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.     

‘You do act differently when you're in it’: lingerie and femininity

This paper examines British women's accounts of buying and wearing lingerie taken from in-depth interviews exploring experiences of shopping in sex shops. Lingerie forms one part of a sexual consumer culture that is positioned within a neoliberal discourse of postfeminism. Women's engagement with the representation of lingerie, the way they enact lingerie buying and wearing in their everyday lives and the ways they speak about these practices show complex and often incongruous strategies of accommodation and negotiation. Such strategies can make lingerie pleasurable and liveable whilst at the same time expressing forms of anxiety, ambivalence or laughter directed towards the performance of femininity and feminine sexuality required and represented by lingerie. I contend that it is precisely through this often contradictory engagement with lingerie that strategic counter discourses emerge, by which women can resist some of the respectable norms of female sexuality. Women position themselves in ambivalent ways in relation to the visual imperative of feminine sexuality represented by lingerie, particularly through an embodied discourse of comfort and discomfort, or through the playful and pleasurable performance of non-naturalised gender roles.     

Picture perfect: nostalgic femininity and temporal disruptions in the Aqualillies’ water ballets

This article examines nostalgic femininity in the aquatic performances of present-day synchronized swimming performance troupe, the Aqualillies. In spite of their fervent emulation of the iconic images of Golden Age Hollywood's splashiest star, Esther Williams, the Aqualillies’ performances refuse to be only a kitschy nod to the past through the addition of marketable symbols of modern femininity, such as the bikini, to their otherwise nostalgic representation. Through a concurrent multiplicity of temporally diverse femininities, they challenge the neoliberal rhetoric of choice that can arise in reperformance. This article invokes Svetlana Boym's theory of reflective nostalgia ­– an emotional connection to the past that does not foreclose critical reflection – to argue that the Aqualillies’ water ballets use performative temporal vacillation to expose the physical and psychical labor in the picture-perfect images of femininity in order to subvert the image's dominance and to defy capital's linear organization of time.     

Accommodating ‘Mrs. Three‐in‐One’: homemaking,home entertaining and domestic advice literature in post‐war Britain

This article analyses the effects of the ‘servant problem’, meaning the contraction of the domestic service industry in the twentieth century, as represented in domestic advice literature (etiquette, homemaking and home decoration books). Before World War II, domestic advisors assumed that readers employed staff, while by the 1970s no such assumption could be made. Managing a home unassisted, especially when entertaining guests in the role American etiquette expert Emily Post termed ‘Mrs. Three‐in‐One’ (hostess, cook and waitress at once), formed an enduring topic for British and North American domestic advice writers between 1920 and 1970. Rather than reapportioning parts of the homemaker’s labour to other family members, the solutions offered by domestic advisors revolved around reshaping domestic space and its uses in order to facilitate the simultaneous performance of multiple tasks. Multipurpose objects were promoted to act as ‘bridges’ between distinct domestic regions, while multifunctional spaces and open‐plan interiors collapsed distinctions between such regions. Thus changes in the roles of women within society and the family are shown in this analysis of domestic advice literature to affect the design and layout of the home, and domestic advice books are seen to have promoted ultimately conservative solutions.     

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.     

Beyond stereotypes: Mary Wilkins Freeman's radical critique of nineteenth‐century cults of femininity

MARY SHELLEY &; FRANKENSTEIN; THE FATE OF ANDROGYNY by William Veeder. (The University of Chicago Press, 1986), Cloth, $22.50

THE FEMALE MALADY: WOMEN, MADNESS, AND ENGLISH CULTURE, 1830–1980 by Elaine Showalter. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 312 pp., 29 illustrations.

PATRIARCHAL STRUCTURES IN SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMA by Peter Erickson. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1985) xii + 209 pp. $22.00

RECLAIMING A CONVERSATION: THE IDEAL OF THE EDUCATED WOMAN by Jane Roland Martin. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); ALMA MATER: DESIGN AND EXPERIENCE IN THE WOMEN'S COLLEGES FROM THEIR 19TH‐CENTURY BEGINNINGS TO THE 1930s by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. (New York: Knopf, 1984); IN THE COMPANY OF EDUCATED WOMEN: A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA by Barbara Miller Solomon. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).     

