Female Readers Research Articles

Love and Beauty on the Battlefield: Transcultural Influence and Transformation from Naoko Takeuchi’s <em>Sailor Moon</em> to Anglophone Young Adult Fantasy

Despite the considerable popularity of the 1990s animated television series Sailor Moon around the world, English-language research has largely neglected the original manga. Naoko Takeuchi’s major success with the girls’ manga series, Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (1991-1997), launched her into the spotlight in Japan and, to this day, its eponymous 14-year-old protagonist remains the quintessential ‘magical girl’ character. To understand the success of the series and, in particular, how Takeuchi’s innovations with the adolescent female heroine and her narrative journey resonated with young female readers globally, a comparison can be made between Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon and Takeuchi’s lesser-known companion work, Codename: Sailor V (1991-1997). This often-forgotten series was initially written as a one-chapter short story, whose success inspired Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, and was later developed into a prequel for the more successful work. In the extended version of Codename: Sailor V, Takeuchi’s original heroine undergoes a unique process of reversal, being progressively undermined until she is appropriate to serve as a secondary character in Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon. Examining the two texts with a particular eye to each protagonist’s personal characteristics, supernatural abilities, social connections, and narrative arcs provides insight into the attributes of the heroine’s journey that Takeuchi considered essential for a true ‘chosen one’. These features persist in present-day magical girl stories, as well as related works produced around the world, including popular Anglophone YA fiction, and examining their origins can provide a richer understanding of the transnational connections between stories for girls around the world.

An Education for (Future) Health `Professionals and Literary Scholars: Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals and Marisa Marchetto's Cancer Vixen

Life-writing on breast cancer vindicates women’s health rights, but, as this article demonstrates, the autopathographies Cancer Journals (1980) by Audre Lordeand Cancer Vixen (2006) by Marisa Marchetto also have the potential to teach lessons to (future) health professionals and scholars in literary studies, so that they can, respectively, improve their interactions with patients and understand the therapeutic power of illness narratives to emotionally heal their authors and intended female readers. Lorde uses the weapon of anger both to criticize how cancer patients are dehumanized by the often-insensitive medical profession and to proudly assert her post-mastectomy identity as a one-breasted warrior.Meanwhile, Marchetto opts for humor to describe her eleven-month war against breast cancer and its associated complications: her lack of health insurance to treat her illness and her fear of losing her fiancé. Yet, as this article examines, Cancer Vixen shows the illuminating power of graphic medicine as a breakthrough narrative form, to mitigate the antagonism between doctors and cancer patients, while enhancing literary scholars’ and health professionals’ empathic understanding of patients’ personal stories of illness beyond clinical and hospitalencounters.

Women in newsroom-A study of selected prominent media organizations in Guwahati

Women journalists face many challenges in the field of media, and their jobs in newsrooms, their views on the media, and the nature of their work have all been studied for a long time by many scholars. Numerous studies have explored varied issues in the journalism profession, such as the underrepresentation of female journalists in newsrooms, gender discrimination, the glass ceiling, and the patriarchal structure of the industry, etc. Despite the established pattern of media ownership, women journalists have significantly impacted the media landscape. Their struggle to enter and establish themselves in journalism has been extended. Women formally entered the field in the 19th century in various countries, including Britain. During this era, newspapers recognized the importance of financial considerations and advertisements. As a result, they strategically decided to engage women to write women’s sections to appeal to female readers as potential shoppers. Historically, women journalists were predominantly restricted to writing for women’s sections and covering social issues, frequently focusing on light-hearted and humorous matters.

