Review of Gender and the Victorian Periodical

\u27We are dominated by Journalism\u27 \u27a really remarkable power\u27, Oscar Wilde observed, not entirely neutrally, in \u27The Soul of Man under Socialism\u27 published in the Fortnightly Review in 1891. Like many of his contemporaries, Wilde recognized not only the power of the press, but also its modernity. In this wide ranging and important study Hilary Fraser, Stephanie Green and Judith Johnston argue that precisely because of its power the periodical press occupied a central position in the construction of gender in Victorian cultural history. Journalism was gendered masculine by those who accorded it a lofty status within the profession of letters, they suggest. It was just as insistently gendered feminine by those who denigrated writing for the press. Hence Matthew Arnold\u27s description of the so-called \u27New Journalism\u27 in 1887 as \u27full of ability, novelty, variety, sensation, sympathy, generous instincts; its one great fault is that it is featherbrained\u27, - all attributes conventionally associated with women. Ironically the increasing number of women who joined the ranks of journalists as the century progressed served to downgrade the periodical press still further, by emphasizing its femininity. But for emerging writers like Marian Evans, Harriet Martineau, Margaret Oliphant and Eliza Lynn Linton earlier in the century the press provided a platform from which their careers were launched. Just as anonymity permitted men \u27never meant for authors\u27 to enter the writing profession, it gave women with literary ambitions an opportunity to write for publication. Fraser and Johnston quote Daniel Brown\u27s comment that the periodical essay became \u27the Trojan horse that allowed women writers to enter the male preserve of professional writing\u27. And their male counterparts were aware of their arrival. G. H. Lewes\u27s article \u27The Condition of Authors in England, Germany and France\u27 (1847) despite its jocular tone, reveals anxiety about the infiltration of the masculine writing profession by \u27speculators\u27 - \u27women, children, and ill-trained troops\u27. A subsequent article in The Leader, \u27A Gentle Hint to Writing Women\u27 (1850), continued the military metaphor, claiming that \u27women have made an invasion of our legitimate domain\u27 - \u27they are ruining our profession\u27 - \u27My idea of a perfect woman\u27, the article concludes, \u27is of one who can write but won\u27t\u27 , an unexpected comment, as the authors observe, by the man who was to become George Eliot\u27s consort