not acceptable, regardless of the status of the accused and accuser. Conducting business as usual as the world finally recognizes the issues at established cultural institutions is neglectful.
I am grateful to NetGalley for providing a free copy of this book in exchange for a review.
