Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines the ways in which reviews and articles served to consolidate Victorian and Edwardian assumptions about women as readers. ...
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This chapter examines the ways in which reviews and articles served to consolidate Victorian and Edwardian assumptions about women as readers. In the case of magazine articles — apart from those which offered practical advice about methods of reading — women readers were encountered in a number of guises. First, they formed a frequent category of reference or appeal in book reviews. Second, types of the woman reader appear in many chatty, conversational articles. Third are those articles which claimed to investigate precisely what girls or women were reading. And finally, the question of access to suitable reading material for working-class women, particularly in cities, leads into the way in which women’s reading practices were considered as part of the whole debate about how best to set up facilities in public libraries. In all of this, the different audiences for periodicals are presented with a variety of assumptions about the woman reader, deriving from, and in their turn serving different social and ideological stances.Less
This chapter examines the ways in which reviews and articles served to consolidate Victorian and Edwardian assumptions about women as readers. In the case of magazine articles — apart from those which offered practical advice about methods of reading — women readers were encountered in a number of guises. First, they formed a frequent category of reference or appeal in book reviews. Second, types of the woman reader appear in many chatty, conversational articles. Third are those articles which claimed to investigate precisely what girls or women were reading. And finally, the question of access to suitable reading material for working-class women, particularly in cities, leads into the way in which women’s reading practices were considered as part of the whole debate about how best to set up facilities in public libraries. In all of this, the different audiences for periodicals are presented with a variety of assumptions about the woman reader, deriving from, and in their turn serving different social and ideological stances.
Susan Jones
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184485
- eISBN:
- 9780191674273
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184485.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This closing chapter demonstrates the importance of women's writing, women readers, female portraiture, and the relationship of text and illustration in the serialized novels in shaping Conrad's ...
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This closing chapter demonstrates the importance of women's writing, women readers, female portraiture, and the relationship of text and illustration in the serialized novels in shaping Conrad's later fiction. It draws attention to the re-emergence of Marguerite Poradowska's influence, and how, in the late work in particular, Conrad exploited the techniques of traditional forms in order to question the structures of romance which continued to confine and classify women.Less
This closing chapter demonstrates the importance of women's writing, women readers, female portraiture, and the relationship of text and illustration in the serialized novels in shaping Conrad's later fiction. It draws attention to the re-emergence of Marguerite Poradowska's influence, and how, in the late work in particular, Conrad exploited the techniques of traditional forms in order to question the structures of romance which continued to confine and classify women.
Ros Ballaster
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184775
- eISBN:
- 9780191674341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184775.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter takes issue with the ‘myth’ of the female reader in the 18th century, which has tended to represent women's amatory fiction as a sub-cultural form servicing degraded popular taste and ...
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This chapter takes issue with the ‘myth’ of the female reader in the 18th century, which has tended to represent women's amatory fiction as a sub-cultural form servicing degraded popular taste and bearing little or no relation to the political and ideological mainstream. It is argued that the depiction of the women reader in contemporary periodical and prose fiction was not a realistic representation, but a formal device that served to introduce new concepts concerning the male political subject and his relation to the state. The chapter outlines prevailing conventions in amatory fiction in the last decades of the 17th century in Britain, developed from French models; it explores the specific formal and ideological properties of the French romance, the nouvelle, the scandal chronicle, and epistolary fiction.Less
This chapter takes issue with the ‘myth’ of the female reader in the 18th century, which has tended to represent women's amatory fiction as a sub-cultural form servicing degraded popular taste and bearing little or no relation to the political and ideological mainstream. It is argued that the depiction of the women reader in contemporary periodical and prose fiction was not a realistic representation, but a formal device that served to introduce new concepts concerning the male political subject and his relation to the state. The chapter outlines prevailing conventions in amatory fiction in the last decades of the 17th century in Britain, developed from French models; it explores the specific formal and ideological properties of the French romance, the nouvelle, the scandal chronicle, and epistolary fiction.
Kim Haines-Eitzen
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195171297
- eISBN:
- 9780199918140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171297.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This chapter focuses on the emergence of the figure of the ideal female reader in early and late ancient Christian ascetic literature, which quite clearly glorifies women who have taken up the ...
