Context Flashcards
Pseudonyms
Austen - ‘By a Lady’
Plath - ‘Victoria Lucas’
Social Class
‘pseudo-gentry’
‘middling-sorts’
Ghost titles
‘Diary of a Suicide’
‘The Girl in the Mirror’
(Plath)
Austen’s other work
‘Northanger Abbey’
‘Mansfield Park’
‘Pride and Prejudice’
‘Persuasion’
‘Emma’
Plath’s other work
‘Daddy’
‘Tulips’
‘Mirror’
‘You’re’
Marriage (1950s)
average marrying age dropped to twenty
35% of women compared to men went to college by 1950s, opposed to 47% in the 1920s
60% dropped out
M.R.S degree
‘neo-Victorian’ era
crinolines and tiny wasits, restrictions on women
reinterpretation of Victorian themes and values
Cold War
capitalism vs communism ideology
Consumerism
revitalising economy post WW2
Communism, ‘Red Scare’ and Mccarthyism
fear of the ideological threats
Rosenbergs
Cold War exacerbated fears of Communism
alienation and incarceration of Communists
‘American Dream’
Aspirational viewpoint
belief that hard work and determination is enough for people achieve success
Magazine and publishing
promote domestic skills and beauty standards
Birth control
first approved contraceptive pill approved in the 1960s
Rise of the novel
18th c
focused on broad social issues of morality and domestic manners
Austen provides a bridge from the didactic novels to psychological realism of the Victorian era
Fordyce’s Sermons
1766
importance of women’s virtue, modesty of apparel, female reserve and piety
women should be modest but also appear handsome and elegant as God has bestowed this onto them
A Father’s Legacy to his Daughter’s
1761
John Gregory
‘if you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret, especially from men’
An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex
1797
Gilbourne
Marriage should be based on love, not vanity
Favoured by Austen
Calling cards
necessary for a gentleman or a lady who called upon friends or acquaintances
visitors weren’t received unless the card was conveyed first
gentlemen could place their addresses on their cards, but women couldn’t
Mary Wollstonecraft
criticised the concept of sensibility, claiming it gave women a ‘weak elegacy of mind’
A Vindication of the Right’s of Women, which argued that women’s education is designed in the interest of men, the inadequate education impacted women’s intellectual development, forcing them into limited societal roles
Married women’s property act
1870
married women could own and inherit property
post-austen
‘Cult’ of sensibility
fashionable
mark of moral virtue
criticised for encouraging impractical and excessive behaviour
