Culture And Classes Flashcards
Although everyone reads in society, what can people do differently?
Read for different things/purposes
Why do we care about what we consume?
Because what we consume says something about who we are
What are the three distinctions in society in culture?
High brow culture, Middle brow culture, low brow culture
Why is it not the content that is often concerning but the person reading it in relation to the content?
To an educated woman may man nothing, to a poorer woman the ideas may seem seductive
What were the lower classes seen as more susceptible to?
Brainwashing, upper classes more educated to judge
Why were press barons of big concern in the 1930s?
They had a lot of power and influence, ie because Bennet mentioned a book in a review it sold out
What were the country as a whole seeking?
Escapism, living in a fantasy world
Why are fears about women’s reading so much more pronounced?
Women felt to be less intelligent and easier to convince
What did fears about women’s reading play into?
Fears about independent women and suffrage movements
What do women become in the 1920s and 30s that gives them more power to choose and think for themselves?
Consumers because get political social and economic rights
For those in work in the 20s 30s what happened to real wages?
Rising, unemployment high but if in work were earning more money
What happened to mass consumer culture as a result of rising wages and more demand?
Massive expansion of mass consumer culture, mass produced for everyone
What did sport become in the 20s 30s?
Commercialised
Whose influence on Britain’s culture often caused unease?
America
How did fears about socialism affect consumer culture?
Were trying to make the world more for everyone, than just for the rich
For the first time who can the domestic servant look as good as?
Her mistress - think Preistley’s Jack and Jill image
What has happened by 1921 in terms of voting?
Millions of people get the vote who have never had it before, Britain becomes a true mass democracy
What does the mass enfranchisement of Britain mean to politicians? What happens to culture?
Suddenly need to appeal to everyone, culture becomes more democratised
What did “The public” become for the first time?
Become a social group that needs to be appealed to, their concerns taken on board
What fears arose though about the new voting public, and why did culture in some ways become stricter?
Fears about how people will use their vote and what they read that may affect how they do so
Where does George Orwell in ‘Boys’ Weeklies’ argue is the best available indication of what the mass of the English people really feels and thinks?
Newsagent’s shops
Who were bestselling novels aimed at?
Lower middle classes
Why were the reading habits of the working class genuinely foreign to most critical readers?
The differences in genres and publication formats aimed at working class and middle class and upper class readers
What did early twentieth century social researchers think a study of reading might illuminate?
The general patterns of life of the working classes and lower middle classes
Who were accounts of popular reading generally written by?
Men and women who were professionally curious about unfamiliar reaches of working class fiction
How does Christopher Hilliard argue social researchers look at text differently from literary critics?
Researchers tend to focus on reading as a practice whereas critics looking at matters of taste, tone and ideology
What kind of establishments were beginning to spread and becoming very popular in the period?
Libraries
How was fiction often published in 20s 30s?
Serial form and not bound - penny weeklies for example
Where did urban workers get their reading matter?
Bookstalls, newsagents and tobacconists who ran libraries as a way of extra income
Who did publishing companies particularly launch new fiction for after world war one due to the groups new consumer status?
Young female workers
Why was Penny Fictions use of titled characters often the subject of mirthful and scornful comment?
They were criticised for writing and wanting to read about the upper classes when they knew so little about them
What did Helen Bonsaquet, contemporary, say fiction provided?
mental distraction form weariness and boredom
What did George R Humphrey who had involvement with a library in Wigan, say that penny dreadful “trash” filled working class peoples heads with?
Unattainable ideas and hopes that can never be realised
What did Thomas Wright, a skilled metalworker and autodidact say about the working class literary taste? Where did he say they got books from?
He said there was no working class literary taste, men and women just got whatever they could from friends, lending libraries and sellers of second hand books
Why was escapism often condemned as a perversive modern ill?
Anti social qualities of escapism and daydreaming, allowing them to leave society
What does Matt Houlbrook argue women engrossed by romantic films were depicted as?
“lacking reason, self-control and maturity”
What does Queenie Leavis in Fiction and the Reading Public written in 1932 sought to account for?
The cultural decline of literary standards
What kind of habit does Queenie Leavis compare a habit of reading to for the poorer classes?
A drug habit
What does Queenie Leavis in Fiction and the Reading Public written in 1932 argue poorer people don’t have when reading?
Critical intelligence
What role does Queenie Leavis in Fiction and the Reading Public written in 1932 suggest journalists play in the marketing of fiction?
