Technology and the housewife in nineteenth‐century America

ALICE JAMES: A BIOGRAPHY by Jean Strouse. Boston. Houghton, Mifflin, 1980. 367 pp. ($15.00).

THE DEATH AND LETTERS OF ALICE JAMES edited by Ruth Bernard Yeazell. Berkeley. University of California Press, 1981.214pp. ($12.95)

CONVERSATIONS WITH KATHERINE ANNE PORTER by Enrique Hank Lopez. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981). 326 pp., $14.95.     

Domination,Subordination and Struggle: middle‐class marriage in early twentieth‐century Wolverhampton,England

The aim of the article is to modify our understanding of the history of middle‐class marriage. It draws upon the detailed examination of one Wolverhampton couple’s marriage to explore relationships between husbands and wives—and between ex‐husbands and ex‐wives—in early twentieth‐century provincial England. It argues that patriarchal and companionate marriages co‐existed alongside one another; that even in patriarchal marriages wives were prepared to seek legal redress for their grievances; and that even in insular and unfashionable regions of the country such as the Black Country the courts, both civil and criminal, policed masculinity and femininity in their assessment of where fault lay.     

Between Labour and Love: The Re‐erotization of Home‐making in Egalitarian Couples within a Nordic Context

This article addresses a proposed rupture between duty and desire in late modern intimacy: the optimistic account of liberated love propagated by Anthony Giddens (1991 Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity Press.  [Google Scholar], 1992 Giddens, Anthony. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Cambridge: Polity Press.  [Google Scholar]) on the one hand, and the feminist critique, among others presented by Lynn Jamieson (1998 Jamieson, Lynn. 1998. Intimacy. Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, Cambridge: Polity Press.  [Google Scholar], 1999 Jamieson, Lynn. 1999. Intimacy transformed? A critical look at the “pure relationship”. Sociology, 33(3): 477–494.  [Google Scholar]) on the other, that emphasizes a widened gap between ideals of pure love and a persistent gendered division of work. Drawing on a longitudinal study of egalitarian couples in Norwegian society, the article outlines an alternative picture. Faced with a noticeable erotization of work and an accentuated focus on the child as a project, neither negotiations for a fair distribution of practical duties nor the mutual disclosure and passion seem to provide the glue in these couples. Instead, the tensions between domestic responsibilities, heavy work requirements, and high expectations on emotional closeness seem to produce new configurations of commitment and desire. Rather than untying domestic necessities from passionate love, these couples transform the timebind into a narrative about shared projects. The achievements of these shared projects are twofold: they liberate the process of home‐making from the gendered narratives, and they permeate these de‐gendered narratives with a romantic spirit. By making these joint projects a focal point in their everyday lives, these couples have managed to reformulate both love and home‐making in a way that produces a committed “in‐between” in their intimate relationship, the overarching principle that is missing in Giddens' concept of confluent love.     

Women,Godliness and Personal Appearance in Seventeenth‐Century England 1

This article discusses Lady Jersey's brief sojourn in New South Wales in 1891-92, as the wife of the colonial governor. In the context of colonial anxieties and hopes about the contemporary women's movement, Lady Jersey's aristocratic confidence and imperial authority gave her the appearance of an ‘Advanced Woman’. A published writer and confident public speaker before she arrived in the colony, Lady Jersey took a keen interest in local political affairs, and her demeanour and activity were swiftly satirised in the radical nationalist and frequently misogynist Bulletin. Local feminist groups, perhaps craving some of the legitimate public authority she so readily exercised, sought her patronage and support but were generally doomed to disappointment. The article suggests that Lady Jersey, despite her own conservatism, offered an ambiguous role model for those seeking positive ways in which to imagine female power.     

Growth of money economy and some questions of transition in late pre‐colonial India

One of the more remarkable but neglected features of the growth of commercial capitalism on an international scale from the sixteenth century consists of widespread processes of monetization affecting a number of Asian societies, and especially India. This was in turn connected with commercialization of both agrarian and urban economy, and the development of markets and manufactures. By the middle of the eighteenth century, this development had become distorted through increasing European intervention in both trade and manufacture; in this respect colonial occupation was both a culmination of earlier processes, and the means (through political monopoly, use of violence, control over the taxation system) for the East India Company to destroy competition and drive prices downwards in an increasingly competitive world. The corollary was that up until the mid‐nineteenth century at least India's integration into a colonial empire was marked by a broad‐based process of under development of which deindustrialization was merely part, and including a process of relative demonetization.¹ This article begins by presenting the problem in terms of the unprecedented international flow and sub‐continental use of monetary media which took place between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The author then considers the implications of these phenomena for an understanding of the development of commercial capitalism during this crucial period, firstly within India itself, and secondly within a broader international context. Finally, he ends with some statements concerning the implications of this hypothesis for an understanding of the early colonial period. The result is to place India firmly on the map of developments affecting the world more generally, long before colonialism.     