Time,work and money in a Tuscan co‐operative

This article describes how and why a small group of farming families in southern Tuscany collectivised their production and formed an agricultural co‐operative in 1980. The attempt to build socialism on one hillside is entirely untypical of the area, but it does provide a vantage point for examining the general post‐war transformation of Tuscan agriculture, and revealing changes in production and the household with the growth of market relations. The concluding section concentrates particularly on changes in the organisation and purpose of work.     

The dreaded body: disgust and the production of “appropriate” femininity

While some literature has explored women’s feelings about social identities like fatness, race, disability, queerness, and aging, little research has examined, from an intersectional perspective, how women construct a dreaded or viscerally disgusting body and how this produces “appropriate” femininity. This paper utilized thematic analysis of qualitative data from a community sample of 20 US women (mean age = 34, SD = 13.35) to illuminate how women imagined a body they dreaded. Responses indicated that defective femininity, having “freak” body parts, fear of excessiveness, loathing a particular person’s body, and language of smelliness and disgust all appeared, weaving together women’s fears about fatness, dark skin, and becoming old or disabled. Implications incorporating visceral disgust to examinations of body image, and the intersectional foundations of women’s dreaded selves, were discussed. Further, imagining “Other” bodies may produce especially vivid narratives around social biases and internalized oppression.     

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.     

Popular culture,symbolism and rural radicalism in nineteenth‐century France

This article explores the relationship between the modernisation of economic life, collective protest and politics and the centuries‐old pattern of popular festivals and rituals. The rise of social‐democratic republicanism among the small peasants of Mediterranean France in the mid‐nineteenth century did not occur at the expense of popular culture. The reconciliation of these two mainsprings of collective life was facilitated by the use of symbolic modes of public behaviour, investing politics and popular culture with mutually reinforcing potency. Only in later decades did socio‐economic and political developments decay this culture.     

Ascertaining the economic characteristics of peasant classes‐in‐themselves in rural India: A methodological and empirical exercise

In 1976 the author developed a simple labour‐use index for the empirical identification of classes‐in‐themselves within a cultivating population. This index was subsequently applied, along with other conventional grouping methods, to farm economics data relating to Haryana, India. This analysis was complete by 1981. Part I of this article summarises some results of this methodological exercise in ascertaining the economic characteristics of classes‐in‐themselves. Part II is a critical discussion of an article on a similar theme by Athreya, Böklin, Djurfeldt and Lindberg in a recent issue of this journal.     

Land,kinship and identity: The cultural roots of agrarian agitation in eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century Ireland

This paper seeks to uncover the underlying causes of agrarian agitation in eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century Ireland. It argues, in contrast to existing explanations, that rural unrest was a highly complex form of popular protest, disciplined and with clear objectives. These objectives centred on the Irish peasantry's defence of traditional rights and customs with regard to the ownership, occupation and use of the land. It is further argued that these rights and customs were in turn grounded upon a system of social norms, beliefs and obligations which governed the relationship between land, kinship and identity in Irish peasant communities.     

Rural landlessness,extended entitlements and inter‐household relations in south Asia: A Bangladesh case

This article shows how people in one part of Bangladesh rendered landless and impoverished by river bank erosion make innovative use of kinship and other ideologies legitimating reciprocity and mutual aid to re‐establish themselves rent‐free on the land of others. It thereby addresses a larger empirical issue: where are the fully landless rural poor in South Asia living, and through what means? Theoretically, it extends Drèze and Sen's analysis of entitlements and poverty to instances of inter‐household cooperative conflict and mutual aid among extremely poor people. A culturally informed, gender disaggregated analysis of those locally called uthuli because they have settled on others’ land without monetary payment demonstrates that women's ‘extended entitlements’ [Drèze and Sen, 1989:10] as daughters, sisters and mothers are often critical assets in establishing residence. Women are also key agents in the establishment and maintenance of uthuli residence and in managing the benefits stemming from it. Using this approach, we show how landless women's entitlements are pivotal in securing access to a houseplot for themselves and their families.