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This chapter focuses on the emergence of the figure of the ideal female reader in early and late ancient Christian ascetic literature, which quite clearly glorifies women who have taken up the ascetic life and, at least metaphorically, have chosen to read rather than to eat. After surveying some evidence from texts as disparate as the Shepherd of Hermas, a Greek papyrus fragment, and Sidonius Apollinarious, the chapter turns especially to the lives of holy women and to patristic writers such as Jerome and Gregory of Nyssa and to Gerontius’s Life of Melania the Younger.Less
This chapter focuses on the emergence of the figure of the ideal female reader in early and late ancient Christian ascetic literature, which quite clearly glorifies women who have taken up the ascetic life and, at least metaphorically, have chosen to read rather than to eat. After surveying some evidence from texts as disparate as the Shepherd of Hermas, a Greek papyrus fragment, and Sidonius Apollinarious, the chapter turns especially to the lives of holy women and to patristic writers such as Jerome and Gregory of Nyssa and to Gerontius’s Life of Melania the Younger.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
At first sight, the controversy induced by the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ fiction in the 1890s bears a close similarity to the wave of ...
More
At first sight, the controversy induced by the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ fiction in the 1890s bears a close similarity to the wave of anxiety expressed about the sensation novel some thirty years earlier. The writers of the 1890s laid particular stress on the part played by men in spreading venereal disease, and on indicating that this was just one of the aspects of sexuality about which girls were unlikely to learn anything before they were married. They also emphasized rationality and interrogation. If the issue of women’s reading in the 1890s becomes most active around the question of access to knowledge, particularly sexual knowledge, then it follows that the attainment of that knowledge can effectively be described and dramatized in ways which challenge the conventions used to delineate the tastes and capacities of women readers. In the New Woman fiction, not only were sexual and marital issues discussed with frankness, but, more importantly, women were offered images of articulacy and efforts at self-determination.Less
At first sight, the controversy induced by the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ fiction in the 1890s bears a close similarity to the wave of anxiety expressed about the sensation novel some thirty years earlier. The writers of the 1890s laid particular stress on the part played by men in spreading venereal disease, and on indicating that this was just one of the aspects of sexuality about which girls were unlikely to learn anything before they were married. They also emphasized rationality and interrogation. If the issue of women’s reading in the 1890s becomes most active around the question of access to knowledge, particularly sexual knowledge, then it follows that the attainment of that knowledge can effectively be described and dramatized in ways which challenge the conventions used to delineate the tastes and capacities of women readers. In the New Woman fiction, not only were sexual and marital issues discussed with frankness, but, more importantly, women were offered images of articulacy and efforts at self-determination.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book provides an invaluable source of information on nineteenth-century culture and the woman reader. Why was the topic of women and reading so controversial for ...
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This book provides an invaluable source of information on nineteenth-century culture and the woman reader. Why was the topic of women and reading so controversial for the Victorians and Edwardians? What was it assumed that women read, and what advice was given about where, when, and how to read? The book examines texts ranging from fiction, painting, and poetry, through medical and psychoanalytic works, advice manuals and periodicals, to autobiographies and contemporary social research, in her detailed study of this central cultural debate in nineteenth-century society. Engaging also in recent feminist theory, the book explores the manipulation of the figure of the woman reader in well-known works like Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley and Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, in sensation novels and New Woman fiction, and in stories found in series such as The Princess’s Novelettes. This is supported by evidence from actual readers — working women, as well as the privileged — as to how they understood their own highly varied reading experiences.Less
This book provides an invaluable source of information on nineteenth-century culture and the woman reader. Why was the topic of women and reading so controversial for the Victorians and Edwardians? What was it assumed that women read, and what advice was given about where, when, and how to read? The book examines texts ranging from fiction, painting, and poetry, through medical and psychoanalytic works, advice manuals and periodicals, to autobiographies and contemporary social research, in her detailed study of this central cultural debate in nineteenth-century society. Engaging also in recent feminist theory, the book explores the manipulation of the figure of the woman reader in well-known works like Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley and Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, in sensation novels and New Woman fiction, and in stories found in series such as The Princess’s Novelettes. This is supported by evidence from actual readers — working women, as well as the privileged — as to how they understood their own highly varied reading experiences.
