Shobna Nijhawan
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198074076
- eISBN:
- 9780199080922
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198074076.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
The emergence of periodicals in Hindi for women and girls in early twentieth-century India helped shape the nationalist-feminist thought in the country. Analysing the format and structure of ...
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The emergence of periodicals in Hindi for women and girls in early twentieth-century India helped shape the nationalist-feminist thought in the country. Analysing the format and structure of periodical literature, Shobna Nijhawan shows how it became a medium for elite and middle-class women to think in new idioms and express themselves collectively at a time of social transition and political emancipation. With case studies of women’s periodicals including Stri Darpan, Grihalakshmi, and Arya Mahila, and explorations of girls’ periodicals like Kumari Darpan and Kanya Manoranjan, the study brings to light the nationalist demand for home rule for women. Discussing domesticity, political emancipation, and language politics, the book argues that women’s periodicals instigated change and were not mere witnesses. With a perceptive Introduction setting the context, the work includes thirty-six archival visuals and advice texts, advertisements, book reviews, and multiple narratives specifically meant for women and girls of early twentieth-century north India.Less
The emergence of periodicals in Hindi for women and girls in early twentieth-century India helped shape the nationalist-feminist thought in the country. Analysing the format and structure of periodical literature, Shobna Nijhawan shows how it became a medium for elite and middle-class women to think in new idioms and express themselves collectively at a time of social transition and political emancipation. With case studies of women’s periodicals including Stri Darpan, Grihalakshmi, and Arya Mahila, and explorations of girls’ periodicals like Kumari Darpan and Kanya Manoranjan, the study brings to light the nationalist demand for home rule for women. Discussing domesticity, political emancipation, and language politics, the book argues that women’s periodicals instigated change and were not mere witnesses. With a perceptive Introduction setting the context, the work includes thirty-six archival visuals and advice texts, advertisements, book reviews, and multiple narratives specifically meant for women and girls of early twentieth-century north India.
Leslie C. Orr
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195177060
- eISBN:
- 9780199785438
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195177060.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This chapter explores whether a domestic religious orientation, engaged with the personal and the particular, can be observed in the context of precolonial South India. It focuses on the period ...
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This chapter explores whether a domestic religious orientation, engaged with the personal and the particular, can be observed in the context of precolonial South India. It focuses on the period between the 9th to 13th centuries in the part of India known today as Tamilnadu. The chapter draws on the resources provided by the thousands of inscriptions written in the Tamil language and engraved in stone on the walls of Hindu and Jain temples during this period. These inscriptions record actions, particularly the making of gifts to temples by a wide variety of people. It is argued that although men's and women's activities recorded on temple walls had distinctive colorings, the contexts, roles, and motives for these actions were overlapping and often congruent.Less
This chapter explores whether a domestic religious orientation, engaged with the personal and the particular, can be observed in the context of precolonial South India. It focuses on the period between the 9th to 13th centuries in the part of India known today as Tamilnadu. The chapter draws on the resources provided by the thousands of inscriptions written in the Tamil language and engraved in stone on the walls of Hindu and Jain temples during this period. These inscriptions record actions, particularly the making of gifts to temples by a wide variety of people. It is argued that although men's and women's activities recorded on temple walls had distinctive colorings, the contexts, roles, and motives for these actions were overlapping and often congruent.
June McDaniel
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195177060
- eISBN:
- 9780199785438
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195177060.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This chapter explores the ritual practices of women active in tantric traditions in West Bengal. These female tantrikas tend to reject the traditional domestic values associated with women's ...
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This chapter explores the ritual practices of women active in tantric traditions in West Bengal. These female tantrikas tend to reject the traditional domestic values associated with women's householder rituals, emphasizing instead ritual practices allied more closely with renunciation and its goals. In this context, renunciation is highly valued in women, as it is in men, while sexuality returns a woman to the sphere of traditional domesticity where she takes on the role of supporter and helper of a man rather than the role of individual seeker. Hence, the world of female tantric ritual challenges the connection between domesticity and women's ritual practices predominant in other contexts.Less
This chapter explores the ritual practices of women active in tantric traditions in West Bengal. These female tantrikas tend to reject the traditional domestic values associated with women's householder rituals, emphasizing instead ritual practices allied more closely with renunciation and its goals. In this context, renunciation is highly valued in women, as it is in men, while sexuality returns a woman to the sphere of traditional domesticity where she takes on the role of supporter and helper of a man rather than the role of individual seeker. Hence, the world of female tantric ritual challenges the connection between domesticity and women's ritual practices predominant in other contexts.
