The Deathly Sleep of Frederic Leighton's Painted Women

In this article, the author argues that, towards the end of his life, Frederic Leighton (president of the Royal Academy from 1878 to 1896) became increasingly preoccupied with painting sleeping and entranced women as a way of simulating death. In turn, death in Leighton's art comes to look like pleasured sinking into unconsciousness accompanied by an irreversible bodily dissolution, which is registered in the multiplying of the ‘endless folds’ in the figures’ drapery. The author analyses key examples of paintings by Leighton of sleeping and sleepy women—namely, Cymon and Iphigenia (1884), The Garden of the Hesperides (1892) and Flaming June (1895)—within the context of late Victorian anxieties around sleep and its resemblance to death. In these works, Leighton twists and elongates the sleeping women's necks and limbs to make them appear dangerously serpentine, while increasing the activity of the drapery to register both the meanderings of the subconscious and the dissolution of the body. The drapery disorganizes classical form, taking on the appearance of liquid, hair and melted wax.     

‘Politics’ and Academic Feminist Theorising: Reflections on Women's Studies in Asia

When invited by the organisers of the Asia-Pacific Non-governmental Organisation (NGO) Beijing+10 Forum to make a brief presentation on the question of academic feminists and the de-politicisation of feminist theorising, I asked myself: What politics? What feminist theorising? Then I remembered how close the links were between the history of feminism in academe—particularly in the form of Women's Studies—and the women's movement.2 Vina Mazumdar, ‘Whose Past, Whose History, Whose Tradition? Indigenising Women's Studies in India’, paper prepared for the International Conference on Women's Studies in Asia, Seoul, 18–21 October 2000 published in Asian Journal of Women's Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2001, pp. 133–53; Carol Sobritchea, ‘Imaging the Future of Asian Women's Studies and Feminist Scholarship’, paper prepared for the International Conference on Women's Studies in Asia, Seoul, 18–21 October 2000; and Tita Marlita and E. Kristi Poerwandari, ‘Indonesian Women's Movement throughout History: 1928–1965’, paper prepared for the International Conference on Women's Studies in Asia, Seoul, 18–21 October 2000, are recent narratives of the development of Women's Studies and its ties to the women's movement in India, the Philippines, and Indonesia, respectively. View all notes Ah, that politics!     

“Mad Agnes” Ebbsmith: Revolutionary Roles and Reconfigured Relationships in A. W. Pinero's the Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith

In The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, Arthur Pinero's use of the “fallen woman” plot is an unusual one, with implications for the 1890s “New Women's” agenda that have continuing relevance today. Linking gender issues to national, religious, and class issues, Pinero examines the limitations of advocacy rhetoric and personal exemplification in promoting social change, and he uses the often puzzling action of the play to explore the possibility of viable alternatives.     

Tenderness,for Lynda Hart

Pedro Almodóvar and Judith Butler's respective projects have long shared an interest in the performativity of gender. More recently, Butler has turned her attention to thinking of rupture as constitutive of identity. Talk to Her reveals a similar turn in the director's work. This essay argues that Talk to Her employs the figure of a comatose woman who awakens in order to investigate the condition of wakefulness as a newly achieved consciousness. In doing so, the director also investigates the parameters of his own authorial condition: alternately embodied and disembodied, he reveals it to be effectively dispossessed. This essay rotates around the opening five minutes of the film, which introduce, in parallel, the space of the theater and that of the hospital–one a space of silence and the other a space for ‘talk,’ a place where the impetus of narrative cures. I argue that these two spaces underscore our condition of existing as bodies. I furthermore consider the role that melodrama–a genre described by its inclination toward embodiment, muteness, and excess–plays in articulating these themes.     

