Female Readers Research Articles

Hayduk novels in the nineteenth-century Romanian fiction: notes on a sub-genre

In the context of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Romanian literature, hajduk novels and hajduk short fiction (novella, short-story, tale) are called to bring back a lost “epicness,” to give back the hajduks their lost aura. But why did the Romanian readers need this remix? Was it for ideological reasons? Did the growing female readership influence the affluence of hajduk fiction? Could the hajduk novels have supplied the default of other important fiction sub-genres such as children or teenage literature? The present article supports the idea that, as a distinct fiction sub-genre, the hajduk novels convey a modern lifestyle, attached to new values such as the disengagement from material objects, the democratization of access to luxury goods and commodities, and the mobility of social classes. Clothing, leisure, eating/ drinking/ sleeping/ hygiene, work, military and forest/ nomad life, and ritual items that are mentioned in these novels can help us correlate the technical tendencies reflected in the making of objects to a particular ethnicity (Romanian).

The making of the ‘new woman’: narratives in the popular illustrated press from the Ottoman Empire to the new Republic (1890–1920s)

ABSTRACTThe genre of social narrative was prominent in the printed press of the Ottoman Empire to the early Republic of Turkey (1850s-1920s). The ideological narratives disseminated through the periodical press were influential in the establishment of a new, changing society and social space. Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, both male and female writers debated the position of women within the changing public setting. Various articles by various authors with various aims constructed multiple imaginations of the ‘new woman’ by the 1930s. The shifting concepts of womanhood entered the public debate with articles on the modern woman versus the women of the past and discussions on what makes a modern woman. Articles in newspapers and political magazines of the era debated the equality of the new woman in the public sphere. In contrast to them, popular almanacs brought the discussion of womanhood into the domestic space. Turkish-language almanacs contained effectual narratives of the culture of domesticity that helped to imagine and establish multiple modes of new womanhood interwoven with the notion of the home. This article attempts to trace the ideas of the “new woman” and the culture of domesticity that were used particularly in the illustrations found in three different Turkish-language almanacs specifically aimed at female readers in the 1920s, by discussing them as visual narratives.

‘… With a Book in Your Hands’: A Reflection on Imaging, Reading, Space, and Female Agency

The Dutch artist, Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), created a series of singular paintings that might be identified as feminine soliloquies of solitude, silence, and space. Like seeing, reading is a mediated practice that occurs within the cultural matrix that promotes the appropriate social mores of how to read, what to read, and who is able to read. Over the millennia of Western cultural history, books have been ambiguous symbols of power that have signified authorship, divine inspiration, wisdom, social position, and literacy. This led to the initiation of a singular Christian form of literature—the advice manual—specifically prepared for Christian women by Jerome (347–420), perhaps best known as one of the church fathers, translator of the Vulgate, and penitential saint. Simultaneously, an iconography of women reading evolved from these theological advisories, and paralleled the history of women’s literacy, particularly within Western Christian culture. The dramatic division that has always existed between male readers and female readers was highlighted during the Reformation when Protestant artists recorded the historical reality that readers were predominantly men of all ages but only old women, that is, those women who were relieved form the duties of childbearing and housekeeping, and who, as a form of spiritual preparation for death, meditated upon the scriptures. The magisterial art historian Leo Steinberg documented the tradition of what he termed “engaged” readers in Western art. Engaged male readers dominated numerically over female readers as reading, Steinberg determined, was not a primary, or perhaps better said appropriate, activity for women. Yet Vermeer’s portrayal of a young woman absorbed in textual engagement with a letter was an exquisitely nuanced visual immediacy of intimacy merging with reality that was highlighted by a refined light that illumined the soft, diffuse ambiance of this woman’s world. How Vermeer was able to focus the viewer’s attention on his female subject and her innermost thoughts as she is “lost in space” reading provides a starting point of this discussion of the images, reading, space, and female agency in Christian and in secular art.

