Saskia Lettmaier
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199569977
- eISBN:
- 9780191722066
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199569977.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
While common law actions for breach of promise of marriage originated in the mid-seventeenth century, it was not until the ‘long nineteenth century’ that they saw their rise to prominence and their ...
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While common law actions for breach of promise of marriage originated in the mid-seventeenth century, it was not until the ‘long nineteenth century’ that they saw their rise to prominence and their subsequent fall from favour. This monograph ties the story of the action's rise and fall between 1800 and 1940 to changes in the prevalent conception of woman, her ideal role in society, sexual relations, and the family, arguing that the idiosyncratic nineteenth-century breach-of-promise suit (a luxuriant blend of both contract and tort) and Victorian notions of ideal femininity were uneasily and fatally, but nonetheless inextricably, entwined. It classifies the ninteenth-century breach-of-promise action as a ‘codification’ of the contemporaneous ideal of true womanhood and explores the longer-term implications of this infusion of mythologized femininity for the law, in particular for the position of plaintiffs. Surveying three consecutive time periods – the early nineteenth century, the high Victorian, and the post-Victorian periods – and adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines the perspectives of legal history, social history, and literary analysis, it argues that the feminizing process, by shaping a cause of action in accordance with an ideal at odds with the very notion of women going to law, imported a fatal structural inconsistency that at first remained obscured, but ultimately vulgarized and undid the cause of action. Alongside more than two hundred and fifty real-life breach-of-promise cases, the book examines literary and cinematic renditions of the breach-of-promise theme, by artists ranging from Charles Dickens to P. G. Wodehouse, in order to expose the subtle yet unmistakable ways in which what happened (and what changed) in the breach-of-promise courtroom influenced the changing representation of the breach-of-promise plaintiff in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature and film.Less
While common law actions for breach of promise of marriage originated in the mid-seventeenth century, it was not until the ‘long nineteenth century’ that they saw their rise to prominence and their subsequent fall from favour. This monograph ties the story of the action's rise and fall between 1800 and 1940 to changes in the prevalent conception of woman, her ideal role in society, sexual relations, and the family, arguing that the idiosyncratic nineteenth-century breach-of-promise suit (a luxuriant blend of both contract and tort) and Victorian notions of ideal femininity were uneasily and fatally, but nonetheless inextricably, entwined. It classifies the ninteenth-century breach-of-promise action as a ‘codification’ of the contemporaneous ideal of true womanhood and explores the longer-term implications of this infusion of mythologized femininity for the law, in particular for the position of plaintiffs. Surveying three consecutive time periods – the early nineteenth century, the high Victorian, and the post-Victorian periods – and adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines the perspectives of legal history, social history, and literary analysis, it argues that the feminizing process, by shaping a cause of action in accordance with an ideal at odds with the very notion of women going to law, imported a fatal structural inconsistency that at first remained obscured, but ultimately vulgarized and undid the cause of action. Alongside more than two hundred and fifty real-life breach-of-promise cases, the book examines literary and cinematic renditions of the breach-of-promise theme, by artists ranging from Charles Dickens to P. G. Wodehouse, in order to expose the subtle yet unmistakable ways in which what happened (and what changed) in the breach-of-promise courtroom influenced the changing representation of the breach-of-promise plaintiff in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature and film.
Efrossini Spentzou
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199255689
- eISBN:
- 9780191719608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199255689.003.0008
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter presents a synthesis of the preceding chapters. It followed the heroines in their twin roles as lovers and writers, pursuing their darlings and their text. It showed their femininity ...
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This chapter presents a synthesis of the preceding chapters. It followed the heroines in their twin roles as lovers and writers, pursuing their darlings and their text. It showed their femininity slipping through their closed stasis and tearing the masculine fabric of Ovid's text, advertising a feminine rhetoric. However, their nuances gained substance only through a sympathetic reading, and this book's author's sensitivity to their efforts due to her explicit situation as a female reader. This book has worked on the feminine reading and writing of the Heroides with the aid of contemporary feminist thought.Less
This chapter presents a synthesis of the preceding chapters. It followed the heroines in their twin roles as lovers and writers, pursuing their darlings and their text. It showed their femininity slipping through their closed stasis and tearing the masculine fabric of Ovid's text, advertising a feminine rhetoric. However, their nuances gained substance only through a sympathetic reading, and this book's author's sensitivity to their efforts due to her explicit situation as a female reader. This book has worked on the feminine reading and writing of the Heroides with the aid of contemporary feminist thought.
Olivia Khoo
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622098794
- eISBN:
- 9789882207516
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622098794.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book examines new representations of diasporic Chinese femininity emerging from Asia Pacific modernities since the late twentieth century. Through an analysis of cultural artefacts such as ...
