Private Women with Public Opinions : Negotiating Gender in Early Modern Fashion Magazines

Abstract: This thesis researches the construction of gender ideals for the new Middle Class and women’s involvement in the same by analysing fashion magazines published in Germany and Sweden between 1786 to 1827 and 1818 to 1844, respectively. The analysis consists of two parts: first, the share of women’s involvement in the public sphere as defined by Habermas as well as the justification of the inclusion of female-written texts and second, the nature of gender ideals in relation to the separate spheres’ framework. They show that the highest percentage of female contributions to fashion magazines was 5.3 % for the Swedish magazine from 1840 to 1844, while the lowest percentage of female contributions was 2.1 % for the German magazine from 1820 to 1827. Furthermore, the inclusion of texts written by women was often justified through their domestic virtue or the statement that they never wanted their texts to be published. The publication was thus against their will, which firmly anchors the female authors in the private sphere. In the second part, this study shows that women authors in the fashion magazines mainly advocated for the separation of the public and private but, in comparison to gender ideals shared by male authors, did not advocate for the submission of women. Regarding the stereotypes of emotionality and rationality, I find that women were mostly portrayed as emotional by men but would contest these negative portrayals of their sex. At the same time, men were portrayed as emotional and rational by both female and male authors, which is surprising considering the prominent male ideal of rationality.