Susan Jones
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184485
- eISBN:
- 9780191674273
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184485.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This closing chapter demonstrates the importance of women's writing, women readers, female portraiture, and the relationship of text and illustration in the serialized novels in shaping Conrad's ...
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This closing chapter demonstrates the importance of women's writing, women readers, female portraiture, and the relationship of text and illustration in the serialized novels in shaping Conrad's later fiction. It draws attention to the re-emergence of Marguerite Poradowska's influence, and how, in the late work in particular, Conrad exploited the techniques of traditional forms in order to question the structures of romance which continued to confine and classify women.Less
This closing chapter demonstrates the importance of women's writing, women readers, female portraiture, and the relationship of text and illustration in the serialized novels in shaping Conrad's later fiction. It draws attention to the re-emergence of Marguerite Poradowska's influence, and how, in the late work in particular, Conrad exploited the techniques of traditional forms in order to question the structures of romance which continued to confine and classify women.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines the ways in which reviews and articles served to consolidate Victorian and Edwardian assumptions about women as readers. ...
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This chapter examines the ways in which reviews and articles served to consolidate Victorian and Edwardian assumptions about women as readers. In the case of magazine articles — apart from those which offered practical advice about methods of reading — women readers were encountered in a number of guises. First, they formed a frequent category of reference or appeal in book reviews. Second, types of the woman reader appear in many chatty, conversational articles. Third are those articles which claimed to investigate precisely what girls or women were reading. And finally, the question of access to suitable reading material for working-class women, particularly in cities, leads into the way in which women’s reading practices were considered as part of the whole debate about how best to set up facilities in public libraries. In all of this, the different audiences for periodicals are presented with a variety of assumptions about the woman reader, deriving from, and in their turn serving different social and ideological stances.Less
This chapter examines the ways in which reviews and articles served to consolidate Victorian and Edwardian assumptions about women as readers. In the case of magazine articles — apart from those which offered practical advice about methods of reading — women readers were encountered in a number of guises. First, they formed a frequent category of reference or appeal in book reviews. Second, types of the woman reader appear in many chatty, conversational articles. Third are those articles which claimed to investigate precisely what girls or women were reading. And finally, the question of access to suitable reading material for working-class women, particularly in cities, leads into the way in which women’s reading practices were considered as part of the whole debate about how best to set up facilities in public libraries. In all of this, the different audiences for periodicals are presented with a variety of assumptions about the woman reader, deriving from, and in their turn serving different social and ideological stances.
Ros Ballaster
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184775
- eISBN:
- 9780191674341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184775.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter takes issue with the ‘myth’ of the female reader in the 18th century, which has tended to represent women's amatory fiction as a sub-cultural form servicing degraded popular taste and ...
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This chapter takes issue with the ‘myth’ of the female reader in the 18th century, which has tended to represent women's amatory fiction as a sub-cultural form servicing degraded popular taste and bearing little or no relation to the political and ideological mainstream. It is argued that the depiction of the women reader in contemporary periodical and prose fiction was not a realistic representation, but a formal device that served to introduce new concepts concerning the male political subject and his relation to the state. The chapter outlines prevailing conventions in amatory fiction in the last decades of the 17th century in Britain, developed from French models; it explores the specific formal and ideological properties of the French romance, the nouvelle, the scandal chronicle, and epistolary fiction.Less
This chapter takes issue with the ‘myth’ of the female reader in the 18th century, which has tended to represent women's amatory fiction as a sub-cultural form servicing degraded popular taste and bearing little or no relation to the political and ideological mainstream. It is argued that the depiction of the women reader in contemporary periodical and prose fiction was not a realistic representation, but a formal device that served to introduce new concepts concerning the male political subject and his relation to the state. The chapter outlines prevailing conventions in amatory fiction in the last decades of the 17th century in Britain, developed from French models; it explores the specific formal and ideological properties of the French romance, the nouvelle, the scandal chronicle, and epistolary fiction.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
At first sight, the controversy induced by the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ fiction in the 1890s bears a close similarity to the wave of ...