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This book examines new representations of diasporic Chinese femininity emerging from Asia Pacific modernities since the late twentieth century. Through an analysis of cultural artefacts such as films, popular fiction, food, and fashion cultures, the book challenges the dominant tendency in contemporary cultural politics to define Chinese femininity from a mainland perspective that furthermore equates it with notions of primitivism. Rather, it argues for a radical reconfiguration of the concept of exoticism as a frame for understanding these new representations. The study raises questions on the relationship between the Chinese diasporas and gender, and provides a critical intervention into the current visualizations of diasporic Chinese femininity. It contends that an analysis of such images can inform the reconfigured relations between China, the Chinese diasporas, Asia, and the West in the context of contemporary globalization, and in turn takes these new intersections to account for the complex nature of modern definitions of diasporic Chinese femininity.Less
This book examines new representations of diasporic Chinese femininity emerging from Asia Pacific modernities since the late twentieth century. Through an analysis of cultural artefacts such as films, popular fiction, food, and fashion cultures, the book challenges the dominant tendency in contemporary cultural politics to define Chinese femininity from a mainland perspective that furthermore equates it with notions of primitivism. Rather, it argues for a radical reconfiguration of the concept of exoticism as a frame for understanding these new representations. The study raises questions on the relationship between the Chinese diasporas and gender, and provides a critical intervention into the current visualizations of diasporic Chinese femininity. It contends that an analysis of such images can inform the reconfigured relations between China, the Chinese diasporas, Asia, and the West in the context of contemporary globalization, and in turn takes these new intersections to account for the complex nature of modern definitions of diasporic Chinese femininity.
Iris Marion Young
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195161922
- eISBN:
- 9780199786664
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195161920.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This essay contends that one of the privileges of femininity in rationalized instrumental culture is an aesthetic freedom — the freedom to play with shape and color on the body, don various styles ...
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This essay contends that one of the privileges of femininity in rationalized instrumental culture is an aesthetic freedom — the freedom to play with shape and color on the body, don various styles and looks — and through them exhibit and imagine unreal possibilities. Such female imagination has liberating possibilities because it subverts and unsettles the order of respectable, functional rationality in a world where that rationality supports domination. In the context of patriarchal consumer capitalism, however, such liberating aspects of clothing fantasy are intertwined with oppressing moments. This essay asks how women’s pleasure in clothes can be described. It adopts a method derived from Luce Irigaray in an attempt to extricate the liberating and valuable in women’s experience of clothes from the exploitative and oppressive.Less
This essay contends that one of the privileges of femininity in rationalized instrumental culture is an aesthetic freedom — the freedom to play with shape and color on the body, don various styles and looks — and through them exhibit and imagine unreal possibilities. Such female imagination has liberating possibilities because it subverts and unsettles the order of respectable, functional rationality in a world where that rationality supports domination. In the context of patriarchal consumer capitalism, however, such liberating aspects of clothing fantasy are intertwined with oppressing moments. This essay asks how women’s pleasure in clothes can be described. It adopts a method derived from Luce Irigaray in an attempt to extricate the liberating and valuable in women’s experience of clothes from the exploitative and oppressive.
SARAH BILSTON
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199272617
- eISBN:
- 9780191709685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272617.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book has presented a historical account of the role of the transitional girl in later 19th-century literature. Focusing on the position of the girl in women's writing, it has argued that ...
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This book has presented a historical account of the role of the transitional girl in later 19th-century literature. Focusing on the position of the girl in women's writing, it has argued that fictional treatments of girls' growth helped clear a literary and cultural space for representations of the New Woman's awakening to disaffected consciousness. The book's primary objective has been to treat Victorian women's writing with respect — to consider the novels of once-popular writers worthy of sustained literary criticism. The texts have yielded complex yet intelligible narratives about the operations of gender in 19th-century England. This book has revealed that, as a matter of historical fact, the construction of femininity and the concept of separate spheres were open to interpretation in even some of the most conservative women's literature. This book serves as a reminder that the New Women were not fighting alone and that theirs was not the only mode of progress.Less
This book has presented a historical account of the role of the transitional girl in later 19th-century literature. Focusing on the position of the girl in women's writing, it has argued that fictional treatments of girls' growth helped clear a literary and cultural space for representations of the New Woman's awakening to disaffected consciousness. The book's primary objective has been to treat Victorian women's writing with respect — to consider the novels of once-popular writers worthy of sustained literary criticism. The texts have yielded complex yet intelligible narratives about the operations of gender in 19th-century England. This book has revealed that, as a matter of historical fact, the construction of femininity and the concept of separate spheres were open to interpretation in even some of the most conservative women's literature. This book serves as a reminder that the New Women were not fighting alone and that theirs was not the only mode of progress.
Ross Shepard Kraemer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199743186
- eISBN:
- 9780199894680
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199743186.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World
In Unreliable Witnesses, Ross Shepard Kraemer shows how her mind has changed or remained the same since the publication of her groundbreaking study, Her Share of the Blessings (1992). Unreliable ...
