Consuming Angels: Advertising and Victorian Women

240 Pages·1994·1.32 MB·English

by  Lori Anne Loeb

CONSUMING
ANGELS
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CONSUMING
ANGELS
Advertising and
Victorian Women
Lori Anne Loeb
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1994
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
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and associated companies in
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Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Locb, Lori Anne.
Consuming angels : advertising and Victorian women / Lori Anne Locb.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-508596-5
I . Advertising—Social aspects—Great Britain—History—
19th century. 2. Social values—Great Britain—History—19th century.
3. Great Britain Social conditions-—19th century, 4. Women
consumers-—Great Britain--History—19th century. I. Title.
HF5813.G7L63 1994
659.i'042'094109034—dC2O 93-46094
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4- 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid free paper
In memory of my grandmother
Vera E. Sparfel (1898-1985)
who taught me
by her love
and
by her example
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Preface
The Victorian advertisement exposes materialistic fantasies. It tells of
goods that excited the imagination and of mundane realities of everyday
life. It is concerned with concrete embodiments of existence, and also with
chimerical images of prosperity and progress. It captivates, alarms, and
amuses. Yet its potential as an historical document is unrealized. Within
the pages of innumerable magazines, the advertisement seems hidden. A
once lively and provocative instrument, it is ready to be uncovered, to
reveal the rise of consumerism, the emergence of a materially defined
cultural ideal and the transformation of a society.
In the late nineteenth century, I will argue, many middle-class Victo-
rians gradually turned away from the puritanical focus that has been so
strongly identified with the Victorian period in general. They moved to-
ward a new and surprisingly more hedonistic emphasis that glorified de-
mocracy; the access of all not simply to political participation, but to
consumer participation; the access of all to a good life, increasingly defined
in material terms. The Victorian advertisement provides an iconography of
this new emphasis in cultural orientation.1
The material redefinition of the late Victorian middle-class ideal is more
than tangentially linked to an intriguing paradox illuminated by historians
of the Victorian family. The Victorian home has been seen as a "walled
garden," a refuge from sordid industry that both nurtured family virtue
and prepared family members for confrontation with the outside world.2
But the maintenance of the "sanctuary," argues Patricia Branca, contrib-
uted to the early demise of many a frail, unassisted "angel in the house."
Moreover, even when well equipped with a retinue of experienced ser-
vants, the angel became a shrewd chancellor of the exchequer of the family
purse.3 Domestic economy literature analyzed by J. A. Banks in Prosperity
and Parenthood suggests that middle-class angels were voracious consum-
viii Preface
ers, who sustained a keen interest in household management.4 These two
views of the Victorian home, as temple of virtue and center of consump-
tion, seem irreconcilable, and yet they underpin most interpretations of
Victorian culture.
Curiously, the simple material abundance of the Victorian middle-class
world has received little historical attention. Material culture studies have
focused on the realities of everyday life of the working class.5 Studies of
objects owned by the prosperous have been preoccupied with aesthetics
and style rather than the object as embodiment of culture. Studies of
Victorian interiors have stressed opulence.6 Historians of the industrial
revolution have concentrated on mass production rather than mass con-
sumption.7 All the major studies of British advertising8 focus on the emer-
gence of advertising as a business. None deals more than marginally with
the advertisement itself as a carrier of culture.
In this book I will use Victorian advertisements as historical documents
in order to explore late Victorian cultural ideals. But I do not argue that
the Victorian advertisement provides a simple reflection of Victorian real-
ity. Recognizing that consumers often do not want to see life as it really is,
advertisers depict fantasy, ideals, life as it ought to be. Advertisers, further,
are driven inexorably by the desire to sell goods. Finally, the class and
social characteristics of advertising agents influences their depiction of
social reality.
T. R. Nevett, the leading historian of the Victorian advertising agency,
