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Selling Social Status: Woman and Automobile Advertisements From 1910- 1920

Posted on: Wednesday, 29 June 2005, 09:00 CDT

Abstract:

This essay analyzes representations of woman that surrounded the advent of the automobile. Automobile advertisements in the Ladies Home Journal from 1910 to 1920 invited women to seek social status via the purchase of an automobile while often simultaneously containing women's political and economic liberation. By focusing on issues of appearance, representing woman's driving as non-serious and appropriate only in service to others, and linking the purchase of an automobile to "good mothering," the texts invited women to spend their time in pursuing social status rather than political or economic status. Grounded in Condit's (1993) positionalist perspective, the essay argues that such invitations were made more salient by the cultural contexts in which the advertisements were run.

The ten years between 1910 and 1920 were teeming with cultural developments that profoundly affected the lives of women.' From the onset of a burgeoning consumer culture to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granting woman suffrage, the lives of women, and by extension, the roles they were expected to play in society, were in flux.2 During these years, women were entering the workforce in larger numbers, affecting their abilities to consume, provide, survive, or be independent. Two specific, interrelated changes, the advent of the affordable automobile and the rise in readership of popular magazines, were of significant importance to women's lives during this time. Since more people were able to purchase an automobile, women could claim more public space, and information, including popular women's magazines, could be disseminated quickly and nationwide.3 Likewise, the popularity and accessibility of national magazines in general and popular women's magazines specifically, offered business leaders the opportunity to provide a number of representations of Woman that reached millions of women each week, including representations of Woman in advertisements for automobiles.

It was also during this time period that a more consumption- oriented society was emerging, giving popular presses a financial incentive to represent Woman as the family's primary consumer.4 Whereas previous generations had worked in order simply to survive, workers from the early 190Os forward labored for necessities and to supplement their lives with luxury items. In order to promote the consumption of luxury items, advertisers began using sales strategies based in psychology (Zuckerman, 1998). For readers nationwide, this meant that advertisements now shifted their focus from discussing the merits of the products to constructing promises for, and listing the (sometimes completely , unrealistic) expectations of, those who consumed those products. Advertisers now more clearly and consistently represented woman in a manner that promoted a domestic ideology that "defined editors as experts, advertisers as prophets, and, most importantly, women as consumers" (Scanlon, 1995, p. 3).

These major changes took place during the final push for a woman's suffrage amendment and World War I. As women emerged as probable voters and proved themselves during World War I as capable of work typically reserved for men (both at home and overseas), advertisers represented them as consumers in the private sphere, reinforcing stereotypes of a woman's primary role as a mother, her more emotional and less rational state, and her preference for the aesthetic rather than intellectual. Automobile advertisements, riding the crest of the consumption wave, played an important role in the attempt to shift the principal definition of Woman to primary consumer.

This article analyzes the representations of Woman from 1910- 1920 in automobile advertisements from the Ladies ' Home Journal. A number of these advertisements represent Woman in particular ways in order to construct specific arguments related to the roles of women in society and about the "nature" of women in general, which stood as evidence in support of appeals related to consumption. Specifically, I argue that these advertisements' focus on social status precludes the entry of women into economic and political spheres. Therefore, this study enables understanding of how a particular cultural development (the automobile) offered opportunities for the representation of Woman and the implications of those representations as fixed within the private sphere and as firmly connected to consumption. The study also adds to the literature about women's rhetorical history by analyzing a time period not yet fully investigated by rhetorical scholars and does so by means of recognizing the importance of cultural context as it relates to the representations of Woman during a particular time period.5

Advertising and the Ladies' Home Journal

At the same time that the important changes noted above took place, the mass circulation of women's magazines grew enormously and the literacy rate shot up to ninetyfour percent (Zuckerman, 1998), giving publishers and editors the opportunity to disseminate their representations of Woman to a larger viewing public. The first women's magazine to exceed one million readers (Karetsky, 1997), the Ladies ' Home Journal was the most popular nationally circulated women's periodical during this time. Changes in the philosophy and format of Ladies ' Home Journal during this time also played an important role in representations of Woman in advertisements in the magazine. As many scholars have suggested, Edward Bok, the magazine's editor from 18891919, deliberately represented Woman in specific (and traditional) ways (Damon-Moore, 1994; Ewen, 1976; Honey, 1992; Karetsky, 1997; Leach, 1993; Marchand, 1985; Peterson, 1964; Scanlon, 1995; Steinberg, 1979; Zuckerman, 1998).

Bok made two important changes in the magazine in the early 190Os. First, he began incorporating advertising with the rest of the magazine's texts, instead of keeping advertisements separate and distinct from stories, editorials, advice columns, and the like (Karestsky, 1997; Scanlon, 1995). In doing so Bok, "effectively merged women's roles as magazine readers and primary consumers" (Scanlon, 1995, p.202). second, he exerted a great amount of control over all content in the magazine, even insisting on "columnists who were compatible" with his ideas and advertisements that met "certain philosophical and aesthetic standards" (Karetsky, 1997, p.2). Bok therefore consistently infused his beliefs in women's essential affinity for all things familial and her "natural" ties to the private sphere into all aspects of the magazine's content.