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In Unreliable Witnesses, Ross Shepard Kraemer shows how her mind has changed or remained the same since the publication of her groundbreaking study, Her Share of the Blessings (1992). Unreliable Witnesses scrutinizes more closely how ancient constructions of gender undergird accounts of women’s religious practices in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. Kraemer analyzes how gender provides the historically obfuscating substructure of diverse texts: Livy’s account of the origins of the Roman Bacchanalia; Philo of Alexandria’s envisioning of idealized, masculinized women philosophers; rabbinic debates about women studying Torah; Justin Martyr’s depiction of an elite Roman matron who adopts chaste Christian philosophical discipline; the similar representation of Paul’s fictive disciple, Thecla, in the anonymous Acts of (Paul and) Thecla; Severus of Minorca’s depiction of Jewish women as the last hold-outs against Christian pressures to convert, and more. While attentive to arguments that women are largely fictive proxies in elite male contestations over masculinity, authority, and power, Kraemer retains her focus on redescribing and explaining women’s religious practices. She argues that gender-specific or not, religious practices in the ancient Mediterranean routinely encoded and affirmed ideas about gender. As in many cultures, women’s devotion to the divine was both acceptable and encouraged only so long as it conformed to pervasive constructions of femininity as passive, embodied, emotive, insufficiently controlled, and subordinated to masculinity. Extending her findings beyond the ancient Mediterranean, Kraemer proposes that more generally, religion is among the many human social practices that are both gendered and gendering, constructing and inscribing gender on human beings and on human actions and ideas. Her study thus poses significant questions about the relationships between religions and gender in the modern world.Less
In Unreliable Witnesses, Ross Shepard Kraemer shows how her mind has changed or remained the same since the publication of her groundbreaking study, Her Share of the Blessings (1992). Unreliable Witnesses scrutinizes more closely how ancient constructions of gender undergird accounts of women’s religious practices in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. Kraemer analyzes how gender provides the historically obfuscating substructure of diverse texts: Livy’s account of the origins of the Roman Bacchanalia; Philo of Alexandria’s envisioning of idealized, masculinized women philosophers; rabbinic debates about women studying Torah; Justin Martyr’s depiction of an elite Roman matron who adopts chaste Christian philosophical discipline; the similar representation of Paul’s fictive disciple, Thecla, in the anonymous Acts of (Paul and) Thecla; Severus of Minorca’s depiction of Jewish women as the last hold-outs against Christian pressures to convert, and more. While attentive to arguments that women are largely fictive proxies in elite male contestations over masculinity, authority, and power, Kraemer retains her focus on redescribing and explaining women’s religious practices. She argues that gender-specific or not, religious practices in the ancient Mediterranean routinely encoded and affirmed ideas about gender. As in many cultures, women’s devotion to the divine was both acceptable and encouraged only so long as it conformed to pervasive constructions of femininity as passive, embodied, emotive, insufficiently controlled, and subordinated to masculinity. Extending her findings beyond the ancient Mediterranean, Kraemer proposes that more generally, religion is among the many human social practices that are both gendered and gendering, constructing and inscribing gender on human beings and on human actions and ideas. Her study thus poses significant questions about the relationships between religions and gender in the modern world.
Arieh Bruce Saposnik
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195331219
- eISBN:
- 9780199868100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331219.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter begins with the centrality of the Hebrew language in the creation of the Yishuv's culture. Aside from the goal of establishing linguistic unity in a multilingual reality, the language ...
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This chapter begins with the centrality of the Hebrew language in the creation of the Yishuv's culture. Aside from the goal of establishing linguistic unity in a multilingual reality, the language was also deemed critical in molding the character of Palestine's “Hebrews”—the men and women who were to constitute the new nation. Accent and mannerism were considered reflections of central elements of the new culture, shaping new masculinities and femininities and placing the Hebrews in their new “Oriental” environment. Educational institutions, new popular songs, journalism, fashion, theater, and more were all enlisted in the effort to fashion a new Hebrew‐speaking person in a national Hebrew public sphere. Rooted in part in Jewish mystical tradition in which Hebrew was deemed a cosmically creative force, the Hebrew language emerges as a leading tool in the formation of the nation.Less
This chapter begins with the centrality of the Hebrew language in the creation of the Yishuv's culture. Aside from the goal of establishing linguistic unity in a multilingual reality, the language was also deemed critical in molding the character of Palestine's “Hebrews”—the men and women who were to constitute the new nation. Accent and mannerism were considered reflections of central elements of the new culture, shaping new masculinities and femininities and placing the Hebrews in their new “Oriental” environment. Educational institutions, new popular songs, journalism, fashion, theater, and more were all enlisted in the effort to fashion a new Hebrew‐speaking person in a national Hebrew public sphere. Rooted in part in Jewish mystical tradition in which Hebrew was deemed a cosmically creative force, the Hebrew language emerges as a leading tool in the formation of the nation.