The Middle Man deciding the public’s taste for them
What does Charlotte Haldane in Motherhood and its Enemies written in 1928 argue unsophisticated girls can fall pray to? And what does it do to her?
Fiction and “her adventures leave her no time for such routine duties”
What did James Douglas in the Ilford Murder say Edith Thompson had been nourished on before she “organised” the death of her husband?
“melodramatic novels and melodramatic plays”
What does James Douglas in the Ilford Murder argue London is “sodden and saturated with the dregs of”?
Vulgar melodrama
What was everyone who did the Mass Observation in June 1939 about class able to do?
Think in the language of class, assess what class they were in and what relation they were to their peers
What did the fact that everyone could think in the language of class confirm Ross McKibbin’s observation of for James Hinton in The Class Complex?
Inter-war England was a country of social classes into which the English freely categorized themselves
What percentage used the conventional labels of class despite the fact Mass Observation did not give them any specifics?
87 per cent
What were even those who showed a distaste for thinking of themselves in terms of class able to do in the Mass Observation trials of 1939?
Well able to place themselves within categories
What was class a measure of for many of the respondents to the MO into class carried out in 1939?
A measure of personal worth and shame and guilt were never far from its articulation
Why was there a tension and unease around class in the 1920s 1930s?
In the social imagination strong images of class coexisted with democratic, egalitarian notions, causing unease and tension, embodied in the notion of snobbery
What may have affected the prevalence of middle class guilt in the 1939 MO?
Most participants had left wing views
What percentage of the observers chose to define their social identities primarily by reference to their taste for high culture?
About a quarter
Which historian analysed the Mass Observation results of the 1939 investigation into class?
James Hinton
What does Pierre Bourdieu argue allows people to position themselves in the social hierarchy?
Taste
How have cultural historians described the social attitudes associated with high culture during the first half of the twentieth century?
Anti democratic and reactionary
What do cultural historians think drove the social attitudes associated with high culture during the first half of the twentieth century?
Fear that the alliance between popular tastes and commercial mass media would undermine cultural standards
What do some particularly pessimistic theorists of modernity say the use of culture to define selfhood produces?
Unhealthy individualism, a chronic condition of meaninglessness, a collapse into narcissism
What did many men use cricket for the advancement of?
Their careers
What class were most of the professional cricketers made up of?
Working class
What did lots of employment providers have a team of?
Cricketers, work teams
What was village cricket an important element of?
Traditions of Englishness
Which way was the demographic bias of cricket?
South, but there were big teams in Yorkshire and Lancashire
What did England spin bowler Fred Root say league cricket had?
No social distinction - one common effort for one common weal
What did league clubs have that country associations didn’t in terms of class?
Considerable cross-class comaraderie
What were professionals in cricket subjected to?
A number of odious social discriminations
What did amateurs and pros have separate?
Changing rooms and entrances into the ground
What were pros obliged to call amateurs?
Mr and Sir
What were professionals obliged to do any time a club member wanted to bat or bowel?
Go with them, go to the nets
What were you really unlikely to ever be if you were a professional?
A captain of a county side
Who thought the cricket system was vicious and why did they think so?
Fred Root and Harold Larwood - the amateurs were also being paid and often more than the progessionals
What did Root claim all professionals would do if they could start again?
Stay as amateurs
Why was Neville Cardus different in his approach to cricket commentary than other commentators?
Innovative, turning what had been largely a factual form into vivid description
What does Neville Cardus’ prelude describe?
A reflection after a cricket season - a last match
What is Cardus’ big statement about Englishness in relation to cricket? What does he say England would be able to do if everything was lost but cricket?
“If everything in this nation of ours were lost but cricket, it would be possible to reconstruct from the theory and practice of cricket all the eternal Englishness, which has gone to the establishment of that constitution and the laws aforesaid.”
What was the bodyline controversy in 1933?
Larwood had a different way of bowling which he used as a cricketing tactic, but an Australian batsmen somebody got seriously injured because of it and Larwood’s career never recovered
What did people say the bodyline tactic breached?
The spirit of cricket
What do photos of cricketing teams show?
Lack of racial difference, players all white males
What values does cricket suggest about Englishness?
Quiet, rural, selective, medieval chivalric Britain, valour and strength, masculinity
What sport had Americans not grasped? And what did this allow the British to do?
Cricket, and allowed them to identify an English national culture outside of America
How did cricket contrast to football in the 20s 30s?