Translation, Gender and the Republic of Letters in José de Cadalso’s Los eruditos a la violeta and Its Suplemento

In this article I study José de Cadalso’s satirical work Los eruditos a la violeta and its Suplemento (both published in 1772), in relation to the changing understanding of the ‘Republic of Letters’ in late eighteenth-century Spain. In doing this, I focus particularly on the discussion of translation initiated by a fictional female reader at the beginning of the supplementary text. Arguing that the Suplemento subverts the conception of the literary world presented in the original satire, I first analyse the construction of ideal and unacceptable versions of learned masculinity (that is, ‘originals’ and ‘copies’) in Los eruditos. I then show how the letter from the female reader that opens the Suplemento destabilizes this binary understanding of knowledge and forces a reconsideration of the reaches of the literary sphere. In discussing this woman’s intervention and her request for translations, I reflect on the historical association of translation with the feminine that casts it as a reproductive rather than a productive mode of writing. In the final section of the article I study the translations that Cadalso includes in the Suplemento, and demonstrate how this addendum offers some steps toward a ‘reframing of fidelity’ through its nuanced contribution to the debate surrounding translation in eighteenth-century Spain.

Mythology moe-ified: classical witches, warriors, and monsters in Japanese manga

ABSTRACT Through a gendered close reading, using classical reception studies as a springboard, this article discusses the reception and moe-ification of the female witch, warrior, and monster figures from classical mythology in Japanese seinen and shōnen manga at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It focuses on Flora and Schierke in Berserk (1990–); the Gorgon sisters in One Piece (1997–) and in Soul Eater (2004–2013); and Medusa in Witchcraft Works (2010–), all of whom are named and/or fashioned after Circe, the Amazons, the Gorgons, and Arachne. It points out to the intertextuality between these worldwide popular turn-of-the-century Japanese manga and classical mythology narratives. It discusses the moe-ification of these classical subversive monstrous female figures, formerly demonised and marginalised by the patriarchal discourse. It analyses how their reception in manga contributes to canonising the monstrous female. It illustrates how that offers the female readers of seinen and shōnen manga new ways of expressing and interpreting gender that liberate and restructure the female’s relationship to power.

Instructions to Women: Admonitions Texts for a Female Readership in Early China

Abstract The texts written for the instruction of women in ancient China are some of the earliest examples of didactic sources aimed at a female readership to be produced anywhere in the world. The oldest surviving texts in the transmitted tradition date to the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). However, in 2010, Peking University acquired a cache of manuscripts written on bamboo, one of which, the Jiaonü (Instructions to women), predates these Han dynasty admonitions texts by several centuries. This paper provides a full translation of this important text, a discussion of the historical and cultural context in which it was produced, and examines its relationship with the later similar works in the transmitted tradition. The Jiaonü throws new light on the way in which women were educated in appropriate gender roles in ancient China.

Glamorous Prose as Supertext: An Attempt at Linguo-axiological Interpretation

This article discusses works of contemporary women’s glamorous prose that constitute a particular supertext. The author refers to novels united by the axiological dominant and end-to-end motif of a planned marriage. Their typical character is a “huntress” girl who manages to win over the heart of a millionaire. In such novels, supertext is also unified by the author, the readership, and the chronotope. The author is a specific person, a young woman, a representative of glamorous culture having the image of a “socialite”. She shares her personal experience with the reader, giving specific recommendations with regard to conquering a millionaire. Aimed at female readership, the novels are monologous: the author is an expert in glamorous culture, which makes her point of view dominant. In some cases, authors use the canons of the genre of practical guide. The didactic constant is motivated by impressive real-life stories, demonstrating women’s superiority. The target audience is girls who want to get married to the “right” man. They get such an opportunity, having examined the “practical manual” to master “professional” competencies which are necessary for a successful marriage. In glamorous prose, the current time is reflected in real space and in real situations. The analysis shows that the supertext of glamorous prose aims to transmit gender values which are different from the traditional ones typical of Russian culture. Spiritual and moral values are replaced by material values. The article points out a tendency for a pragmatic approach to women’s perception of the world. The main goal girls seeking to enter the world of glamour pursue is not family happiness, not “love in a cottage”, but wealth, replacing love, which is the key concept of Russian culture. The author of the article emphasises a direct connection between the glamorous style of the prose and the style of glossy magazines. Similar to glossy magazines, the writers of such prose draw the reader’s attention to the external characteristics of the world of things and the world of luxury.