Tracy Pintchman
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195177060
- eISBN:
- 9780199785438
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195177060.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of Hindu women's participation in religious practice. Some notes on the scholarly and historical context of the study are presented. This is ...
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This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of Hindu women's participation in religious practice. Some notes on the scholarly and historical context of the study are presented. This is followed by an overview of the chapters in this volume.Less
This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of Hindu women's participation in religious practice. Some notes on the scholarly and historical context of the study are presented. This is followed by an overview of the chapters in this volume.
George Anastaplo
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813125336
- eISBN:
- 9780813135243
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125336.003.0014
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter examines Shakespeare's Hamlet and seeks to understand the Good life. It notes that Prince Hamlet naturally preferred a private life, subordinating himself to the rule of others, and even ...
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This chapter examines Shakespeare's Hamlet and seeks to understand the Good life. It notes that Prince Hamlet naturally preferred a private life, subordinating himself to the rule of others, and even courted Ophelia, which suggests an opening to domesticity on his part. It further seeks to explore the ultimate dependency of Good on understanding. It notes that in order to be able to conclude that the Good is elusive; one must have a reliable sense of what is truly good. It points out that whatever openness Hamlet had had toward domesticity seems to have been seriously disturbed by what happened to what may have been his model of a good marriage. It notes that his mother need not be considered to have been aware of the murder of her first husband, but her hasty remarriage can arouse suspicions that Gertrude and Claudius had had some “understanding” while King Hamlet was still alive.Less
This chapter examines Shakespeare's Hamlet and seeks to understand the Good life. It notes that Prince Hamlet naturally preferred a private life, subordinating himself to the rule of others, and even courted Ophelia, which suggests an opening to domesticity on his part. It further seeks to explore the ultimate dependency of Good on understanding. It notes that in order to be able to conclude that the Good is elusive; one must have a reliable sense of what is truly good. It points out that whatever openness Hamlet had had toward domesticity seems to have been seriously disturbed by what happened to what may have been his model of a good marriage. It notes that his mother need not be considered to have been aware of the murder of her first husband, but her hasty remarriage can arouse suspicions that Gertrude and Claudius had had some “understanding” while King Hamlet was still alive.
Joan C. Williams
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198294962
- eISBN:
- 9780191598708
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198294964.003.0008
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The charge of socialism is a conversation-stopper; republicanism offers a native American alternative. To justify his radical widening of the concept of property, Charles Reich, in “The New ...
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The charge of socialism is a conversation-stopper; republicanism offers a native American alternative. To justify his radical widening of the concept of property, Charles Reich, in “The New Property,” mixed the liberal language of privacy with language from the republican egalitarian strain. The mystique of homeownership carries on republican themes, such as the notion that property offers a stable stake in society, and the notion that owners make good citizens. The grip of domesticity is so profound that the only realistic strategy is to transform it from within, to turn arguments for why women should remain in the home into demands to employers and the government to spread the costs of childrearing instead of privatizing them onto the women and children who represent 77 percent of those in poverty. In a culture with few viable redistributive rhetorics, religion has tremendous potential for building cross-class and cross-race coalitions.Less
The charge of socialism is a conversation-stopper; republicanism offers a native American alternative. To justify his radical widening of the concept of property, Charles Reich, in “The New Property,” mixed the liberal language of privacy with language from the republican egalitarian strain. The mystique of homeownership carries on republican themes, such as the notion that property offers a stable stake in society, and the notion that owners make good citizens. The grip of domesticity is so profound that the only realistic strategy is to transform it from within, to turn arguments for why women should remain in the home into demands to employers and the government to spread the costs of childrearing instead of privatizing them onto the women and children who represent 77 percent of those in poverty. In a culture with few viable redistributive rhetorics, religion has tremendous potential for building cross-class and cross-race coalitions.