Katherine West Scheil
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450426
- eISBN:
- 9780801464225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450426.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter focuses on the various literate practices of women readers and how each of those practices helped empower them through the public speaking skills and analytical strategies promoted by ...
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This chapter focuses on the various literate practices of women readers and how each of those practices helped empower them through the public speaking skills and analytical strategies promoted by clubs and through the confidence gained from mastering (and sometimes performing and adapting) Shakespeare, by and large in the period before women could even vote. Women engaged in elaborate and intellectually demanding work on Shakespeare: they read plays closely; researched unfamiliar words or phrases; contextualized the plays in history, contemporary literature, and art; memorized passages; wrote essays; read aloud and sometimes performed plays; often kept up with the latest Shakespeare criticism; and frequently expressed their enthusiasm for Shakespeare publicly, by sponsoring libraries, educational scholarships, public gardens, and parks: all lasting memorials to these grassroots readers and to their passion for Shakespeare.Less
This chapter focuses on the various literate practices of women readers and how each of those practices helped empower them through the public speaking skills and analytical strategies promoted by clubs and through the confidence gained from mastering (and sometimes performing and adapting) Shakespeare, by and large in the period before women could even vote. Women engaged in elaborate and intellectually demanding work on Shakespeare: they read plays closely; researched unfamiliar words or phrases; contextualized the plays in history, contemporary literature, and art; memorized passages; wrote essays; read aloud and sometimes performed plays; often kept up with the latest Shakespeare criticism; and frequently expressed their enthusiasm for Shakespeare publicly, by sponsoring libraries, educational scholarships, public gardens, and parks: all lasting memorials to these grassroots readers and to their passion for Shakespeare.
JAN FERGUS
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199297825
- eISBN:
- 9780191711244
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297825.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter takes issue with assumptions about gender and fiction in this period: novels were neither primarily written by women nor primarily, in the provinces, consumed by them — the word ...
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This chapter takes issue with assumptions about gender and fiction in this period: novels were neither primarily written by women nor primarily, in the provinces, consumed by them — the word ‘consumed’ throughout this study is meant in a purely economic sense, not in the pejorative sense of mindless ‘consuming’ or devouring of fiction. The chapter begins by reviewing the buying and borrowing of two men with a strong interest in print, John Latimer of Warwick and Henry Bagshaw Harrison of Daventry. Figures for adult buying and borrowing of fiction taken from the Clay and Stevens records are summarized and tabulated, and this evidence of adult men's and women's consumption is placed in the context of their other purchases. Men are so numerous, however, that the chapter focuses upon a subgroup — men who subscribed to the Monthly and Critical Reviews — because their subscriptions allow the study of the possible effect of reviewing on purchases of new fiction and other works. The far fewer women customers for fiction is considered in detail, offering case studies of purchases and borrowings of women who were members of the gentry and the professional, trading, and servant classes. The chapter speculates first on why the novel was in 18th-century England so closely identified with women even though no empirical evidence seems to support this identification; and second on what men might gain by being culturally invisible as readers of fictions.Less
This chapter takes issue with assumptions about gender and fiction in this period: novels were neither primarily written by women nor primarily, in the provinces, consumed by them — the word ‘consumed’ throughout this study is meant in a purely economic sense, not in the pejorative sense of mindless ‘consuming’ or devouring of fiction. The chapter begins by reviewing the buying and borrowing of two men with a strong interest in print, John Latimer of Warwick and Henry Bagshaw Harrison of Daventry. Figures for adult buying and borrowing of fiction taken from the Clay and Stevens records are summarized and tabulated, and this evidence of adult men's and women's consumption is placed in the context of their other purchases. Men are so numerous, however, that the chapter focuses upon a subgroup — men who subscribed to the Monthly and Critical Reviews — because their subscriptions allow the study of the possible effect of reviewing on purchases of new fiction and other works. The far fewer women customers for fiction is considered in detail, offering case studies of purchases and borrowings of women who were members of the gentry and the professional, trading, and servant classes. The chapter speculates first on why the novel was in 18th-century England so closely identified with women even though no empirical evidence seems to support this identification; and second on what men might gain by being culturally invisible as readers of fictions.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter deals with the phenomenon of sensation fiction in the 1860s: fiction which deliberately catered to compulsive forms of consumption, ...