Fashioning Identities through Consumption: Clothes, Class, and Gender in the First World War Fictionalized Epistolary Column

ABSTRACT This article explores how the fictionalized epistolary column that appeared in three illustrated magazines during the First World War linked subtle differences in relatively affluent female readers’ class identification with a set of prescribed gendered practices governing women’s wartime consumption of clothes and entertainments. While the columns appearing in The Tatler, The Sketch, and The Bystander similarly encouraged female readers to support the war effort, they did so by promoting distinct versions of gender and consumption.

Annotating theGolden Legendin Early Modern England

This article discusses annotations to some eighty surviving copies of William Caxton's “Golden Legend.” It assesses reactions from male and female readers across the religious spectrum, exploring the varied ways in which early modern readers engaged with a book that quickly became—and has remained—a shorthand for medieval religion. It seeks to contribute to the history of the “Legend” itself, to historical understanding of annotation, and to the history of reading during the Reformation.

Reforming Count D’elmont: Masculinity, Sympathy, and Reading in Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess

This article explores the ways in which Eliza Haywood uses reading and sympathy to reform masculinity in her novel Love in Excess (1719). It argues that Haywood, long established as an author of amatory passion, is also a foundational authority on the connection between moral passion and codes of masculinity. In Love in Excess, Haywood transforms Count D’elmont from a rakish seducer to a sentimental gentleman through a narrative pattern that links D’elmont’s masculinity with his sympathetic reading—both literal and metaphorical—in ways that create access points for women’s influence and authorship. Haywood uses this dynamic to create desire in her readers for the new masculinity of the gentleman and validate the moral, sympathetic potential of her own amatory style and literary authority. This essay rethinks assumptions that Haywood was primarily focused on female readers and argues that she sought to dictate to male readers as well

An Image in Lava: Annotation, Sentiment, and the Traces of Nineteenth-Century Reading

Drawing first on an annotated copy of the poetry of Felicia Hemans that my students discovered in the stacks of the University of Virginia's library, this essay goes on to examine the marks made by female readers in three nineteenth-century copies of Hemans's poetry to reveal the dynamics of sentiment in author-reader networks of Romantic and Victorian poetry. Seeing Hemans through the eyes of individual female readers surfaces a lost world in which poetry was valued as a collaborative, intimate language of the heart. Specific historical copies allow us best to apprehend this world, but, in the wake of wide-scale digitization, nineteenth-century books are simultaneously newly visible and newly at risk. This essay makes the case for retaining them and for integrating them into our accounts of nineteenth-century literary history.

