Gender, Bolshevism & the popular press in Britain, 1916-1921
Antonio Gramsci described 'hegemony' as the organisational and connected means by which a dominant group exercises influence and control throughout society. One of the primary ways this is possible is through media. This dissertation examines how the British popular press constructed a gendered hegemony using narratives involving women and Bolshevism during the aftermath of the First World War. These narratives were a response to a perceived crisis of gender related to the women's suffrage movement and new roles created for women during the war. I argue that the popular press helped construct a gendered variant of hegemony during and after the war by appealing to the patriarchal imagination pervasive in British society as well as relying on Euro-Orientalist tropes and fears of the unclean masses. In all cases, women were placed in narratives that often depicted them either as maternal, victimised or deviant. Those narratives fixated on anxieties of social disorder and degeneration. This work draws from a variety of British scholarship pertaining to media history, labour history and gender studies. Apart from Gramsci, this thesis has been influenced by the gendered scholarship of Billie Melman, Nicoletta Gullace,
McIntosh, Andrew
D204 Modern History ; D501 World War I ; D901 Europe (General) ; DA Great Britain ; HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform ; HQ The family. Marriage. Women ; HX Socialism. Communism. Anarchism ; JN101 Great Britain
Gender, Bolshevism & the popular press in Britain, 1916-1921. Antonio Gramsci described 'hegemony' as the organisational and connected means by which a dominant group exercises influence and control throughout society. One of the primary ways this is possible is through media. This dissertation examines how the British popular press constructed a gendered hegemony using narratives involving women and Bolshevism during the aftermath of the First World War. These narratives were a response to a perceived crisis of gender related to the women's suffrage movement and new roles created for women during the war. I argue that the popular press helped construct a gendered variant of hegemony during and after the war by appealing to the patriarchal imagination pervasive in British society as well as relying on Euro-Orientalist tropes and fears of the unclean masses. In all cases, women were placed in narratives that often depicted them either as maternal, victimised or deviant. Those narratives fixated on anxieties of social disorder and degeneration. This work draws from a variety of British scholarship pertaining to media history, labour history and gender studies. Apart from Gramsci, this thesis has been influenced by the gendered scholarship of Billie Melman, Nicoletta Gullace,
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