Although the Woman Question was becoming the most widely aired topic of the day in mid-Victorian England, “the leading periodicals for women were careful to avoid the whole subject of women’s rights. Only the most casual references to feminist activities were made, and these were infrequent and invariably derogatory. From 1850 onwards a number of new magazines entered the field, but it is significant that no periodical which espoused the women’s cause survived for more than a year or two. On the other hand, several publications which proffered the usual mixture of fiction, fashion, and needlework, were immediately successful and embarked upon long runs of between twenty-five and thirty years” (White 47). [These included The Ladies Treasury (1858-95)].
[White traces the Victorian retreat from the intellectual approach to women’s magazines, first evident in the 1820s and triumphant by the arrival of The New Monthly Belle Assemblee in 1847. White: ]
Women'’s magazines were no longer required to contribute to the intellectual improvement and advancement of women, merely to provide innocent and amusing reading matter as an alternative to the daily newspapers which were now considered to be too tainted for female perusal. The broad-based formula and intellectual approach evolved during the eighteenth century became obsolete and was gradually replaced by one more suited to the restricted lives and interests of early Victorian women.
The onset of these changes was visible in the magazines of 1825. There was a significant reduction in the coverage of domestic and foreign news, politics, and public affairs generally, all such items having disappeared completely from La Belle Assemblee, and The Lady’s Magazine. Gone, too, were the boisterous debates on topical questions in which both sexes had once enthusiastically engaged, together with all other signs of reader-involvement apparent in the magazines of 1800. In all respects there was a definite sobering of magazine content and signs of growing introversion. The reaction against the excesses of the Regency period gave rise to a new emphasis on propriety and the purging of every indiscretion and lapse of taste. ... (White 39-40).
[White on fashion in magazines:]
Contraction in one area [intellectual content of women’s magazines] was balanced by expansion in another. Female dress at this period [beginning in 1820s] was becoming increasingly elaborate and the women’s press paid more and more attention to it. Several new publications devoted almost entirely to the fashions appeared during the early years of the nineteenth century, and fashion coverage was also increased in some existing periodicals. The need for women to be informed about matters of dress was undoubtedly intensifying at this time. With the increase in wealth and productive capacity resulting from the spread of industrialisation, both the demand for and supply of consumer goods was rising. More important still, a new class of consumers was beginning to emerge, a class o wealthy industrialists who rose to social eminence via horse-power rather than horseflesh, and who had money to spend but little inbred taste to guide them. As they breached the ranks of the landed aristocracy, either by marriage or land purchase, it was incumbent upon them to assume the modes and manners of the leisured classes, and for their womenfolk particularly to observe the socially accepted rules of dress and decorum. Here was wide scope for the women’s magazines, and many of them took to supplying detailed descriptions, with sketches, of what fashionable Society women were wearing, an important new service at a time when communications were still unreliable, and fashion intelligence difficult to come by (White 40).
[White on middle-class publications:]
Until the middle of the century, the women’s press remained an upper-class institution. But in 1852, an important new development occurred in the introduction of the first ‘cheap’ magazine to be produced for women of the middle classes. This was The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, brought out by Samuel Beeton and issues monthly at twopence. The customary price for a monthly had previously been one shilling, which placed them beyond the reach of those with moderate incomes. ... (White 44)
... The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, the first women’s periodical to deal systematically with the subject of domestic management, achieved a greater popularity than even [publisher Samuel] Beeton himself had anticipated. Within two years of publication it had reached a sale of 25,000 copies a month, rising to 37,000 by 1856, and when the first series ended in 1860 its circulation stood at 50,000. In that year Beeton launched a new and enlarged series, printed (in anticipation of the repeal of the newspaper duty) on better quality paper, and introducing coloured fashion engravings which were imported from Paris (White 46).
[White on the women’s press in the 1870s:]
Meanwhile, magazines generally were preoccupied with catering on the one hand to the rising middle classes who kept their women in idleness and luxury, and on the other to the growing number of gentlewomen with no hope of marriage who had been reduced to penury. The magazines of the ‘seventies reflected the extremes of wealth and poverty, the mixed harvest of the first phase of the industrial revolution. The third quarter of the century was characterised by ‘a degree of opulence, luxury and refinement unheard of in the palmist days of the Roman commonwealth’, [The Ladies 1872] which showed itself in ‘the immense amount of money which seems to be at liberty to be spent in the purchase of art treasures...’, in luxury furniture, ‘which is more useful, convenient and costly every year’, and in the extravagance of female dress.
The amassing of industrial property was beginning to have its effect upon the class structure, permitting and unprecedented degree of social mobility. In consequence, women born to a lowly station were now required, by virtue of their husbands’ success in business, to take their place alongside ladies of rank and breeding. The latter did not welcome these parvenues. (White 51-2).
... For such women [newly wealthy], ignorant of Society’s modes and manners, the women’s magazines proved an indispensable guide. More and more publications began to include features on etiquette, undertaking to answer readers’ queries on all matters of dress and taste. Fashion notes occupied an increasing amount of space as styles grew ever more elaborate and succeeded each other with increasing rapidity. Advertisements now began to figure largely in several magazines, testifying to the big expansion in mass-produced consumer goods and rising incomes. The economy was booming, and industrial property-owners contributed to the growth of the retail trade by channelling their newly acquired wealth into display expenditure to buttress their social position.
While this orgy of spending benefited the newly rich, it placed a severe strain upon the financial resources of established Society, for whom landed property was a far less fruitful source of income than industry and commerce (White 52).
...There was a corresponding broadening in the range of leisure pursuits. With the later years of the nineteenth century came a relaxation of some of the restraints inhibiting social intercourse for women, who were able to participate in many new outdoor activities. ... (White 53)
The magazines were now [in the 1870s] meeting a heightened demand for romantic fiction, advice about dress and ‘the toilette’, and fancy work, since these were still the chief interests and occupations of well-bred young ladies. One of the main functions of periodicals at this time was to keep readers au fait with the latest fad or novelty. It was an age of ‘crazes’, in needlework and in dress (White 53).
[Within a few years of The Ladies’ demise, the comparatively small women’s press would
begin to assume the characteristics of an industry (White 56). ]
“Publishing firms were waking up to the
fact that there was a vast potential demand for useful and entertaining periodical literature among women
of all classes, but particularly in the middle and lower-middle ranks. The proportion of advertising was
steadily increasing, indicating that manufacturers and retailers too were becoming aware of the potential
of the women’s press--as a selling medium” (White 56).