Being Private in Public: Claudia Rankine and John Lucas's "Situation" Videos

Being Private in Public:Claudia Rankine and John Lucas's "Situation" Videos Chad Bennett (bio) 1 On November 9, 2015, johari osayi idusuyi, then a student at Lincoln Land Community College in Springfield, Illinois, attended a rally for presidential candidate donald trump, and, unimpressed with Trump's rhetoric and the ugly treatment of protestors, began to read a book. Because she, along with a number of other people of color in the predominantly white crowd, had been strategically invited to sit behind Trump, footage of her engrossed in claudia rankine's celebrated Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), with its already iconic cover featuring david hammons's artwork In the Hood (1993), was broadcast across cable news (Figure 1). Images of this moment and its juxtaposition of trump's bigoted bombast and idusuyi's quietly absorbed reading quickly went viral, trending on Twitter and appearing everywhere from Jezebel to Jimmy Kimmel Live! to the Wall Street Journal to damon young's VerySmartBrothas site, which named idusuyi its "Blackest Person Who Ever Lived This Week."1 The rash of media coverage of idusuyi's inspired reading [End Page 377] in turn inspired renewed sales of Citizen, returning it to The New York Times Paperback Nonfiction Bestseller list thirteen months after its release.2 Asked for a comment on the episode by The Rachel Maddow Show, rankine herself responded, in part, "I love [idusuyi's] resistance against being managed in the name of good manners. She is a citizen shaping her own dialogue within and against trump's performance of racism and violence."3 The unlikely shape of that dialogue—assuming not the more overt dissent of the activists forcibly removed from the rally but instead the intimate exchange between a reader and her book—sparked both curiosity and contempt: contempt from the Trump supporters seated behind idusuyi, who found her public display of private absorption irritating enough to confront her, insisting she put down her book; curiosity on the part of the larger public, who spent the next few weeks wondering who she was, what she was reading, and why.4 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Lyric Reading. One of many online images of footage of Johari Osayi Idusuyi reading Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) during a November 9, 2015 Donald Trump campaign rally in Spring field, Illinois. [End Page 378] Among the many scenes of resistance to Trump's toxic campaign, why did this one in particular attract such interest? Surely Idusuyi's act of reading involved a degree of deliberate political protest. Although she claimed that she wasn't "trying to make a scene and it wasn't originally planned to be a protest," Idusuyi nevertheless added, "I'm not going to waste my time listening to somebody who I can't respect anymore, so I started to read."5 Her choice of reading material certainly suited the occasion: Rankine's Citizen centers on a choral account of racial microaggressions and relentlessly tracks the damaging effects for people of color negotiating public spaces shaped by and for whiteness. Moreover, whatever Idusuyi's intention, the circulation of the image of her reading itself carries with it a long and ongoing history of overdetermined responses to both female and Black readers as loci for cultural anxieties about the subversion of white patriarchy—as rebellious or even unlawful figures whose imaginative immersion proves alluring but whose dangerous energies ultimately must be repressed or contained.6 As Young succinctly put it, "she's a Black woman reading a book in a public space. And you can't get much Blacker than that."7 In this regard, the image of Idusuyi reading in public more specifically evokes a history of civil rights resistance distilled, for example, in photographs of Black men and women antagonized while reading during lunch counter protests (Figure 2). The power of such images might be ascribed to their visible protest, or to "the canonical idea," in Jeffrey Clapp's words, "that visibility, recognition, and representation can serve as solutions to injustice and inequality."8 Yet the animating charge of Idusuyi's reading, I suggest, has as much to do with how its moment of...

The Epicure in Surinam: Lucretian Reception and Skepticism in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko

The Epicure in Surinam:Lucretian Reception and Skepticism in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko Sarah-Gray Lesley Aphra Behn was unapologetic in her support of Epicureanism. This is particularly evident in her poem, "To the Unknown Daphnis" (1683), one of several prefatory paeans to Thomas Creech in the second edition of his translation of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura. Creech was the first to publish a complete English translation of the Roman didactic epic in 1682, and Behn's poem praises Creech for making the Latin text readable to those who did not receive a classical education. This group includes, notably, Behn and a vast majority of seventeenth-century women. However, Behn is excited not only by the increased classical accessibility for her and her fellow female readers, but also by the heterodoxy within De Rerum Natura itself. "To the Unknown Daphnis" makes explicit that Behn finds in Lucretius classical support for her career-long commitment to intellectual freedom, skepticism, and libertine anti-religion.1 Behn, of course, was not the first to mobilize Epicureanism as a tool for thinking about the world outside of the theocratic standard. Epicureanism engenders skepticism within its followers by way of its materialist principles.2 At the center of the Epicurean universe are atoms—the smallest possible unit of matter from which all things are made. These atoms' movement through and structure within vacuums order the world in which we live. The universe is infinite in size, and other worlds like or unlike ours can and do exist. This unlimited universe is not guided by divine force. Though extant, the gods are entirely removed from the lives of those on earth(s), so they enact neither good will nor wrath, neither providence nor ultimate judgment, upon mortals. If the gods were to involve themselves with the troubles of humans, they would no longer be perfect, because perfection, for the Epicure, is ataraxia, a state of complete peace about one's life [End Page 75] and, especially, one's mortality. In ataraxia, one accepts that they are made exclusively of the materials of the world—atoms. This includes one's soul3 (anima), which is atomic and part of the body; thus, it dies with the body. It follows then that there is no afterlife that humans can either fear or look forward to. For Lucretius and Epicurus, this denial of immortality enables humans to escape the constraints of religion—religion being an institution which is merely a vehicle of fear designed to control people. The purpose of an Epicurean life then is not to appease the moral guidelines of an unseen god, but rather to live a life of mental peace, bodily health, and intellectual fellowship. Given this context, it is hardly surprising that a full English translation of De Rerum Natura was kept from print for nearly 250 years after Poggio Bracciolini's 1417 rediscovery of the text. For reasons such as these, Creech appears quite apologetic and uncomfortable with his position as Lucretius's translator. His marginalia and prefatory material work to distance him from certain beliefs held by his classical subject, while Behn's "To the Unknown Daphnis" highlights the same bristly elements and writes them honorable. Creech, or his publisher Jacob Tonson, identified the controversy innate in Behn's brazen promotion of Epicurean materialism at its most heterodox and censured her poem in its 1683 print. Evidence that Behn's paean was in fact edited against her wishes is found in two of her later poems. In 1685, Behn published "A Letter to Mr. Creech," a Hudibrastic satire which accuses Creech of betrayal regarding a "scrap of Nonsense" which had been "left at the Tonsons" (4–5). This "scrap", she alleges, has been marred by Creech's intervention; she complains that his "Scribling Fist was out of joynt / And ev'ry Limb made great complaint" (41–42). Just a year before, Behn published her second edition of "To the Unknown Daphnis" (1684) with significant changes in her collection, Poems Upon Several Occasions. Behn's explicit identification of editorial betrayal in "A Letter to Mr. Creech" suggests that the second edition of "To the Unknown Daphnis" was a correction, rather than a...