Tracing the voice: Pandita Ramabai's life through her landmark texts

‘The silence of a thousand years is broken’ exulted Rachel Bodley's introduction to Pandita Ramabai's feminist manifesto The High‐caste Hindu Woman, which was published in 1887 and sold 9,000 copies internationally within a year.1 Rachel L. Bodley, ‘Introduction’ in Pandita Ramabai, The High‐caste Hindu Woman (Maharahstra State Board of Literature and Culture) Bombay, 1887, reprinted 1977, pp. i–xix (reference p. i). The 1888 reprint of the book in the United States mentions that it is the ‘tenth thousand’. View all notes Its author was instantly made into an icon in Western countries from the United States to Australia, to linger on in their collective memories, even as she was relegated to ‘silence’ in the social histories and discourses of India. This conundrum, pivotal to an understanding of her life and, I submit, rooted in her feminism, is still to be addressed. The numerous and informative biographies of Ramabai (23 April 1858–5 April 1922) have been located within two distinct paradigms: one projects her life, sometimes almost hagiographically, as a triumphant expression of the Christian impulse;2 Ramabai's Christian biographies in English include S.M. Adhav, Pandita Ramabai (The Christian Literature Society) Madras, 1979; Bodley, ‘Introduction’; Rajas K. Dongre and Josephine F. Patterson, Pandita Ramabai: a Life of Faith and Prayer (The Christian Literature Society) Madras, 1963; Nicol McNicol, Pandita Ramabai (Association Press) Calcutta, 1926; and Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabai Saraswati: Her Life and Work (Asia Publishing House) Bombay, 1970. Her best‐known Marathi Christian biography is Devadatta Tilak, Maharashtrachi Tejaswini Pandita Ramabai (Nagarik Prakashan) Nashik, 1960. View all notes and the other valorises her advocacy of women's education while sidestepping the issue of religion.3 Ramabai's Hindu (or non‐Christian) biographies include Tarabai Sathe, Aparajita Rama (D.P. Nagarkar) Pune, 1975, and K.S. Thackeray, Pandita Ramabai (V.R. Baum) Mumbai, 1905 (both in Marathi); and A.B. Shah, ‘Introduction’ in A.B. Shah (ed.), The Letters and Correspondence of Pandita Ramabai (Maharashtra State Board of Literature and Culture) Bombay, 1977, pp. xi–xxxvi (in English). View all notes Both elide her feminism. Recent feminist scholarship on Ramabai has impressively interwoven multiple disciplinary and ideological strands, but tended to focus either on her passage to Christianity,4 Susan Glover, ‘Of Water and of the Holy Spirit’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1995; Gauri Viswanathan, ‘Silencing Heresy’ in Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity and Belief (Oxford University Press) Delhi, 1998, pp. 118–52. View all notes or her reverse gaze at the West during international travels.5 Antoinette Burton, ‘Restless Desire’ in A. Burton, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late‐Victorian Britain (University of California Press) Berkeley, 1998, pp. 72–109; Inderpal Grewal, ‘Pandita Ramabai and Parvati Athavale’ in I. Grewal, Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and the Cultures of Travel (Duke University Press) Durham, NC and London, 1996, pp. 179–229. Kumari Jayawardena, ‘Going for the Jugular of Hindu Patriarchy’ in Vicki L. Ruiz and Ellen Carol DuBois (eds), Unequal Sisters, 3rd edition (Routledge) New York and London, offers a variation on Ramabai's interaction with American women, in terms of American aid to her educational project in India and its inherent tensions. View all notes The parameters of her life and of her feminism have rarely been clearly outlined.6 I have tried to do this in Meera Kosambi, ‘Introduction’ in M. Kosambi (ed.), Pandita Ramabai through Her Own Words: Selected Works (Oxford University Press) Delhi, 2000, pp. 1–32; and Meera Kosambi, ‘Returning the American Gaze: Situating Pandita Ramabai’s American Encounter' in M. Kosambi (ed.), Pandita Ramabai's American Encounter: ‘The Peoples of the United States’, 1889, M. Kosambi (trans.) (Indiana University Press) Bloomington, 2003, pp. 1–46. View all notes In this article I propose to analyse her feminism by tracing her multiple ideological trajectories mainly through a discussion of some of her landmark writings, and then indicate the problematic of her representation of the highly troped ‘oppressed Indian woman’.     

Launching a New Journal: Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000

This article traces the founding and development of an online journal, Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000 (WASM), which Sklar & Dublin began editing in 2003. A quarterly journal, a database, and a website, WASM publishes edited collections of primary documents and full‐text sources that focus on the history of women and social activism in the United States. The journal’s editors discuss their experience in launching the journal and reach out to scholars in the UK to expand the transnational and comparative dimensions of the project.     