Football now become professionalized, all about money and also whereas cricket is gentlemanly, ordered and slow, football is fast and rowdy
What fields did people say Englishness was made in?
The fields of Eton, old fashioned gentlemanly training
What was cricket articulated as?
A shared English culture
But why was cricket not unifying?
There were many levels to the game
What does Cardus’ view not take into account and only focus on?
Fails to take into account city playing and suburbs, focus is on the southern rural countryside
Why are some cricket players labelled on the scorecard with the surname and some without?
Ones with were amateurs or gentleman
What does Larwood’s biography put emphasis on at the start of his career?
That he worked down the mine, sense of a journey, hard work and determination
What did the Mecca Organisation control?
Britain’s largest chain of dancehalls
What did Mecca promote in the 20s 30s as explicitly British?
Five novelty dances
What did the novelty dances celebrate that links to Baldwin’s speech?
The ideal of old, traditional Britain linked to democratic spirit and natural beauty
Why is it important that the Lambert Walk was performed in Mayfair ballrooms and village hops?
It crossed class divisions
What is different about previous dances that caused great excitement, such as the Charleston and Foxtrot, versus the Lambeth Walk?
Both were dances that came to Britain from United States whereas Lambeth Walk was British in origin and this was unprecendented
What did Mecca do in the hope of replicating the success of the Lambeth Walk?
Introduced four more novelty dances
How did the novelty dances Mecca introduced try to portray class differences?
Portrayed class harmony and celebrated the ordinary Briton
What does Alison Abra argue in ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’ the pubic were focused on more than the Britishness of the new dances created after the Lambeth Walk?
The level of enjoyment they provided
What dance were the King and Queen reported to have performed?
The Lambeth Walk
What does Alison Abra in ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’ argue inspired the dancing boom of the 20s?
The euphoria at the end of WW1
When dancing, what did people become quickly bored of in the 20s?
Bored of the four standard dances and the fact they had to have dancing lessons
What did Heimann, managing director of the Mecca organisation, tell the Star Newspaper?
“Practically everything popular here came from America. The Lambeth Walk has changed all that.”
What did multiple newspapers try to link The Lambeth Walk to?
A longer history of the song and cockney movements within dance, Manchester Guardian suggested it was danced 60 years ago
What did the Lambeth Walk’s London theme mean it fell short of?
A truly national cultural form
Why did the steps to the Lambeth Walk vary?
People adapted them to their regional preferences
What was done to ensure all the new novelty dances Mecca created were as English as the Lambeth Walk?
They were all created by English musicians and dancers
What was a lot of American music at the time associated with and what does Alison Abra in ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’ argue Mecca was trying to avoid in their new novelty dances?
Negro rhythms not suited to the English temperment
Why were some people nervous about the novelty dances created by Mecca?
Not ‘real’ dances, some people worried taking part in them would make them look foolish
What were the follow up dances to the Lambeth Walk never really recognised as?
Being English, there was little or no discussion about it
Although Mecca were working against Americanisation, what did the British public remain?
Besotted with jazz, American celebrities and Hollywood movies
What does Tim Cresswell in ‘“You Cannot Shake That Shimmie Here”’ argue various forms of dance were seen as?
American, and thus degenerate and threatening
How does Philip Richardson, editor of the Dancing Times and writer of a history of Ballroom Dancing, recall his decision to organise a meeting to standardise dance?
Something needed to be done “to call a halt to freakish dancing before it became something worse”
Why does Jane Desmond suggest we struggle to study dancing?
Because we lack the skills to do so, she says “we must become movement literate”
What does Jane Desmond suggest we enact through our bodily movement?
Our place in society
What does Tim Cresswell in ‘“You Cannot Shake That Shimmie Here”’ argue that movements originating in “subordinate” populations become as they make their way upward through a social heirarchy?
“polished”
What does Tim Cresswell in ‘“You Cannot Shake That Shimmie Here”’ argue dance is refracted through?
“the lenses of society and power”
Where were the annual dance crazes sweeping Britain usually from?
The US
What did Monseiur Maurice blame the current state of dance on at the May 1920 meeting where the ISTD was formed?
The influence of jazz music and the dubious new dance steps that had found their way into decent places
What is the name of the song produced in 1919 that showed the capacity of the shimmy to outrage?
“You cannot shake that shimmie here”
What was the dictionary definition of the 1920s and 30s for shimmy? Why is this important?