Gendered bodies in academia — an analytic approach to social meaning‐making among students

This article presents an analytic approach to the study of gender meaning in an academic context. In the presentation empirical material from an interview study among 29 Danish male and female university students is applied. The analytic approach is based on the conception of gender meaning as a culturally constructed phenomenon in continuous process. Current gender meaning is seen as a construction based on the idea of coherence between the gendered sign on the body and a variety of components including sexual and professionally related aspects. The connections between body sign and the components as well as among the components themselves are a continuous goal of negotiation processes among the male and female students.     

Captivity,Confrontation, and Self‐Empowerment: identity in Forugh Farrokhzad’s poetry

In modern Iranian literature, Forugh Farrokhzad, undoubtedly, occupies a pivotal position. Her poetry presents the singular voice of an Iranian woman who dared to challenge the social and patriarchal boundaries imposed on Iranian women for centuries. Farrokhzad’s pioneering artistic career and her bold lifestyle created an unprecedented legacy for the woman artist in Iran. Her work defies all categories as she not only confronted the stereotypes forced on Iranian women’s identity, but she also challenged the long‐established tradition of the classic Persian poetry. In both arenas, Farrokhzad proved herself resilient and uncompromising. Her unique poetic voice articulates inclusion in literary and social activism and subversion from the mainstream male‐dominated literary circles. Confronting the individual and collective definitions of identity, and sexual and textual territories, Farrokhzad broke many boundaries and expressed the need for self‐awareness and affirmation of female identity. This study is an attempt, in part, to explore and investigate Farrokhzad’s rebellion against the confinement of self in the bondage of conformity and subjection and the delineation of her arduous journey to liberation and self‐empowerment.     

Edith södergran and the sexual discourse of the fin‐de‐siècle

This article focuses on women's business positions in Swedish porn publishing from the 1950s to the 1970s, i.e. when pornography was legalized and when sexually explicit magazines made their commercial breakthrough. The research draws on statistical information on women's entrepreneurial roles in the overall publishing industry, which is then compared with women's agency in porn publishing. According to the findings, women seem to have had a slightly more central role in pornography than within the mainstream publishing industry. The analysis is also expanded with details about a few key female pornography entrepreneurs, tracing their publications and business strategies connected to the Freedom of the Press legislation. It is argued that women's presence in pornographic print and in the overall publishing industry were in fact similar, with a high ratio of family businesses. Women's entrepreneurship in pornography thus followed a more general historical pattern whereby women engaged in small-scale business with relatively low barriers to entry.     

‘A Great Politicianess’: Ann Jebb,Rational Dissent and politics in late eighteenth‐century Britain 1

This article discusses the life of Ann Jebb (1735–1812) in light of recent scholarship on gender and politics in late eighteenth‐century Britain. Wife of the Unitarian political activist John Jebb, Ann was one of the most respected women among ‘enlightened’ Rational Dissenters. In the 1770s at Cambridge, and afterwards in London, she held ‘tea parties’ for reformers, and wrote pamphlets and newspaper articles supporting religious, educational and political reform. Her case sheds light on the activities and status of women in reform circles during the ‘age of cultural revolution’, and further complicates the separate spheres model of gender in the late eighteenth century.     

Gender and Modernity in Post‐War British Cinema; a case study of Young Wives’ Tale (1951)

This article explores the interrelationship between gender and modernity within the context of post‐war Britain, focusing upon the representation of women in the popular film genre of the ‘marriage comedy’. It uses a case study of the 1951 film Young Wives’ Tale to explore post‐war ideas about the ‘companionate marriage’ and the emergence of a ‘modern’ British society. Critical examination of female performance style and the gendered negotiation of domestic space within the film suggests the ways in which anxieties about the ‘new’ and the ‘modern’ are displaced onto the female protagonists. The article explores the ways in which ‘tradition’ is usurped in the film and concludes that it was a box office failure because it was out of step with the cultural consciousness of post‐war cinema audiences. The film’s lack of success demonstrates the extent and manner to which gender relations could be challenged in the early 1950s.     

Songs of the eight‐hour movement∗

The Making of the Labor Bureaucrat: Union Leadership in the United States, 1870–1920. By Warren R. Van Tine. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973. 230 pp. $10.00.

Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform. By John D. Buenker. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973. xi + 299 pp. $8.95.

Labor's Search For Political Order: The Political Behavior Of The Missouri Labor Movement, 1890–1940. By Gary M. Fink. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973. viii + 228 pp. $10.00.

Them and Us: Struggles of a Rank and File Union. By James J. Matles and James Higgins. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, 1974. 311 pp. $6.95.

Writers in Revolt: the Anvil Anthology, 1933–1940. Edited by Jack Conroy and Curt Johnson. New York: Lawrence Hill &; Co., 1973. 234 pp. $8.95.

The Aristocracy of Labor: The Position of Skilled Craftsmen in the American Class Structure. Cambridge Studies in Sociology 7. By Gavin Mackenzie. New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1973‐ 208 pp. $14.50.

Aspects historiques du mouvement ouvrier au Quebec. Edited and with an introduction by Fernand Harvey. Etudes d'histoire du Québec, 6. Montréal: Les Editions du boréal express, 1973. 226 pp. $5.80.

G. D. H. Cole. An Intellectual Biography. By L. P. Carpenter. Conference on British Studies Biographical Series. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973. 271 pp. $14.95.