Cross-Currents: Elizabeth von Arnim,Max Beerbohm and George Bernard Shaw

Abstract

When Elizabeth von Arnim’s novel Introduction to Sally appeared in 1926, the critical response was divided. Dame Ethel Smyth may have told von Arnim the book was her ‘masterpiece’ but some were less convinced; the reviewer in Punch, for instance, considered it ‘a coarse-grained fantasy’. By situating Introduction to Sally in a wider literary context that includes Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson (1911 Beerbohm, Max (1964a), ‘To Reggie Turner, 3 November 1911’, in Rupert Hart-Davis (ed.), Letters to Reggie Turner, London: Davis, p. 126. [Google Scholar]) and George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1914 Shaw, George Bernard (1914), ‘Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts’, Everybody’s Magazine, Vol xxxi, (5). [Google Scholar]), this article explores the personal connections between these three authors and the thematic cross-currents in these texts. Is von Arnim’s novel really as ‘coarse’ and ‘vulgar’ as some earlier critics suggest? Or is it a novel that successfully mixes the plausible with the artificial, the comic and the socially catastrophic, in ways that, more than a decade later, resonate with the work of her friends to highlight several continuing preoccupations?     

Rebel masculinities of star/director/text: James Dean,Nicholas Ray,and Rebel Without a Cause

Director Nicholas Ray is arguably most familiar to cinema culture as the American test case for la politique des auteurs, the influential mode of film criticism formulated at the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma after World War II. Ray was elevated to the status of film ‘author’ for a consistency of vision and style associated with rebellion. Yet, he was known in the film industry as an ‘actor's director,’ both for his background in theater and for bringing Lee Strasberg's ‘The Method’ to Hollywood after it had gained considerable cachet at the Actors Studio in New York since the 1930s. Although Ray was relatively unknown among the movie-going public, his films were (and still remain) recognizable for their male stars, including James Dean, Robert Mitchum, and Humphrey Bogart. In this essay, I look at his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955 Rebel Without a Cause, 1955. Film. Directed by Nicholas Ray. USA: Warner Bros. [Google Scholar]), to argue that Ray's reputation as a rebel auteur was as much the product of highbrow auteurist film criticism as the mass cultural persona of ‘rebel male hero’ that the film's star James Dean cultivated. As an actor, Dean was promoted at the vanguard of an innovative and experimental new performance style. Further, his star-performance text reveals a construction of masculinity that the film asks us to view as socially rebellious, which is retroactively linked to Ray. Both the film and the popular press form Dean's image constituted by his self-fashioned sense of authenticity, his non-normative sexuality, his highly publicized death, and the identification with an alternative family structure his role invites.     

Out of Place: Black women academics in British universities

This article examines the experience of Black women academics in British universities. ¹ [1] An intended outcome of the study on which this article is based was the opportunity which it provided for the participants to reflect on their experiences in academia. Participants regarded the opportunity to discuss their experiences as therapeutic and cathartic. However, a number of the women whom we approached as possible participants were unable to take part in the study because they had been ‘legally gagged’. We were unable to unravel the specifics of these ‘gagging orders’; however, those who were unable to take part were seeking other routes through which they could explore their own ordeal. The names used in the article are pseudonyms. View all notes The background to this is the under‐representation of Black people at all levels of academia, particularly in senior posts. Black women in academia can be seen to be occupying a space that has historically been the preserve of the white middle‐class male. Within this space Black women are ‘space invaders’. The article explores this concept by reporting the findings from a study of Black women academics. The marginalization, tenuous position, lack of a sense of belonging and survivalist strategies are issues explored. Feelings of being excessively scrutinized and marginalized are common amongst the women. Issues of lack of progression, workload management, lack of opportunities, lack of support and access to resources are identified by the women and discussed. The article describes how Black women negotiate their experiences of work in academia and how they feel damaged by their experiences. The article concludes by making the case for institutional change in British universities.     

‘Control Grabbing’ and small-scale agricultural intensification: emerging patterns of state-facilitated ‘agricultural investment’ in Rwanda

The Rwandan government's ongoing reconfiguration of the agricultural sector seeks to facilitate increased penetration of smallholder farming systems by domestic and international capital, which may include some land acquisition (‘land grabbing’) as well as contract farming arrangements. Such contracts are arranged by the state, which sometimes uses coercive mechanisms and interventionist strategies to encourage agricultural investment. The Rwandan government has adapted neo-liberal tools, such as ‘performance management contracts’, which make local public administrators accountable for agricultural development targets (often explicitly linked to corporate interests). Activities of international development agencies are becoming intertwined with those of the state and foreign capital, so that a variety of actors and objectives are starting to collaboratively change the relations between land and labour. The global ‘land grab’ is only one aspect of broader patterns of reconfiguration of control over land, labour and markets in the Global South. This paper demonstrates the ways in which the state is orienting public resources towards private interests in Rwanda, through processes that have elsewhere been termed ‘control grabbing’ [Borras et al. 2012 Borras, S.M., et al. 2012. Land grabbing and global capitalist accumulation: key features in Latin America. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 33(4), 402–416. doi: 10.1080/02255189.2012.745394[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 402–416].     