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At first sight, the controversy induced by the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ fiction in the 1890s bears a close similarity to the wave of anxiety expressed about the sensation novel some thirty years earlier. The writers of the 1890s laid particular stress on the part played by men in spreading venereal disease, and on indicating that this was just one of the aspects of sexuality about which girls were unlikely to learn anything before they were married. They also emphasized rationality and interrogation. If the issue of women’s reading in the 1890s becomes most active around the question of access to knowledge, particularly sexual knowledge, then it follows that the attainment of that knowledge can effectively be described and dramatized in ways which challenge the conventions used to delineate the tastes and capacities of women readers. In the New Woman fiction, not only were sexual and marital issues discussed with frankness, but, more importantly, women were offered images of articulacy and efforts at self-determination.Less
At first sight, the controversy induced by the emergence of the ‘New Woman’ fiction in the 1890s bears a close similarity to the wave of anxiety expressed about the sensation novel some thirty years earlier. The writers of the 1890s laid particular stress on the part played by men in spreading venereal disease, and on indicating that this was just one of the aspects of sexuality about which girls were unlikely to learn anything before they were married. They also emphasized rationality and interrogation. If the issue of women’s reading in the 1890s becomes most active around the question of access to knowledge, particularly sexual knowledge, then it follows that the attainment of that knowledge can effectively be described and dramatized in ways which challenge the conventions used to delineate the tastes and capacities of women readers. In the New Woman fiction, not only were sexual and marital issues discussed with frankness, but, more importantly, women were offered images of articulacy and efforts at self-determination.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book provides an invaluable source of information on nineteenth-century culture and the woman reader. Why was the topic of women and reading so controversial for ...
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This book provides an invaluable source of information on nineteenth-century culture and the woman reader. Why was the topic of women and reading so controversial for the Victorians and Edwardians? What was it assumed that women read, and what advice was given about where, when, and how to read? The book examines texts ranging from fiction, painting, and poetry, through medical and psychoanalytic works, advice manuals and periodicals, to autobiographies and contemporary social research, in her detailed study of this central cultural debate in nineteenth-century society. Engaging also in recent feminist theory, the book explores the manipulation of the figure of the woman reader in well-known works like Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley and Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, in sensation novels and New Woman fiction, and in stories found in series such as The Princess’s Novelettes. This is supported by evidence from actual readers — working women, as well as the privileged — as to how they understood their own highly varied reading experiences.Less
This book provides an invaluable source of information on nineteenth-century culture and the woman reader. Why was the topic of women and reading so controversial for the Victorians and Edwardians? What was it assumed that women read, and what advice was given about where, when, and how to read? The book examines texts ranging from fiction, painting, and poetry, through medical and psychoanalytic works, advice manuals and periodicals, to autobiographies and contemporary social research, in her detailed study of this central cultural debate in nineteenth-century society. Engaging also in recent feminist theory, the book explores the manipulation of the figure of the woman reader in well-known works like Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley and Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, in sensation novels and New Woman fiction, and in stories found in series such as The Princess’s Novelettes. This is supported by evidence from actual readers — working women, as well as the privileged — as to how they understood their own highly varied reading experiences.
Kim Haines-Eitzen
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195171297
- eISBN:
- 9780199918140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171297.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This chapter focuses on the emergence of the figure of the ideal female reader in early and late ancient Christian ascetic literature, which quite clearly glorifies women who have taken up the ...
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This chapter focuses on the emergence of the figure of the ideal female reader in early and late ancient Christian ascetic literature, which quite clearly glorifies women who have taken up the ascetic life and, at least metaphorically, have chosen to read rather than to eat. After surveying some evidence from texts as disparate as the Shepherd of Hermas, a Greek papyrus fragment, and Sidonius Apollinarious, the chapter turns especially to the lives of holy women and to patristic writers such as Jerome and Gregory of Nyssa and to Gerontius’s Life of Melania the Younger.Less
This chapter focuses on the emergence of the figure of the ideal female reader in early and late ancient Christian ascetic literature, which quite clearly glorifies women who have taken up the ascetic life and, at least metaphorically, have chosen to read rather than to eat. After surveying some evidence from texts as disparate as the Shepherd of Hermas, a Greek papyrus fragment, and Sidonius Apollinarious, the chapter turns especially to the lives of holy women and to patristic writers such as Jerome and Gregory of Nyssa and to Gerontius’s Life of Melania the Younger.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter deals with the phenomenon of sensation fiction in the 1860s: fiction which deliberately catered to compulsive forms of consumption, ...