“To vibrate or wobble abnormally” - African American dance movement, called ‘abnormal’
What did The Dancing Times in June 1921 say teachers should be doing to solve the problem of shimmying?
Putting their heads together to evolve some very harmless variation
What does Tim Cresswell in ‘“You Cannot Shake That Shimmie Here”’ suggest often happened to dance moves frowned upon?
Moves not simply banned but incorporated and smoothed out
How was the Charleston felt about before it went through Sylvester’s process of ‘refinement’?
Outraged people
What does the ISTD stand for?
Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing
In what ways was dancing like literature?
It was said to be degenerating the same as literature
Before the meeting in May 1920, what did Tim Cresswell in ‘“You Cannot Shake That Shimmie Here”’ say there had been more than a decade of?
Concerns about degenerate, decadent and freaking dancing threatening to undo the right kind of people
Within a year what had the ISTD done?
set out a syllabus for ballroom dancing
What did the ISTD issue to overcome the issue of unstandardised dance music?
Began to issue tempo numbers and from 1935 created strict tempo records which to date more than 75 million have been sold
Where had jazz and ragtime music been depicted as wildly chaotic and primitive associated with lowly places for years?
Dance journals
What does Tim Cresswell in ‘“You Cannot Shake That Shimmie Here”’ argue disgust was tinged with, citing the once abhorence of some really popular dances?
Desire
What did the process of codifying social dancing by the ISTD involve?
Outlining correct steps, abolishing unecessary ones, accepted terminology and dance charts
What did the ISTD deter many from doing once they’d standardised things so much?
People from entering the right kind of places, they were made to feel awkward and embarrassed for their lack of expertise
If ISTD dances were described as graceful, dignified and uniform, how were non ISTD dances described?
Simple, primitive and barbaric
What does Tim Cresswell in ‘“You Cannot Shake That Shimmie Here”’ argue regardless of the efforts of ISTD and Silvester, many people continued to do?
Dance outrageously in the clubs of London
Dancing was one of the …………… crazes?
Leisure
How did the commercial landscape around dance shift?
Big dance hall chains were established, becomes linked to consumerism
What does dance music become in the 1920s 30s?
Commercialized and brought and sold
What particular kinds of establishments created the most social unease? What were they targeted as?
Night clubs, targeted as evil of modern life
What policies can be seen between gender roles in dancing?
Sexual policies
How does Frank Forster feel about dancing in his diaries?
Thinks it will help him to meet a woman and have sex but he was also concerned about it, felt he needed lessons before he could go
What gets blurred because dance is a very public activity?
Class, cultural and racial forms
What happens in the 1929 film Piccadilly?
Cautionary tale of dangers of love across racial lines, man thrown out for dancing with white woman
What kind of lifestyle were the dance halls trying to sell/suggest?
Opulent, upper class, palais de danse made to look very opulent, also people getting dressed up, it is an aspirational space
What adverts were placed next to the Joy of Dancing advert?
An advert for Burberry/face powder
Why can jazz be linked to the nightclub scene?
Used night clubs to make music - meet people.
What two types of culture are there?
Music that makes you think versus music that makes you feel
What did the middle brow show about the music that makes you think versus music that makes you feel dichotomy?
Not mutually exclusive, there are different ways of engaging with popular culture
For what four main reasons is jazz frowned upon?
Sexual and sexuality, low-brow, race - AfroAmerican, commodity commercialism
What was undesirable about jazz?
Its black origins
What did American jazz musicians take away from the white british people? What did they introduce to try to stop it?
Jobs and opportunities, licensed them to try to stop it
Why were they concerned about jazz as a cultural commodity?
Taking bigger market share than British music
What does Noel Coward argue Jazz doesn’t look like to him? And what does this reveal about the 1920s/30s more generally?
Coward says it doesn’t look modern to him, but it could be due to a generational divide
Which generation is jazz associated with?
The post war generation, too young to remember the war
Are the problems people have with jazz always the same?
No changing over time, depending on different anxieties of the time.
What ideas did people use to defend jazz music?
Stress the technical proficiency and skill, people promised it could be worked on, smoothed out to take out the energy
What did the Savoy Orpheans do?
Because they were white dominated jazz band, anglocised jazz, they were played on the radio. Cultural appropriation of jazz music.
What did american bands then have to do after the Savoy Orpheans became popular?
Had to follow their anglocized style
Why did lots of newspapers talk constantly about jazz?