Lisa Odham Stokes
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099708
- eISBN:
- 9789882207257
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099708.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This raucous, gender-stretching comedy follows the disruptions of a glamorous Hong Kong music couple's tumultuous romance by an “ordinary” fan's noisy arrival in their lives. With great comic story ...
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This raucous, gender-stretching comedy follows the disruptions of a glamorous Hong Kong music couple's tumultuous romance by an “ordinary” fan's noisy arrival in their lives. With great comic story development, the film confronts social stereotypes of masculine females, male anxieties about homosexuality, and the limits of male femininity.Less
This raucous, gender-stretching comedy follows the disruptions of a glamorous Hong Kong music couple's tumultuous romance by an “ordinary” fan's noisy arrival in their lives. With great comic story development, the film confronts social stereotypes of masculine females, male anxieties about homosexuality, and the limits of male femininity.
Cecilia Tossounian
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781683401162
- eISBN:
- 9781683401421
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9781683401162.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This book reconstructs different images of modern femininities and their evolution during the 1920s and 1930s, showing that women were at the center of a public debate about modernity and its ...
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This book reconstructs different images of modern femininities and their evolution during the 1920s and 1930s, showing that women were at the center of a public debate about modernity and its consequences on the emergence of an Argentine national identity.
With a focus on competing media representations of womanhood, mainly proposed by male contemporaries, but also with attention to young women’s descriptions of their experiences, the book explores different images of modern femininities and what they reveal about how Argentines imagined themselves and their country during decades of cultural and social renewal. Based on an analysis of a wide range of consumer culture sources—including women’s and general interest magazines and daily newspapers, pulp fiction, advertising, popular music, and films—this book shows that the multifaceted figure of the modern girl embodied the hopes, tensions and anxieties associated with sociocultural transformations, while becoming the bearer of diverse assessments about the Argentine nation. While the young modern woman was sometimes invoked to symbolize fears of the country’s moral decadence and cultural loss, at other times she stood for an “advanced” nation in the media, and her image was a demonstration of national progress and civilization. By reconstructing the emergence and evolution of new female images and their connection to the conformation of different versions of Argentina’s national identity, this book not only unveils the dynamics of sociocultural change but also explores its gendered and nationalistic dimension.Less
This book reconstructs different images of modern femininities and their evolution during the 1920s and 1930s, showing that women were at the center of a public debate about modernity and its consequences on the emergence of an Argentine national identity.
With a focus on competing media representations of womanhood, mainly proposed by male contemporaries, but also with attention to young women’s descriptions of their experiences, the book explores different images of modern femininities and what they reveal about how Argentines imagined themselves and their country during decades of cultural and social renewal. Based on an analysis of a wide range of consumer culture sources—including women’s and general interest magazines and daily newspapers, pulp fiction, advertising, popular music, and films—this book shows that the multifaceted figure of the modern girl embodied the hopes, tensions and anxieties associated with sociocultural transformations, while becoming the bearer of diverse assessments about the Argentine nation. While the young modern woman was sometimes invoked to symbolize fears of the country’s moral decadence and cultural loss, at other times she stood for an “advanced” nation in the media, and her image was a demonstration of national progress and civilization. By reconstructing the emergence and evolution of new female images and their connection to the conformation of different versions of Argentina’s national identity, this book not only unveils the dynamics of sociocultural change but also explores its gendered and nationalistic dimension.
Georgia Cervin
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780252043772
- eISBN:
- 9780252052675
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043772.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sport and Leisure
This book chronicles the history of Women’s Artistic Gymnastics against the backdrop of the Cold War. Accepted into the Olympic program in 1952 because it was considered uniquely appropriate for ...
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This book chronicles the history of Women’s Artistic Gymnastics against the backdrop of the Cold War. Accepted into the Olympic program in 1952 because it was considered uniquely appropriate for women, the sport has always been defined by the performance of femininity. Eastern bloc governments harnessed the nonthreatening nature of gymnasts to advance their political ambitions through citizen diplomacy. Yet at the same time, they were accused of flouting the amateur rule. But this was not the only rule being broken. Some also cheated by score fixing and later, age falsification. The sport became notorious for its young athletes. Their youth contributed to a power imbalance with their coaches, creating the conditions for abuse. Gymnastics was once at the forefront of women’s sport. But can a sport facing these issues, designed to promote a narrow view of gender, really be feminist? In exploring these topics, this book shows how gymnastics became a part of the cultural battlefield for Cold War supremacy. But gymnastics was not only a space for challenge. It also provided moments of international collaboration: between the international gymnastics federation and the International Olympic Committee, between gymnasts, coaches, officials, fans, and even politicians. This book argues that these global interactions charged the transformation of the sport throughout the twentieth century. It offers new insights into how sport transmits and perpetuates social ideals and the role sports, and their governing bodies, play in international relations. And with this knowledge, it suggests how women’s gymnastics might once again become the empowering, feminist experience it once was.Less
This book chronicles the history of Women’s Artistic Gymnastics against the backdrop of the Cold War. Accepted into the Olympic program in 1952 because it was considered uniquely appropriate for women, the sport has always been defined by the performance of femininity. Eastern bloc governments harnessed the nonthreatening nature of gymnasts to advance their political ambitions through citizen diplomacy. Yet at the same time, they were accused of flouting the amateur rule. But this was not the only rule being broken. Some also cheated by score fixing and later, age falsification. The sport became notorious for its young athletes. Their youth contributed to a power imbalance with their coaches, creating the conditions for abuse. Gymnastics was once at the forefront of women’s sport. But can a sport facing these issues, designed to promote a narrow view of gender, really be feminist? In exploring these topics, this book shows how gymnastics became a part of the cultural battlefield for Cold War supremacy. But gymnastics was not only a space for challenge. It also provided moments of international collaboration: between the international gymnastics federation and the International Olympic Committee, between gymnasts, coaches, officials, fans, and even politicians. This book argues that these global interactions charged the transformation of the sport throughout the twentieth century. It offers new insights into how sport transmits and perpetuates social ideals and the role sports, and their governing bodies, play in international relations. And with this knowledge, it suggests how women’s gymnastics might once again become the empowering, feminist experience it once was.