Gender Disparities in Book Circulation at a Chinese University Library (2012–2022)

The study explores the significance of gender differences in higher education, using book circulation data from Nanjing Normal University libraries between 2012 and 2022. It aims to analyze gender disparities and calculate the mathematical characteristics of gender prediction probability using the ANN model. The time-series ARIMA model also forecasts the average number of books that male and female teachers and teacher candidates are expected to borrow and renew in the next three years. The findings indicate that men tend to be more focused and persistent readers despite women having a more extensive network of book borrowing ties. Male graduate students and faculty members demonstrate significantly greater individual variability in book renewals than their female counterparts. Additionally, the maximum value of book renewals for male graduate students and male faculty members is notably higher than that of female graduate students and female faculty members. Book renewal frequency is a crucial factor in ANN gender prediction. On average, male readers incur higher overdue fines than female readers, and the overdue fines for both genders during the COVID-19 pandemic were considerably higher than usual. The actual monthly average renewal rates in 2022 exhibited significant fluctuations across genders and academic statuses, highlighting the limitations of the ARIMA model and other factors influencing renewal rates.

BookTok Community Building: Dissecting Fangirl Behavior on TikTok

ABSTRACTThis poster explores how BookTok, a social media community on TikTok focused on literature, builds a community among an audience of primarily female readers, sometimes called “fangirls.” The researchers analyzed comments on popular BookTok videos, finding that emotional responses, generic comments, and seeking interaction with other viewers were most prevalent. BookTok discussions prioritize shared experiences and emotional connection over critical analysis, creating a welcoming space for readers of all ages. This research suggests that BookTok functions similarly to traditional book clubs, offering a platform for community building and potentially boosting reading engagement and offers possibilities for engagement for libraries and educators.

Reading patterns: dressmaking sections in women’s magazines in the 1960s and 1970s

ABSTRACT In the 1960s and 1970s, many women’s magazines had special sections for home dressmaking. At a time when ready-to-wear clothing was expensive, the sew-it-yourself pages had an important function to win over competition among female readers. Teenagers read the magazines in search of clothing designs to copy in order to dress according to the latest fashion. Despite the importance of such special sections, they have only been given a marginal place in the history of the popular press and in cultural studies. This article examines and discusses the role of dressmaking sections in women’s magazines in Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on analysis of the two largest Swedish women’s weeklies and interviews with readers and editors, the study highlights women’s ‘utilitarian reading’, which combines textual, visual, and material literacy, and thus contributes to an overlooked area within women's studies, fashion and media history.

Exploring Women's Health and Medical Treatment in Renaissance Italy Through Giovanni Marinello's Treatise

This article looks at a 16th-century medical book called Le medicine partenenti alle infermità delle donne by Giovanni Marinello (Venice, 1574), who wrote it intending to assist midwives and other delivery attendants in improving their professional practices. It is a very successful text that serves as an illustration of the rich body of treatises on women's diseases that were published in Europe in the sixteenth century and up until the first half of the seventeenth and which, despite disagreements and controversies, reflect a rekindled and passionate interest in medicine for the uniqueness of the female body that is beginning to diverge from the scholastic view of woman as an imperfect male. In addition, Marinello's work depicts the nature of contemporary daily life. It provides in great detail natural cures for sterility issues and all conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum, always within the bounds of what is reasonable for a period defined by the ideas of the Council of Trent. The writings of Giovanni Marinello on women's diseases and cosmetics have two main advantages: first, they present traditional medical notions about female physiology and pathology in a way that is understandable through the use of colloquial language and an unpretentious style; second, they provide invaluable information on aspects of daily life. A significant portion of this practical book, which contains both prescribing and discursive material, is devoted to issues related to health and disease, the look of the body in life, pain, and methods to address these issues. Discussions include the human obligation to compete with natural rules, reflections on aesthetic canons and goals, and the interaction between nature and art or technology. The analysis of Marinello's texts focuses on both the form and the substance to make them accessible to a primarily female readership. The purpose of Marinello's three books, organized in a chronological order that starts with marriage and ends with childbirth, is to inform women of all the methods for maintaining their bodies and posses-sions. In the first book, we discuss eliminating all the annoying obstacles like urinary incontinence or lousy breath while discussing various sterility therapies in the seco- nd and pregnancy and childbirth in the third one. Despite the abundance of graphic and comprehensive erotic counsel, Marinello always sees it as an essential medical treatise while guaranteeing procreation. Mari- nello consequently highlights women's health through reproduction to safeguard the marriage and family unit. In addition to viewing health as the outcome of humoral balance, me- dieval medicine, based on the Hippocratic idea of humor, also consi- dered that physicians were responsible for aiding in the redemption of the soul alongside preachers (Jacquart & Thomasset, 1989; Lan, 1970). Especially when we consider that medical texts were written in Latin, a preferred language for disseminating science, until well into the seven- teenth and even the eighteenth century, the healing of diseases was associated with an unquestionable hermeticism, only accessible to spe- cialists, never to patients' objectives. As a counterpart to the idea of a Latin language associated with science, this study aims to present a guided reading of a work written in Italian, Le medicine partenenti alle enfermità delle donne, by Giovanni Marinello, the first to use his lan- guage instead of scientific Latin.

