Upper-class Woman Research Articles

Reclaiming Desire and Defying Conventions: An Analysis of Female Sexuality in Mrs Dalloway and the God of Small Things

The paper offers a detailed analysis of the complexities of female sexuality in Mrs Dalloway and The God of Small Things from a feminist perspective. It investigates how female protagonists overcome and defy societal norms and expectations concerning their sexual desires. The obstacles of conventional sexual norms align with the ‘repressive hypothesis’, coined by Michele Foucault in The History of Sexuality which posits that the modern discourse on sexuality is characterized by repression. This theory is used to depict how societal repression shapes and is shaped by the narratives of Clarissa and Ammu. The paper is qualitative and uses close textual analysis as an analytical tool. For the study, primary data were collected from textbooks, and secondary sources including various books, websites, articles, and journals were used to gather secondary data. The clear finding is that Clarissa has a sexual desire for Sally which is not accepted by post world war British society and Ammu, being a divorcee and upper-class woman, reclaims her sexual agency and attempts to fulfill her sexual desire by making a romantic relationship with Velutha which is prohibited in the post-colonial Indian society. Through the blending of sexual desires with more general societal issues like race, class, and cultural identities, both novels deconstructed conventional depictions of female sexuality. Thus, the study contributes to the ongoing conversation on the role of women’s sexual desires and their place in a postmodern world where autonomy, self-expression, and the deconstruction of conventional norms are of paramount importance.

Archiving Religious Piety and Trans Identity

Abstract This article proposes a nonsecular transfeminist critique to interrogate how labels such as political, strategic, and activist are deployed in ways that reproduce exclusionary transgender archives in Turkey. It analyzes the section on religion and spirituality from the South African Gabrielle Le Roux’s activist documentary Proudly Trans in Turkey (2012) as well as Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay’s article “Reconstructing the Transgendered Self as a Muslim, Nationalist, Upper-Class Woman” (2008), which focuses on the statements and performances of Bülent Ersoy, who has been a very popular trans public figure in Turkey since the eighties and who has, to the surprise of many, publicly embraced Islam in the last three decades. Through this analysis, this article demonstrates how a Western secular framework persistently disciplines and limits trans studies in a Turkish context by foregrounding trans people whose agency can be described in terms of resistance or subversion, thus excluding those pious Muslim trans people whose approaches differ.

Francis Lee’s Period Film Ammonite: An Exploration of Gender, Class, and Sexuality

Ammonite (2020) is loosely based on the life of Mary Anning (1799–1847), a palaeontologist in England. The film captures her struggles as she drudges by the seaside to collect fossils that were appropriated by the male scientists who claimed her relics as their own. Her stormy relationship with Charlotte Murchison, an upper-class woman, posits the chief ideas that the film explores- class, gender, and sexuality. Lee’s story resurrects the unacknowledged achievements of Mary Anning in a patriarchal society and adds an LGBTQ dimension through their passionate erotic relationship. It is a reimagination based on the lives of two women who were ignored by the male-centric scientific community of the nineteenth century. The study critiques discrimination against women, class differentiation and the institution of marriage. It underscores the role of cinema as a cultural text to reveal how such practices have existed through centuries of exploitation and marginalization by those in positions of power. As a storytelling medium, cinema can transport audiences into a different historical time frame and give an alternate perspective to challenge the status quo. The paper examines how Ammonite addresses pressing issues of class and gender and offers a cultural critique through the aesthetic use of images, sound, and narrative. The film has been evaluated through Feminist Theory, Media Studies, and Queer Theory to establish how Lee’s film presents alternative paradigms favouring inclusivity and representation of the less privileged.