It sold copies of newspapers as it was so popular, provoked a response
What did the Palais de Danse set itself against and suggest you did not need to dance there?
“You do need to treat the fantastic toe to enjoy yourself at Palais de Danse” - setting itself against the snobbishness of the ISTD and other ballroom clubs
What did the Palais de Danse advertise it always had two of in attendance?
Jazz bands
What does Hannen Swaffer in Nightclub Panic say those that fight in the war, didn’t fight for?
Nightclubs and people to be stupid and frivolous
What kind of class were jazz bands tied into?
Criminal classes
What did Cath Feely argue Forster was searching for in his diaries?
Sexual and social experience in the dance halls and cinemas, she says he was not alone in this
What did Victor Silvester in Modern Ballroom Dancing compare the basic principles of dance as being as permanent as?
The laws of gravity
What kind of assett does Victor Silvester in Modern Ballroom Dancing describe dancing as?
A social asset - providing a mental tonic, opportunity to meet people and dress up
What was the caravan club?
A night club in London, raided and prosecuted as disorderly house in 1934
What do the national archives from the caravan club file suggest police officers were doing at the nightclub?
Going in undercover to try to prove evidence of the clubs nature and very sexually explicit behaviour
What dances were practiced at the caravan club that were associated with male homosexuality?
The Rumba and Black Bottom dances
What does Clarence Winchester in 1926 say people of the middle brow can take doses of both of?
Jazz and Einstein
Moments for fooling and moments for …………? - Clarence Winchester, 1926
Schooling
Alexis Gunning in a Listeners Letters in 1926 said that both jazz and classical music make people happy but what did she clarify jazz’s happiness would be?
Shorter than classical music happiness
To Annette Kuhn in ‘An Everyday Magic’, what was the attraction of the pictures for the movie made generation of the 1930s?
Cinema provided escapism, and a distraction from dreary conditions people were living in in the 30s
What did American sociologist E. Wight Bakke conduct an interview based study on in London in the 1930s? What did he find?
Unemployed men, found that unemployed men unwilling to forgo the cinema unless they had to
When Wight Bakke asked the unemployed men why they were unwilling to forgo the cinema what did they say?
“The pictures help you live in another world for a little while. I almost feel I’m in the picture”
What four key points does Annette Kuhn in ‘An Everyday Magic’ extract from Bakke’s study that show the cinema’s attraction?
A sense of entering or living in another world, a sense of oneself being in the picture, a feeling that life seems better whilst there and acknowledgement of the temporariness of this immersion into a new world
What desire does Annette Kuhn in ‘An Everyday Magic’ say is widespread, if not universal?
The desire to be occasionally taken out of oneself
What does Annette Kuhn in ‘An Everyday Magic’ argue the recurrence of certain themes and turns of phrase in contemporary accounts of cinema going show?
Suggests a collective imagination is at work in them
While entertainments such as the theatre felt socially off-limits to the working classes, what did the pictures seem?
Accessible, they had feelings of entitlement and acceptance there
What was the practical reason cinemas were so attractive?
They were warm, a good way of getting out the cold. Austerity of the home. The comforts of ease were stressed ‘warmth! Nearness and love!’ in comparison with world outside cinema walls which was ‘chilly’ and ‘wet’
What does Robert James in Popular Culture and Working Class Taste in Britain describe as by far the most popular leisure activity in the 1930s?
Cinemagoing
What did the New Survey of London Life and Labour describe the cinema as in 1935?
The People’s Amusement
What does Simon Rowson argue was the average weekly attendance of cinemagoers across the country in 1934?
Eighteen and a half million
What does Robert James in Popular Culture and Working Class Taste in Britain argue happened to the building of many cinemas?
They were enlarged and seating capacity rose significantly, lavish and plush, given elaborate fronts
Who dominated the ownership of cinemas in the period?
Three main chains - The Odeon, Gaumont-British and Associated British Cinemas
Was cinema-going expensive?
No
Whilst cinemas attracted all classes of citizen who attended most often?
Lower middle and working classes
What helped to create a new class of consumer, predominantly affecting the working classes?
Social and demographic changes occasioned by WW1
What does the New Survey of London claim girls and women accounted for seventy per cent of?
Weekly cinema admissions
Why was cinemagoing still one of the only leisure pursuits women could take part in?
