Images Negotiating the Feminine Norm
In nineteenth century America, how a middle- to upper-class white woman should look and behave was highly defined and specialized. Feminine identity took its form in relation to masculine identity. What it meant to be a woman was commonly defined through marriage, motherhood, and domesticity.
As social forces brought change in America's early modern period, the norm for feminine behavior underwent challenge. Change in the feminine norm was negotiated in the magazines and newspapers of the period, which were widely read.
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Ancient History
Conveying gender challenge, the Feb. 20, 1913 Life magazine cover references Ancient Greece, the model of democracy. Dressed in classical garb and drawn with a downturned mouth, woman's rights movement leader Susan B. Anthony, makes an aggressive, unladylike thrust with an umbrella at a surprised but reasonable-appearing man in a toga. Another woman holds a sign reading, "We Want Our Rights." Men in the background are running for cover, chased by women.
The border motif with running figures in battle dress conveys a battle between the sexes as woman chases man, an inversion of the natural order. The upper left title "Husbandette's Number," implies a weak man whose wife is a suffragette, a term used in the periodical press after 1910 that suggested the taint of militancy and feminism.
As social forces brought change in America's early modern period, the norm for feminine behavior underwent challenge. Change in the feminine norm was negotiated in the magazines and newspapers of the period, which were widely read.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Ancient History
Conveying gender challenge, the Feb. 20, 1913 Life magazine cover references Ancient Greece, the model of democracy. Dressed in classical garb and drawn with a downturned mouth, woman's rights movement leader Susan B. Anthony, makes an aggressive, unladylike thrust with an umbrella at a surprised but reasonable-appearing man in a toga. Another woman holds a sign reading, "We Want Our Rights." Men in the background are running for cover, chased by women.
The border motif with running figures in battle dress conveys a battle between the sexes as woman chases man, an inversion of the natural order. The upper left title "Husbandette's Number," implies a weak man whose wife is a suffragette, a term used in the periodical press after 1910 that suggested the taint of militancy and feminism.
Ancient History. Artist, Rea Irvin. Life Magazine Cover. Feb. 20, 1913. Library of Congress Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002716767/