drones,swarms and becoming-insect: feminist utopias and posthuman politics

Insects and ‘the swarm’ as metaphors and objects of research have inspired works in the genres of science fiction and horror; social and political theorists; and the development of war-fighting technologies such as ‘drone swarms’, which function as robot/insect hybrids. Contemporary developments suggest that the future of warfare will not be ‘robots’ as technological, individualised substitutions for idealised (masculine) warfighters, but warfighters understood as swarms: insect metaphors for non-centrally organised problem-solvers that will become technologies of racialisation. As such, contemporary feminist analysis requires an analysis of the politics of life and death in the insect and the swarm, which, following Braidotti (2002), cannot be assumed to be a mere metaphor or representation of political life, but an animating materialist logic. The swarm is not only a metaphor but also a central mode of biopolitical and necropolitical war, with the ‘terrorist’ enemy represented as swarm-like as well. In analysing the relations of assemblage and antagonism in the war ontologies of the drone swarm, I seek inspiration from what Hayles (1999, p. 47) describes as a double vision that ‘looks simultaneously at the power of simulation and at the materialities that produce it’. I discuss various representations and manifestations of swarms and insect life in science/speculative fiction, from various presentations of the ‘Borg’ in Star Trek (1987–1994, 1995–2001, 1996), Alien (1979) and The Fly (1958, 1986) to more positive representations of the ‘becoming-insect’ as possible feminist utopia in Gilman’s Herland (2015 [1915]) and Tiptree’s Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1989 [1976]). Posthuman warfare also contains the possibilities of both appropriating and rewriting antagonisms of masculine and feminine in the embodiment of the subject of war in the swarm. This piece seeks to analyse new ways of feminist theorising of the relations of power and violence in the embodiment of war as the swarm.     

‘The Worst Job in the World’: Reform,Revolution, and the Secret Rebellion in Florida's Cane Fields

Governments around the world are embracing guestworkers as a flexible labor force. The untold story of 1960s-era strike wave among Caribbean sugarcane cutters in Florida shows how the longest-running US guestworker program – the H2 Program – has functioned. The program, which began in 1942 and continues today, provided Florida's sugarcane industry with its sole source of harvest field labor, and became all the more important in the 1960s as the Cuban Revolution and the embargo that followed it caused Florida's industry to expand exponentially. Expropriated Cuban sugar moguls adopted the labor practices pioneered by the US Sugar Company, importing mostly Jamaican peasant farmers as temporary workers and deporting those who refused to accept their terms. Federal efforts to mitigate growers' exploitative practices only encouraged worse labor abuses. Cane cutters defended themselves with frequent strikes but deportations made insurgency's gains ephemeral.

‘No ebery ting wha got sugar a sweet’.

Jamaican proverb 1 1. Frank Cundall 1924 Cundall, Cundall. 1924. Jamaica in 1924: A Handbook for Visitors and Intending Settlers with Some Account of the Colony's History, Kingston, Jamaica: The Institute of Jamaica.  [Google Scholar]: 56].      

Understanding ‘The Panty Shanty’: off-campus house signs as cultural texts on gender and sexuality

Students at a large, prestigious, public university in the Midwestern region of the USA have a long-standing tradition of naming their rented houses off campus and communicating those names to the student body through displaying prominent and eye-catching house signs. Examples of signs names and visual characteristics are: ‘Betty Ford Clinic’ (featuring an image of a martini glass); ‘Morning Wood’ (referencing male sexual arousal and depicting a tent with a man's legs sticking out); ‘Time Well Wasted’ (written in pink over a beach scene and a martini glass); ‘Fox Den’ (images of a fox tail and a well-known sorority symbol); ‘Tequila Mockingbird’ (a play on words); and ‘Down on U’ (the sign references a sexual act for a house located on University Avenue). Through a socio-feminist and social constructionist perspective, the researchers use content analysis to explore how these house signs serve as cultural texts on gender and sexuality norms in the American undergraduate college setting. Based on our data, house signs reinforce dominant forms of gender ideologies, including hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity, both of which are associated with upholding and promoting institutionalized patriarchy (Connell, R. W., &; Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005 Connell, R. W., &; Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender &; Society, 19, 829–859. 10.1177/0891243205278639.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender &; Society, 19, 829–859). These house signs are also shown through the data to promote a campus culture of heteronormativity where partying, drinking, and casual sex are standards for social belonging, and where high rates of sexual assault persist. As opposed to viewing house signs as simply manifestations of student wit and harmless humor, the researchers critically evaluate if and how these visual displays serve as a mechanism through which gender and sexuality-related inequalities are perpetuated within a higher education institutional setting. Implications for students and their college campuses are discussed.     

