Its Prohibitive Cost: The Bicycle, the New Woman and Conspicuous Display

IF 0.1 4区 文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
E. Chen
{"title":"Its Prohibitive Cost: The Bicycle, the New Woman and Conspicuous Display","authors":"E. Chen","doi":"10.1080/20512856.2016.1221620","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As a Victorian form of transport, the bicycle is often linked with the New Woman and hailed as a harbinger of emancipation and public mobility for women, or a tool for female sartorial reform and physical improvement. This paper argues that until the end of the nineteenth century, the bicycle, with its high cost and its association with the younger members of the upper-middle class, is also a tool of conspicuous consumption and fashionable display. As a crucial accessory of the much advertised, ridiculed but also emulated ensemble that constitutes the New Woman, the bicycle signifies her complicity with modern commodity culture, which, though entailing more opportunities and greater emancipation along gender lines for many bourgeois women, at the same time functions as a new marker of visible class privilege denying access to other less privileged women. This paper locates the bicycle, in its initial stage of the mid-1890s bicycle craze, as an integral part of a wider late Victorian material culture of conspicuous consumption and phantasmagoria where commodities, objects and spectacles increasingly articulate or fashion human subjectivities and denote their classed identities.","PeriodicalId":40530,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20512856.2016.1221620","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Language Literature and Culture","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20512856.2016.1221620","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

ABSTRACT As a Victorian form of transport, the bicycle is often linked with the New Woman and hailed as a harbinger of emancipation and public mobility for women, or a tool for female sartorial reform and physical improvement. This paper argues that until the end of the nineteenth century, the bicycle, with its high cost and its association with the younger members of the upper-middle class, is also a tool of conspicuous consumption and fashionable display. As a crucial accessory of the much advertised, ridiculed but also emulated ensemble that constitutes the New Woman, the bicycle signifies her complicity with modern commodity culture, which, though entailing more opportunities and greater emancipation along gender lines for many bourgeois women, at the same time functions as a new marker of visible class privilege denying access to other less privileged women. This paper locates the bicycle, in its initial stage of the mid-1890s bicycle craze, as an integral part of a wider late Victorian material culture of conspicuous consumption and phantasmagoria where commodities, objects and spectacles increasingly articulate or fashion human subjectivities and denote their classed identities.
它的禁止性成本:自行车、新女性和引人注目的展示
摘要作为维多利亚时代的一种交通方式,自行车经常与“新女性”联系在一起,被誉为女性解放和公共流动的先驱,或是女性着装改革和身体改善的工具。本文认为,直到19世纪末,自行车由于其高昂的成本和与中上层年轻成员的联系,也是一种炫耀性消费和时尚展示的工具。作为构成新女性的广受宣传、嘲笑但也被模仿的组合的重要配件,自行车象征着她与现代商品文化的共谋,尽管这意味着许多资产阶级女性有更多的机会和更大的性别解放,同时,它也成为了明显的阶级特权的新标志,拒绝与其他弱势女性接触。本文将自行车定位为19世纪90年代中期自行车热的初始阶段,作为更广泛的维多利亚晚期物质文化的一个组成部分,在这种文化中,商品、物体和眼镜越来越多地表达或流行人类的主观能动性,并表示其分类身份。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 求助全文
来源期刊
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
2
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术官方微信