It was still taboo for women to go to the pub etc but the cinema was deemed respectable, also matinee performance meant they could go before children finished school
Who does Robert James in Popular Culture and Working Class Taste in Britain cite as talking about the warmth of the cinema? What do they say?
George Orwell, says ‘even people on the verge of starvation will readily pay twopence to get out of the ghastly cold of a winter afternoon.’
What did John Martin Johns from Mass-Observer say the cinema affected?
Their education, fashions, morality, leisure and social attitudes - people imitating hair of Norma Shearer
To Robert James in Popular Culture and Working Class Taste in Britain what did going to the pictures bring a sense of to working class people?
Camaraderie
What categories did World Film News separate films into?
Working class, mixed family and middle class
Robert James in Popular Culture and Working Class Taste in Britain argue promoters were not only selling a film but selling a?
lifestyle - “one that was awash with elegance and sophistication”
In an attempt to attract a wider reading public what were authors encouraged to do?
Write novels that could be read without the need for long, protracted reading spells, and to write fiction that could become part of a series
What did the person who made the 1920s scrapbooks seem to want to look like/idealised?
American actresses
What part of actors and actresses lives do people become fascinated with for the first time?
Their private lives, find out through magazines like Picturegoer
What did Mass observers describe cinemagoers as often doing?
Wanting to see the credits, see the people in real life
What did The Picturegoer try to create the sense that actors were?
The same as you and me, just ordinary men and women
What advertising slogan was grafted onto working class neighbourhoods?
‘Friday night is Amami Night’
What did the film Its Love Again and Jessie Matthews herself feed into the idea of?
That everyone/anyone could be a celebrity
What did newspapers and their ‘scoops’ become really important in establishing and spreading?
Celebrity, creating celebrity.
What does the daily columnist become a motif for?
The state of the press
What kinds of questions were the Mass Observation Cinema-Going Survey of 1938 asking?
If British or American films liked more, regularity of visits to the cinema, genres people like and want more of
Did most people who did specify like American films of British films more?
The older people preferred British, the younger preferred American
What does the question in the mass observation survey about what people want more of in films show?
Personal taste a big factor, completely varied answers
What did a range of publications in the early 1920s offer film commentary that predicated on the assumptions of?
The fact that cinema was not an art and that readers should be helped towards understanding its riches
Why did Walter Mycroft criticise American films?
He called them frivilous, vulgar and said they gave a ‘false outlook on life’
Who was Iris Barry?
Most dominant, widely read critic of the 1920s
What did Iris Barry believe would happen if enough people supported the ‘better type of pictures’?
‘supply [would] inevitably follow demand’
Why does Iris Barry in Lets Go To The Pictures suggest middle/upper class went to the cinema?
To be sociable, see their friends
What brows shape fiction during the period?
Cultural brows
What do Edith Thompson’s letters seem to allow her to do?
Escape a sense of entrapment
What ethical dilemma may we feel when reading Edith Thompson’s love letters and Frank Forster’s Diaries?
Feels like an invasion of privacy
Why are letters such a brilliant source for accessing 20s 30s?
It was the main form of communication
What are love letters generally in nature?
Idealistic and intimate
What is the main problem with using Edith Thompson’s love letters as a source?
We don’t see Percy’s replies, we are missing part of the dialogue
What two impending pressures does Thompson fight in her love letters?
Pressure to conform to the ideal, suburban, heteronormative house wife versus her own sense of what she wants and desire
What did reading become in the 20s 30s?
A popular past time
What does Edith Thompson find in her reading?
Herself, forming herself through books/writing
How do books encourage/support Edith Thompson’s affair?
She compares her relationship to those she reads about, helps her to defend her decision, also sharing the literature gives them something to talk about
Why did Edith Thompson get lots of criticism for her job?
She earned more than Percy and more than her father as a Milliners Buyer
What is Edith Thompson Percy a typical example of?
The inward looking suburban man Alison Light describes
What does Percy try to learn to do in Edith Thompson’s letters but can’t?
Dance
What were there lots of different types of in 20s 30s?
Leisure pursuits
Edith Thompson has a very varied social life, name two things she attends in her letters?
Dances, Lunches, Films, Drinking, Betting, Smoking, Tea
Why does Lucy Bland in The Trials and Tribulations of Edith Thompson (2008) say Thompson’s trial has been of such interest to historians
Touches on a spectrum of issues of crucial importance in the years after the war
When was Percy Thompson murdered?
3rd October 1922
What did the letters become in Thompson’s trial?
