Consuming Angels: Advertising and Victorian WomenOxford University Press, 1994 M10 13 - 240 pages Timid and retiring, the Victorian housewife was an "angel in the house," or so says the stereotype. But when this angel picked up a popular magazine--The Lady, for instance--she saw in its advertisements images of Grecian goddesses, women warriors, queens, actresses, adventurers. These arrestingly sexual and surprisingly powerful images are the subject of Consuming Angels, a major examination of how Victorian ads shaped social values. Stylishly written and featuring 73 reproductions, this book shows how ads used the hedonistic aspects of Victorian culture to sell their wares, glorified consumerism, and mythologized the middle-class life. Images of aggressive women, Loeb shows, played well to both men and women. And ultimately, these ads helped usher in the twentieth century with the creation of a new community: the community of consumers. |
Contents
| 3 | |
2 Commercial Interpretations of the Domestic Ideology | 16 |
Productive Engines and Consuming Conflagrations | 46 |
4 Heroes for Sale | 72 |
Evangelical Forms and Material Deliverers | 100 |
6 Community and the Individual | 128 |
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actress adver appearance aristocratic beauty Beecham's Pills Bird's Custard Bodleian Library Bovril Boxes Cadbury's Cadbury's Cocoa caption celebrated child Christian Age Cocoa consumerism consumption Court Journal cultural decoration democratic depictions domestic emphasized Eno's evangelical experience Family Circle feminine Figure focus Food fºr Grecian hedonistic hero Home Chat household Illustrated London Illustrated Sporting individual industrial January–June 1900 John Johnson Collection July–December 1900 Lady late nineteenth century late Victorian leisure Liebig Extract luxury material ment middle middle-class Monkey Brand Soap moral mother motif Nubolic offered Ogden's Cigarettes patent medicine Pears Soap physical pleasure political popular potential progress promise Queen Robarts Library role romantic romantic love royal seemed sexual social emulation society sphere Sporting and Dramatic status suggests Sunlight Soap Swan Soap testimonial tion tºº University Press Victorian advertisement Victorian period woman women