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This chapter deals with the phenomenon of sensation fiction in the 1860s: fiction which deliberately catered to compulsive forms of consumption, and which the reviewers presented as being devoured by women. The sensation fiction’s frames of reference are drawn from familiar supppositions about woman’s affective susceptibility. Above all, the presence of sexual desire and sexual energy within the fictions was singled out. This disruptive potential was greeted with particular anxiety when it was located in novels written by women, notably Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, and Mrs Henry Wood. Inevitably, it also reflected on the perceived status of those women readers who borrowed and devoured these fictions so hungrily. The novels of Braddon and Broughton in particular are studded with quotations from writers ranging such as William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Milton. In sensation fiction, sensitivity to poetry, and the ability to have an apposite quotation spring to one’s lips, is equated with sensitivity to life in general. In many examples of women’s sensation fiction, external proprieties are maintained, enabling their authors’ indignant self-defence against charges of immorality.Less
This chapter deals with the phenomenon of sensation fiction in the 1860s: fiction which deliberately catered to compulsive forms of consumption, and which the reviewers presented as being devoured by women. The sensation fiction’s frames of reference are drawn from familiar supppositions about woman’s affective susceptibility. Above all, the presence of sexual desire and sexual energy within the fictions was singled out. This disruptive potential was greeted with particular anxiety when it was located in novels written by women, notably Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, and Mrs Henry Wood. Inevitably, it also reflected on the perceived status of those women readers who borrowed and devoured these fictions so hungrily. The novels of Braddon and Broughton in particular are studded with quotations from writers ranging such as William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Milton. In sensation fiction, sensitivity to poetry, and the ability to have an apposite quotation spring to one’s lips, is equated with sensitivity to life in general. In many examples of women’s sensation fiction, external proprieties are maintained, enabling their authors’ indignant self-defence against charges of immorality.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. ...
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This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. One of the paintings, Ralph Hedley’s Seeking Situations (1904), serves to alert one to the proximity of textuality and sexuality in discourses of reading throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period. This book offers suggestions as to why ‘the woman reader’ was an issue addressed with such frequency throughout the period. It treats reading both as a leisure activity and as an essential component of more formal education, whether this education was home based or, increasingly, obtained at school. The study of literature, in particular, became an area for discussion as girls’ education widened in availability and seriousness in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book presents a variety of accounts of reading, providing evidence of the wide-ranging practices of particular girls and women throughout the period; their opportunities for obtaining books and the differing degrees of supervision exercised over their consumption of print.Less
This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. One of the paintings, Ralph Hedley’s Seeking Situations (1904), serves to alert one to the proximity of textuality and sexuality in discourses of reading throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period. This book offers suggestions as to why ‘the woman reader’ was an issue addressed with such frequency throughout the period. It treats reading both as a leisure activity and as an essential component of more formal education, whether this education was home based or, increasingly, obtained at school. The study of literature, in particular, became an area for discussion as girls’ education widened in availability and seriousness in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book presents a variety of accounts of reading, providing evidence of the wide-ranging practices of particular girls and women throughout the period; their opportunities for obtaining books and the differing degrees of supervision exercised over their consumption of print.
Susan Jones
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184485
- eISBN:
- 9780191674273
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184485.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter introduces the novel Chance as the current central focus of this book. Serialised in the New York Herald Sunday Magazine in 1912, and aimed at the women readers of the paper, the novel ...