Central evidence in her conviction
When were Thompson and Bywaters hung?
9th Jan 1923
What had popular daily newspapers adoped from the late Victorians?
‘new journalism’ of sex, crime and scandal
Lucy Bland in The Trials and Tribulations of Edith Thompson (2008) argues Edith Thompson was not simply on trial for murder, but for……?
Being modern, consuming mass culture, seeking sensation and exerting sexual agency
What did Edith Thompson epitomize?
The ‘modern woman’ and ‘flapper’
Although married what kind of life did Edith Thompson pursue?
The life of an unmarried young woman - a life of pleasure
What two sides of 1920s society did Lucy Bland in The Trials and Tribulations of Edith Thompson (2008) argue Edith Thompson represented at once?
On the one hand, modernity, new opportunities, break with prewar world, on the other hand, immorality, erosion of stability in regard to the family
What did Thompson do at work which was another sign of her unmarried, independent, flapper persona?
Use her maiden name, Graydon
What does Lucy Bland in The Trials and Tribulations of Edith Thompson (2008) argue was most contentious about the modern woman?
Her sexuality, her appearance as a sexual spectacle and her capacity for sexual agency
What did one of Edith’s letters describe, which was presented as evidence at the trial and reproduced by the press?
A description of orgasm
Why were readers so shocked at Edith’s description of an orgasm?
Shocked by the audacity of a woman writing in such terms
What did Christopher Breward in The Culture of Fashion (1995) argue there was an interwar anxiety about?
Young lower-middle class women adopting new products and lifestyles and refusing to accept that access to pleasure and luxury should be stratified
What 4 reasons meant literature was characterized as cheap and dangerous?
Inexpensive to buy, Worthless in content, Appealed to base emotion over reason, Encouraged dangerous fantasy
What did broadsheets criticize the popular press for doing during the Thompson Trial?
‘whipping up public emotion’
What did The Worlds Pictorial News assert tens of thousands of women declared about the Thompson Trial?
They would hang Edith not Freddy
What were spectators in court during the Thompson Trials labelled as?
Morbid with morbid appetites encouraged by the tabloids
What does Lucy Bland in The Trials and Tribulations of Edith Thompson (2008) argue the anxiety prompted by the trial about how to know the modern woman revealed?
Deep anxiety about the erosion of social boundaries in the aftermath of war
How is crime fiction written?
In a formulaic way - reader knows what to expect from book to book
How do books become cheaper?
Mass production of cheap hardbacks
What were commercial lending libraries?
Pay a small subscription fee and get a new book each week on loan
Why did reading become more popular to the middle classes?
Rise of middlebrow fiction created for them, easier to read took up less time and also works of literature more accessible
How are books like Murder on the Orient Express different to books like Mrs Dalloway?
Murder on the Orient written for entertainment, not like Mrs Dalloway which has deep political meaning ALSO because of modernist movement, Woolf deliberately trying to be difficult
What is there at the end of an Agatha Christie novel that people of the 20s 30s felt they had missed out on?
A strong sense of closure they didn’t get this with the war, people died for no reason, in Agatha Christie there is a motive
What term does Matt not like and why doesn’t he like it?
Escapism, because it closes down productive avenues of exploration
What does Matt Houlbrook argue in “A Pin to See The Peepshow” (2010) fiction could do and did for Edith Thompson?
Presented everyday dilemmas in melodramatic form and provided a way of making or rationalizing decisions
Shani D’Cruze in “Dad’s Back”: Mapping Masculinities, Moralities argues that novels were…?
Escapist but imaginatively hooked up to the emotional economies of its readers
What does Shani D’Cruze in “Dad’s Back”: Mapping Masculinities, Moralities say middle class reading is often?
Feminized not feminine
Why does Shani D’Cruze in “Dad’s Back”: Mapping Masculinities, Moralities argue men liked the so called ‘Golden Age’ of crime fiction?
Because of the soft intellectualism of the crime puzzle
How does Shani D’Cruze in “Dad’s Back”: Mapping Masculinities, Moralities argue interwar British culture can be described?
As middlebrow, cites evidence of growing suburbs, identification with domesticity and engagement with the market - ALSO agrees with conservative modernity theory
What does Susan Rowland argue crime fiction is feminised because of?
Its relation to the masculine law, deals in the excess that the official texts will not tell
What form also offered the excess official texts will not tell?
Newspapers - sensational reporting of crime hybrid of fictional and actual events