Five Per Cent Philanthropy: An Account of Housing in Urban Areas Between 1840 and 1914. By John Nelson Tarn. Cambridge, G. B.; Cambridge University Press, 1973. xiv, 211 pp. $23.50.

The Emancipation of Women: The Rise and Decline of the Women's Movement in German Social Democracy 1863–1933. By Werner Thonnessen. Trans. Joris de Btes. London: Pluto Press, 1973.185 pp. £3.75.     

Doing it anyway Lesbian sado‐masochism and performance

Playwright Young Jean Lee, like many Asian-American playwrights of her generation, chafe at the thought of writing an ‘identity’ play—something that will genuinely or accurately reveal some truth of Asian-American gendered experience. Her response to the call of identity, in Songs of the dragons flying to heaven: A play about white people in love draws upon the exhaustion and anxieties that characterizes recent postfeminism and post-race discourses. Jameson's lamentations over the waning of affect notwithstanding, Lee's play set in this post-post landscape is full of feeling—of discomfort, self-loathing, boredom, and mild bemusement. Using Sianne Ngai's formulation of ‘ugly feelings,’ this essay considers Lee's work as indicator of, and response to, the generative value of ugly feelings.     

The Missionary Narrative as Coercive Interrogation: seduction,confession and self‐presentation in women’s ‘letters home’ 1

This article takes as its starting point the late nineteenth and early twentieth century missionary discourse of feminine self‐denial, and attempts to chart the ways in which it became a subversive theme in women missionaries’ ‘letters home.’ It argues that in the simultaneously public and private act of letter writing, women missionaries created complex sexual and political self‐narratives. By co‐opting the imperial rhetoric of a threatening, violent East, and then setting up their letters as conversations with an invisible interrogator, missionary women repeatedly forced their audiences to discover the various ways in which they had been seduced by this East, and had thereby deviated from accepted feminine norms. In the process, they both reinforced imperial notions of race and civilization and undermined the likewise imperial notion of protective domestic space.     

Philomela strikes back: Adultery and mutilation as female self‐assertion

The language of witchcraft and adultery in English Renaissance writing is marked by common metaphors: both are considered female crimes that threaten to subvert the patriarchy; both employ images of fragmentation. This cultural equation is embodied in the figure of the drama's adulteress. First, she is invariably linked with witchcraft by her betrayed husband. Second, she is threatened with brutal mutilation, often bodily dismemberment. The actual treatment of adulterers by the English court system enacts no such violence, but punishes through public shame. However, the treatment of suspected witches offers a useful paradigm: the court's search for the witch's mark, the brand of the devil, as the sign of a true witch; and the accuser's action of “scratching” a witch as a remedy for the witch's enchantment. Ultimately, the patriarchal attempts to contain both adultery and witchcraft are futile: woman retains possession of her power to subvert, whether her husband — or society — marks her with physical violence or not.     

Farm size ‐ farm productivity re‐examined: Evidence from rural Egypt

A major component of the economic rationale for redistributive land reform is the empirically observed inverse relation between farm size and farm productivity. A major policy implication of this statistical relationship, frequently suggested, is for a small farm bias in agricultural development strategy. This article examines the hypothesis that while the above inverse relation may hold in the static context of a relatively backward agriculture, it breaks down with advancing levels of technological innovation, and to show, using primary data from village surveys, that this latter process has indeed been taking place in the context of rural Egypt. The article points out some of the conceptual and methodological confusion of earlier studies.     

London as text: Eighteenth‐century women writers and reading the city

Moral convention required that the eighteenth‐century English novelist express disapproval of the opportunities London afforded women for mobility, deception, and independence. Women novelists of the period, however, subverted this code by depicting urbanized heroines who gain forbidden knowledge about male and female sexuality and social roles, and are thus able to manipulate convention rather than merely following it. Examination of five novels of the period — two by men, three by women — demonstrates that male and female novelists, while allegedly working within the same moral framework, generated vastly different moral texts out of the complex semiotic of the London environment. As the novel gained in respectability, women novelists’ use of the London convention became on the surface more conventional, and their heroines’ attitudes toward urban mores more disapproving, but subversive alternative behaviors are still depicted in late eighteenth‐century novels.     

‘Quality’, Cinema and the ‘Superior Woman’ Persona: understanding women’s film criticism in post‐war Britain (1945–59)

Criticism was a particularly buoyant area of film culture in Britain during the post‐war period, a regular feature in newspapers, periodicals, magazines, and BBC radio programmes. What has not been widely recognised is the central role that women played as critics of film at this time, and where their interests differed from those of their male peers. This article recovers the contribution made by women film critics, arguing that middle‐class writers such as C. A. Lejeune and E. Arnot Robertson adopted a form of ‘distanced amusement’ with regard to themes of sentimentality and romance (associated with low‐brow female pleasures). This strategy permitted them to engage with the broader cultures of film‐watching, commenting on subjects such as female crying and character identification, and recognising cinema‐going as a pleasurable activity for women, subjects which male critics did not discuss. These findings expand knowledge about film criticism in the post‐war period and reconfigure received understandings of film culture to account for women’s gendered contribution to the critical field.