The enormous growth in circulation numbers for the Journal, the move in advertising towards psychologically-based appeals, Bok's marriage of feature articles and advertising content, the advent of the affordable automobile, the growing push towards consumption as a means of identity construction and maintenance, the shift in favor of woman suffrage rights, and the entrance of the United States into World War I, all converged from 1910 to 1920 to create a fascinating cultural context for the analysis of advertising. How advertisers attempted to account for the obvious changes in women's roles and lives while also containing those representations so as to maintain the traditional definitions of women's primary roles and her newer role as the family's primary consumer tied to the private sphere is as interesting as it is incredible.

I analyze automobile advertisements from the pages of the Ladies' Home Journal from 1910 to 1920. My study includes 107 advertisements for automobiles, 46 advertisements for automobile accessories, and 61 nonauto advertisements using cars as either background or as part of the advertisement's primary message (Ramsey, 2000). This comprehensive analysis allowed me to correctly ascertain the consistency of the representations of Woman in automobile advertisements. I looked for emergent themes throughout the advertisements such as social setting and assumed occupations, demographics, and interests, and recognized a number of recurring themes in the advertisements that were either explicitly or implicitly tied to different arguments about the relationships between women, automobiles, and women's status as it related to the automobile. In this essay I focus on those representations of Woman in automobile advertisements that make specific arguments about women and social status and discuss the implications of those representations.

Following a methodology suggested by Macdonald (1995), I analyzed these texts to measure the consistency of certain representations of Woman and asked, "To what extent are specific cultural representations of Woman in texts communicated and repeated throughout this time period and what are the general possibilities for women generated from their communication?" In order to determine how Woman is represented in relation to broader cultural contexts during this time, I also asked, "To what extent do the representations of Woman in these texts resonate with larger cultural shifts and/or events that occurred before or during the time period?"6 Finally, in order to discover how the representations of Woman in the advertisements may have invited possibilities or constituted constraints for the lives of women I asked, "In what ways might the rep\resentations of Woman in these texts serve to enable and/or constrain possibilities for women's progress?"

Based on the positionalist perspective proposed by Condit (1993), this methodology recognizes the prevailing social forces functioning from 1910 to 1920 and acknowledges that the contextual phenomena surrounding these advertisements influenced the texts regardless of whether or not all of the aspects of the cultural context were consciously addressed in the advertisements themselves. The representations of Woman that emerged in my analysis are rhetorical formations that exist as the "relatively co-occurrent sets of discourse-metaphors, narratives, values, and so on" that emerged during this specific time period (Condit, 1999, p. 14) in response to the cultural factors operating from 1910 to 1920. I recognize that certain epistemes that defined Woman were overarching (and many would probably argue, still exist as overarching), but that there are typically different versions of epistemes throughout history, rhetorical formations, that are constructed in response to specific cultural developments and these diversified versions interact with one another. These courses are always in the process of formationcontested, adapted, and trying to persuade. Therefore, I am able to determine the extent to which different articulations of Woman existed during this time rather than looking only for the presence and absence of dominant themes. Addressing the subtle or distinct variances in representations of Woman allows us to recognize and investigate the contradictions present in different representations of Woman and to take note of how the representations change over a particular time period, in response to changing contexts and within specific types of texts.

Woman, Automobiles, and Social Status

In the early 190Os, women's relationship to general society was limited primarily to notions of civic housekeeping, made popular by Jane Addams, a chief reformer in the Progressive Party. Addams introduced the notion of "civic housekeeping" in 1906 as an attempt to contextualize and redefine the necessity of Suffrage and Progressive policies. Addams (re)defmed Woman as a competent protector of society, rationalizing her perspective with arguments that referred back to the cult of true womanhood. While creating some social space for women outside of the home, this conception still justified that space using many of the very definitions of woman that barred her from the public sphere in the first place. The reconstruction of Woman as civic housekeeper was an expediency- based argument that was ultimately limiting because while it called for women to do public work in order to better the community, she still maintained her traditional other-centered role. Thus, even with the emergence of the civic housekeeper, the role of women in society at large was not extensive and its link to real change that affected her life was minimal, as her relationship to society at large was limited to helping others.

Because her role in the everyday functioning of society was negligible, advertisements did not represent Woman's relationship to society as one bound to her political and economic status. Rather, advertisers specifically divorced Woman's role in society from political or economic independence and promised women a type of social status that could be garnered through the purchase of an automobile. In addition, with their representation of Woman as White only, these advertisements not only connect Woman's social status to consumption, they also implicitly connect social status to being White, allowing White women the be marked positively in terms of social class and race. Hence, automobile advertisements in the Ladies ' Home Journal from 1910 to 1920 that imply Woman's roles in society speak only to White women and mostly to personal identity and its relationship to social status as reflected by consumer purchases. The advertisements that speak to social status ignore changes in social structure that were emerging during this time period as a result of the Woman's Suffrage movement and women's work in other social movements and in World War I. Specifically, the advertisements represent Woman's social status as related to attractiveness, Woman's lack of interaction in the political or career spheres, Woman's work in caring for others, and the importance of being a "good mother."