Elizabeth E. Prevost
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199570744
- eISBN:
- 9780191722097
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199570744.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter examines the next generation of Anglican women's mission work in Uganda through the growth of the Mothers' Union. Concerns about ‘nominal Christianity’ persisted after the institution of ...
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This chapter examines the next generation of Anglican women's mission work in Uganda through the growth of the Mothers' Union. Concerns about ‘nominal Christianity’ persisted after the institution of the Church of Uganda, and the MU provided a new way to interrogate the relationship between outward, corporate manifestations of Christianity and inner spiritual life. The fluidity of Christian and non‐Christian parameters and the persistence of polygamy made missionary women confront their prior understandings of marriage, domesticity, ‘progress,’ and national identity. British and African women approached motherhood as a shared medium of religious and social authority, and used prayer and revivals to construct a hybrid discourse of evangelicalism that appropriated male clerical functions. The MU's influence in the mission church and its potential to transgress clerical and social boundaries were revealed by the widespread resistance to the organization by African men.Less
This chapter examines the next generation of Anglican women's mission work in Uganda through the growth of the Mothers' Union. Concerns about ‘nominal Christianity’ persisted after the institution of the Church of Uganda, and the MU provided a new way to interrogate the relationship between outward, corporate manifestations of Christianity and inner spiritual life. The fluidity of Christian and non‐Christian parameters and the persistence of polygamy made missionary women confront their prior understandings of marriage, domesticity, ‘progress,’ and national identity. British and African women approached motherhood as a shared medium of religious and social authority, and used prayer and revivals to construct a hybrid discourse of evangelicalism that appropriated male clerical functions. The MU's influence in the mission church and its potential to transgress clerical and social boundaries were revealed by the widespread resistance to the organization by African men.
John Ibson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226656083
- eISBN:
- 9780226656250
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226656250.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
Before the movement commonly described as “gay liberation” was well under way, queer life in the United States is sometimes thought to have been a veritable prison of shame, repression, illegality, ...
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Before the movement commonly described as “gay liberation” was well under way, queer life in the United States is sometimes thought to have been a veritable prison of shame, repression, illegality, and invisibility. Indeed during the 1950s, on the very eve of the “liberation,” the United States experienced an especially harsh, widespread outbreak of homophobia—with countless arrests, lost jobs, even lost lives, in a fierce cultural orgy of mandatory heterosexuality. Focusing on several American males who lived before the “liberation,” in stories of agency as well as agony, of fulfillment and pleasure as well as thwarted desire and self-loathing, Men without Maps freshly explores the actual quality of life for those “of the generation before Stonewall” who yearned for and sometimes experienced sexual involvements with other men. A few of the men studied are moderately well known today, but most are not. The involvements of some with other men were examples of long-lasting gay domesticity, while the encounters that others had were fleeting. Relying mostly on archival material--such as letters, memoirs, and snapshots--previously unused by a scholar, the book first explores those midcentury males, more numerous than usually realized, who lived as part of a male couple; it then examines experiences of solitary queer men who found coupling to be either unappealing or simply unattainable. Men without Maps joins John Ibson’s acclaimed previous books, Picturing Men and The Mourning After, to form a trilogy of studies, from varying angles, of male relationships in modern American society.Less
Before the movement commonly described as “gay liberation” was well under way, queer life in the United States is sometimes thought to have been a veritable prison of shame, repression, illegality, and invisibility. Indeed during the 1950s, on the very eve of the “liberation,” the United States experienced an especially harsh, widespread outbreak of homophobia—with countless arrests, lost jobs, even lost lives, in a fierce cultural orgy of mandatory heterosexuality. Focusing on several American males who lived before the “liberation,” in stories of agency as well as agony, of fulfillment and pleasure as well as thwarted desire and self-loathing, Men without Maps freshly explores the actual quality of life for those “of the generation before Stonewall” who yearned for and sometimes experienced sexual involvements with other men. A few of the men studied are moderately well known today, but most are not. The involvements of some with other men were examples of long-lasting gay domesticity, while the encounters that others had were fleeting. Relying mostly on archival material--such as letters, memoirs, and snapshots--previously unused by a scholar, the book first explores those midcentury males, more numerous than usually realized, who lived as part of a male couple; it then examines experiences of solitary queer men who found coupling to be either unappealing or simply unattainable. Men without Maps joins John Ibson’s acclaimed previous books, Picturing Men and The Mourning After, to form a trilogy of studies, from varying angles, of male relationships in modern American society.