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This chapter deals with the phenomenon of sensation fiction in the 1860s: fiction which deliberately catered to compulsive forms of consumption, and which the reviewers presented as being devoured by women. The sensation fiction’s frames of reference are drawn from familiar supppositions about woman’s affective susceptibility. Above all, the presence of sexual desire and sexual energy within the fictions was singled out. This disruptive potential was greeted with particular anxiety when it was located in novels written by women, notably Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, and Mrs Henry Wood. Inevitably, it also reflected on the perceived status of those women readers who borrowed and devoured these fictions so hungrily. The novels of Braddon and Broughton in particular are studded with quotations from writers ranging such as William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Milton. In sensation fiction, sensitivity to poetry, and the ability to have an apposite quotation spring to one’s lips, is equated with sensitivity to life in general. In many examples of women’s sensation fiction, external proprieties are maintained, enabling their authors’ indignant self-defence against charges of immorality.Less
This chapter deals with the phenomenon of sensation fiction in the 1860s: fiction which deliberately catered to compulsive forms of consumption, and which the reviewers presented as being devoured by women. The sensation fiction’s frames of reference are drawn from familiar supppositions about woman’s affective susceptibility. Above all, the presence of sexual desire and sexual energy within the fictions was singled out. This disruptive potential was greeted with particular anxiety when it was located in novels written by women, notably Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, and Mrs Henry Wood. Inevitably, it also reflected on the perceived status of those women readers who borrowed and devoured these fictions so hungrily. The novels of Braddon and Broughton in particular are studded with quotations from writers ranging such as William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Milton. In sensation fiction, sensitivity to poetry, and the ability to have an apposite quotation spring to one’s lips, is equated with sensitivity to life in general. In many examples of women’s sensation fiction, external proprieties are maintained, enabling their authors’ indignant self-defence against charges of immorality.
Siobhán McIlvanney
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786941886
- eISBN:
- 9781789623215
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941886.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines the earliest French women’s journals during the Ancien Régime, before focussing specifically on Le Journal des dames. It introduces: the women writers and readers who produced ...
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This chapter examines the earliest French women’s journals during the Ancien Régime, before focussing specifically on Le Journal des dames. It introduces: the women writers and readers who produced and consumed the earliest women’s journals in France and the challenges facing women journalists; the main objectives sustaining their writing projects; and the rhetoric, forms and content employed by women’s journals in order to better achieve these. French women may have been less visible in public fora or the political arena in the latter half of the eighteenth century, yet their involvement with it in the form of wives and mothers – as citoyennes - was significant. The women’s press acted as a vital means of bringing the outside in through cultural and societal news, and of helping to bring the inside out by confirming French women’s moral and pedagogical contribution to constructing an evolving sense of French nationhood. These early journals also promoted the importance of the role played by female-authored literature and writing in valorising French’s women’s public value and contribution to the patrimoine and fought for its recognition by the Academies.Less
This chapter examines the earliest French women’s journals during the Ancien Régime, before focussing specifically on Le Journal des dames. It introduces: the women writers and readers who produced and consumed the earliest women’s journals in France and the challenges facing women journalists; the main objectives sustaining their writing projects; and the rhetoric, forms and content employed by women’s journals in order to better achieve these. French women may have been less visible in public fora or the political arena in the latter half of the eighteenth century, yet their involvement with it in the form of wives and mothers – as citoyennes - was significant. The women’s press acted as a vital means of bringing the outside in through cultural and societal news, and of helping to bring the inside out by confirming French women’s moral and pedagogical contribution to constructing an evolving sense of French nationhood. These early journals also promoted the importance of the role played by female-authored literature and writing in valorising French’s women’s public value and contribution to the patrimoine and fought for its recognition by the Academies.
Kate Flint
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198121855
- eISBN:
- 9780191671357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198121855.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. ...
