18th Century Finishing Work postcard on handmade paper
From Chapter 4
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Drawing on feminist and material rhetorics, the authors of Women Making History demonstrate that, by creating postcards, Helaine Victoria Press aimed to do more than provide a convenient writing surface or even affect collective memory; instead, they argue, the press generated feminist memory. The cards, each with the picture of a woman or group of women from history, were multimodal. Pictures were framed in colors and borders appropriate to the era and subject. Lengthy captions offered details about the lives of the women pictured. Unlike other memorials, the cards were mobile; they traveled through the postal system, viewed along the way by the purchasers, mail sorters, mail carriers, and recipients. Upon arriving at their destinations, cards were often posted on office bulletin boards or refrigerators at home, where surroundings shaped their meanings.
Women Making History shows that Helaine Victoria Press’s cards, like the movement from which they emanated, were dynamic and participatory. They were, in short, a multidirectional, open ended, rhetorically evolving process of transforming feminist consciousness. The print edition includes many images from the press’s records, and the digital edition offers additional images plus audio and video clips from press participants.
This is the first book to demonstrate the relationships between the feminist art movement, the women in print movement, and the scholars studying women’s history. Readers will be drawn to both the large quantity of illustrative materials and the theoretical framework of the book, as it provides an expanded understanding of rhetorical multimodality. Scholars of gender and women’s studies, art history, media studies, and the history of rhetoric, as well as members of the public with interests in feminism, Lesbian feminist culture, postcards, fine letterpress printing, and papermaking will be inspired by this richly produced history.
About the authors
Julia M. Allen is professor emerita of English at Sonoma State University.
Jocelyn H. Cohen is an artist, arborist and co-founder of Helaine Victoria Press, Inc.
The complete manuscript of this work was subjected to a fully closed (“double-blind”) review process. For more information, please see our Peer Review Commitments and Guidelines.
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From Chapter 4
In the 18th century, France produced some of the finest handmade paper in the world, much of it for export. In the finishing room of this mill, the women are smoothing, cleaning, counting, inspecting, and bundling the paper. The mills were largely in rural areas and often were cottage industries employing whole families. Women and children were paid much less than men, but the combined income gave additional home comforts. Although the work was monotonous, it was cleaner and better liked than the rag rooms, the other work open to women in the paper mills.
From Resources only
Women and children entered the factories in large numbers as soon as the industrial revolution began. By 1900 half the employees in paper mills in the U.S. and Britain were women, and their wages were less than half of men’s for a day of typically 10 hours. Sharp division of labor left women and children sorting rags or in the finishing room—all unskilled labor without opportunity for promotion. Rag pickers earned 80¢-$1.00 a day, below half what was considered a living wage. Lint and dust from the chopping machines and filth of rags presented great risks to health.