Studi eksplorasi nilai-nilai Serat Wulang Putri Nyi Adisara: respon pembaca perempuan jawa masa kini

Serat Wulang Putri Nyi Adisara is a classic text that provides guidance on becoming an ideal Javanese woman. This study examines contemporary Javanese women's perceptions of the traditional values outlined in Serat Wulang Putri Nyi Adisara. The method used is a descriptive qualitative survey and a literary reception approach towards the views of female readers of the Javanese Literature Study Program and Javanese Language and Literature Education Study Program, FBS Unnes. Through a literary reception approach to the reader's view of Serat Wulang Putri Nyi Adisara, the interaction between traditional hopes and the reader's modern aspirations is explained. The findings in this research reveal an understanding of the values of Serat Wulang Putri Nyi Adisara among contemporary Javanese women. In Serat Wulang Putri Nyi Adisara women are taught to be patient, sincere, and obedient. This study contributes to a broader understanding of how these texts shape roles and how these roles evolve over time in response to social and cultural change. Keywords: Serat Piwulang, Nyi Adisara, woman, reception, literature

On Age-Related Changes in Reading Tastes among Female Readers in XIX – Early XX Century Russia Based on Diary Texts

On Age-Related Changes in Reading Tastes among Female Readers in XIX – Early XX Century Russia Based on Diary Texts

Wollstonecraft and the Burghs of Newington Green

ABSTRACT This essay investigates the importance of Mr and Mrs James and Hannah Burgh of Newington Green for Mary Wollstonecraft’s life and career during the 1780s. Newington Green was a hugely productive environment for Wollstonecraft, but the Burghs offered a particular combination of support and provocation. Hannah Burgh was Wollstonecraft’s mentor and financial supporter from 1784, during her residence in Newington Green, and until she became the protégée of Joseph Johnson in 1787. Through Hannah Burgh, Wollstonecraft accessed the works of the late James Burgh, who had died in 1775. Burgh’s pedagogical writings were important intertexts for Wollstonecraft’s early works, especially in their account of female education, their “rational” treatments of scripture, and their responses to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Wollstonecraft builds on Burgh’s writings in her pedagogical works, and he continues to be an important interlocutor even after Wollstonecraft’s departure from Newington Green. Burgh’s anthology The Art of Speaking (1761) is a model and probable source for one of Wollstonecraft’s first publications for Johnson, The Female Reader (1789). In her own anthology, however, Wollstonecraft offers a distinct account of reading as a tool of improvement, and builds a new canon of reading texts for women and girls.

Socialising feminism and diversity: the use of gender in young female readers' literary attachments and exclusions

AbstractThis article discusses young women's reading practices and the social uses of literature for enabling gender equality that are present in those practices. Through a digital ethnography study where six young women collaborated as participants, I asked the data: How is literature, precisely its capacity to be used, conceived by young women readers in the search for gender equality? These women's reading engagements are tightly woven with a gender perspective. What are these readers embracing, and what are they rejecting by assuming a gender lens? By tracing these attachments and exclusions, I describe how books affect readers' perspectives and practices on their identities, their choice of authors, the cultural value of books, the social representations of books and reading as education. Participants' close and distant connections between the book and their desire for gender equality allow me to discuss the literature's pedagogical instrumentality and uselessness for achieving gender‐inclusive literacy. Finally, I argue that a plural and non‐functional approach to literature could offer young people heterogeneous and more creative forms to approach the challenge of gender equality.