"Will You Give Me Your Opinion?": Mundane Beauty in the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, 1860–75

"Will You Give Me Your Opinion?":Mundane Beauty in the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, 1860–75 Jessica P. Clark (bio) In February 1868 the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine printed a letter enquiring about experiences with hair treatments. Correspondent C. M. R. requested advice from readers of the "Englishwoman's Conversazione" on a widely available commercial hair restorer. On news that Mrs. Allen's Dressing caused itchy red scalps in two acquaintances, "I bethought," she wrote, "of your invaluable Conversazione, which so often helps us out of difficulties"; she felt "most thankful if any of your subscribers who may have used this preparation will kindly inform me whether the result was similar in their case."1 C. M. R.'s letter set off a chain of responses over the coming months, including a warning from respondent Constance that Mrs. Allen's Dressing contained hazardous amounts of mercury. Constance's disclosure in turn prompted a defensive response from the distributor, who asserted the "natural" makeup of his company's product and impugned Constance's motives.2 Other responses followed both refuting and supporting Constance's charge, accompanied by correspondents' own tried-and-true personal recipes for hair restorers. Exchanges like that of C. M. R. and her contemporaries illuminate the role of the correspondence column as a textual community of participants, as defined by Margaret Beetham and Lynn Warren. The conversazione functioned as a textual forum where female interlocutors engaged in the production of personal and collective meanings. According to Beetham and Warren, columns could operate as relatively independent entities despite editorial attempts to manage their content, forging a sense of belonging to a discursive milieu populated by textual identities.3 As part of this exchange, participants in the "Englishwoman's Conversazione" periodically debated daily practices of bodily management despite popular opprobrium of female beautification through the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, in addition [End Page 540] to questions about fashion and needlework, the column encouraged a widening circle of consumer knowledge encompassing a commercially conscious public sphere of citizens who debated the efficacy and, more importantly, the safety of widely available beauty products. Although C. M. R. reportedly discussed hair treatments with two friends, she relied on the larger community of the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine's correspondents to substantiate their negative claims. She placed her trust in a textual community of women facilitated by the popular press in an effort to buttress traditional forms of advice shared among female intimates. Her effort bore fruit; it elicited Constance's response that exposed the dangerous chemical makeup of the hair product, a factor unbeknownst to C. M. R.'s unfortunate acquaintances. C. M. R.'s letter, with its focus on health and beauty, appeared at a moment when the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine was embroiled in a contentious and highly documented debate over corset training, first ignited in March 1867. In that same year, another sensational correspondence emerged. This time the topic of corporal punishment eclipsed the tight-lacing debate in terms of length and public censure, adding further infamy to the conversazione.4 Historians of Victorian sexuality have fixed on these two correspondences as instances of what Mary Poovey terms "boundary work," a moment of ideological disjuncture that reveals conflicting expectations of female sexuality and desire.5 For some, like David Kunzle, the letters represent subcultural expressions of desire circulating in Victorian society. He argues that women adopted tight-lacing in its erotic context as a fetishized practice and not, as some earlier scholars attest, a symbol of subordination.6 For others, like Ros Ballaster, Margaret Beetham, Elizabeth Frazer, and Sandra Hebron, the correspondence about tight-lacing emerged in part because of editorial strategies that presented multiple, contradictory forms of femininity, situating female readers as domestic managers but also desirable women. Samuel Beeton, publisher of the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, bolstered readers' sense of desirability through his masculine "semi-flirtatious tone" when replying to readers' queries on love and romance.7 More recently, Margaret Beetham and Sharon Marcus shifted the discussion to consider the whipping and corset debates as complex expressions of female hetero- and homoerotic desire made widely available to women readers.8 With its suggestive glimpses into gendered and sexual...