Derek B. Scott
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195151961
- eISBN:
- 9780199870394
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151961.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
A sexual division of musical composition emerged in 19th-century Britain: during that period, metaphors of masculinity and femininity solidified into truths about musical style. Contemporary social ...
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A sexual division of musical composition emerged in 19th-century Britain: during that period, metaphors of masculinity and femininity solidified into truths about musical style. Contemporary social theory, domestic sphere ideology, the new scientia sexualis, and aesthetics of the sublime and the beautiful ensured that certain musical styles were considered unsuitable or even unnatural for women composers. Female creativity was also denied or inhibited by educational and socioeconomic pressures born of ideological assumptions. In consequence, many women found themselves marginalized as composers, restricted to “acceptable” genres such as the drawing-room ballad. Men, too, were affected by the sexual politics of the age, because the supposed revelation of biological truths in music meant that the presence of feminine qualities in their compositions could lead to invidious comparison with the less elevated output of women.Less
A sexual division of musical composition emerged in 19th-century Britain: during that period, metaphors of masculinity and femininity solidified into truths about musical style. Contemporary social theory, domestic sphere ideology, the new scientia sexualis, and aesthetics of the sublime and the beautiful ensured that certain musical styles were considered unsuitable or even unnatural for women composers. Female creativity was also denied or inhibited by educational and socioeconomic pressures born of ideological assumptions. In consequence, many women found themselves marginalized as composers, restricted to “acceptable” genres such as the drawing-room ballad. Men, too, were affected by the sexual politics of the age, because the supposed revelation of biological truths in music meant that the presence of feminine qualities in their compositions could lead to invidious comparison with the less elevated output of women.
Roop Rekha Verma
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198289647
- eISBN:
- 9780191596698
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198289642.003.0020
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
Verma argues that the Hindu traditions of India have been hostile to women's demands for equality and that a critical position should be sought from the Western Enlightenment and its ideas of rights ...
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Verma argues that the Hindu traditions of India have been hostile to women's demands for equality and that a critical position should be sought from the Western Enlightenment and its ideas of rights and personhood, rather than from within those traditions. Verma further posits that since such traditions reduce men's personhood as well as women's, the feminist struggle ought to be viewed as a struggle for humanity in general. Verma thus presents an androgynous concept of personhood and favours retaining equality on the feminist agenda.Less
Verma argues that the Hindu traditions of India have been hostile to women's demands for equality and that a critical position should be sought from the Western Enlightenment and its ideas of rights and personhood, rather than from within those traditions. Verma further posits that since such traditions reduce men's personhood as well as women's, the feminist struggle ought to be viewed as a struggle for humanity in general. Verma thus presents an androgynous concept of personhood and favours retaining equality on the feminist agenda.
Kaye Mitchell
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474461849
- eISBN:
- 9781474481250
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474461849.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Writing Shame examines the intersection of shame, gender and writing in contemporary literature. Through readings of an array of recent texts – literary and popular, fictional and autofictional, ...
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Writing Shame examines the intersection of shame, gender and writing in contemporary literature. Through readings of an array of recent texts – literary and popular, fictional and autofictional, realist and experimental – the book maps out a contemporary, Western, shame culture. Shame is presented here as an emotion of self-assessment, a peculiarly social experience, and a culturally pervasive affect with particular pertinence for understanding contemporary constructions of gendered subjectivity, expressions and experiences of sexual desire, the complexities of embodiment, and social processes of othering.