The Ecology of Virginia Woolf's London Scene

Abstract: Virginia Woolf's The London Scene essays, published in 1931–1932 in Good Housekeeping , showcase her engagement with the contemporary life sciences, as expressed by Arthur George Tansley, Julian Huxley, and H.G. and G.P. Wells, among others. While Woolf embraces certain aspects of contemporary ecology, namely observing species in their habitats and material interconnectedness—elements that inform her essay writing—the series displays reservations about the field's imperial androcentric foundation. Through the trope of birds, Woolf unsettles this patriarchal framework, positing more polyvocal, cooperative networks of human and non-human exchange to her female middlebrow readers. Rethinking "nature," Woolf suggests, can destabilize social hierarchies and generate alternative political and economic futures.

A Counterfactual Canon

The article analyzes the relationship between gender and taste at Shakespeare and Company. Using the Shakespeare and Company Project datasets, we discover that the majority of the books in the lending library were by men, and that women were almost twice as likely as men to borrow books by women. We also discover that the female authors with a high ratio of male to female readers are now canonical: Agatha Christie, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore. In contrast, the female authors with the highest ratio of female to male readers are less well-known: Margaret Kennedy, E. M. Delafield, Rebecca West, Elizabeth von Arnim. These final two discoveries are surprising: they suggest that the reading practices of men determined the canon of female authors, and that the reading practices of women might reveal a counterfactual canon of modernism. We consider how this counterfactual canon of female authors might influence future work in literary history.

Beyond Words

Beyond Words

It Is High Time for Serious Women

Abstract This article aims to highlight aspects of female emancipation in the Kingdom of Poland in the second half of the nineteenth century that gave this movement a specific, national character. The political and economic consequences of the January Uprising (1863–1864) hit the landed gentry particularly hard. As a result, many gentry women faced the necessity of earning a living and this forced a change in their way of life and aspirations. The traditional model for elite women did not match the economic challenges, and with this in mind, the Polish press, especially magazines for female readers, aimed to create a new model of gentry womanhood. Most periodicals agreed that women's emancipation was on a certain level necessary. But to what extent? This question has been a subject of dispute. Some columnists postulated to limit women's professional aspirations to manual occupations in order to preserve the domain of prestigious intellectual labor exclusively for men. This conservative movement succeeded only partially, with some upper-class women devoting themselves to handicrafts while others, against conservatives’ wishes, graduated from universities abroad and obtained qualifications for performing previously male professions. The majority of these educated women combined paid labor with social work. They were strongly influenced by the promoted ideal of a “new Polish woman” who was to be hard working, constantly improving her mental faculties, and engaging in activities that benefitted Polish society and the nation. This model contributed significantly to the formation of a new generation of distinguished female activists.

Beyond Social Barriers: Empathy versus Socioeconomic Factors in Pride and Prejudice

This paper observes the role of empathy and equality in overcoming social barriers in Pride and Prejudice. More specifically, I argue that the novel shows that empathy plays a more significant role in creating a successful marriage than socioeconomic factors do. Austen’s significance as a groundbreaking women author of interesting ideas and genres during a time when authors were predominantly male has left a remarkable impact on the literary world and therefore spread a message about feminism and women’s rights discourse to young female readers, even in the modern day. Thus, this paper analyzes Pride and Prejudice alongside other feminist works of the time, such as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Throughout the novel, the need to marry well to live a successful life is emphasized through the characters’ actions and dialogue and reflects on the desires and problems of many young women during the time period that the novel was published. I challenge the idea that Austen was only concerned with showing how socioeconomic factors determined a woman’s future in the Regency Era. Rather, Austen utilizes the written word to comment on the need for empathy in marriage, which she implies is more important than socioeconomic factors.