Francis Lee’s Period Film Ammonite: An Exploration of Gender, Class, and Sexuality

Ammonite (2020) is loosely based on the life of Mary Anning (1799–1847), a palaeontologist in England. The film captures her struggles as she drudges by the seaside to collect fossils that were appropriated by the male scientists who claimed her relics as their own. Her stormy relationship with Charlotte Murchison, an upper-class woman, posits the chief ideas that the film explores- class, gender, and sexuality. Lee’s story resurrects the unacknowledged achievements of Mary Anning in a patriarchal society and adds an LGBTQ dimension through their passionate erotic relationship. It is a reimagination based on the lives of two women who were ignored by the male-centric scientific community of the nineteenth century. The study critiques discrimination against women, class differentiation and the institution of marriage. It underscores the role of cinema as a cultural text to reveal how such practices have existed through centuries of exploitation and marginalization by those in positions of power. As a storytelling medium, cinema can transport audiences into a different historical time frame and give an alternate perspective to challenge the status quo. The paper examines how Ammonite addresses pressing issues of class and gender and offers a cultural critique through the aesthetic use of images, sound, and narrative. The film has been evaluated through Feminist Theory, Media Studies, and Queer Theory to establish how Lee’s film presents alternative paradigms favouring inclusivity and representation of the less privileged.

Oscar Wilde’s ideal woman: Constructing Victorian upper-class female identity in Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan

Abstract This paper examines the definition of the Victorian upper-class woman in the context of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, in light of the prevailing gender roles and conventions of the late Victorian era. Drawing upon Judith Butler’s theories of sex and gender, this study investigates Victorian female subjectivity in terms of the power dynamics between men and women. Drawing upon Butlerian analyses of sex and gender, this paper has explored two divergent representations of upper-class female subjectivity in the Victorian period. The representation of intelligible-gendered identities in the Duchess of Berwick is a key point of consideration when examining Victorian upper-class female subjects. In contrast, Mrs. Erlynne serves as an example of an unintelligible-gendered character, allowing for an exploration of the ramifications of challenging the prevailing power structure. In this article, it is demonstrated that Wilde’s female ideal is neither definitively intelligible-gendered nor unintelligible-gendered; rather, she is a figure who resists power and reacts to any perceived threats to her social standing. This article posits that Wilde’s ideal woman is a semi-intelligible-gendered identity. Furthermore, it is suggested that, despite his advocacy of Women’s rights, Wilde still endorses certain gender roles and binary oppositions between the sexes, one of which is the role of motherhood. Wilde illustrates a scenario in which breaking away from these social conventions would lead to a tragic end which no woman is able to escape.