Antoinette Burton
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195144253
- eISBN:
- 9780199871919
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195144253.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This chapter explains how the memories of three 20th century Indian women made use of memories of home served as archival sources for the writing of histories that tried to capture the rifts and ...
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This chapter explains how the memories of three 20th century Indian women made use of memories of home served as archival sources for the writing of histories that tried to capture the rifts and fissures of modernity in late colonial India. It highlights the importance of home as both a material archive for history and a very real political figure in an extended moment of historical crisis. It discusses that the centrality of domestic space to the rhetoric, ideologies, and practices of Indian feminism in all its diversity during this period is striking. It adds that 20th-century feminists reappropriated the discourses of house and home that had been seized by male Indian nationalists since the nineteenth century, linking domesticity expressly to their own reform agendas in ways that both consolidated that traditional idiom and refigured it as a new subject of public political discourse.Less
This chapter explains how the memories of three 20th century Indian women made use of memories of home served as archival sources for the writing of histories that tried to capture the rifts and fissures of modernity in late colonial India. It highlights the importance of home as both a material archive for history and a very real political figure in an extended moment of historical crisis. It discusses that the centrality of domestic space to the rhetoric, ideologies, and practices of Indian feminism in all its diversity during this period is striking. It adds that 20th-century feminists reappropriated the discourses of house and home that had been seized by male Indian nationalists since the nineteenth century, linking domesticity expressly to their own reform agendas in ways that both consolidated that traditional idiom and refigured it as a new subject of public political discourse.
Catherine Richardson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719065446
- eISBN:
- 9781781701164
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719065446.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
In a theatre that self-consciously cultivated its audiences' imagination, how and what did playgoers ‘see’ on the stage? This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process, considering a ...
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In a theatre that self-consciously cultivated its audiences' imagination, how and what did playgoers ‘see’ on the stage? This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process, considering a range of printed and documentary evidence for the way ordinary individuals thought about their houses and households. It then explores how writers of domestic tragedies engaged those attitudes to shape their representations of domesticity. The book therefore offers a way of understanding theatrical representations based around a truly interdisciplinary study of the interaction between literary and historical methods. The opening chapters use household manuals, court depositions, wills and inventories to reconstruct the morality of household space and its affective meanings, and to explore ways of imaging these spaces. Further chapters discuss Arden of Faversham, Two Lamentable Tragedies, A Woman Killed With Kindness and A Yorkshire Tragedy, considering how the dynamics of the early modern house were represented on the stage. They identify a grammar of domestic representation stretching from subtle identifications of location to stage properties and the use of stage space. Investigating the connections between the seen and the unseen, between secret and revelation, between inside and outside, household and community, these plays are shown to offer a uniquely developed domestic mimesis.Less
In a theatre that self-consciously cultivated its audiences' imagination, how and what did playgoers ‘see’ on the stage? This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process, considering a range of printed and documentary evidence for the way ordinary individuals thought about their houses and households. It then explores how writers of domestic tragedies engaged those attitudes to shape their representations of domesticity. The book therefore offers a way of understanding theatrical representations based around a truly interdisciplinary study of the interaction between literary and historical methods. The opening chapters use household manuals, court depositions, wills and inventories to reconstruct the morality of household space and its affective meanings, and to explore ways of imaging these spaces. Further chapters discuss Arden of Faversham, Two Lamentable Tragedies, A Woman Killed With Kindness and A Yorkshire Tragedy, considering how the dynamics of the early modern house were represented on the stage. They identify a grammar of domestic representation stretching from subtle identifications of location to stage properties and the use of stage space. Investigating the connections between the seen and the unseen, between secret and revelation, between inside and outside, household and community, these plays are shown to offer a uniquely developed domestic mimesis.
Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469627410
- eISBN:
- 9781469627434
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469627410.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Nineteenth-century America was rife with Protestant-fueled anti-Catholicism. This book reveals how Protestants nevertheless became surprisingly and deeply fascinated with the Virgin Mary, even as her ...
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Nineteenth-century America was rife with Protestant-fueled anti-Catholicism. This book reveals how Protestants nevertheless became surprisingly and deeply fascinated with the Virgin Mary, even as her role as a devotional figure who united Catholics grew. Documenting the vivid Marian imagery that suffused popular visual and literary culture, the book argues that Mary became a potent, shared exemplar of Christian womanhood around which Christians of all stripes rallied during an era filled with anxiety about the emerging market economy and shifting gender roles. A range of diverse sources, including the writings of Anna Jameson, Anna Dorsey, and Alexander Stewart Walsh and magazines such as The Ladies’ Repository and Harper’s, reveal that Mary was represented as pure and powerful, compassionate and transcendent, maternal and yet remote. Blending romantic views of motherhood and female purity, the virgin mother’s image enamored Protestants as a paragon of the era’s cult of true womanhood, and even many Catholics could imagine the Queen of Heaven as the Queen of Home. Sometimes, Marian imagery unexpectedly seemed to challenge domestic expectations of womanhood. On a broader level, the book contributes to understanding lived religion in America and the ways it borrows across supposedly sharp theological divides.Less
Nineteenth-century America was rife with Protestant-fueled anti-Catholicism. This book reveals how Protestants nevertheless became surprisingly and deeply fascinated with the Virgin Mary, even as her role as a devotional figure who united Catholics grew. Documenting the vivid Marian imagery that suffused popular visual and literary culture, the book argues that Mary became a potent, shared exemplar of Christian womanhood around which Christians of all stripes rallied during an era filled with anxiety about the emerging market economy and shifting gender roles. A range of diverse sources, including the writings of Anna Jameson, Anna Dorsey, and Alexander Stewart Walsh and magazines such as The Ladies’ Repository and Harper’s, reveal that Mary was represented as pure and powerful, compassionate and transcendent, maternal and yet remote. Blending romantic views of motherhood and female purity, the virgin mother’s image enamored Protestants as a paragon of the era’s cult of true womanhood, and even many Catholics could imagine the Queen of Heaven as the Queen of Home. Sometimes, Marian imagery unexpectedly seemed to challenge domestic expectations of womanhood. On a broader level, the book contributes to understanding lived religion in America and the ways it borrows across supposedly sharp theological divides.
Corey Ross
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199278213
- eISBN:
- 9780191707933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278213.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter argues that the potential of the mass media to open a more universal public sphere was by no means linear or straightforward, but was accompanied by a simultaneous process of ...
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This chapter argues that the potential of the mass media to open a more universal public sphere was by no means linear or straightforward, but was accompanied by a simultaneous process of differentiation that reflected the highly variegated market for entertainment and information. Rather, these processes had a wide range of possible social implications, including the potential to unite or to divide audiences, to weaken or reproduce existing social distinctions and, of course, to create new ones. In addition, it shows that different media exerted quite different effects within the rapidly changing public sphere. In sum, the modern media and commercial entertainment, despite their underlying ‘democratic’ logic, were not the culturally ‘standardizing’ and socially ‘levelling’ forces so often conjured by contemporaries and historians alike.Less
This chapter argues that the potential of the mass media to open a more universal public sphere was by no means linear or straightforward, but was accompanied by a simultaneous process of differentiation that reflected the highly variegated market for entertainment and information. Rather, these processes had a wide range of possible social implications, including the potential to unite or to divide audiences, to weaken or reproduce existing social distinctions and, of course, to create new ones. In addition, it shows that different media exerted quite different effects within the rapidly changing public sphere. In sum, the modern media and commercial entertainment, despite their underlying ‘democratic’ logic, were not the culturally ‘standardizing’ and socially ‘levelling’ forces so often conjured by contemporaries and historians alike.