Voices from the feminine margin: Izumi Shikibu and the nuns of Kumano and Seiganji

Kara Walker's 2005 multimedia creation, Song of the South, marks an important transitional moment in Walker's critical artistic practice, described in this essay as a ‘performative turn’. A close study of the work reveals Walker's increasing attentiveness to engage with the viewer's presence as well as incorporating her own personal and collective experiences as an African-American woman with even greater intimacy than in her previous projects. These elements, combined with Walker's use of filmic interventions and her own body as both a represented image and live performer, result in the production of a richly layered and provocative work of art. Song of the South reflects Walker's continued ability to exacerbate the stinging wounds of history while challenging us to address the trauma of the past as manifested in today's societal ills.     

what’s in a face?: Sara Baartman,the (post)colonial gaze and the case of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Vénus Noire</Emphasis> (2010)

The story of Sara Baartman, who was brought to Europe in 1810 to be exhibited as the erotic-exotic freak ‘Hottentot Venus’, is arguably the most famous case study of the scientific validation of (gendered) racism. Her scientific examination and post-mortem dissection by Georges Cuvier, who looked for an alleged connection between the Khoisan and the orangutan, have been the object of famous critical works (Gilman, 1985; Haraway, 1989; Fausto-Sterling, 1995), but also exposed her to the unpalatable fate of becoming the ‘quintessential’ figure of intersecting gender and racial oppressions. This paper deals with Abdellatif Kechiche’s film Vénus Noire (2010), which interestingly rearticulates the (in)famous narrative in unexpected ways. Shot by a male director who is also a postcolonial subject, the film exposes the performativity not only of gender and racial identities, but also of science theorisation, while at the same time raising the issue of whether exposing a violent male colonial gaze on a heavily exhibited woman can contribute to a counter-knowledge of her experience or rather risks reiterating the historical violence. The startling dynamic between the portrayed abuse and Kechiche’s peculiar filmic strategies is the crucial focus of this paper. While Sara’s body is continually exposed and violated, Vénus Noire relies on her face, shot in recurrent extreme close ups, as a haunting presence potentially exceeding violence. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s (1987 [1980]) account of the close up, I explore how Kechiche’s take on Sara’s face builds a strong connection with the spectator’s extra-filmic dimension. As a case of what Deleuze and Guattari call a ‘reflective face’, such close ups invest the viewer with the ethical responsibility of being complicit in the othering practices of (post)colonial times. Vénus Noire thus manages to engage the spectator’s own corporeal awareness of violence, and calls attention to the persisting exploitation of sexual and racial colonial tropes in the contemporary world.     

Negotiating Female Morality: place,ideology and agency in the Red River Colony

By 1850 British women had settled in the Red River colony, a British outpost in what became the province of Manitoba, Canada, and where the Hudson’s Bay Company established fur trading posts. Through an analysis of documents concerning two unconnected lawsuits involving Countryborn women, it is possible to glean some understanding of how British women became agents of colonialism. Company authorities envisaged that White women would establish households predicated on Victorian patriarchal ideology that defined separate spheres for men and women. This article maps how White women stereotyped non‐White women as ‘Other,’ manipulated their symbolic role as mothers of the English nation, and used rumour to maintain a segregated settlement. It also explores the agency of these White women as they sought to establish a place for themselves through their struggles with one another, with First Nations and Countryborn women, as well as with the White men who ruled the colony.