From Green Gables to Grönkulla: The Metamorphoses of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables in its Various Swedish Translations

This paper examines Swedish translations of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908), a novel that has maintained the status of a children’s classic in the Scandinavian countries for more than a century. I explore the background conditions of this long-lasting reception by analyzing significant differences between source and target text within this series of translations. All the translations have been adapted to the context of their target culture in general and shaped to address an audience of young female readers in particular. Many of the interventions correspond to general patterns in translations for children and reflect contemporary assumptions about the needs of young readers: they emphasize domestication over foreignization and add clarifying comments and explanations to cultural elements unfamiliar to Swedish readers. Some minor inconsistencies point to turbulences within the translation process and highlight the low esteem for children’s fiction within the literary system. Other, more consistent changes can be attributed to programmatic decisions that affect the very premises of Anne of Green Gables. The handling of intertextual references and some major abridgements reveal a tendency to disambiguate the protagonist’s cross-over status between girlhood and adulthood, and clarify her often blurry position between the realms of imagination and reality. This results in the seemingly paradoxical result that the success of Anne of Green Gables in Sweden is founded on decisions that have narrowed down its literary scope.

The Poetics of Maria Smith Abdy: Wielding the Sword and the Shield

This article focuses on the sentimental poems of Maria Smith Abdy, a popular nineteenth-century British poetess, whose work highly influenced female readers in Victorian Britain and America but who vanished from literary history due to her association with literary annuals and periodicals, both considered minor literary venues by the academy. In its attempt to reintroduce and substantiate the relevance of this lesser-known poet to the canon and to feminist studies, this article examines thematic and rhetorical tensions informing Abdy’s poetry, tensions born of and fueled by the interrelationship between the poetess and the editorial constraints of the annuals. It argues that Abdy, by assuming theologically conservative positions through which to register political criticism, is able to gain entree into public debates, such as those on slavery and the abuse of the working class. This strategy allowed her to transcend accepted norms of propriety for women of the time while providing a way to draw back when her voice pushed the limit of acceptability, thus serving as a critique of patriarchy.

Investigating the Reading Preferences of Young Female Readers of Hausa Popular Prose Fiction: A Feminist Approach

Reading the story of popular romance fiction is the most powerful social activities among women in the Western countries, Europe, Asia and Africa for their leisure and enjoyment. In this study an attempt has been made to understand the reading habits and preferences of the young adult female readers of Hausa popular romance fiction, the contemporary romance fiction are popular because it deals with unimaginable relationship between men and female, the novels help them to solve some issues on courtship, ineqality, domestic violence and social change. In this study a face to face interviews was employed to collect their views, feelings and understanding of 10 young female readers through the Rosenblatt’s Reader-response theory (1978). The data were analyzed using the constant comparative method. The findings of the study indicated four main outcomes which revealed the major motivating factors which includes; (i ) image of flashy car appeared at the cover page (ii) image of beautiful flowers, (iii) image of golden ring (iv) Heart images, this images played a significant role for encouraging the readers to select a novel and read the story enjoy the freedom from breaking free of gender constraints through those stories consider it as part of their lives.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon’un Lady Audley’nın Sırrı Başlıklı Romanında Feminist Çelişki