Paul Betts
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199208845
- eISBN:
- 9780191594755
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208845.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History, Economic History
Private life in the German Democratic Republic is often seen as having been virtually non-existent, simply another East German commodity forever in short supply. In part this had to do with the ...
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Private life in the German Democratic Republic is often seen as having been virtually non-existent, simply another East German commodity forever in short supply. In part this had to do with the common perception that private life and state socialism were at odds by definition, to the extent that the private person has no legal identity or political standing outside the socialist community. The East German regime's infamous surveillance techniques, best illustrated in the notorious exploits of the state's sprawling security force – the Stasi—and its reserve army of ‘unofficial collaborators,’ further dramatized the full penetration of the state into the private sphere. This book, however, takes a different perspective. It argues that despite the primacy of public identities, the private sphere assumed central importance in the GDR from the very outset, and was especially pronounced in the regime's former capital city. In a world in which social interaction was heavily monitored, private life functioned for many citizens as a cherished arena of individuality, alternative identity-formation and potential dissent. This book charts the changing meaning of private life across a variety of fields, ranging from law to photography, religion to interior decoration, family living to memoir literature, revealing the myriad ways in which privacy was expressed, staged and defended by citizens living in a communist society.Less
Private life in the German Democratic Republic is often seen as having been virtually non-existent, simply another East German commodity forever in short supply. In part this had to do with the common perception that private life and state socialism were at odds by definition, to the extent that the private person has no legal identity or political standing outside the socialist community. The East German regime's infamous surveillance techniques, best illustrated in the notorious exploits of the state's sprawling security force – the Stasi—and its reserve army of ‘unofficial collaborators,’ further dramatized the full penetration of the state into the private sphere. This book, however, takes a different perspective. It argues that despite the primacy of public identities, the private sphere assumed central importance in the GDR from the very outset, and was especially pronounced in the regime's former capital city. In a world in which social interaction was heavily monitored, private life functioned for many citizens as a cherished arena of individuality, alternative identity-formation and potential dissent. This book charts the changing meaning of private life across a variety of fields, ranging from law to photography, religion to interior decoration, family living to memoir literature, revealing the myriad ways in which privacy was expressed, staged and defended by citizens living in a communist society.
M. Whitney Kelting
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195389647
- eISBN:
- 9780199866434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389647.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
The volume concludes with a return to the discourse of wifehood as celebrated by Jain laywomen through iconic representations of domesticity and pleasure. The majority of Jain wives interviewed and ...
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The volume concludes with a return to the discourse of wifehood as celebrated by Jain laywomen through iconic representations of domesticity and pleasure. The majority of Jain wives interviewed and observed in this study have expressed joy in wifehood. They participate in a variety of Jain rituals, which mark wifehood as a special and honored state within Jain discourse. Wifehood carries with it a set of particular pleasures of sensuality and intimacy, which are understood to be the just rewards of marriage and domesticity.Less
The volume concludes with a return to the discourse of wifehood as celebrated by Jain laywomen through iconic representations of domesticity and pleasure. The majority of Jain wives interviewed and observed in this study have expressed joy in wifehood. They participate in a variety of Jain rituals, which mark wifehood as a special and honored state within Jain discourse. Wifehood carries with it a set of particular pleasures of sensuality and intimacy, which are understood to be the just rewards of marriage and domesticity.
Paul Betts
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199208845
- eISBN:
- 9780191594755
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208845.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History, Economic History
The Introduction locates the argument within the wider secondary source literature, and reconsiders East German social politics and everyday life through an examination of East German norms and ...