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This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. One of the paintings, Ralph Hedley’s Seeking Situations (1904), serves to alert one to the proximity of textuality and sexuality in discourses of reading throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period. This book offers suggestions as to why ‘the woman reader’ was an issue addressed with such frequency throughout the period. It treats reading both as a leisure activity and as an essential component of more formal education, whether this education was home based or, increasingly, obtained at school. The study of literature, in particular, became an area for discussion as girls’ education widened in availability and seriousness in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book presents a variety of accounts of reading, providing evidence of the wide-ranging practices of particular girls and women throughout the period; their opportunities for obtaining books and the differing degrees of supervision exercised over their consumption of print.Less
This introductory chapter begins with five images which depict women readers absorbed in texts, apparently oblivious to artist and observer. One of the paintings, Ralph Hedley’s Seeking Situations (1904), serves to alert one to the proximity of textuality and sexuality in discourses of reading throughout the Victorian and early Edwardian period. This book offers suggestions as to why ‘the woman reader’ was an issue addressed with such frequency throughout the period. It treats reading both as a leisure activity and as an essential component of more formal education, whether this education was home based or, increasingly, obtained at school. The study of literature, in particular, became an area for discussion as girls’ education widened in availability and seriousness in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book presents a variety of accounts of reading, providing evidence of the wide-ranging practices of particular girls and women throughout the period; their opportunities for obtaining books and the differing degrees of supervision exercised over their consumption of print.
Susan Jones
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184485
- eISBN:
- 9780191674273
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184485.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter introduces the novel Chance as the current central focus of this book. Serialised in the New York Herald Sunday Magazine in 1912, and aimed at the women readers of the paper, the novel ...
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This chapter introduces the novel Chance as the current central focus of this book. Serialised in the New York Herald Sunday Magazine in 1912, and aimed at the women readers of the paper, the novel represented a turning point in Conrad's career, his first economically successful venture in reaching a wider audience and addressing the themes of gender and romance that would occupy later fiction. Conrad's creation of a central female protagonist has often been heralded as the moment when his artistic powers began to diminish. The novel has also received negative responses from those critics who see it as an unsuccessful attempt to emulate Henry James. This chapter demonstrates that Chance was a new direction in Conrad's fiction, one in which he engages in a theoretical debate with ‘The Master’ on the relationship of vision and epistemology in the presentation of women in romance.Less
This chapter introduces the novel Chance as the current central focus of this book. Serialised in the New York Herald Sunday Magazine in 1912, and aimed at the women readers of the paper, the novel represented a turning point in Conrad's career, his first economically successful venture in reaching a wider audience and addressing the themes of gender and romance that would occupy later fiction. Conrad's creation of a central female protagonist has often been heralded as the moment when his artistic powers began to diminish. The novel has also received negative responses from those critics who see it as an unsuccessful attempt to emulate Henry James. This chapter demonstrates that Chance was a new direction in Conrad's fiction, one in which he engages in a theoretical debate with ‘The Master’ on the relationship of vision and epistemology in the presentation of women in romance.
JAN FERGUS
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199297825
- eISBN:
- 9780191711244
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297825.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter takes issue with assumptions about gender and fiction in this period: novels were neither primarily written by women nor primarily, in the provinces, consumed by them — the word ...
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This chapter takes issue with assumptions about gender and fiction in this period: novels were neither primarily written by women nor primarily, in the provinces, consumed by them — the word ‘consumed’ throughout this study is meant in a purely economic sense, not in the pejorative sense of mindless ‘consuming’ or devouring of fiction. The chapter begins by reviewing the buying and borrowing of two men with a strong interest in print, John Latimer of Warwick and Henry Bagshaw Harrison of Daventry. Figures for adult buying and borrowing of fiction taken from the Clay and Stevens records are summarized and tabulated, and this evidence of adult men's and women's consumption is placed in the context of their other purchases. Men are so numerous, however, that the chapter focuses upon a subgroup — men who subscribed to the Monthly and Critical Reviews — because their subscriptions allow the study of the possible effect of reviewing on purchases of new fiction and other works. The far fewer women customers for fiction is considered in detail, offering case studies of purchases and borrowings of women who were members of the gentry and the professional, trading, and servant classes. The chapter speculates first on why the novel was in 18th-century England so closely identified with women even though no empirical evidence seems to support this identification; and second on what men might gain by being culturally invisible as readers of fictions.Less
This chapter takes issue with assumptions about gender and fiction in this period: novels were neither primarily written by women nor primarily, in the provinces, consumed by them — the word ‘consumed’ throughout this study is meant in a purely economic sense, not in the pejorative sense of mindless ‘consuming’ or devouring of fiction. The chapter begins by reviewing the buying and borrowing of two men with a strong interest in print, John Latimer of Warwick and Henry Bagshaw Harrison of Daventry. Figures for adult buying and borrowing of fiction taken from the Clay and Stevens records are summarized and tabulated, and this evidence of adult men's and women's consumption is placed in the context of their other purchases. Men are so numerous, however, that the chapter focuses upon a subgroup — men who subscribed to the Monthly and Critical Reviews — because their subscriptions allow the study of the possible effect of reviewing on purchases of new fiction and other works. The far fewer women customers for fiction is considered in detail, offering case studies of purchases and borrowings of women who were members of the gentry and the professional, trading, and servant classes. The chapter speculates first on why the novel was in 18th-century England so closely identified with women even though no empirical evidence seems to support this identification; and second on what men might gain by being culturally invisible as readers of fictions.