1860ların sansasyonel romanları, alışılmadık ve sıradışı kadın karakterleri nedeniyle yazıldıkları dönemde hararetli tartışmaların çıkmasına neden olmuştur. Çünkü, bu romanlar daha çok kadın okur kitlesine hitap etmiş ve zina yapan, iki eşli ya da bir şekilde suça bulaşmış kadın karakterlerin kadın okurlar üzerindeki olası etkileri edebi çevreleri endişelendirmiştir. Öte yandan, yirminci yüzyıl feminist edebi eleştirmenler bu olağandışı ve tartışmalı kadın temsiliyetini feminist uyanışın dönem edebiyatındaki yansıması olarak yorumlama eğilimi göstermişlerdir. Fakat, bunun tam tersi yaklaşımlardan bahsetmek de mümkün. Örneğin, cinsel, sosyal ve kültürel normların dışına çıkan kadın karakterlerin romanlarda cezalandırıldığı ve disipline edildiğine vurgu yapan farklı okumalar de bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın yaklaşımı ikinci görüşe daha yakındır. Bu makale anlatılardaki feminist içeriğin aslında anti-feminist bir bakış açısı ile ele alındığına vurgu yapmayı amaçlar. Bunun için sansasyonel roman türünün en iyi örneklerinden kabul edilen Mary Elizabeth Braddon’ın Lady Audley’nin Sırrı (1862) başlıklı romanının detaylı okuması sunulacaktır.

‘Ateliers d’artistes’ (1898): an advertorial for the ‘lady readers’ of the Figaro illustré

ABSTRACTThis article examines the text and imagery of an article entitled ‘Ateliers d’artistes,’ a series of studio visits conducted by the critic François Thiébaut-Sisson in 1898 and published in the Figaro illustré. The series is interesting for a number of reasons, but most importantly because the author makes an explicit appeal to the female readers of the magazine. This appeal is set in the context of the construction of women as consumers (in this case, specifically as consumers of art) and female readership of the illustrated press, and analyzed as an early form of ‘advertorial,’ designed to encourage women to purchase the work of the artists visited. At the same time, the series serves to further the commercial interests of the painters discussed, and to consolidate certain stereotypes surrounding the artist’s studio.

«Почти каждой сплетнице есть что вспомнить»: репрезентации сексуального насилия в цифровых таблоидах

Полина Андреевна Ерофеева – к. п. н., преподаватель, Нижегородский государственный лингвистический университет им. Н. А. Добролюбова, Нижний Новгород, Россия. Электронная почта: polina.erofeeva@gmail.com
 Средства массовой информации играют важную роль в формировании общественных представлений о проблеме сексуального насилия. Переход к цифровым каналам информации дает возможность оценить, как проблему сексуального насилия воспринимают потребители цифровых СМИ разных жанров. В статье рассматриваются репрезентации сексуального насилия в отношении женщин среди потребителей цифровых таблоидов, комментирующих публикации по теме насилия. Роль читательского комментария разбирается с опорой на нарративную теорию Эрминии Ибарры, которая выделяет три этапа процесса формирования идентичности в коммуникации: (1) выбор ролевых моделей и их сопоставление с собой; (2) экспериментирование с поведением ролевых моделей; (3) внутренняя оценка поведения на предмет совместимости с прошлой идентичностью, а также его внешнее одобрение значимыми окружающими. Процесс формирования идентичности выражается в «я-нарративе», рассказе, который позволяет высказать соображение о себе. В статье читательский комментарий в цифровых СМИ рассматривается как форма «я-нарратива», в котором комментатор сопоставляет себя с ролевой моделью (героем новостной истории), получая или не получая одобрение («лайк») со стороны других участников обсуждения. В качестве эмпирического источника рассматривается женский цифровой таблоид «Сплетник». Статья демонстрирует, что, освещая жизнь знаменитостей, «Сплетник» дает благодатную почву для создания и подтверждения «я-нарративов». Показывается, что поводом для обсуждения темы насилия служат истории знаменитых женщин, его переживших. Используя тематический анализ, автор выявляет основные темы читательского обсуждения историй знаменитостей. Поскольку издание представляет собой гибрид таблоида и глянца, восприятие темы насилия среди аудитории «Сплетника» является ареной борьбы между разными дискурсами – патриархатным, характерным для таблоида, и феминистским, элементы которого присутствуют в современном женском глянце. В заключении критически осмысляется вклад «Сплетника» в развитие общественной дискуссии о проблеме сексуального насилия в России, легитимацию открытого обсуждения этой темы как социальной, а не частной проблемы.