Bernice

In 1919 the Provincetown Players debuted Susan Glaspell’s first full-length play, Bernice. Over 100 years later, Genoveva Productions, a small Manhattan-based production company, revived the play as part of their 2021–22 season. It is heartening to see this rarity revived.Readers of Jeff Kennedy’s website provincetownplayers.com will be familiar with Bernice’s plot and setting. To paraphrase: the play is set in the living room of the home belonging to Bernice and her father and takes place over twenty-four hours, beginning in the late afternoon of an October day. Bernice—an absent main character in the manner of Mrs. Wright in Trifles—has died. At rise, Bernice’s father, Mr. Allen, and the maid, Abbie, both of whom had lived with Bernice, await the arrival of Bernice’s husband Craig, her best friend Margaret, and her sister-in-law Laura. This group will plan the funeral. Abbie declares that Bernice has killed herself, and we learn that Craig has been having an affair, which Craig assumes accounts for her alleged suicide. As the play progresses, however, we come to understand that Bernice has died of a sudden illness. Craig remains ignorant of this fact and continues to believe that she died because of her love for him. The second and third acts find the characters figuring out whether or not to tell Craig the truth about Bernice’s death. In the final act, they decide to restore the living room to Bernice’s preference to honor her legacy. Margaret, who throughout the play is unable to go into the adjoining room to view Bernice’s body, finally musters the courage to visit her.Performed midtown in a room the size of many New York City studio apartments, this humble production was shaped by COVID-era protocols. Audience members were required to sit six feet apart, wear masks, and show proof of vaccination. While waiting to enter the studio, I overheard guests in the hallway and stairwell discussing their trepidation about attending a live theater production for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. For many, every sneeze and cough during the performance caused anxiety. This production was staged before AEA (Actors Equity Association) announced Coronavirus guidelines for showcase codes (microbudget and independent productions); so much credit is given to the producers, creative team, and cast for determining and upholding safety guidelines while still providing a space for nonunion artists to work.Even on a shoestring budget, Genoveva Productions was able to create the mood and tone of a rural visitation with simple area lighting and set design choices. Upon entering the studio, audiences were met with a sparse living room set consisting of two chairs, a coffee table, and a piano, on which perched a photograph of Bernice. The intimacy of the space informed the spectators’ relationship to Bernice, making us feel the characters’ responses to the death all the more acutely. While we never saw Bernice’s body, her spirit haunted the space.This production featured several strong performances, most notably Kathleen Regan as Laura Kirby, Bernice’s sister-in-law. She brought powerful energy and humor to all her scenes, with a strong presence that radiated through the room each time she entered. I look forward to seeing more of her work. Jack Coogins also stood out in the role of Bernice’s grieving father. He created an authentic character with which audiences could immediately empathize. Both actors made strong and successful physical choices such as adjusting their posture and gait. The cast was rounded out by Misti Tindiglia (Abbie), Gus Ferrari (Craig Norris), and Julia Genoveva (Margaret Pierce), who also directed and produced.Like other audience members in the space that day, I appreciated being introduced to this gem of a play. For me it really shed light on the status of women in the early twentieth century, both in terms of what society thought their place was and how they viewed themselves. Particularly notable in this respect is the second-act disagreement between Margaret, a single activist, and Laura, a traditional upper-class woman, regarding Bernice’s life choices. This scene speaks to the ever-relevant social and personal pressures placed on women, and particularly the likelihood that the choices a woman makes for herself will always seem wrong to someone else. I am grateful that Genoveva Productions resurrected this play.

Losing Freud

Losing Freud

신라 여성관인 제도의 성립과 운영

This study examines the process of establishing and operating the female official system in the Silla Dynasty(Silla) The official duties of women in the early Silla Period were recorded in connection with the divine characteristics of royal women. She was worshipped as a female deity and was in charge of ancestral rites as a priest. However, as Silla society developed with the political system of Silla, the political status of royal and upper-class women and public affairs have been differentiated. The official status of Silla''s Court Maid was established under the bureaucracy in the 4th year(664) of King Munmu(文武王). The important role of female officials was to administer and enforce the procedures in the official royal rites of King Sinmun(神文王), especially in royal marriages based on Confucian Ritual Systems(禮制). From King Sinmun(神文王)''s royal wedding, it can be seen that the female official consists of a government official''s spouse, a true aristocratic woman (wife and daughter, etc.), an upper-class woman. As such, the female official of the Silla played a role in proceeding rituals based on Confucian Ritual Systems(禮制) as an upper class. During the Middle Ages of Silla, the BonPiGung(本彼宮) was established, the Sa-mo(私母) was assigned, and the Sa-mo(私母) were placed in charge of female government officials. The BonPiGung(本彼宮) was a government office in charge of various affairs in the Imperial Court, and the BonPiGung(本彼宮)''s Sa-mo(私母) was in charge of two duties in the royal family. One is to administer the duties of implementing royal rites, and the other is to administer the government offices related to textile production in the court handicrafts. The Sa-mo(私母)''s main duties include the education and leadership of female officials and the supervision of government offices belonging to female officials concerning royal rituals and court handicrafts. In addition, the mother(母) and the woman(女子) who are female officials can be seen in the government office of the Interior Ministry. According to the name of the agency, the mother(母) were mainly in charge of textile production, and there were the woman(女子) edical personnel who were in charge of pregnancy and childbirth and treatment of women''s diseases. The BonPiGung(本彼宮) was established in 681 and was in charge of royal affairs, and the Sa-mo(私母) was in charge of preparing and conducting royal ceremonial procedures, and was responsible for managing the government offices and women''s officials. Subsequently, the division of labor and specialization of royal affairs was promoted, which led to the division of government offices belonging to domestic government offices into higher and lower government offices and the establishment of new government offices. For this reason, the Sa-mo(私母) of the palace was a senior female official, and she was mainly in charge of the preparation and progress of royal rituals. Furthermore, the government offices related to textile production and the women''s government offices of the Imperial handicraft industry are gradually positioned as the lower government offices of the government offices related to production and their affiliated with the production.