The book, then, unpicks the complex triangulation of shame, gender and writing, and intervenes forcefully in feminist and queer debates of the last three decades. Starting from the premise that shame cannot be overcome or abandoned, and arguing that femininity and shame are utterly and necessarily imbricated, Writing Shame examines writing that explores and inhabits this state of shame, considering the dissonant effects of such explorations on and beyond the page.Less
Writing Shame examines the intersection of shame, gender and writing in contemporary literature. Through readings of an array of recent texts – literary and popular, fictional and autofictional, realist and experimental – the book maps out a contemporary, Western, shame culture. Shame is presented here as an emotion of self-assessment, a peculiarly social experience, and a culturally pervasive affect with particular pertinence for understanding contemporary constructions of gendered subjectivity, expressions and experiences of sexual desire, the complexities of embodiment, and social processes of othering.
The book, then, unpicks the complex triangulation of shame, gender and writing, and intervenes forcefully in feminist and queer debates of the last three decades. Starting from the premise that shame cannot be overcome or abandoned, and arguing that femininity and shame are utterly and necessarily imbricated, Writing Shame examines writing that explores and inhabits this state of shame, considering the dissonant effects of such explorations on and beyond the page.
Steven Huebner
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195189544
- eISBN:
- 9780199868476
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189544.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter focuses on criticisms against Massenet's appeal to women. The reception of Massenet was strongly gendered from Manon on, and critics portrayed audiences as a reflection of the music ...
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This chapter focuses on criticisms against Massenet's appeal to women. The reception of Massenet was strongly gendered from Manon on, and critics portrayed audiences as a reflection of the music itself, and vice versa. This typecasting as a specialist in feminine behaviour, with corresponding applications to musical style, has meant that Massenet always faced an uphill battle with critics when it came to larger heroic subjects such as Le Cid, or male characters such as Werther and Don Quichotte. It was in the Wagnerian camp of critics — the Fourcauds, the Ernsts, the Servières — that the invective against Massenet became most virulent: his supposed insincerity, desire for flattery, superficiality, all tainted more or less (depending on the writer and the circumstance) with the brush of femininity.Less
This chapter focuses on criticisms against Massenet's appeal to women. The reception of Massenet was strongly gendered from Manon on, and critics portrayed audiences as a reflection of the music itself, and vice versa. This typecasting as a specialist in feminine behaviour, with corresponding applications to musical style, has meant that Massenet always faced an uphill battle with critics when it came to larger heroic subjects such as Le Cid, or male characters such as Werther and Don Quichotte. It was in the Wagnerian camp of critics — the Fourcauds, the Ernsts, the Servières — that the invective against Massenet became most virulent: his supposed insincerity, desire for flattery, superficiality, all tainted more or less (depending on the writer and the circumstance) with the brush of femininity.
Karen W. Tice
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199842780
- eISBN:
- 9780199933440
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199842780.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
Universities are unlikely venues for grading, branding, and marketing gendered beauty, bodies, poise, and style. Nonetheless, thousands of college women have sought not only college diplomas but ...
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Universities are unlikely venues for grading, branding, and marketing gendered beauty, bodies, poise, and style. Nonetheless, thousands of college women have sought not only college diplomas but campus beauty titles and tiaras throughout the twentieth century. The cultural power of beauty pageants continues into the 21st century as campus beauty pageants, especially racial/ethnic pageants and pageants for men, have soared in popularity. Tice asks how, and why, does higher education remain in the beauty and body business and with what effects on student bodies and identities. She explores why students compete in and attend pageants as well as why campus-based etiquette and charm schools are flourishing. Based on archival research and interviews with contemporary campus queens and university sponsors as well as hundreds of hours observing college pageants on predominantly black and white campuses, Tice examines how campus pageant contestants express personal ambitions, desires, and, sometimes, racial/political agendas to resolve the incongruities of performing in evening gowns and bathing suits on stage while seeking their degrees. Tice argues the pageants help to illuminate the shifting iterations of class, race, religion, region, culture, sexuality, and gender braided in campus rituals and student life. Moving beyond a binary of objectification versus empowerment, Tice offers a nuanced analysis of the contradictory politics of higher education, feminism and post-feminism, empowerment, consumerism, race and ethnicity, class mobility, and popular culture on student bodies and cultures, the making of idealized collegiate masculinities and femininities, and the stylization of higher education itself.Less
Universities are unlikely venues for grading, branding, and marketing gendered beauty, bodies, poise, and style. Nonetheless, thousands of college women have sought not only college diplomas but campus beauty titles and tiaras throughout the twentieth century. The cultural power of beauty pageants continues into the 21st century as campus beauty pageants, especially racial/ethnic pageants and pageants for men, have soared in popularity. Tice asks how, and why, does higher education remain in the beauty and body business and with what effects on student bodies and identities. She explores why students compete in and attend pageants as well as why campus-based etiquette and charm schools are flourishing. Based on archival research and interviews with contemporary campus queens and university sponsors as well as hundreds of hours observing college pageants on predominantly black and white campuses, Tice examines how campus pageant contestants express personal ambitions, desires, and, sometimes, racial/political agendas to resolve the incongruities of performing in evening gowns and bathing suits on stage while seeking their degrees. Tice argues the pageants help to illuminate the shifting iterations of class, race, religion, region, culture, sexuality, and gender braided in campus rituals and student life. Moving beyond a binary of objectification versus empowerment, Tice offers a nuanced analysis of the contradictory politics of higher education, feminism and post-feminism, empowerment, consumerism, race and ethnicity, class mobility, and popular culture on student bodies and cultures, the making of idealized collegiate masculinities and femininities, and the stylization of higher education itself.