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This chapter introduces the novel Chance as the current central focus of this book. Serialised in the New York Herald Sunday Magazine in 1912, and aimed at the women readers of the paper, the novel represented a turning point in Conrad's career, his first economically successful venture in reaching a wider audience and addressing the themes of gender and romance that would occupy later fiction. Conrad's creation of a central female protagonist has often been heralded as the moment when his artistic powers began to diminish. The novel has also received negative responses from those critics who see it as an unsuccessful attempt to emulate Henry James. This chapter demonstrates that Chance was a new direction in Conrad's fiction, one in which he engages in a theoretical debate with ‘The Master’ on the relationship of vision and epistemology in the presentation of women in romance.Less
This chapter introduces the novel Chance as the current central focus of this book. Serialised in the New York Herald Sunday Magazine in 1912, and aimed at the women readers of the paper, the novel represented a turning point in Conrad's career, his first economically successful venture in reaching a wider audience and addressing the themes of gender and romance that would occupy later fiction. Conrad's creation of a central female protagonist has often been heralded as the moment when his artistic powers began to diminish. The novel has also received negative responses from those critics who see it as an unsuccessful attempt to emulate Henry James. This chapter demonstrates that Chance was a new direction in Conrad's fiction, one in which he engages in a theoretical debate with ‘The Master’ on the relationship of vision and epistemology in the presentation of women in romance.
Katherine West Scheil
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450426
- eISBN:
- 9780801464225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450426.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This introductory chapter explores the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, by combining work on women's clubs with recent work on the ...
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This introductory chapter explores the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, by combining work on women's clubs with recent work on the role of reading for individual and collective agency. It focuses on the variety of ways Shakespeare was read by American club women in order to suggest some of the repercussions of their literate practices for individual women, for groups, and for their communities in the decades around the fin de siècle. Women readers in large cities and small towns across America helped spread the idea that Shakespeare was for everyone, not just cultural elites in metropolitan areas. The efforts of club women to improve their communities also established Shakespeare as a local foundation of American culture and as a marker for learning, self-improvement, civilization, and entertainment for a broad array of populations.Less
This introductory chapter explores the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, by combining work on women's clubs with recent work on the role of reading for individual and collective agency. It focuses on the variety of ways Shakespeare was read by American club women in order to suggest some of the repercussions of their literate practices for individual women, for groups, and for their communities in the decades around the fin de siècle. Women readers in large cities and small towns across America helped spread the idea that Shakespeare was for everyone, not just cultural elites in metropolitan areas. The efforts of club women to improve their communities also established Shakespeare as a local foundation of American culture and as a marker for learning, self-improvement, civilization, and entertainment for a broad array of populations.
Katherine West Scheil
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450426
- eISBN:
- 9780801464225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450426.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter shows how numerous black club women across the country claimed Shakespeare for their own educational and social agendas. These women saw knowledge of Shakespeare as a way to attain ...
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This chapter shows how numerous black club women across the country claimed Shakespeare for their own educational and social agendas. These women saw knowledge of Shakespeare as a way to attain intellectual development and social progress and frequently included Shakespeare as part of their educational programs, but they usually read Shakespeare in ways very different from those employed by the white women's clubs already discussed. First, few black clubs read only Shakespeare. Rather, the most common practice was to read Shakespeare as part of a wider curriculum that included other classic authors, African American writers, women authors, and usually a substantial component of civic work, more so than for most white women's clubs. In this context, reading Shakespeare was not the only goal for most black women readers, but it was a significant step in their commitment to education as a component of racial progress.Less
This chapter shows how numerous black club women across the country claimed Shakespeare for their own educational and social agendas. These women saw knowledge of Shakespeare as a way to attain intellectual development and social progress and frequently included Shakespeare as part of their educational programs, but they usually read Shakespeare in ways very different from those employed by the white women's clubs already discussed. First, few black clubs read only Shakespeare. Rather, the most common practice was to read Shakespeare as part of a wider curriculum that included other classic authors, African American writers, women authors, and usually a substantial component of civic work, more so than for most white women's clubs. In this context, reading Shakespeare was not the only goal for most black women readers, but it was a significant step in their commitment to education as a component of racial progress.
Natalie Bradbury
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474412537
- eISBN:
- 9781474445054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412537.003.0033
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
WOMAN’S OUTLOOK was first published in 1919 as a magazine for the women of the co-operative movement. Despite extensive scholarship on the Women’s Co-operative Guild (WCG), both within the ...