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The Introduction locates the argument within the wider secondary source literature, and reconsiders East German social politics and everyday life through an examination of East German norms and experiences of private life. It focuses on the very interplay of private and public in East Germany, charting the ways in which the domestic sphere in particular emerged as a unique site for the expression of personal liberty and alternative non-communist identities. In so doing it shows how the changing understanding of the private sphere serves as an illuminating case study for reinterpreting East German state and society more generally.Less
The Introduction locates the argument within the wider secondary source literature, and reconsiders East German social politics and everyday life through an examination of East German norms and experiences of private life. It focuses on the very interplay of private and public in East Germany, charting the ways in which the domestic sphere in particular emerged as a unique site for the expression of personal liberty and alternative non-communist identities. In so doing it shows how the changing understanding of the private sphere serves as an illuminating case study for reinterpreting East German state and society more generally.
Paul Betts
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199208845
- eISBN:
- 9780191594755
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208845.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Social History, Economic History
The frequency and ease of divorce became one of the distinguishing traits of GDR socialism. However, this chapter is not a macro-level discussion of the frequency and causes of marital breakdown in ...
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The frequency and ease of divorce became one of the distinguishing traits of GDR socialism. However, this chapter is not a macro-level discussion of the frequency and causes of marital breakdown in the GDR. The focus of this chapter is on the public presentation of private domestic problems in court, based on the analysis of some 1500 never before used East Berlin divorce records. The approach parts company from other studies of East German divorce in allowing those involved – judges and spouses—to articulate their views in court. What makes these divorce court records so valuable is the way in which they cast light on the shifting articulation of the ‘private good,’ showing how the moral sphere of the family served as a crucible for the changing understanding of marriage within socialism.Less
The frequency and ease of divorce became one of the distinguishing traits of GDR socialism. However, this chapter is not a macro-level discussion of the frequency and causes of marital breakdown in the GDR. The focus of this chapter is on the public presentation of private domestic problems in court, based on the analysis of some 1500 never before used East Berlin divorce records. The approach parts company from other studies of East German divorce in allowing those involved – judges and spouses—to articulate their views in court. What makes these divorce court records so valuable is the way in which they cast light on the shifting articulation of the ‘private good,’ showing how the moral sphere of the family served as a crucible for the changing understanding of marriage within socialism.
Paul Betts
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199208845
- eISBN:
- 9780191594755
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208845.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Social History, Economic History
This chapter moves the discussion in a new direction, exploring how private life was presented in the visual arts and in particular photography. Whereas private life played little role in East German ...
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This chapter moves the discussion in a new direction, exploring how private life was presented in the visual arts and in particular photography. Whereas private life played little role in East German professional photography in the 1950s and early 1960s, the domestic sphere emerged as a new interest in the 1970s and 1980s. By that time a new generation of East German Fotokünstler saw themselves as maverick chroniclers of ‘real existing socialism,’ recording the private lives of ordinary East German citizens. Given the state's embracing of socialist realism as official ideology from the early 1950s on, as well as the much-touted relaxation of the Honecker Era, photographers began to test the meaning of socialist realism from fresh perspectives. This chapter addresses how and why many of them chose to go indoors in the 1970s and 1980s, identifying the private domestic sphere as the authentic register and last outpost of GDR socialism.Less
This chapter moves the discussion in a new direction, exploring how private life was presented in the visual arts and in particular photography. Whereas private life played little role in East German professional photography in the 1950s and early 1960s, the domestic sphere emerged as a new interest in the 1970s and 1980s. By that time a new generation of East German Fotokünstler saw themselves as maverick chroniclers of ‘real existing socialism,’ recording the private lives of ordinary East German citizens. Given the state's embracing of socialist realism as official ideology from the early 1950s on, as well as the much-touted relaxation of the Honecker Era, photographers began to test the meaning of socialist realism from fresh perspectives. This chapter addresses how and why many of them chose to go indoors in the 1970s and 1980s, identifying the private domestic sphere as the authentic register and last outpost of GDR socialism.
Sean A. Scott
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195395990
- eISBN:
- 9780199866557
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395990.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century, History of Religion
Many women on the home front had to cope with the absence of their men during the war, and personal faith played a prominent role in helping them deal with what sometimes seemed like overwhelming ...