Katherine West Scheil
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450426
- eISBN:
- 9780801464225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450426.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter focuses on the various literate practices of women readers and how each of those practices helped empower them through the public speaking skills and analytical strategies promoted by ...
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This chapter focuses on the various literate practices of women readers and how each of those practices helped empower them through the public speaking skills and analytical strategies promoted by clubs and through the confidence gained from mastering (and sometimes performing and adapting) Shakespeare, by and large in the period before women could even vote. Women engaged in elaborate and intellectually demanding work on Shakespeare: they read plays closely; researched unfamiliar words or phrases; contextualized the plays in history, contemporary literature, and art; memorized passages; wrote essays; read aloud and sometimes performed plays; often kept up with the latest Shakespeare criticism; and frequently expressed their enthusiasm for Shakespeare publicly, by sponsoring libraries, educational scholarships, public gardens, and parks: all lasting memorials to these grassroots readers and to their passion for Shakespeare.Less
This chapter focuses on the various literate practices of women readers and how each of those practices helped empower them through the public speaking skills and analytical strategies promoted by clubs and through the confidence gained from mastering (and sometimes performing and adapting) Shakespeare, by and large in the period before women could even vote. Women engaged in elaborate and intellectually demanding work on Shakespeare: they read plays closely; researched unfamiliar words or phrases; contextualized the plays in history, contemporary literature, and art; memorized passages; wrote essays; read aloud and sometimes performed plays; often kept up with the latest Shakespeare criticism; and frequently expressed their enthusiasm for Shakespeare publicly, by sponsoring libraries, educational scholarships, public gardens, and parks: all lasting memorials to these grassroots readers and to their passion for Shakespeare.
Katherine West Scheil
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450426
- eISBN:
- 9780801464225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450426.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This introductory chapter explores the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, by combining work on women's clubs with recent work on the ...
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This introductory chapter explores the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, by combining work on women's clubs with recent work on the role of reading for individual and collective agency. It focuses on the variety of ways Shakespeare was read by American club women in order to suggest some of the repercussions of their literate practices for individual women, for groups, and for their communities in the decades around the fin de siècle. Women readers in large cities and small towns across America helped spread the idea that Shakespeare was for everyone, not just cultural elites in metropolitan areas. The efforts of club women to improve their communities also established Shakespeare as a local foundation of American culture and as a marker for learning, self-improvement, civilization, and entertainment for a broad array of populations.Less
This introductory chapter explores the transformative possibilities of reading Shakespeare for women, both collectively and individually, by combining work on women's clubs with recent work on the role of reading for individual and collective agency. It focuses on the variety of ways Shakespeare was read by American club women in order to suggest some of the repercussions of their literate practices for individual women, for groups, and for their communities in the decades around the fin de siècle. Women readers in large cities and small towns across America helped spread the idea that Shakespeare was for everyone, not just cultural elites in metropolitan areas. The efforts of club women to improve their communities also established Shakespeare as a local foundation of American culture and as a marker for learning, self-improvement, civilization, and entertainment for a broad array of populations.