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WOMAN’S OUTLOOK was first published in 1919 as a magazine for the women of the co-operative movement. Despite extensive scholarship on the Women’s Co-operative Guild (WCG), both within the organisation and in relation to the British women’s movement, this publication has received only limited attention. This chapter examines Woman’s Outlook as part of the interwar co-operative women’s movement, arguing that it functioned at a variety of levels to bring women together into a co-operative community. Woman’s Outlook represented a group of women who were not captured in other publications, and who shared particular concerns as working class women committed to co-operative ideas and trading. While it promoted the co-operative movement more widely, within the movement it served as a means of sharing information with and from its readers on effective home management (thereby responding to women’s immediate lives and needs) and aimed to extend women’s interests beyond the home. In these ways, it proved both educational and aspirational, expanding women’s horizons at a time when opportunities for women were changing, by showing what other women had and could achieve. The most sustained analysis of Woman’s Outlook to date is Rachel Ritchie’s study of Woman’s Outlook and Home and Country, the magazine produced by the Women’s Institute (WI). While Ritchie focuses on the 1950s, the goal here is to revisit Woman’s Outlook and its place in informing and educating a community of co-operative women from its inception in the interwar years.Less
WOMAN’S OUTLOOK was first published in 1919 as a magazine for the women of the co-operative movement. Despite extensive scholarship on the Women’s Co-operative Guild (WCG), both within the organisation and in relation to the British women’s movement, this publication has received only limited attention. This chapter examines Woman’s Outlook as part of the interwar co-operative women’s movement, arguing that it functioned at a variety of levels to bring women together into a co-operative community. Woman’s Outlook represented a group of women who were not captured in other publications, and who shared particular concerns as working class women committed to co-operative ideas and trading. While it promoted the co-operative movement more widely, within the movement it served as a means of sharing information with and from its readers on effective home management (thereby responding to women’s immediate lives and needs) and aimed to extend women’s interests beyond the home. In these ways, it proved both educational and aspirational, expanding women’s horizons at a time when opportunities for women were changing, by showing what other women had and could achieve. The most sustained analysis of Woman’s Outlook to date is Rachel Ritchie’s study of Woman’s Outlook and Home and Country, the magazine produced by the Women’s Institute (WI). While Ritchie focuses on the 1950s, the goal here is to revisit Woman’s Outlook and its place in informing and educating a community of co-operative women from its inception in the interwar years.
Stella Deen
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474412537
- eISBN:
- 9781474445054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412537.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter situates Clemence Dane’s literary criticism for Good Housekeeping within the context of interwar women’s literary journalism and discusses her program for the cultural, social, and civic ...
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This chapter situates Clemence Dane’s literary criticism for Good Housekeeping within the context of interwar women’s literary journalism and discusses her program for the cultural, social, and civic empowerment of women readers. It argues that, as she modelled a holistic reading pleasure that encompassed sensuous and intellectual experience alike, and as she emphasised readers’ responsibility to bring about good books, Dane’s monthly essays both countered cultural images of indiscriminately consuming women readers and provided the structure for ongoing instruction in literary tradition. The chapter demonstrates that Dane’s middlebrow literary criticism engaged in dialogue with and challenged modernist and academic literary criticism, especially through its conception of a literary heritage that both enhanced enjoyment of literature and empowered ordinary readers to evaluate it. Finally, the chapter argues that Dane’s model of pleasurable reading as a gateway to cultural, social, and political benefits helped to shape a progressive modernity for women.Less
This chapter situates Clemence Dane’s literary criticism for Good Housekeeping within the context of interwar women’s literary journalism and discusses her program for the cultural, social, and civic empowerment of women readers. It argues that, as she modelled a holistic reading pleasure that encompassed sensuous and intellectual experience alike, and as she emphasised readers’ responsibility to bring about good books, Dane’s monthly essays both countered cultural images of indiscriminately consuming women readers and provided the structure for ongoing instruction in literary tradition. The chapter demonstrates that Dane’s middlebrow literary criticism engaged in dialogue with and challenged modernist and academic literary criticism, especially through its conception of a literary heritage that both enhanced enjoyment of literature and empowered ordinary readers to evaluate it. Finally, the chapter argues that Dane’s model of pleasurable reading as a gateway to cultural, social, and political benefits helped to shape a progressive modernity for women.
Susan Carlile
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474419659
- eISBN:
- 9781474445061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474419659.003.0024
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Drawing upon her command of Charlotte Lennox’s life and career, Susan Carlile presents the Lady’s Museum (1760–1) as an idealised educational attempt to offers its readers, particularly the women ...