Social Status and Attractiveness

One group of advertisements that invokes a connection between Woman and the importance of social status focuses specifically on two dimensions of how "things look." These advertisements typically represent Woman as either concerned with the aesthetic quality of an automobile over its mechanical merit or as mostly concerned with how she looks while driving. Taken together, these two worries of Woman are explicitly connected to Woman's rank on the social ladder. For example, one advertisement not only suggests that the woman who can distinguish "the superlative from the commonplace" will buy this specific car, but also explicitly claims that such distinctions are noted "especially in woman's eyes." Hence, the advertisement reconstructs Woman as more inclined to be concerned with aesthetic distinctions and then connects her "correct" taste with a higher social status (April 1920, p. 18). In similar form, another advertisement promises the "ideal car" for a woman of "taste and refinement" who is socially skillful enough to be included among "women of discrimination" (December 1916, p.52). The Overland company claims that their car is the "natural" choice for those with a "decided taste for the artistic," (March 1915, p. 41) and the White company ups the social status ante with their suggestion that the owners of their cars are distinguished by their obvious showing of "a proper sense of repression" exemplified by their preference for "patrician elegance" (September 1911, p.31).8

These advertisements thus encourage competition among women. For example, the Stevens-Duryea advertisement implicitly pits women against each other when it notes that the satisfaction women obtain from the car's performance is equal to that secured by the "admiration it will command from your friends" (January 1913, p.50). A more insidious construction of competitiveness between women is evident in Cadillac advertisements. According to Cadillac, Woman "knows that every other woman will envy her" and takes pride in the "social prestige which attaches to it" (February 1920, p.38). In this example, a well-dressed woman is happily talking with an attractive man her age, thus perhaps implying to some that her choice of automobile has "won" her a date or relationship with a man. Considering most women could only climb the economic ladder through marriage because most career paths were blocked, perhaps this advertisement implies that the woman's automobile has played an important role in increasing her already high social status by attracting a successful male. Likewise, Stevens-Duryea compares buying "fine decoration for your home" in order to "retain a high place in the admiration of yourself and your friends" to buying their automobile, which implies that the decorative nature of an automobile should be the only concern of women (November, 1912, p.79). These advertisements invite women to compete with each other for social status, and with their portrayal of Woman as White only also racialize both status and attractiveness.

Overland's advertisement states that their automobile in "...appearance leaves nothing to be desired with its big-car stylish design, correct color scheme and exquisite finish"; the advertisement explicitly notes that the purchase will "make your life fuller and richer" (July, 1918, p.43, emphasis theirs). Overland connects women's automobile purchases to their happiness with the advertisement dual titled, "She has an Overland-an' everything" and "She hasn't an Overland-or anything" (Figure 1). The advertisement notes that Woman should "let him" help her select the automobile most likely to bring her a "bigger, happier, healthier life." The representation of the woman who has "everything" is a young woman in an automobile smiling joyfully at what we are to assume is her male companion, while the representation of the woman who hasn't "anything" is a slightly older woman (indicated by her bun hairstyle and less stylish clothes) standing by the window (which implies she has seen the woman "with everything" outside her window) with her head down in anguish and her fingertips on her chin as if she is in deep thought. Beside her sits a man reading the newspaper, paying no attention to her or her apparent unhappiness. Taken together the images compare the story of a woman who has an automobile and a happy relationship with a male companion against that of a woman without an automobile, who is trapped indoors with what appears to be an unsatisfying relationship. The images, coupled with the hyperbolic written titles, invite women to associate the purchase of an automobile with a happier life and encourage women to compare their social status against that of other women.

These advertisements push past the argument that Woman is more inclined to buy an attractive car to a class-based claim that Woman also necessarily desires the "most" attractive and distinctive automobile available and that the decision to purchase a certain car is indicative of her social standing. These advertisements were published between the years 1911 and 1920, and are probably responding to the introduction of Ford's affordable Model T. In 1916, Ford sold 738, 811 Model Ts, thereby "giving Ford about half the market for new cars in the United States" by 1917 (Flink, 1988, p. 37). Once a luxury only the rich could afford, automobiles were now available to the masses. Advertisers were no longer able to connect mere car ownership to social st\atus; thus, they were forced to draw distinctions among the cars themselves. For if there are no distinctions among car owners there is no place for the advertisers to "move" consumers. Considering the limited nature of women's roles in society, the economy, and politics, it is possible that any status at all was attractive during this time; hence, promising women social status and pitting them against one another was likely good for business. However, the representation of Woman as competitive may have inhibited the possibility of further collective action. Automobile manufacturers served themselves well by inviting women to consume more and agitate less.

Moreover, advertisers also represented Woman as largely concerned with her style and attractiveness as it related to her automobile. As early as 1899 the New York Times defined an impending "automobile girl" who was attractive, had contempt for other forms of transportation, and worried about what gowns, shoes, and hats will best suit her driving habit (Anderson, 1950). Thus, it is not surprising that advertisers represented Woman as interested in the automobile because it served as a fashion statement and a means of display.

