Fashion Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Cheryl A. Morgan

Critical Essay by Cheryl A. Morgan

SOURCE: Morgan, Cheryl A. “Unfashionable Feminism? Designing Women Writers in the Journal des Femmes (1832-1836).” In Making the News: Modernity and the Mass Press in Nineteenth-Century France, edited by Dean de la Motte and Jeannene M. Przyblyski, pp. 207-32. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Morgan considers the juxtaposition of fashion with literary and scientific articles and feminist concerns illustrated throughout the publishing history of Journal des Femmes.

Je suis donc content qu'elles fassent leurs romans et leurs chiffons. Le temps viendra peut-être bientôt où l'homme qui fera un roman sera aussi ridicule que ceux qu'on voit aujourd'hui faire des robes et des bonnets. [I am then happy to let them (women) make their novels and their clothes. The time will come perhaps when the man who makes a novel will be as ridiculous as the ones who today make dresses and bonnets.]

—Auger, 1827

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