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Drawing upon her command of Charlotte Lennox’s life and career, Susan Carlile presents the Lady’s Museum (1760–1) as an idealised educational attempt to offers its readers, particularly the women among them, a wider view of the world, its inhabitants, and its history. Focusing on the shorter ‘Trifler’ essays that headlined the long, miscellaneous numbers of the Lady’s Museum, Carlile shows how the magazine was seriously interested in encouraging intellectual ambition in women. Women authors and women readers are given particular attention and care throughout the periodical, which subversively, or perhaps ahead of its time, hopes that its educational content will spur readers on to intellectual and authorial action.Less
Drawing upon her command of Charlotte Lennox’s life and career, Susan Carlile presents the Lady’s Museum (1760–1) as an idealised educational attempt to offers its readers, particularly the women among them, a wider view of the world, its inhabitants, and its history. Focusing on the shorter ‘Trifler’ essays that headlined the long, miscellaneous numbers of the Lady’s Museum, Carlile shows how the magazine was seriously interested in encouraging intellectual ambition in women. Women authors and women readers are given particular attention and care throughout the periodical, which subversively, or perhaps ahead of its time, hopes that its educational content will spur readers on to intellectual and authorial action.
Slaney Chadwick Ross
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474419659
- eISBN:
- 9781474445061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474419659.003.0022
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Highlighting the role that surveillance culture and rhetoric plays in early periodical writing, Slaney Chadwick Ross argues that women’s surveillance activities and the contributions of female ...
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Highlighting the role that surveillance culture and rhetoric plays in early periodical writing, Slaney Chadwick Ross argues that women’s surveillance activities and the contributions of female correspondents were a crucial element to the periodical eidolon’s emergent authority. Through the provocative pairing of John Dunton’s Ladies Mercury (1693) with Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s Spectator (1711–12), Ross unspools how conventions of which forms of female representation would come to be championed in periodical culture, arguing in the process that Dunton’s venture was the more radical of the twain. In the Mercury, women are allowed to testify to their own experiences, and they are believed when they do so: this was not at all in keeping with the broader the legal or literary trends that would emerge in the decades that followed.Less
Highlighting the role that surveillance culture and rhetoric plays in early periodical writing, Slaney Chadwick Ross argues that women’s surveillance activities and the contributions of female correspondents were a crucial element to the periodical eidolon’s emergent authority. Through the provocative pairing of John Dunton’s Ladies Mercury (1693) with Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s Spectator (1711–12), Ross unspools how conventions of which forms of female representation would come to be championed in periodical culture, arguing in the process that Dunton’s venture was the more radical of the twain. In the Mercury, women are allowed to testify to their own experiences, and they are believed when they do so: this was not at all in keeping with the broader the legal or literary trends that would emerge in the decades that followed.
Catherine Clay
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474412537
- eISBN:
- 9781474445054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412537.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines the short fiction content of the feminist weekly Time and Tide alongside readers’ letters printed in the periodical’s correspondence columns. A basic unit of magazine production ...
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This chapter examines the short fiction content of the feminist weekly Time and Tide alongside readers’ letters printed in the periodical’s correspondence columns. A basic unit of magazine production the short story is also ‘definitional to modernism’ (Armstrong 2005: 52), and during the interwar period its status as commodity or art became the subject of increasing scrutiny and debate. Drawing on examples from amateur writers and well-known figures such as E. M. Delafield, the chapter explores how Time and Tide negotiated readers’ expectations for short fiction amongst its core target audience of women readers. Building on Fionnuala Dillane’s application of affect theory to periodical studies (2016), the chapter uses her concept of ‘discursive disruption’ to consider moments of conflict between Time and Tide and its readers over the short stories it published as moments of opportunity for the periodical to expand its scope, readership and brow, and renegotiate its position in the literary marketplace.Less
This chapter examines the short fiction content of the feminist weekly Time and Tide alongside readers’ letters printed in the periodical’s correspondence columns. A basic unit of magazine production the short story is also ‘definitional to modernism’ (Armstrong 2005: 52), and during the interwar period its status as commodity or art became the subject of increasing scrutiny and debate. Drawing on examples from amateur writers and well-known figures such as E. M. Delafield, the chapter explores how Time and Tide negotiated readers’ expectations for short fiction amongst its core target audience of women readers. Building on Fionnuala Dillane’s application of affect theory to periodical studies (2016), the chapter uses her concept of ‘discursive disruption’ to consider moments of conflict between Time and Tide and its readers over the short stories it published as moments of opportunity for the periodical to expand its scope, readership and brow, and renegotiate its position in the literary marketplace.