The establishment at which we encamped last night, may be considered the boundary between the Civilized and Savage Worlds, as beyond this point, the country is uninhabited by Whites, except where a Trading Post of the Honourable Hudson’s Bay Company occasionally presents itself. ¹ [1] Hudson’s’ Bay Company Archives (HBCA) D6/4, Frances Simpson’s Journal, 5 May 1830. In 1830, Frances Ramsey Simpson was the eighteen‐year‐old English wife and first cousin of Sir George Simpson, the Governor of Rupert’s Land. View all notes     

Transing the small screen: loving and hating transgender youth in Glee and Degrassi

The teen television shows Glee (2009-) and Degrassi (2001-) are notable for diversity in gender and sexuality representations. Glee represents a variety of masculine women and feminine men as well as gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters. Likewise, Canada's Degrassi franchise has portrayed non-heterosexual characters in significant and controversial ways. Its most recent incarnation, Degrassi (previously Degrassi: The Next Generation) is discussed in this article, alongside Glee, in relation to their recent inclusions of two transgender-identified teenagers bringing transgenderism to the fore of these programmes' discussions of gender and identity. As trans youth are highly vulnerable due to both systemic ageism and cisgenderism, it is not surprising that both detail narratives of discrimination and assault driven by bigotry and ignorance. Conversely, they also explore more positive aspects of the lives of young people, such as friendship and romance (even as these cause their own problems at times), also enjoyed by trans youth. As such, the themes of ‘love’ and ‘hate’ manifest in interesting ways in both of these televisual texts and guide this article's analysis. While challenging assumptions that trans lives are governed by negative emotional states, these representations continue to reify stereotypes, not only of transness, but also of boyhood, girlhood, race and their intersections. Both representations are grounded in material and emotional journeys (or movements) and the concept of the ‘moving body’ (Keegan, 2013 Keegan, C. M. (2013). Moving bodies: sympathetic migrations in transgender narrativity. Genders, 57. Retrieved from http://www.genders.org/g57/g57_keegan.html. [Google Scholar]) partly informs these readings. The privileging of certain modes of trans personhood and embodiment over less normative (unseen, unacknowledged, and thus invisible) ones is at stake in these representations, but they also lay the groundwork for diverse future depictions. By addressing this gap in research, this article elucidates how gender (diversity) is being constructed for consumption on adolescent television and its potential for (re)thinking trans/gender, identity, and embodiment for young people in contemporary Western societies.     

Dress and Distinction in Nursing, 1860–1939: ‘A corporate (as well as corporeal) armour of probity and purity’ 1

This article considers the uniform and uniform rules which formed an important part of the ‘reformed nurse’ in the latter years of the nineteenth century and remained central to the concept of the nurse in the twentieth. It will be shown that the rules and regulations of nurses’ garb continued long after the rules for women’s dress in general had relaxed. These dress codes were used by the reformers of nursing to provide a ‘space’ between the ‘new or reformed nurse’ and her morally suspect predecessor, the Sairey Gamp figure in Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit. The nurses’ garb was created to provide a common identity for the profession at a time of rapid social change. But within this context it also represented its distinctiveness; uniform was a metaphor for the class divisions and symbolic fractures within the profession.     

Caring consumption as marketing schema: representations of motherhood in an era of hyperconsumption

What can representations of women's ‘caring consumption’ (Thompson 1996 Thompson, C., 1996. Caring consumers: gendered consumption meanings and the juggling lifestyle. Journal of consumer research, 22, 388–407. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2489789.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) reveal about broad cultural understandings of the nature of motherhood? We study Canadian television advertisements to gain insight into the production of cultural schemas and the reproduction of beliefs about gender and motherhood. Employing an inductive qualitative analysis of portrayals of mothers and women who are not depicted as mothers, we find that the defining feature of mothers' consumption is a unidimensional depiction of control and caring for others, presented as self-evidently gratifying and fulfilling, in the absence of competing consumption goals. Mothers' identity emerges solely from successful consumer choices that benefit others. Such unidimensional representations of consumption stand in contrast to the consumption of women who are not depicted as mothers, who are found to engage in hyperbolic and indulgent consumption targeted towards self-gratification. We thus provide novel empirical data which show that depictions of consumption in mothers and in women not depicted as mothers are extreme in nature. Our findings provide support for, and elaborate on, the concept of ‘caring consumption’ by helping to make sense of media representations appearing within the conjunction of the contemporary marketing context of hyperconsumption, and the parenting/gender context of intensive mothering. By examining extreme consumption in television advertisements, we gain insight into features of maternal consumption ideals that may not be observable in everyday instantiations, such as the lack of mothers' consumption for self-benefit.