Katherine West Scheil
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450426
- eISBN:
- 9780801464225
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450426.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter shows how numerous black club women across the country claimed Shakespeare for their own educational and social agendas. These women saw knowledge of Shakespeare as a way to attain ...
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This chapter shows how numerous black club women across the country claimed Shakespeare for their own educational and social agendas. These women saw knowledge of Shakespeare as a way to attain intellectual development and social progress and frequently included Shakespeare as part of their educational programs, but they usually read Shakespeare in ways very different from those employed by the white women's clubs already discussed. First, few black clubs read only Shakespeare. Rather, the most common practice was to read Shakespeare as part of a wider curriculum that included other classic authors, African American writers, women authors, and usually a substantial component of civic work, more so than for most white women's clubs. In this context, reading Shakespeare was not the only goal for most black women readers, but it was a significant step in their commitment to education as a component of racial progress.Less
This chapter shows how numerous black club women across the country claimed Shakespeare for their own educational and social agendas. These women saw knowledge of Shakespeare as a way to attain intellectual development and social progress and frequently included Shakespeare as part of their educational programs, but they usually read Shakespeare in ways very different from those employed by the white women's clubs already discussed. First, few black clubs read only Shakespeare. Rather, the most common practice was to read Shakespeare as part of a wider curriculum that included other classic authors, African American writers, women authors, and usually a substantial component of civic work, more so than for most white women's clubs. In this context, reading Shakespeare was not the only goal for most black women readers, but it was a significant step in their commitment to education as a component of racial progress.
Natalie Bradbury
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474412537
- eISBN:
- 9781474445054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412537.003.0033
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
WOMAN’S OUTLOOK was first published in 1919 as a magazine for the women of the co-operative movement. Despite extensive scholarship on the Women’s Co-operative Guild (WCG), both within the ...
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WOMAN’S OUTLOOK was first published in 1919 as a magazine for the women of the co-operative movement. Despite extensive scholarship on the Women’s Co-operative Guild (WCG), both within the organisation and in relation to the British women’s movement, this publication has received only limited attention. This chapter examines Woman’s Outlook as part of the interwar co-operative women’s movement, arguing that it functioned at a variety of levels to bring women together into a co-operative community. Woman’s Outlook represented a group of women who were not captured in other publications, and who shared particular concerns as working class women committed to co-operative ideas and trading. While it promoted the co-operative movement more widely, within the movement it served as a means of sharing information with and from its readers on effective home management (thereby responding to women’s immediate lives and needs) and aimed to extend women’s interests beyond the home. In these ways, it proved both educational and aspirational, expanding women’s horizons at a time when opportunities for women were changing, by showing what other women had and could achieve. The most sustained analysis of Woman’s Outlook to date is Rachel Ritchie’s study of Woman’s Outlook and Home and Country, the magazine produced by the Women’s Institute (WI). While Ritchie focuses on the 1950s, the goal here is to revisit Woman’s Outlook and its place in informing and educating a community of co-operative women from its inception in the interwar years.Less
WOMAN’S OUTLOOK was first published in 1919 as a magazine for the women of the co-operative movement. Despite extensive scholarship on the Women’s Co-operative Guild (WCG), both within the organisation and in relation to the British women’s movement, this publication has received only limited attention. This chapter examines Woman’s Outlook as part of the interwar co-operative women’s movement, arguing that it functioned at a variety of levels to bring women together into a co-operative community. Woman’s Outlook represented a group of women who were not captured in other publications, and who shared particular concerns as working class women committed to co-operative ideas and trading. While it promoted the co-operative movement more widely, within the movement it served as a means of sharing information with and from its readers on effective home management (thereby responding to women’s immediate lives and needs) and aimed to extend women’s interests beyond the home. In these ways, it proved both educational and aspirational, expanding women’s horizons at a time when opportunities for women were changing, by showing what other women had and could achieve. The most sustained analysis of Woman’s Outlook to date is Rachel Ritchie’s study of Woman’s Outlook and Home and Country, the magazine produced by the Women’s Institute (WI). While Ritchie focuses on the 1950s, the goal here is to revisit Woman’s Outlook and its place in informing and educating a community of co-operative women from its inception in the interwar years.