In one advertisement, for example, Saxon prompts women to "seek style" in their motor car just as she does in her gown, hat, and pair of shoes (November, 1915, p.68) while another Saxon advertisement even proposes that a woman's automobile is the "latest automobile fashion" and that women like "to be seen" in a Saxon (October, 1915, p.87, emphasis theirs). Meanwhile, an advertisement for a Waverly electric car notes that "Four grown people may ride in delightful comfort, without crowding or crushing of handsome gowns and wraps" (December, 1912, p.68). Most explicitly this advertisement makes sure women recognize that their style will not be affected by the automobile, thus implying that Woman will not lose her feminine appeal by virtue of venturing out of the home. More tacitly though, the advertisement suggests that only Woman should be concerned with such worries because while the text first mentions sexually ambiguous "grown people," the same sentence quickly narrows the focus to people who wear "gowns and wraps"- women. Moreover, the picture below the text includes an image of four women rather than a mixed-sex group. Thus, it is clear that physical appearance as it relates to social status is primarily a concern for Woman.

Aside from another association of car ownership with Woman's instincts for "real cultivation and distinction," one Overland advertisement notes that the automobile will "immediately suggest itself to you as the appropriate setting for youth and beauty smartly attired" (January, 1917, p.43). Again, women are asked to place more consideration on how the car can make them look. Another Overland advertisement makes no verbal connections between fashion and car ownership, but the representation of Woman in the advertisement is certainly not natural (Figure 2). It is as if the women are mannequins placed in and around the car for the gazing pleasure of the males in the advertisement. The picture is akin to those we see in modem times on the covers of "muscle car" and "four wheel drive" magazines, and this is no coincidence since the first automobile show in New York at the turn of the century was advertised with a "woman dressed in high fashion sitting on a bright glittering car" (Anderson, 1950, p. 192). Woman in this advertisement is to be gazed at, and even though the advertisement is printed in a woman's magazine, women are reminded of her primary role as object of the male (and female) gaze. Placed in a woman's magazine, this advertisement positions the reader (a woman) as a "spectator" who is "made to identify with this male gaze and to objectify the woman" just as man does (Walters, 1995, p. 57). Women are thus encouraged to "size up" the women in the advertisement, as well as compare themselves to the idealized notion of Woman as sex object whose primary goal should be that of physical attractiveness. Therefore the advertisement not only sells cars, it also sells any other product women could buy in an effort to fit into the male representation of female perfection.

Woman in this advertisement is meant to be gazed at and is represented as "modern," which, according to Marchand (1985), was a regular feature in advertisements as 1920 drew closer. The "modern woman" is "slender, youthful and sophisticated" with a "slightly aloof smile, suggesting demure self-confidence in her obvious social prestige" (p. 181). She stood "tall and angular, her fingers and toes tapering to sharp points" (p. 181). The modern Woman's role in this advertisement, then, is to also attract the gaze of other women, by representing Woman's "role as a model of the proper feminine look" (p. 181) and a higher social status. The "modern" Woman, with her unattainable body shape, was the precursor for later advertising strategies, such as airbrushing, aimed at urging women to seek the unfeasible, and her impossibly slender figure is an eerie precursor to the predominance of anorectic models we see in advertising (and in most other genres of media) today. The "modern" representation of Woman in this advertisement should also be compared to the representation of man in the illustration, which is quite average and realistic. The different representations of Woman and man in this advertisement "reinforced the tendency to interpret woman's modernity in a 'fashion' sense and to define the status as 'decorative object' as one of her natural roles" (Marchand, 1985, p. 185). That is, Woman's "freedom" to leave the home, even if only to shop, is constrained in this advertisement, as her sophistication rests in her fashion sense and attractiveness to the exclusion of political or career savvy. Much like the art sculpture she imitates, then, this representation of Woman functions as no more than decoration in the advertisement, a tendency in car advertising that was consistent during the time period and has remained constant in the last 80 years as well.9

"And she'll have fun, fun, fun..."

Moreover, automobile advertisements imply that women's driving is not to be taken seriously, as it is merely a hobby. O'Connell (1998) notes that the reconstruction of Woman as driving for leisure was typical in car advertisements during this time. Hence, it is not surprising that one of the most frequent representations of Woman's relationship to the automobile is one that posits driving as simply a leisure activity for Woman. Far from projecting a means by which Woman can engage in political or economic activities, these advertisements mostly promote the numerous social uses for the automobile in the lives of women. For example, Cadillac promotes their line as one that will allow women to "weave in and out among the city's congested traffic" in order to "return from shopping, the theater or the social function without exhaustion." This advertisement also visually communicates the notion that only Woman uses the automobile in this manner, as the two separate pictures in the advertisement show only women. Saxon promises that their cars are the best for "making calls, shopping or taking you and the 'kiddies' into the country (March, 1915, p.65), and the White company suggests that Woman use her car in order to shop and go to operas and musicals and adds that the White coup will keep "her handsomest gowns spotless, though she drives it herself (August, 1911, p.35).