안토니오 로페즈의 작품에 나타난 1960년대 패션 일러스트레이션의 색채 이미지 연구

The purpose of this study was to explain the color image and component by analyzing the color images that appeared in Antonio Lopez’s works in the 1960s. To this end, the characteristics of Lopez’s 1960s fashion illustrations were analyzed through theoretical consideration. That is, the researcher selected 91 pieces of these illustrations and identified their colors. The team found that Lopez wanted the present a new image of a woman, not the typical fashion illustration that represented an upper-class woman. More specifically, Lopez wished to display an image from everyday life or youthful fashions that were popular at the time, expressing a bright, cheerful image of a woman. Additionally, Lopez’s method for representing women in everyday life employed a variety of types, such as soft-dynamic, soft-static, hard-dynamic, and hard-static images. As a component for expressing women of various images, Lopez used high chroma colors or pastels to express cheerful and cute images, abandoning brighter colors for achromatic hues to represent delicate, modern images of women. Beyond this, dynamic images appeared that possesses various component, such as mixes of achromatic and chromatic colors, complex and irregular curves, dynamic human poses, and fashion displaying abstract patterns. Therefore, these results highlight the importance of color for fashion students. Furthermore, these data could be used as a reference for the component according to the fashion illustration image.

The ‘Good Indian Queer Woman’ and the Family: Politics of Normativity and Travails of (Queer) Representation

ABSTRACT Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (dir. Shelly Chopra Dhar, 2019) is touted as the mainstream commercial venture that cemented Bollywood’s journey from creating queer homosocial and homoerotic moments on screen to representing a queer relationship between two women for the first time. This paper tries to understand how the film’s liberal messaging about queer acceptance and anti-discrimination, through the coming out narrative of its queer protagonist, is made possible through the embodiment of sanitized class and caste markers, how Indian queer femininity is encoded in the film and what its relationship with the heteronormative biological family reveals about the film’s messaging. It also tries to explore the figuration of Sweety, an upper-class feminine queer woman in small town Moga (in the North Indian state of Punjab), who is portrayed as the quintessentially ‘good’ queer woman. Even though Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga offers a queer visual and imaginative landscape, it limits itself by constructing discursive, narrative, and visual terrains where Sweety’s dissidence is deemed acceptable on grounds of her class privilege, her reverence for her family, her respectable femininity, and the embeddedness of her queer subjectivity in the family and culture. This paper interrogates the nature of queer representation in the film, how it tackles anxieties around acculturation, queer opposition to the nation-state and the visual and narrative means by which it domesticates queerness by sanitizing and inviting it into culture, family, nationalism and the nation-state.

Nigâr Hanım’ın Günlüklerinde Benlik İnşası: Geç Osmanlı Dönemi’nde Kadın Özneyi Yazmak

As an important woman writer, Nigâr binti Osman (1862–1918) contributed to social and cultural change in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire through her intellect and her writings. From her early work onward, Nigâr Hanım cared about the issue of “writing herself.” Her diaries, kept from 1887 to 1918 evidence this: the diaries are constantly cited but have not been transliterated into the Latin alphabet. From an upper-class woman’s perspective, her writings convey firsthand impressions of the Ottoman Empire’s rapid political and social changes during the nineteenth century. Her diaries reveal her position, daily life, emotions, literary preferences, writing adventures, and quests. From these texts, Nigâr Hanım’s experience of life can be discussed as memory, experience, and testimony. In this study specifically, her diaries will be examined in detail as to construction of the self through this daily written genre, through writing by the female subject, and subsequent inclusion in public literature.