Martina Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199559213
- eISBN:
- 9780191594403
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559213.003.0016
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Feminist responses to Antigone's choice to rebel against masculine authority have largely refocused the text as a discourse of gender difference in order to expose patriarchy's victimization of ...
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Feminist responses to Antigone's choice to rebel against masculine authority have largely refocused the text as a discourse of gender difference in order to expose patriarchy's victimization of women. This chapter, while acknowledging feminine defiance as a crucial aspect of the text's internal contradictions, equally recognizes that Antigone's performance of the burial rites situates her firmly within paternalistic constructions of femininity. In classical art, contemporary (roughly) with Sophocles' play, defiance becomes invisible: only the traditional feminine role is portrayed. A long visual tradition follows from the classical one, always casting the ancient heroine in this same, typically feminine role, and this tradition serves as a perfect example of the modern feminist critique of the history of images, in which women are robbed of their agency. Such endemic aversion to the depiction of overt defiance is, it is proposed, symptomatic of the broader cultural response to the play's revelation of two discrete, but mutually dependent feminine constructs: one demands Antigone's submission to a patriarchal definition of femininity that would require her to relinquish her autonomous perception of her feminine role, and the other involves her wilful conformance to that self‐generated identity. Meyer proposes in this chapter to demonstrate that by politicizing Antigone in the most conservative fashion, images reinforce patriarchal gender and kinship hierarchies, implying a perception of the dangers of what the author interprets here as expressions of ‘excess’ femininity, and underlining the need for continuing oppression in the interests of masculine political systems and social stability.Less
Feminist responses to Antigone's choice to rebel against masculine authority have largely refocused the text as a discourse of gender difference in order to expose patriarchy's victimization of women. This chapter, while acknowledging feminine defiance as a crucial aspect of the text's internal contradictions, equally recognizes that Antigone's performance of the burial rites situates her firmly within paternalistic constructions of femininity. In classical art, contemporary (roughly) with Sophocles' play, defiance becomes invisible: only the traditional feminine role is portrayed. A long visual tradition follows from the classical one, always casting the ancient heroine in this same, typically feminine role, and this tradition serves as a perfect example of the modern feminist critique of the history of images, in which women are robbed of their agency. Such endemic aversion to the depiction of overt defiance is, it is proposed, symptomatic of the broader cultural response to the play's revelation of two discrete, but mutually dependent feminine constructs: one demands Antigone's submission to a patriarchal definition of femininity that would require her to relinquish her autonomous perception of her feminine role, and the other involves her wilful conformance to that self‐generated identity. Meyer proposes in this chapter to demonstrate that by politicizing Antigone in the most conservative fashion, images reinforce patriarchal gender and kinship hierarchies, implying a perception of the dangers of what the author interprets here as expressions of ‘excess’ femininity, and underlining the need for continuing oppression in the interests of masculine political systems and social stability.
Lou Charnon-Deutsch and Jo Labanyi (eds)
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158868
- eISBN:
- 9780191673399
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158868.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book features a wide-ranging discussion on women's writing and representations of gender in Spanish literature and culture from the Romantic period to the fin de siècle. It is customary to ...
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This book features a wide-ranging discussion on women's writing and representations of gender in Spanish literature and culture from the Romantic period to the fin de siècle. It is customary to regard gender roles and representation in 19th-century Spain as polarised and predictable. But in this volume, scholars from the United Kingdom and the United States discuss not only the patriarchal emphasis of Spanish culture, but also demonstrate that this was a period in which relations between men and women were being constantly negotiated, challenged, and redefined as part of an ongoing transformation of political and national identities. Contributions look at women's writing and the representation of women in canonical texts, the construction of both femininity and masculinity, issues of race and region, and popular fiction, journalism, and the visual arts. All quotations are given in Spanish with English translation.Less
This book features a wide-ranging discussion on women's writing and representations of gender in Spanish literature and culture from the Romantic period to the fin de siècle. It is customary to regard gender roles and representation in 19th-century Spain as polarised and predictable. But in this volume, scholars from the United Kingdom and the United States discuss not only the patriarchal emphasis of Spanish culture, but also demonstrate that this was a period in which relations between men and women were being constantly negotiated, challenged, and redefined as part of an ongoing transformation of political and national identities. Contributions look at women's writing and the representation of women in canonical texts, the construction of both femininity and masculinity, issues of race and region, and popular fiction, journalism, and the visual arts. All quotations are given in Spanish with English translation.