Similarly, Buick believes its sedan to be "an ideal car for formal service, theater, ball or dinner party" (March, 1917, front inside cover), and Overland exclaims that their automobiles are "just the car for mothers and daughters to use for shopping, calling," and "outings" and perfect for "evening drives and holiday trips for the whole family" (November, 1915, p.33). In an advertisement where the text focuses on the mechanical quality of the automobile, Cadillac still manages to limit Woman's use of the automobile through the image of a Woman's domestic helper bringing the Woman a picnic basket, probably for her country outing (July 1920, p.36). A Franklin advertisement claims that its car "is the easiest for a woman to drive" and "gives a feeling of confident self- reliance" to the women drivers. The woman in the accompanying visual, however, likely is driving to a nonpolitical event, given the look (columnar, artistic) of the building in front of which she is parked and that men and women are entering it (which probably precludes it from being a government building). Thus, although Woman is enjoying an uncomplicated sort of freedom via the easyto-operate automobile, the implication of the illustration (which also incorporates the "modern woman" image) is that Woman remains restricted to non-political events. Moreover, the representation of Woman as enjoying the opportunity to enjoy leisure time, especially with the assistance of a domestic helper, also continues to solidify the representation of Woman in the Ladies ' Home Journal as a White member of higher social status in the United States.

Certainly it would be easy for advertisers to portray Woman as spending her free time shopping rather than spending time with her family, but the short-term benefits of promoting Woman as consumer is outweighed by the long-term benefits of representing Woman as the family's consumer. In spite of political and economic changes on the horizon for women, most citizens were unwilling (and in many instances possibly unable) to dismiss their belief in the "natural" tendency for Woman to care for others, and the higher number of suffrage and progressive arguments based on notions of expediency from 1910 to 1920 probably only encouraged this tendency. Therefore, by focusing on maintaining a representation of Woman as other- centered rather than on representing Woman as selfindulgent, advert\isers insured that women would not only continue shopping to make their lives better, but that they would also continue shopping for the benefit of their entire family. Furthermore, the choice to represent Woman's free time as spent socializing and/or taking her children on outings helps eliminate the possibility that women will take the opportunities afforded her by automobiles and use them to forward a political or economic agenda.

Woman's work is never done

In general terms, the automobile advertisements both redefined and reified notions of Woman's work. Automobile advertisements consistently reified Woman's role as household worker even as they claimed to give women more free time. Despite the message that automobiles would give woman more free time, they actually implied more work for women. Like current advertisements aimed at today's "soccer moms," advertisements that address the benefits of the automobile with regard to women's free time promote the automobile as simply an extension of Woman herself-Woman becomes a sort of cyborg with faster legs and safer arms by which to cater to her husband and children.

Overland, for example, suggests that their automobiles provide women a "short-cut to shopping, social duties, church and school" while providing "father" with a ride "to and from business with a stimulating and time-saving rapidity" (February, 1915, p.38). In a second advertisement, Overland notes that their automobile "promotes thrift" and "increases your usefulness" (March, 1918, p. 53). Another advertisement for Overland clearly relies on notions of the public/private sphere dichotomy by designating one frame with the title, "How You Can Use It" and the other "How He Can Use It" (Figure 3). ' While the advertisement's text does not discuss exactly how men and women can each use the car, the visuals attached to the advertisement distinguish the different uses quite clearly. A woman is shown driving a number of children to the country while another woman and her child look in admiration from afar. The advertisement presents a group of men in front of a column-laden business or government building while a smiling man looks on. Moreover, the woman must do her own driving and is an implied chauffer serving others, while men are chauffeured by someone else to and from their different locations.

In both illustrations, we see what Marchand (1985) calls secular iconography at work. During the 1920s a trend in advertising emerged around new technologies wherein groups of people were pictured either circled around the appliance as a salesman demonstrated the product or as a family showed its new belonging off to friends. These friends are supposed to represent a larger number of people- the "adoring throngs" of people anxious to buy the product. According to Marchand, the strategy of "secular iconography" (p. 269) was successful in that it allowed for an appropriation of the "imagery of the sublime" (p.273) that allowed advertisers to represent their products as "saviors" without appearing heretical. Because advertisers were certainly not able to compare their products to any "godly" creation, they frequently illuminated their products in an effort to garner an ethos connected to Christianity- truth, good, purity, and the like.

secular iconography is clearly present in this advertisement, however, in this example the addition of an encompassing light deepens the iconographie nature of the advertisement. For example, the woman and child watching seemingly admire the woman taking her kids to the country, with the woman perhaps wishing she could be as "good" a mother as the driving woman and the child hoping for a chance to have the sort of fun the other children are having. Such a reading is not unlikely as during this time the emergence of new appliances and technologies was said to lessen the time it took to fulfill women's domestic duties, while simultaneously social scientists began shifting the blame for troubled children off of biology and onto social and environmental factors. As a result of these two cultural shifts, professionals began hounding women to expend more energy on the rearing of their children (Cott, 1987). Thus, as the housework requirements supposedly diminished, the mothering responsibilities increased dramatically, thereby placing more pressure on women to rear her children in particular ways (Marchand, 1985). And while authorities never agreed on exactly what women should be doing differently to rear her children, they all agreed that she should be spending more time doing it. In the second illustration of Figure 3, the man looking on seems enamored by the businessmen as they are chauffeured through their busy and surely successful day. In light of the increasing competition brought on by capitalism, perhaps this man recognizes that an Overland would be his ticket to success, thereby allowing him to provide for his family in a manner that allows them to live "the right way" as well. Situated side by side and essentially labeled "his" and "hers," the two illustrations can also be read as the story of two families-the family living "the right way" and the family living "the wrong way."