SIMONETTA VESPUCCI IN THE MIRROR OF RENAISSANCE ART: IMAGE OR ART IMAGE?

This article deals with the portraits of the Florentine court lady of the 15th century Simonetta Vespucci. The analysis of the content and meaning of the works of one of the prominent Renaissance artists Sandro Botticelli was conducted on the basis of the study of image methods and particular artistic approaches to the model characteristic. To study the artist’s paintings – portrait and genre – cultural and art studying analysis was used, in particular, a comprehensive examination of the material (hairstyle and accessories) and nonmaterial (ideas and art image) levels of Simonetta Vespucci’s representation as a historical figure and mythological character. The purpose of the article is to reveal in the portrayals of Simonetta Vespucci the signs of art image and image, which provide portraits with different meaning. The research novelty of the article is the interpretation of the hairstyle, clothing, jewellery – as a means of creation in one case typified artistic image, mythical character, in another – the image of a noble court lady, of upper-class woman. The study makes it possible to summarize the historical experience as to modern art image creation and image-making, to understand the mechanisms of introducing this historical experience into the practice of contemporary design. Conclusions. Due to systematic visualization of Simonetta Vespucci’s images, her portraits of the Renaissance period embody different sense characteristics. The underlined details of hairstyles, clothing, accessories in the artist’s portraits (1475, 1475–1480) create the idea of Simonetta as a real person, a noble Florentine woman, court lady, whose image corresponds to the idea of representation of the upper class of Italian society in the fifteenth century. Symbolism and convention of accessories and hairstyles, as well as bringing the image of Simonetta Vespucci to the formula of God-man in line with ancient traditions in the paintings “Primavera”, “The Birth of Venus”, “Venus and Mars”, corresponds to the idea of typification, artistic image, image-ideal in the spirit of myth-creation in the Renaissance period.

Blunt force trauma: an exceptional example of an ancient Egyptian mummy head

In the course of a scientific cooperation between the German Mummy Project at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim (Germany) and the Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art Luxembourg (Luxembourg), an ancient Egyptian mummy head was analyzed using a multidisciplinary approach including radiocarbon dating, ultra-high resolution computed tomography, physical anthropology, forensic medicine and Egyptology. Dated to the Roman Period, the mummy head belonged to an upper-class woman between 25 and 35 years of age. Computed tomography revealed a lethal blunt force trauma affecting the dorsal parts of the parietal bones, below the intact overlaying soft tissue. Moreover, ancient medical treatment was evidenced through localized shaving of the hair on the affected area, which indicates that efforts have been made to keep the woman alive. This astonishing example of homicide demonstrates the enormous scientific benefit brought by the multidisciplinary investigation of mummified bodies and body parts, and sheds light on life, death and medical care of a woman from Roman Period Egypt.