Ji-Eun Lee
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824839260
- eISBN:
- 9780824868178
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824839260.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
In order to better understand the rise of discourse on women vis-à-vis forces of modernity, this chapter discusses gender in the context of pre-twentieth-century reading practices in Korea. The usual ...
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In order to better understand the rise of discourse on women vis-à-vis forces of modernity, this chapter discusses gender in the context of pre-twentieth-century reading practices in Korea. The usual trajectory of scholarship on pre-twentieth-century book culture first associates women with indigenous script (han’gŭl), then links them with the literary genre of the novel, and thus defines women as the main reader group for novels written in han’gŭl. However, low literacy rates and socio-cultural factors pertaining to Chosŏn women challenge more than support this association. In examining how reading materials circulated and re-assessing claims that novels in han’gŭl constituted a women’s genre, this chapter calls for greater nuance in interrogating gender categories as they get deployed in literary scholarship. It sees the juncture of “women”, mun/munhak, and the role of women in Korean literature as a site for re-evaluating the intricate mechanics of gender relations in Korea.Less
In order to better understand the rise of discourse on women vis-à-vis forces of modernity, this chapter discusses gender in the context of pre-twentieth-century reading practices in Korea. The usual trajectory of scholarship on pre-twentieth-century book culture first associates women with indigenous script (han’gŭl), then links them with the literary genre of the novel, and thus defines women as the main reader group for novels written in han’gŭl. However, low literacy rates and socio-cultural factors pertaining to Chosŏn women challenge more than support this association. In examining how reading materials circulated and re-assessing claims that novels in han’gŭl constituted a women’s genre, this chapter calls for greater nuance in interrogating gender categories as they get deployed in literary scholarship. It sees the juncture of “women”, mun/munhak, and the role of women in Korean literature as a site for re-evaluating the intricate mechanics of gender relations in Korea.
Catherine Clay
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474418188
- eISBN:
- 9781474449700
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474418188.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines Time and Tide’s early music, theatre, film and book reviews – a treasure-trove for exploring trends in interwar literature and the arts as well as debates about the nature and ...
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This chapter examines Time and Tide’s early music, theatre, film and book reviews – a treasure-trove for exploring trends in interwar literature and the arts as well as debates about the nature and function of criticism itself. Focusing on the contributions of regular columnists including Christopher St John (née Christabel Marshall) and Sylvia Lynd the chapter discusses Time and Tide’s mediation of culture ranging from the modernist and ‘avant-garde’ to the ‘middlebrow’ and popular and posits that its position is identifiably feminist both in terms of its promotion of women in the cultural sphere and in its responses to developments in criticism in the interwar years. Engaging with such topics as the well-known ‘romanticism versus classicism’ debate and modernism’s ‘problem with pleasure’ (Frost 2013), the chapter demonstrates Time and Tide’s commitment both to educating the woman reader in a higher culture and defending traditional reading pleasures.Less
This chapter examines Time and Tide’s early music, theatre, film and book reviews – a treasure-trove for exploring trends in interwar literature and the arts as well as debates about the nature and function of criticism itself. Focusing on the contributions of regular columnists including Christopher St John (née Christabel Marshall) and Sylvia Lynd the chapter discusses Time and Tide’s mediation of culture ranging from the modernist and ‘avant-garde’ to the ‘middlebrow’ and popular and posits that its position is identifiably feminist both in terms of its promotion of women in the cultural sphere and in its responses to developments in criticism in the interwar years. Engaging with such topics as the well-known ‘romanticism versus classicism’ debate and modernism’s ‘problem with pleasure’ (Frost 2013), the chapter demonstrates Time and Tide’s commitment both to educating the woman reader in a higher culture and defending traditional reading pleasures.