Other advertisements connecting Woman's duties to the automobile are less specific about women's chores. However, these advertisements still manage to delineate Woman's relationship to the automobile as one that is other-centered. For example, Buick notes that "For all the family for all purposes there is a Buick" (May, 1917, inside front cover). In spite of Buick's claim that the automobile has multiple purposes, there is only one purpose distinguished in the illustration that accompanies the advertisement- Woman hauling children to and fro while onlookers (again, meant to represent "adoring throngs") gaze at both the mother performing her duties and a Buick brochure. Similarly, Overland claims that with their Model 90 touring car you can "Get More Done-With Less Money!" thus promoting your "thrift" and increasing your "usefulness" (March, 1918, p.53). These examples, even in their vagueness, are quite clear about the relationship of Woman to the automobile. The automobile is not a purchase to be made in hopes of making the lives of women better; rather, the car stands as a means by which women can make the lives of others better more quickly and in more ways. Woman bears the responsibility of tending to the health and well- being of her family through her purchase of the automobile.

The "Good Mother"

A final representation of Woman in these advertisements focused on arguments that connected Woman's social status to her ability to be a "good" mother, and the ability to be a "good mother" to the purchase of an automobile. As I noted earlier, from 1910 to 1920 women's domestic work was purportedly made easier and less time consuming by new products and appliances while "experts" in magazines and other news sources were simultaneously correlating the behavior of troubled children with social and environmental factors. Consequently, women were being sent the message that they needed to spend even more time rearing their children (Cott, 1987; Marchand, 1985). Advertisements in this category promote the automobile as a means by which Woman could gamer the high social status granted "good mothers." Therefore, while Figure 3 is somewhat subtle in making the "good mother" argument, other advertisements were patently explicit in their claims. In an advertisement titled "Which side of the fence is your family on?" (May, 1916, p. 51, Fig. 4), Overland claims that children will emerge with "rosy cheeks" and a "delight" that will "dance in their eyes," which will "repay you for the outlay many times over." The advertisement also warns that "...now is the time to buy-delay may be costly." The accompanying drawings include a woman lifting the last two of what are presumably her five children into an Overland. The woman is smiling as she lifts while the children already in the automobile are all smiling as they wave, laugh, or play with horns and dolls, respectively. The competing image includes four children on the "other side" of the fence looking on as their neighbors pile into the Overland. One child is even dreaming of their family in the car, as is represented by the thought bubble drawn over his head. Unbelievably, even the family dog stares longingly at the family next door. Combining secular iconography with written warnings of "costly delay" in the context of emerging pressure on women to perform "better" as mothers, the advertisement invites women to heed the warning of the advertiser who threatens her with images of unsatisfied and unhappy children (and family pets!).

Some advertisements in this category also explicitly argue that the automobile serves as a health product, thus implying that "good mothers" will purchase an automobile in order to "protect" her family. Encompassing a number of advertising strategies common during this time, an Overland advertisement is titled, "Weather and Social Requirements, Health and Economy Dictate This Car!" and implies that families are healthier when protected from the weather (January 1918, p.37, emphasis theirs). Another Overland advertisement goes so far as to claim that, "Driving has restored perfect health to thousands," and then goes on to say that its purchase keeps "your family" happier and healthier (June 1915, p. 40, emphasis theirs).

Some advertisements discuss the automobile's connection to good health via an outdoor/indoor dichotomy. In one advertisement, a family is pictured indoors, sweating from the heat and clearly miserable (August 1917, p.38). The advertisement calls their product the "cure" for "hot, sultry" days and claims that the automobile will turn "cross days into days of gladness for the whole family." An Overland advertisement notes the importance of filling "your lungs with the good fresh air" (while al\so promising that you will arrive, "looking your best-with not even one wisp of hair blown out of place" (November, 1916, p.55). A final advertisement in this category is titled, "Two minds with but a single thought," and pictures two people sitting indoors and watching a happy family drive by them while one child gleefully waves at the couple trapped indoors (April 1917, p.37). The text notes that nothing can compare to the Overland in terms of health and that the automobile serves as a wise investment in health that will "repay you and all your family so richly."

These advertisements do not merely promote the purchase of an automobile as evidence of good mothering; the advertisements often construct the representation of the "good mother" via comparison with the "bad mother." Through the use of secular iconographie images that portray mothers, fathers, and children without automobiles gazing sorrowfully at those with automobiles, the comparison of "good" and "bad" is clear. Placed in a woman's magazine during a time when women were told that they were failing as mothers, the advertisements connect the right automobile choice to good mothering. Moreover, the sad stories of those who have not and the images of "good" and "bad" also invite women to connect how they measure on the motherhood scale with their social status-in a society where mothering is purportedly prized, a mother with the wisdom and good sense to own an automobile is represented as protecting her family from the harm that hangs over the have-nots and is therefore awarded a higher social status.