Introduction

Introduction Paul Poplawski e ‘hilarious depression’ of the 1920s Oen referred to as the ‘roaring twenties’ or the ‘gay twenties’, the popular image of the 920s, as I have suggested elsewhere, is of ‘a carefree, frivolous, even anarchic’ age.1 is is an image strongly coloured by the American experience of that decade, but it applies to Britain too, not least because this was precisely the decade when American influences started to become widespread in Britain, especially within popular culture. Part of this common view of the era is that it was also, apparently, a ‘golden’ age for a whole host of things: motoring, air travel, wireless broadcasting, jazz, movies, musicals, revues, detective fiction — all things which seem to testify to a certain degree of post-war economic recovery and growth,2 to the continuing survival of a class of the affluent elite (from whom were drawn most of the ‘Bright Young ings’ of post-Waugh fame),3 and to a gradual spreading of a broadly middle-class lifestyle. But this was also, famously, a boom-and-bust decade and, in Britain, even before the Wall Street Crash of 929, there were severe swings in the economy throughout the 920s. Whatever relative prosperity might have existed for the population seen as a whole, this was always unevenly spread geographically, and some regions of the country continued to suffer extremes of poverty and hardship. High levels of unemployment and a pitiful lack of decent housing were persistent blights across the land and were compounded in the immediate post-war years by the return of huge numbers of war-wounded who were oen given no significant support or help in finding homes and employment. us, although the 920s saw ‘a period of psychological release aer the war and there was something of a hedonistic mood of “living for the moment” — among the middle and leisured classes at least’, Paul Poplawski, ‘e Twentieth Century, 90–939’, in English Literature in Context, ed. by 1 Paul Poplawski, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 207), pp. 470–540 (p. 492). And, speaking of things golden, in 925 Britain confidently restored the gold standard, which 2 had been suspended since 94. Unfortunately, the consequent overvaluation of the pound seems to have exacerbated the economic slump later in the decade — and the gold standard was abandoned again in 93. is was the phrase popularized in the period’s tabloid press, which is satirized in Evelyn 3 Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies (930) (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 938; repr. 965). Waugh’s own phrase in the novel is actually ‘Bright Young People’ (pp. 59, 92). Yearbook of English Studies, 50 (2020), –2© Modern Humanities Research Association 2020 these years clearly had their grimmer side too, with a major economic depression, mass unemployment, constant industrial unrest and an underlying sense of wartrauma . Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (925) is in this sense a brilliant analysis of the divided nature of the 920s, where, on a glorious June morning in London, an upper-class woman exults in ordering beautiful flowers for her carefully planned dinner party while, in the park over the way, a former soldier relives the horrors of the trenches as he begins his chaotic slide into a suicidal nervous breakdown.4 As this suggests, the war hung very heavily over the decade and tropes reflecting variously on the war’s derangement of civilization are not hard to find in the literature of the period. Indeed, Vera Brittain’s blunt summation of the war in her classic memoir, Testament of Youth (933), could stand as a convenient motto over the entrance into the 920s too: ‘e world was mad and we were all victims.’5 On the one hand, then, we have images of a war-wearied decade of depression, despair and disenchantment;6 on the other, images of general well-being and high spirits, of a burgeoning of popular pastimes and entertainments for the masses and of positively riotous partying among the idle rich and their hangerson : Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else...