John Wilson Foster
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199232833
- eISBN:
- 9780191716454
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199232833.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter analyzes Irish novels that reflect the religious sentiments and tribulations of the times. These novels depict sermons, Anglican Protestantism in internal difficulty, perceived conflict ...
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This chapter analyzes Irish novels that reflect the religious sentiments and tribulations of the times. These novels depict sermons, Anglican Protestantism in internal difficulty, perceived conflict between the authority of the Pope and the Church and private judgement, altruism, and femininity.Less
This chapter analyzes Irish novels that reflect the religious sentiments and tribulations of the times. These novels depict sermons, Anglican Protestantism in internal difficulty, perceived conflict between the authority of the Pope and the Church and private judgement, altruism, and femininity.
Amy J. Binder and Kate Wood
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691145372
- eISBN:
- 9781400844876
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691145372.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Education
This chapter examines how gender influences college conservatism, focusing on what is known as “conservative femininity”—the set of national-level ideas found in politics and the media. It considers ...
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This chapter examines how gender influences college conservatism, focusing on what is known as “conservative femininity”—the set of national-level ideas found in politics and the media. It considers the extent to which ideas about conservative femininity are shared across campuses at Eastern Elite University and the Western Public system, and whether and how gender may intersect with other demands of being a conservative member of campus. The example of conservative women reveals that individuals' differing experiences can encourage or discourage their embrace of local political styles. The chapter shows that women across both campuses show a strong distaste for mainstream feminism while seeking to recapture femininity. It also dicusses the career plans of women on the two campuses and how they use conservatism as a gender strategy.Less
This chapter examines how gender influences college conservatism, focusing on what is known as “conservative femininity”—the set of national-level ideas found in politics and the media. It considers the extent to which ideas about conservative femininity are shared across campuses at Eastern Elite University and the Western Public system, and whether and how gender may intersect with other demands of being a conservative member of campus. The example of conservative women reveals that individuals' differing experiences can encourage or discourage their embrace of local political styles. The chapter shows that women across both campuses show a strong distaste for mainstream feminism while seeking to recapture femininity. It also dicusses the career plans of women on the two campuses and how they use conservatism as a gender strategy.
Julia C. Bullock
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833879
- eISBN:
- 9780824870836
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833879.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book provides the first systematic analysis of Japanese literary feminist discourse of the 1960s—a full decade before the “women's lib” movement emerged in Japan. It highlights the work of three ...
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This book provides the first systematic analysis of Japanese literary feminist discourse of the 1960s—a full decade before the “women's lib” movement emerged in Japan. It highlights the work of three well-known female fiction writers of this generation (Kōno Taeko, Takahashi Takako, and Kurahashi Yumiko) for their avant-garde literary challenges to dominant models of femininity. Focusing on four tropes persistently employed by these writers to protest oppressive gender stereotypes—the disciplinary masculine gaze, feminist misogyny, “odd bodies,” and female homoeroticism—the book brings to the fore their previously unrecognized theoretical contributions to second-wave radical feminist discourse. In all of these narrative strategies, the female body is viewed as both the object and instrument of engendering. Severing the discursive connection between bodily sex and gender is thus a primary objective of the narratives and a necessary first step toward a less restrictive vision of female subjectivity in modern Japan. The book further demonstrates that this “gender trouble” was historically embedded in the socioeconomic circumstances of the high-growth economy of the 1960s, when prosperity was underwritten by an increasingly conservative gendered division of labor that sought to confine women within feminine roles. The book affords a cogent and incisive analysis of these texts as feminist philosophy in fictional form, arguing persuasively for the inclusion of such literary feminist discourse in the broader history of Japanese feminist theoretical development.Less
This book provides the first systematic analysis of Japanese literary feminist discourse of the 1960s—a full decade before the “women's lib” movement emerged in Japan. It highlights the work of three well-known female fiction writers of this generation (Kōno Taeko, Takahashi Takako, and Kurahashi Yumiko) for their avant-garde literary challenges to dominant models of femininity. Focusing on four tropes persistently employed by these writers to protest oppressive gender stereotypes—the disciplinary masculine gaze, feminist misogyny, “odd bodies,” and female homoeroticism—the book brings to the fore their previously unrecognized theoretical contributions to second-wave radical feminist discourse. In all of these narrative strategies, the female body is viewed as both the object and instrument of engendering. Severing the discursive connection between bodily sex and gender is thus a primary objective of the narratives and a necessary first step toward a less restrictive vision of female subjectivity in modern Japan. The book further demonstrates that this “gender trouble” was historically embedded in the socioeconomic circumstances of the high-growth economy of the 1960s, when prosperity was underwritten by an increasingly conservative gendered division of labor that sought to confine women within feminine roles. The book affords a cogent and incisive analysis of these texts as feminist philosophy in fictional form, arguing persuasively for the inclusion of such literary feminist discourse in the broader history of Japanese feminist theoretical development.