Conclusions

Overall, the possibility of women driving their way into the political or economic arenas was contained in the advertisements through appeals to the added benefits of social status and attractiveness afforded women who owned cars and used them for "appropriate" ambitions. The automobile advertisements served as another means by which capitalists could encourage the commodification of Woman herself, as she posed unnaturally in front of shiny machines, primped and preened in order to maintain the male gaze, worked tirelessly for the benefit of others rather than herself, and most importantly, fought other women for a higher position on the social ladder rather than working with them to promote political, economic, and social equality for all women. All of this effort to "succeed" might have seriously impeded the ability of women to form collective political unions, as the only pathways to victory automobile advertisements offered in these advertisements was the successful attainment of impossible beauty standards (the "modern Woman," for example) and the lucrative feat of a high social status which, of course, would also lead to success in the area of matrimony-if you were White, of course. Women's political aspirations were contained by these representations, as political activity via the automobile was completely ignored, while the means to economic success was represented as something a woman would gain through marriage to the man who could provide the "right life" rather than through education or work on her own.

The representations of Woman as she relates to society in the Ladies ' Home Journal are examples of rhetorical formations that surrounded the definition of Woman in the public vocabulary from 1910 to 1920. In a decade when women's roles were in serious flux as a result of war and various social movements, the rhetorical formations that emanated from these automobile advertisements precluded emerging notions of Woman in control of her own political, economic, and social destiny. While typically founded on traditional definitions of womanhood, these representations highlighted the fact that from those traditional definitions of womanhood a large number of possible variations of Woman can emanate in response to particular cultural developments. Recognizing these rhetorical formations prompts us to remember that representations of Woman are constantly in flux and only capable of offering possibilities to the public. Unable to force anyone to accept the representation of Woman offered in the advertisements, the formation adapts to, and contests, cultural developments and other representations of Woman from the same time period. When we understand the variety of representations of Woman proffered from 1910 to 1920 or during any other time period, we are reminded that as feminist rhetorical critics we should seek alternatives to representations of Woman that we sometimes assume wholly dominate or completely disappear during a particular time period. In investigating the rhetorical formations surrounding women during a specific time period, we offer our colleagues and the public new ways to understand the different subject positions of women and promote the acceptance of diversity as well.

These texts also remind us of the importance of visual communication as a stand-alone persuasive force, as well as a means of persuasion that exists within other types of persuasive communication and within many cultural contexts. Like speeches, letters, and books, visual representations of Woman in these automobile advertisements provided the public with another means by which to discuss, challenge, and maintain specific public definitions of Woman. These texts, while not as explicit and obvious as an anti-suffrage speech or a presidential call for a "return to normalcy" after a war in which women proved themselves invaluable workers, are still as important as these more public texts in what possibilities they offer the public for defining Woman. In fact, precisely because they were probably not perceived as specific attempts to reify traditional public definitions of Woman, they were perhaps even more powerful, as psychology-based strategies were just beginning to take hold while the analysis of advertising occurred rarely, if ever. In other words, while women from 1910 to 1920 were probably not complete dupes, neither were they likely to be skilled in recognizing the rhetorical strategies aimed at them by advertisers who probably hoped to turn the energy they saw women expending on social and political welfare movements into specific patterns of heavy consumption.10 Therefore, visual representations of Woman not only supplemented oral and written discourse but they also portrayed the possibilities for and restrictions of, women's lives that probably went unrecognized as such from 1910 to 1920. A popular adage contends that "seeing is believing," and while this study cannot attend to the semiotic issues that surround visual representations of Woman in these texts, it certainly points to their likely power to persuade and probably affect what women and men in the general public "saw" as possible for women from 1910 to 1920.

In addition to a deeper understanding of women's lives from 1910 to 1920 this study recognizes that the public vocabulary that surrounds Woman during any time period is a relational phenomenon "identifiable within a (constantly moving) context," as well as a "location for the construction of meaning, a place where meaning is constructed, rather than simply a place where meaning can be discovered (the meaning of femaleness)" (Alcoff, 1997, p. 349). In spite of the fact that representations of Woman in these advertisements were founded on traditional definitions of Woman, they still held possibilities for liberation. Although particular definitions of Woman may have a strong presence during a specific time period, "they rarely become fully dominant, and the particular hegemonic forms they take are shaped as much by the contest among different visions as they are by any singular force" (Condit, 1999, p.253). The nature of the public vocabulary is that it only asks to be recognized, it does not command that one definition be accepted over another (Condit, 1999).

For the area of women's public address, this means that we can begin looking for messages of liberation in texts that we only thought oppressed. I am not suggesting that we should ignore or downplay the significant ways that women have been oppressed throughout history; rather, I am proposing that we uncover what possibilities for liberation lurked behind the seemingly static representations of Woman during this time period because certainly some women do find liberation in seemingly restrictive texts. For instance, in their representations of Woman as the primary consumer automobile advertisements still represented her as intelligent and free to move out of the private sphere. And while the advertisements then resituated Woman right back into the domestic realm, some women might have latched on to notions of Woman as liberated by automobiles. Thus, in spite of the fact that these representations did little in terms of moving most toward more liberating definitions of Woman, perhaps they did leave enough room for some women to garner a sense of freedom. The possibility of liberation present in the representations of Woman examined here is important, even if those possibilities are somewhat diminished by their reliance on more traditional definitions of Woman, because the "dialectical awareness" of the contradictions present in these representations creates the possibility for "revolution and change" (Macdonald, 1995, p. 5). That is, even though these representations alone were not responsible for a revolution in women's social, economic, and political lives, they may have resulted in some shift in the public vocabulary that left the door open for later women to take advantage of. In the end, it is important to note that these representations, while limited in their ability to challenge the public vocabulary, nonetheless might have empowered some women.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Notes

