What logic would dictate setting the legal age for girls to marry lower than the age for them to consent to sexual activity or the age at which they may enter sex work? Whose interests are at stake when rendering girls “old enough” to permanently marry but not “old enough” to consent to sex? Or “old enough” to consent to sex but not “old enough” to take money for the transaction? Defining Girlhood examines the arc of legal debates in India and the global arena that defined and redefined feminine sexual maturity for marriage, pleasure, and business. Ashwini Tambe's analysis, spanning the twentieth century to the present, unearths competing rhetorical positions of British colonizers, Indian nationalists, international abolitionists, patriarchal traditionalists, feminists, economic developmentalists, transnational humanitarians, and always concerned parents. Each rival group took up the task of dictating the “rightful” place of adolescent girls as it behooved their own strategic...

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