Susan Carlile
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474419659
- eISBN:
- 9781474445061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474419659.003.0024
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Drawing upon her command of Charlotte Lennox’s life and career, Susan Carlile presents the Lady’s Museum (1760–1) as an idealised educational attempt to offers its readers, particularly the women ...
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Drawing upon her command of Charlotte Lennox’s life and career, Susan Carlile presents the Lady’s Museum (1760–1) as an idealised educational attempt to offers its readers, particularly the women among them, a wider view of the world, its inhabitants, and its history. Focusing on the shorter ‘Trifler’ essays that headlined the long, miscellaneous numbers of the Lady’s Museum, Carlile shows how the magazine was seriously interested in encouraging intellectual ambition in women. Women authors and women readers are given particular attention and care throughout the periodical, which subversively, or perhaps ahead of its time, hopes that its educational content will spur readers on to intellectual and authorial action.Less
Drawing upon her command of Charlotte Lennox’s life and career, Susan Carlile presents the Lady’s Museum (1760–1) as an idealised educational attempt to offers its readers, particularly the women among them, a wider view of the world, its inhabitants, and its history. Focusing on the shorter ‘Trifler’ essays that headlined the long, miscellaneous numbers of the Lady’s Museum, Carlile shows how the magazine was seriously interested in encouraging intellectual ambition in women. Women authors and women readers are given particular attention and care throughout the periodical, which subversively, or perhaps ahead of its time, hopes that its educational content will spur readers on to intellectual and authorial action.
Stella Deen
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474412537
- eISBN:
- 9781474445054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474412537.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter situates Clemence Dane’s literary criticism for Good Housekeeping within the context of interwar women’s literary journalism and discusses her program for the cultural, social, and civic ...
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This chapter situates Clemence Dane’s literary criticism for Good Housekeeping within the context of interwar women’s literary journalism and discusses her program for the cultural, social, and civic empowerment of women readers. It argues that, as she modelled a holistic reading pleasure that encompassed sensuous and intellectual experience alike, and as she emphasised readers’ responsibility to bring about good books, Dane’s monthly essays both countered cultural images of indiscriminately consuming women readers and provided the structure for ongoing instruction in literary tradition. The chapter demonstrates that Dane’s middlebrow literary criticism engaged in dialogue with and challenged modernist and academic literary criticism, especially through its conception of a literary heritage that both enhanced enjoyment of literature and empowered ordinary readers to evaluate it. Finally, the chapter argues that Dane’s model of pleasurable reading as a gateway to cultural, social, and political benefits helped to shape a progressive modernity for women.Less
This chapter situates Clemence Dane’s literary criticism for Good Housekeeping within the context of interwar women’s literary journalism and discusses her program for the cultural, social, and civic empowerment of women readers. It argues that, as she modelled a holistic reading pleasure that encompassed sensuous and intellectual experience alike, and as she emphasised readers’ responsibility to bring about good books, Dane’s monthly essays both countered cultural images of indiscriminately consuming women readers and provided the structure for ongoing instruction in literary tradition. The chapter demonstrates that Dane’s middlebrow literary criticism engaged in dialogue with and challenged modernist and academic literary criticism, especially through its conception of a literary heritage that both enhanced enjoyment of literature and empowered ordinary readers to evaluate it. Finally, the chapter argues that Dane’s model of pleasurable reading as a gateway to cultural, social, and political benefits helped to shape a progressive modernity for women.
Tova Cohen
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774617
- eISBN:
- 9781800340145
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774617.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter analyses the depiction of women in nineteenth-century Haskalah literature, demonstrating just how gender-specific this was. Haskalah literature was written by men for a male audience, ...
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This chapter analyses the depiction of women in nineteenth-century Haskalah literature, demonstrating just how gender-specific this was. Haskalah literature was written by men for a male audience, and the maskilim were taken by surprise when women readers and writers began to appear in the 1860s. The chapter then outlines two extremes of the literary image of women. On the one hand is the idealized depiction of the goddess or angel. On the other hand is the critical depiction of the insensitive, crass, and domineering woman. Both of these images derive from literary conventions. The chapter examines the interplay of these conventions with the social experience and social agenda of the maskilim.Less
This chapter analyses the depiction of women in nineteenth-century Haskalah literature, demonstrating just how gender-specific this was. Haskalah literature was written by men for a male audience, and the maskilim were taken by surprise when women readers and writers began to appear in the 1860s. The chapter then outlines two extremes of the literary image of women. On the one hand is the idealized depiction of the goddess or angel. On the other hand is the critical depiction of the insensitive, crass, and domineering woman. Both of these images derive from literary conventions. The chapter examines the interplay of these conventions with the social experience and social agenda of the maskilim.