Introduction

Introduction Paul Poplawski e ‘hilarious depression’ of the 1920s Oen referred to as the ‘roaring twenties’ or the ‘gay twenties’, the popular image of the 920s, as I have suggested elsewhere, is of ‘a carefree, frivolous, even anarchic’ age.1 is is an image strongly coloured by the American experience of that decade, but it applies to Britain too, not least because this was precisely the decade when American influences started to become widespread in Britain, especially within popular culture. Part of this common view of the era is that it was also, apparently, a ‘golden’ age for a whole host of things: motoring, air travel, wireless broadcasting, jazz, movies, musicals, revues, detective fiction — all things which seem to testify to a certain degree of post-war economic recovery and growth,2 to the continuing survival of a class of the affluent elite (from whom were drawn most of the ‘Bright Young ings’ of post-Waugh fame),3 and to a gradual spreading of a broadly middle-class lifestyle. But this was also, famously, a boom-and-bust decade and, in Britain, even before the Wall Street Crash of 929, there were severe swings in the economy throughout the 920s. Whatever relative prosperity might have existed for the population seen as a whole, this was always unevenly spread geographically, and some regions of the country continued to suffer extremes of poverty and hardship. High levels of unemployment and a pitiful lack of decent housing were persistent blights across the land and were compounded in the immediate post-war years by the return of huge numbers of war-wounded who were oen given no significant support or help in finding homes and employment. us, although the 920s saw ‘a period of psychological release aer the war and there was something of a hedonistic mood of “living for the moment” — among the middle and leisured classes at least’, Paul Poplawski, ‘e Twentieth Century, 90–939’, in English Literature in Context, ed. by 1 Paul Poplawski, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 207), pp. 470–540 (p. 492). And, speaking of things golden, in 925 Britain confidently restored the gold standard, which 2 had been suspended since 94. Unfortunately, the consequent overvaluation of the pound seems to have exacerbated the economic slump later in the decade — and the gold standard was abandoned again in 93. is was the phrase popularized in the period’s tabloid press, which is satirized in Evelyn 3 Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies (930) (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 938; repr. 965). Waugh’s own phrase in the novel is actually ‘Bright Young People’ (pp. 59, 92). Yearbook of English Studies, 50 (2020), –2© Modern Humanities Research Association 2020 these years clearly had their grimmer side too, with a major economic depression, mass unemployment, constant industrial unrest and an underlying sense of wartrauma . Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (925) is in this sense a brilliant analysis of the divided nature of the 920s, where, on a glorious June morning in London, an upper-class woman exults in ordering beautiful flowers for her carefully planned dinner party while, in the park over the way, a former soldier relives the horrors of the trenches as he begins his chaotic slide into a suicidal nervous breakdown.4 As this suggests, the war hung very heavily over the decade and tropes reflecting variously on the war’s derangement of civilization are not hard to find in the literature of the period. Indeed, Vera Brittain’s blunt summation of the war in her classic memoir, Testament of Youth (933), could stand as a convenient motto over the entrance into the 920s too: ‘e world was mad and we were all victims.’5 On the one hand, then, we have images of a war-wearied decade of depression, despair and disenchantment;6 on the other, images of general well-being and high spirits, of a burgeoning of popular pastimes and entertainments for the masses and of positively riotous partying among the idle rich and their hangerson : Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else...

‘Mothers at the Malls’: A Study of Glocal Aspirations and Mothering from Delhi

This paper utilises findings from a short-term project titled Mall: A Gendered Space, undertaken by the Women’s Studies and Development Centre (WSDC), University of Delhi, India, between 2016 and 2017. The project was aimed at examining the way newly-created, globalised spaces such as shopping malls (in this case a bustling mall frequented by different classes in upscale Delhi) are being accessed by women in India. Investigations into the Promenade Mall involved interaction with women accessing the space in two primary capacities: migrant women that constituted the majority of the mall workforce, and women visiting the mall as the predominant category of consumers. Women from different social classes appeared to have diversely adapted glocal shifts and practices typified by shopping mall use. While the migrant women employed there as security-personnel, or as housekeeping staff, took from it an aspirational framework of urban-living, employment, and education, the middle, upper-middle, and upper class woman as consumers appreciated and imbibed a self-development project of consumption and transformation (that included self-care, grooming and additional consumer practices). This article employs findings from the WSDC project on shopping malls to establish how processes of mothering in case of women-women workers of the Mall, as well mothers visiting the Mall as consumers, drew heavily from their exposure to the apparently emboldening forces of globalisation, while simultaneously resulting in further entrapment for these women through the very aspirational mother-functions they seemed to perform. Furthermore, such mothering practices exemplified why motherhood and its interconnections with materiality and consumption in varied forms, and with class dynamics, are indispensable to any critical understanding of women’s lives today.

Memoria y olvido : participación de Antonia Moreno durante la campaña de la Breña. Andes centrales (Perú), 1881-1883.

Este trabajo intenta dar a conocer la historia de las mujeres durante el desarrollo del conflicto bélico Perú-Chile (1879-1883), particularmente la figura de Antonia Moreno de Cáceres, mujer de clase alta. En dicha oportunidad se publicará tal volumen en el que está presente la bibliografía anotada.