identifies London's early advertising agents as male black-coated workers.9
Since the late 1700S the function of the British advertising agents had been
mostly administrative: they provided information about newspapers and
they negotiated the price and insertion of advertisements. Only a few
wrote copy. Then, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as
lavishly illustrated advertisements became more common, advertising
agencies installed art departments. The advertising agent assumed creative
control. Male agents paid attention to the demonstrable characteristics of a
predominantly female market, but, unconsciously or not, they inevitably
incorporated their masculine biases and preconceptions into their adver-
tisements. The Victorian advertisement may reflect three determining fac-
tors: the consumer, the agent, and the product. But as it becomes part of a
visual and verbal vocabulary, it may even indirectly and unconsciously
shape as well as reflect popular perceptions.10
Each of these factors is considered in an analysis based on a qualitative
and quantitative examination of over 250,000 advertisements. Many arc
from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, a collection, held
at the Bodleian Library, which contains hundreds of advertisements, yet
has never been explored by an historian of advertising. Other advertise-
ments are drawn from a range of women's magazines, home journals,
general interest magazines, sporting magazines and the religious press—
Queen, The Lady., Lady's Pictorial, Home Chat, Illustrated London News,
Sphere, Illustrated Sporting/ and Dramatic News, Christian Age, Family Cir-
cle, Hand and Heart, I have concentrated on print advertisements that
Preface ix
appeared mainly between 1880—1914. Advertisements during this period
were usually illustrated and relatively unencumbered by editorial conven-
tions, developments that made them richer cultural artifacts than early
unillustrated advertisements. Further, it may be argued that there is a
cultural coherence to the period between 1880—1914, which in most
schemes of periodization sets it apart from the mid-Victorian years. I refer
to the period between 1880—1914 loosely as late Victorian, although clearly
it encompasses the Edwardian years as well.
In the absence of historical conventions for evaluating advertisements,
all advertisements were subjected first to a frequency content analysis that
grouped advertisements according to product type, setting, sex roles, age
depiction, and marketing strategies. This preliminary quantitative survey
provided a foundation for the more substantive qualitative analysis that is
the focus of this book. Painterly images; pictorial conventions; artistic,
literary, and religious symbolism; historical allusions; repetitive poses,
dress, settings, or actions; and social themes were all considered. Analysis
of these patterns was informed by an appreciation of marketing strategy,
the limitations of technology, the interaction of text and illustration, cog-
nitive and affective response, and the demands of commercial convention.
This sort of cultural reading does not depend on a doctrinaire commitment
to a particular interpretation of one or even of several advertisements.
Ultimately the Victorian advertisement emerges as a graphic depiction
of the deepest materialistic desires of the Victorian middle class. While it
illuminates the material reality of Victorian middle-class existence, it re-
veals Victorian hopes, fears, and aspirations. It helps to dictate the Victo-
rian paraphernalia of gentility. In doing so, it charts the cultivation of a
commercial and hedonistic definition of late Victorian middle-class ideals,
an orientation relevant to our understanding of Victorian culture.
I WOULD LIKE to thank Richard J. Helmstadter, who, as my supervisor
at the University of Toronto, led me to study advertisements. Without his
advice, discerning judgment, and support this book would not have been
possible. Trevor Lloyd read critically an earlier draft. R. K. Webb has
provided thoughtful commentary and encouragement; he has inspired me
in ways I cannot express. I have been privileged to work with wonderful
collections of Victorian periodicals at Robarts Library at the University of
Toronto and at the British Library at Colindale. The staff of the John
Johnson Collection at the Bodleian Library, especially its curator, Julie
Anne Lambert, provided incomparable professionalism and warmth. Gor-
don Phillips of the History of Advertising Trust offered invaluable assis-
tance. Funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Coun-
cil of Canada helped support some of the research. Nancy Lane at Oxford
University Press has been a wonderful editor. Finally, I should also like to
thank my parents, for their love and for their endurance.
Columbia, S.C. L.A.L.
December 1993