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Many women on the home front had to cope with the absence of their men during the war, and personal faith played a prominent role in helping them deal with what sometimes seemed like overwhelming changes. In letters to soldiers, wives and mothers encouraged their loved ones to abstain from the evils of camp life and preserve a Christian testimony while in the army. Some historians of women have interpreted these moral appeals as evidence of dominant social values, such as female domesticity or the cult of true womanhood, but a careful reading of female correspondence reveals that sincerely held theological beliefs prompted these admonitions.Less
Many women on the home front had to cope with the absence of their men during the war, and personal faith played a prominent role in helping them deal with what sometimes seemed like overwhelming changes. In letters to soldiers, wives and mothers encouraged their loved ones to abstain from the evils of camp life and preserve a Christian testimony while in the army. Some historians of women have interpreted these moral appeals as evidence of dominant social values, such as female domesticity or the cult of true womanhood, but a careful reading of female correspondence reveals that sincerely held theological beliefs prompted these admonitions.
Elizabeth Elkin Grammer
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195139617
- eISBN:
- 9780199834242
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195139615.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Itinerant preachers, the women in this study were literally and figuratively “homeless.” Having abandoned housekeeping to become evangelists, they broke away from the ideology of domesticity and true ...
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Itinerant preachers, the women in this study were literally and figuratively “homeless.” Having abandoned housekeeping to become evangelists, they broke away from the ideology of domesticity and true womanhood that had defined them spatially, socially, and culturally. Of course these “female strangers” knew that she who lost her life—with its familiar patterns and meanings—for the sake of Christ, would find it. Ultimately, and inevitably, however, when they came to write their autobiographies, these female evangelists were lost without some familiar cultural referent that applied specifically to women of nineteenth‐century America. Thus while their unorthodox careers took them far beyond the bounds of home, they found it necessary as writers to make much use of the language of domesticity in their efforts to understand themselves, to justify their lives to an audience that regarded them with suspicion, and to find a “home” in American culture.Less
Itinerant preachers, the women in this study were literally and figuratively “homeless.” Having abandoned housekeeping to become evangelists, they broke away from the ideology of domesticity and true womanhood that had defined them spatially, socially, and culturally. Of course these “female strangers” knew that she who lost her life—with its familiar patterns and meanings—for the sake of Christ, would find it. Ultimately, and inevitably, however, when they came to write their autobiographies, these female evangelists were lost without some familiar cultural referent that applied specifically to women of nineteenth‐century America. Thus while their unorthodox careers took them far beyond the bounds of home, they found it necessary as writers to make much use of the language of domesticity in their efforts to understand themselves, to justify their lives to an audience that regarded them with suspicion, and to find a “home” in American culture.
Joanne Bailey
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199565191
- eISBN:
- 9780191740664
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199565191.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Family History
This chapter assesses the historiography of childhood, family, masculinity, and femininity where it relates to mothers and fathers. It then sets out a new research agenda intended to open up the ...
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This chapter assesses the historiography of childhood, family, masculinity, and femininity where it relates to mothers and fathers. It then sets out a new research agenda intended to open up the world of parents in the long eighteenth century. This takes an updated ‘history of sensibilities’ approach, which recognises that different structures of beliefs, values, feelings, sense and taste mark different eras and peoples. The chapter details the wide array of primary sources used, from print culture, to visual culture to autobiographies and correspondence. It explains that the terms in which literate British parents experienced the world of parenting in the period 1760–1830 were rooted in three cultural frameworks: Christianity, sensibility, and domesticity.Less
This chapter assesses the historiography of childhood, family, masculinity, and femininity where it relates to mothers and fathers. It then sets out a new research agenda intended to open up the world of parents in the long eighteenth century. This takes an updated ‘history of sensibilities’ approach, which recognises that different structures of beliefs, values, feelings, sense and taste mark different eras and peoples. The chapter details the wide array of primary sources used, from print culture, to visual culture to autobiographies and correspondence. It explains that the terms in which literate British parents experienced the world of parenting in the period 1760–1830 were rooted in three cultural frameworks: Christianity, sensibility, and domesticity.
