Difficult Subjects: Working Women and Visual Culture, Britain 1880-1914The working women of Victorian and Edwardian Britain were fascinating but difficult subjects for artists, photographers, and illustrators. The cultural meanings of labour sat uncomfortably with conventional ideologies of femininity, and working women unsettled the boundaries between gender and class, selfhood and otherness. From paintings of servants in middle-class households, to exhibits of flower-makers on display for a shilling, the visual culture of women's labour offered a complex web if interior fantasy and exterior reality. The picture would become more challenging still when working women themselves began to use visual spectacle. In this first in-depth exploration of the representation of British working women, Kristina Huneault explores the rich meanings of female employment during a period of labour unrest, demands for women's enfranchisement, and mounting calls for social justice. In the course of her study she questions the investments of desire and the claims to power that reside in visual artifacts, drawing significant conclusions about the relationship between art and identity. |
Contents
domestic servants and visual culture | 23 |
selling on the streets | 63 |
order and beauty on the factory floor | 101 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Difficult Subjects: Working Women and Visual Culture, Britain 1880-1914 Kristina Huneault No preview available - 2017 |
Common terms and phrases
activity advertisement apparent artists associations attention banner beauty Betsy body British called central century claims Collection common concern Daily demonstrations desire discourse display domestic economic Edwardian effect emblem employers employment engaged English example exhibitions face factory female femininity Figure Flower flower-girl flower-seller Gallery gaze gender Girl Graphic hands History identity Illustrated included issue John labour Library living London look maid male Manchester March means middle-class movement nature never object offered oil on canvas organization painting participation Photograph courtesy physical play political popular position possibility presented Press production question relation Report representation represented role seen sense servants sexuality social Society stand streets strike suffrage suggests sweated industries exhibitions trade union University urban Victorian viewers vision visual culture Woman Worker women working-class young
References to this book
Consuming Fantasies: Labor, Leisure, and the London Shopgirl, 1880-1920 Lise Sanders Limited preview - 2006 |