Disabled Housewives: Impairment in Emilia Pardo Bazán’s “Las medias rojas” and “El revólver”

Abstract In both “Las medias rojas” and “El revólver,” the young female protagonists begin as beautiful vibrant women until disabling older men restrict their movement through violence and intimidation. Whereas the peasant girl in “Las medias,” brutally beaten by her father, becomes permanently disfigured and partially blind, the upper-class woman, in “El revólver”, ultimately heals from post-traumatic anxiety through a form of narrative therapy at the spa. This paper argues that the differential treatment of female poverty and affluence illustrates how classist nineteenth-century society sanctions the punishment of the peasant woman while fostering the wellness of the well-to-do señora. Permanent disability is reserved for the poor.

Bodies in Play: Maternity, Repertory, and the RivalRomeo and Juliets, 1748–51

In her recent book on celebrity pregnancy, legal scholar Renée Ann Cramer writes, “in the years from 1970 to 2000, popular culture became more open to performances of pregnancy; once kept secret and articulated as private, pregnancy became ‘public.’” This is not wholly true. In the English-speaking world, “celebrity pregnancy,” with its overt performances of femininity and maternity, bodily monitoring, and careful dance between the concealment and revelation of private information, had its first public moment in the long eighteenth century. That century's professional theatre was a site for the intersection of two forms of women's labor: the maternal labor of pregnancy and birth, which affected women of all classes throughout a century with rapidly rising birth rates, and the theatrical labor of professional actresses. Although the latter has been the subject of much-needed study in recent decades, the impact of maternal labor on the professional theatre of the time is only beginning to be explored. Between 1700 and 1800, birth rates for middle- and upper-class British woman rose significantly. Among the aristocracy, rates doubled from four to eight children, and middle-class women averaged seven births by the end of the century. At the same time, women in the professional theatre were inventing and modeling new forms of public womanhood, capitalizing on a burgeoning culture of female celebrity, and, in some cases, wielding exceptional economic and artistic power. Though not all actresses had children, many did, and at rates that were not unlike those of their nontheatrical counterparts. For these women, the successful balancing of maternal and theatrical labor could be vital to their careers and, in many cases, their family's survival. The need to balance personal and professional demands was all the more imperative within the hectic and extremely competitive repertory system. The day-to-day repertory of a London company was of necessity a malleable thing, accommodating short runs of popular pieces, audience requests, illnesses and absences of company members, and the perpetual state of competition between the patent houses of Covent Garden and Drury Lane. To compete profitably, managers needed competent and popular performers (bodies) and performance vehicles (texts) in which to feature them. As the available bodies changed, then, so too did the available plays for performance.

Boudoirs and Harems: The Seductive Power of Sophas

This paper investigates the cultural influences between the East and the West (a contested set of geographic terms) through the boudoir and its furniture. The staple ingredient of the Rococo period (1723–1774), the pursuit of pleasure and happiness, produced spaces and furniture with an unprecedented attention to bodily comfort. In addition to Eastern–inspired furniture pieces, such as the sopha, divan, lit à la Turque (Turkish bed), lit de repos à la Turque (Turkish bed of rest), canapé à la Turque (Turkish couch), veilleuse à la Turque (Turkish sofa), veilleuse à la Ottomanne (Ottoman sofa), and ottomanne (ottoman) to be used in a chamber à la Turque (Turkish room) or elsewhere, there was one space every modern eighteenth–century upper–class woman needed: the boudoir. The boudoir was an exclusive space for females, informed by the late eighteenth– and nineteenth–century Western fascination with Orientalism. In spite of its so–called cultural superiority, the West at times turned to the East and found fertile ground for working out questions of gender identity and power. Encapsulating the experience of colonialism, the boudoir became the site for the repression and reconciliation of gender roles and biases. Furthermore, the eighteenth–century boudoir was a space where the modernization of interior space was underway due to the level of informality, personal privacy, and bodily comfort it afforded to its users.