Modernizing Tradition: Gender and Consumerism in Interwar France and Germany (review)

This book starts from the widely-held thesis that the formation of gender norms after the Great War amounted to a 'reconstruction' of gender. Stanley demonstrates that during the interwar years women, through the discourses surrounding newly available consumer goods, were granted a degree of access to the modern while still being defined primarily as wives and mothers. It is acknowledged that the importance of consumption in the interwar era was limited, given the absence of a true consumer economy anywhere in Europe; but Stanley repeatedly stresses that the important point is the mentality rather than the reality of consumption. The mechanisms of advertising had begun so to permeate everyday life that, 'Regardless of whether individuals could or did buy particular goods, they were participating in a consumer culture' (p. 13). Following Judith Williamson, Stanley indicates that the subject is interpellated by publicity as if already a part of the group that a particular product represents, even though advertisers often set their images in more up-market environments than their presumed audiences inhabited on a daily basis. The major part of the book is devoted to the presentation and discussion of advertising material from France and Germany, set out under thematic headings: 'Constructing Modern Housewives', the 'Discourse of Motherhood', 'Fashion, Health and Beauty', 'Gender and Automobiles', and 'Labor and Leisure'. The documentation is rich and aptly presented, with a valuable selection of facsimiles of pages and posters from magazines, manufacturers' brochures, store prospectuses, and so on. The visuals are well glossed, but occasionally the texts would repay further scrutiny (e.g. p. 145). The analysis largely confirms the trading on traditional imagery, though for example the role of housewife is enhanced by technological consumer goods for the home; and the car brings intimations of freedom, though hedged around with caveats for the female driver: changing tyres is a man's job. Men's fashions tend to be modelled outdoors or in social settings, whereas women were portrayed without a background image or in a domestic scene. The predictability of such findings reflects the limited range of the advertisers' interests. The theme of cleanliness in the household is seen to emerge before the period in which Kirstin Ross sees it as having crucial ideological significance–though the association between cleanliness and family health is more marked in Germany than in France. There appears to have been less emphasis on skin-care products in Germany, and a greater focus instead on hair care; and the leisure-time of French housewives is highlighted more often. German advertising, it seems, did not provide examples analogous to those found in France of masculine authority being established over the household economy (p. 52). Whereas there were more ads depicting 'mothers happily involved with their children' in Germany (p. 64), there was no counterpart for the stress on the importance of breastfeeding in France (p. 71). Overall, despite occasional differences, in an era of considerable change and upheaval cultural ideology in both countries remained deeply attached to basic stereotypes.