The Pamplona Bibles: A New Member of the Family

In the last decade of the twelfth century, two monumental illustrated bibles were produced in the Kingdom of Navarre, Spain. Named after the city where they originated, they are known as the Pamplona Bibles. Encompassing around a thousand illustrations each, the two bible picture books were commissioned by King Sancho VIII el Fuerte of Navarre: the oldest was completed in 1197 and produced for the king’s use, while a second was finished not long after for an unknown female reader. In 1328, a third Pamplona Bible was produced in a different style by commercial artisans in Paris. This paper introduces a single surviving leaf that appears to represent a fourth Pamplona Bible. The remaining leaf, which is kept at the University of Victoria, holds an illustration that closely resembles its counterpart in the 1197 copy and may well be of a similar age. The leaf deepens our understanding of the production context of the oldest Pamplona Bibles and the workshop that produced them. At the same time, its codicological features suggest that the original manuscript to which the leaf belonged was a very different object than the other surviving Pamplona Bibles.

Consent and Mystical Marriage in the Late Middle English Prose Life of St. Katherine and John Capgrave’s The Life of St. Katherine

ABSTRACT Many studies of mystical marriage depend upon the assertion that writers and readers agreed upon its desirability and usefulness as a devotional paradigm for medieval women. This article challenges the assumption that mystical marriage held an unambiguously positive meaning for medieval audiences by offering a comparison of two Middle English accounts of St. Katherine of Alexandria’s vita: the prose Life (ca. 1420) and John Capgrave’s The Life of St. Katherine (ca. 1445). It argues that these authors use the motif of mystical marriage to opposing social and religious ends. While the former offers an idealized portrayal of Katherine’s marriage, Capgrave, perhaps responding to the concerns of his lay, female readership, instead uses the same episode to critique the efficacy of bridal imagery as a devotional tool. The article concludes by asserting that Capgrave, through his engagement with contemporary discourses surrounding consent, suggests that the concept of marriage to Christ contains problematic theological implications.

Problem praw kobiet w międzywojennej prasie dla Polek

The article contains topics that were of historical interest but are still relevant today. The issue of women’s rights was part of the reflection on the existence of normative laws regulating the rights of women citizens, but it also fell within the sphere of social exclusion, which reflected the mentality of society. In the interwar period, Polish women gained full rights, including educational, economic, and social ones. These were largely subject to „maternal determinism”, that is, they resulted from the social role of the mother. Moreover, they could enjoy political rights. They had the right to vote and stand for election, to hold public office, to information, freedom of association, and freedom of expression. In the press journalism addressed to female readers, attention was drawn to the discrepancy between the normative rights of Polish women and the actual implementation of the principle of legal egalitarianism. On its basis, an image of the dysfunction of the system of women’s rights, areas of abuse, and sometimes crimes against female citizens of the Republic of Poland was created

Czy Zofia Kossak pisze herstorię? Literacki portret Maryny Mniszech w powieści "Złota wolność"

Zofia Kossak introduced Maryna Mniszchówna as one of the historical characters in her novel Złota wolność. By doing that she took the challenge of facing the tradition of writing about the empress (present for example in Józef Szujski’s dramas). The article includes an analysis of the method in which Kossak turns Maryna into a literary character, using available sources thoroughly, but creating a different, new story. The writer emphasizes the difference by introducing into the novel the character of Jadwiszka Paryshazówna as an alter ego of the empress, personifying all the vices attributed to her in stereotypes. Kossak used her own social experience (including the traditional role of a woman) to show a famous historical figure in a different way, thanksto which she was able to satisfy her female readers, who did not find a fully developed heroine in previous historical novels. Researchers who deal with Kossak’s work have not paid attention to Maryna Mniszech before. In the analyses that investigate the presence ofthe empress in cultural texts, the novel Złota wolność has been neglected or mentioned briefly. The article fills this gap.