Alexis Easley, Clare Gill, and Beth Rodgers (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474433907
- eISBN:
- 9781474465120
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474433907.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This collection of new essays offers in-depth analysis of the multi-faceted relationship between women, periodicals and print culture in Victorian Britain. This period witnessed the proliferation of ...
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This collection of new essays offers in-depth analysis of the multi-faceted relationship between women, periodicals and print culture in Victorian Britain. This period witnessed the proliferation of print culture and the greater availability of periodicals for an increasingly diverse readership and, as a result, the Victorian periodical press has been of keen interest to scholars working across a range of specialist fields in recent decades. No previous volume, however, has offered as rich or as diverse a set of essays on women’s periodicals and women authors, editors, engravers, illustrators and readers of this crucial period in the history of periodical culture. This was, after all, a significant period in women’s history, in which the ‘Woman Question’ dominated public debate, and writers and commentators from a range of perspectives engaged with ideas and ideals about womanhood ranging from the ‘Angel in the House’ to the New Woman. Essays in this collection gather together expertise from leading scholars as well as emerging new voices in order to produce sustained analysis of underexplored periodicals and authors and to reveal in new ways the dynamic and integral relationship between women’s history and print culture in Victorian society.Less
This collection of new essays offers in-depth analysis of the multi-faceted relationship between women, periodicals and print culture in Victorian Britain. This period witnessed the proliferation of print culture and the greater availability of periodicals for an increasingly diverse readership and, as a result, the Victorian periodical press has been of keen interest to scholars working across a range of specialist fields in recent decades. No previous volume, however, has offered as rich or as diverse a set of essays on women’s periodicals and women authors, editors, engravers, illustrators and readers of this crucial period in the history of periodical culture. This was, after all, a significant period in women’s history, in which the ‘Woman Question’ dominated public debate, and writers and commentators from a range of perspectives engaged with ideas and ideals about womanhood ranging from the ‘Angel in the House’ to the New Woman. Essays in this collection gather together expertise from leading scholars as well as emerging new voices in order to produce sustained analysis of underexplored periodicals and authors and to reveal in new ways the dynamic and integral relationship between women’s history and print culture in Victorian society.
Slaney Chadwick Ross
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474419659
- eISBN:
- 9781474445061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474419659.003.0022
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Highlighting the role that surveillance culture and rhetoric plays in early periodical writing, Slaney Chadwick Ross argues that women’s surveillance activities and the contributions of female ...
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Highlighting the role that surveillance culture and rhetoric plays in early periodical writing, Slaney Chadwick Ross argues that women’s surveillance activities and the contributions of female correspondents were a crucial element to the periodical eidolon’s emergent authority. Through the provocative pairing of John Dunton’s Ladies Mercury (1693) with Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s Spectator (1711–12), Ross unspools how conventions of which forms of female representation would come to be championed in periodical culture, arguing in the process that Dunton’s venture was the more radical of the twain. In the Mercury, women are allowed to testify to their own experiences, and they are believed when they do so: this was not at all in keeping with the broader the legal or literary trends that would emerge in the decades that followed.Less
Highlighting the role that surveillance culture and rhetoric plays in early periodical writing, Slaney Chadwick Ross argues that women’s surveillance activities and the contributions of female correspondents were a crucial element to the periodical eidolon’s emergent authority. Through the provocative pairing of John Dunton’s Ladies Mercury (1693) with Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s Spectator (1711–12), Ross unspools how conventions of which forms of female representation would come to be championed in periodical culture, arguing in the process that Dunton’s venture was the more radical of the twain. In the Mercury, women are allowed to testify to their own experiences, and they are believed when they do so: this was not at all in keeping with the broader the legal or literary trends that would emerge in the decades that followed.