66 pages • 2 hours read
Alex GinoGeorge
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
The Pronoun “She”
The female pronoun “she” is a central motif in George. From the outset, the book’s male-presenting protagonist is referred to with female pronouns (1). Even when other characters think George is a boy, the narrator makes sure that the reader sees George as she sees herself, a girl. This writing choice makes the world that insists she is a boy abnormal, rather than making George abnormal herself.
The effect of George’s pronoun is heightened when others in her world refer to her as a boy. The first person to do this is George’s brother Scott, who says, “That’s my little bro! Growing up and looking at dirty magazines,” attributing typically masculine behavior to a girl-identifying person (8). In this case, George initially finds the misidentification funny and “almost laughed” because she was looking at more wholesome images of clothed girls (8). However, hiding who she really is deeply upsets George. It is hurtful for people such as Ms. Udell to see the more sensitive elements of her character as forming “a fine young man,” rather than the girl she is (15).
It is a special moment for George when her best friend Kelly uses the name she gives herself—Melissa—and never slips up on their day out at the zoo. Kelly’s embrace of her friend’s female name and pronoun brings the two girls closer together, as “a wave of warmth filled Melissa from deep in her belly and out to her fingers and toes” (194).
Magazines
George’s magazines are tangible evidence of her girl self. Representing her initial foray into girlhood, George’s magazines are secretly and carefully acquired. For example, “two summers ago, she had noticed an old issue of Girls’ Life in the recycling bin at the library. The word girl had caught her eye instantly, and she slipped the magazine in her jacket to look at later” (4).
The magazines deal with girlish topics such as boy crushes, makeup, and figure-flattering swimwear. They are sensorially appealing to George, with their “silky, slippery pages” (2) and “faint smell of paper” (3). The tactile, delicate pages themselves seem feminine to George, and she has visceral, bodily reactions to the experience of reading them. For example, “her heart raced in her chest” when she reads an article on “framing your face with makeup” and she wonders “what it would really be like to wear lipstick” (5). Through the magazines and their articles that focus on the management and decoration of a girl’s body, George is able to vicariously inhabit a girl’s body. This feels more natural to her than inhabiting the male body she was endowed with at birth.
Importantly, George views the magazines and the girls pictured in them as “her friends,” who know who she truly is (94). When she is forbidden from playing Charlotte and considers throwing out her magazines, that symbol of her girl identity, she cannot bring herself to do it. She thinks that “even if she could, she couldn’t stop herself wanting to be” like the girls inside the magazines (79). She thus realizes that her allegiance to the girlhood promoted in the magazines runs deeper than the objects themselves.
When Mom discovers the magazines, she considers that George has no right to possess these girlish items and accuses her son of stealing them. It is little consolation to her that George found them. Following an injunction not to wear and thereby temporarily steal Mom’s clothes, George’s mother takes the magazine collection from George (93). When Mom returns the collection, it is a symbol of her acceptance of George and her wish to be like the girls in the magazines.
Bathrooms
The bathroom is a central motif in George. Bathrooms figure as both private spaces where George can be her true self and places of public intimacy where users have to be categorized as one gender or the other. The first bathroom the reader encounters is the one George locks herself in to read her magazines in secrecy and safety. When her brother surprises her, he guesses that she has been indulging some kind of illicit desire in a private place, i.e., “thinking about girls” (9). This assumption replaces the mainstream heterosexual transgression of masturbating over girls with an even more taboo desire—that is, thinking about being a girl (9).
George’s other private moments in her home bathroom are ones where she confronts her anatomy in a safe space. There, she can practice combing her hair in a more feminine style, so it looks “as if she had bangs” and wrap the towel around under her armpits as girls do (4). It is also the place where she can confront the discomforting fact of her penis “bobbing in front of her” (44-45) and the disconcerting realization that her gender-neutral childish smoothness will one day give way “to a terrible beard all over her face” (127). Here, Gino uses the bathroom as a tool for engaging the reader with George’s private, anatomical preoccupations. It is a moment for the reader to feel George’s intense vulnerability as what she fears will be inevitable, unless there is some medical intervention to stop it happening. The home bathroom is a safe space for George, locked away from prying eyes and public debate.
By contrast, public bathrooms are relatively unsafe. They are utilitarian spaces, which George tries to use in times of intense need only. It is significant that George makes a concerted effort to not drink from the water fountains and “tried to never use” the boys’ bathroom “when there were any boys inside” (17). The boys’ bathroom at school is a threatening space, dominated by masculinity in its blue tile-color, smell of urine, and boys’ talk at the conspicuous urinals of “what was between their legs” (17). Given George’s lack of identification with this exhibitionist type of masculinity, it is almost cruel that Ms. Udell gives her a pass to visit this space when she needs to comfort herself.
In the end, when George, as Melissa, enters the girls’ bathroom at the zoo, it is a welcome change, and she is “delighted for the privacy” of the cubicle (193). This public yet private space of the women’s cubicle is where George can practice relieving herself as feels most natural to her—sitting, like a girl. Arguably, the cubicle becomes like the locked private bathroom at home, a place where George can contemplate and come to terms with her identity as it meets her anatomy.