1 De Lauretis (1994) addresses the problematic nature of differentiating between actual women and the cultural representations of womanhood, whichup until relatively recently has not represent non-White and/or working class women. De Lauretis defines "woman" as a "fictional construct," and "women" as "the real historical beings who cannot as yet be defined outside of those discursive formations, but whose material existence is nonetheless certain" (5). 1 use her definitions in this paper and to better delineate one from the other I will denote the fictional constructs of women by capitalizing the word "woman."

2 The notion that cultural developments between 1910-1920 prompted important changes in women's lives is well-documented. For more information on women's history from 1910-1920 and/or the lives of women in relation to World War 1, consumerism, the Suffrage Movement, please see the following sources. For women's relation to World War I, see Braybon (1989), Elshtain ( 1987), Jensen ( 1996), and Stiehm ( 1982). For sources that address women's relationships to most of the cultural contexts from 1910-1920, see Cott (1987), Flexner (1975), Marilley (1996) and Woloch (1984). For information on women's relationship to consumption, advertising, and/or the press, see Damon-Moore (1994), Ewen (1976), Finnegan (1999), Leach (1993), Lopate (1977), Marchand (1985), McGovem (1998), Peterson, (1964), Solomon (1991), Triece (1999), and Zuckerman (1998). For women's relationship to the automobile, see Scharff (1991).

3 The single biggest factor influencing the rise in automobile sales from 1910 to 1920 was the introduction of Ford's Model T in 1908. From its inception in 1908 until its replacement by the Model A in 1929, the price of the Model T steadily declined (Andersen, 1950; Donovan, 1965). In 1920, for example, the Model T was typically priced at S440.00, while its closest competitor cost over twice that amount (Lewis and Musciano, 1977). After 1908, even if one could not afford to buy a new automobile, it was still possible for most to buy a used vehicle because automobiles were now inexpensive enough to buy regularly (Anderson, 1950). Thus, the Model T "provided the common man (sic) with his first and biggest symbol of freedom and power" (Anderson, 1950, p. 99). Ironically, in spite of the fact that the Model T inspired enormous growth in the auto industry, thereby making way for more and more auto advertising, Ford himself despised the sorts of advertisements 1 analyze in this essay. Fond of "no frills" advertising, Ford refrained from such strategies until 1927 and then only did so as a means of maintaining the company's profits (Marchand, 1985, p. 157).

4 For a more detailed discussion of changes in consumption patterns as they affected women's lives in the early 1900s, see DamonMoore (1994), Ewen (1976), Leach (1993), Marchand (1985), McGovem (1998), and Peterson (1964).

5 This study is an attempt to redress this gap by discussing ways that representations of woman evolved in a mainstream communication medium during this time and in response to particular cultural developments. Karlyn Kohrs CampbelPs Man Cannot Speak for Her is perhaps the only work in our field that gives any sustained attention to the public address surrounding women in the early 1900s, but only briefly touches on this time period. Campbell's decisions to focus on speeches made by Woman's Rights leaders before 1900 make sense in terms of her goal to "restore one segment of the history of women, namely the rhetoric of the early woman's rights movement that emerged in the United States in the 183Os, that became a movement focused primarily on woman suffrage after the Civil War, and whose force dissipated in the mid 1920s" (Campbell, 1989, Vol. 1, p. 1-2). It is therefore not my intention to critique her work; rather, it is my aim to point to the fact that rhetorical critiques have yet to investigate the crucial years between 1910-1920 with the same type of breadth and depth accomplished in Campbell's work.

Scholars have addressed, to some extent, public address by and about woman from 1910-1920. Some of these studies not noted in my essay include Adler (2002), Borda (2002), Bowman & Altman (2002), Clemens (1993), Enstad (1995), Greenwald (1989), Huxman (1993, 2000), Inness (1995), Keire (2001), Koven & Michel (1990), Kowal (1997, 2000), Ross (2001), Sassler (2000), Scanlon (2004), Shepler & Mattina (1999), Sivulka (1999), Soderlund (2002), Tonn (1995), Triece (1999), and Woyshener (2003). These studies are not all rhetorical analyses.

6 For a more detailed discussion of the importance of looking at context in public address studies, see Condit (1993).

7 Readers will notice the preponderance of Overland advertisements discussed in this essay. Overland advertisements, while perhaps only slightly more common that other advertisements in the Ladies Home Journal, were unmatched by any company in terms of advertisement size, detail, and amount of imagery. As such, they serve as the best examples of these representations of woman; however, these representations were also consistently used by other automobile manufacturers.

8 A number of the advertisements I analyzed referred to products as driven by English royalty or inferred that the advertised car was fit for royalty. Marchand (1985) notes that advertisers sensed a "powerful and insufficiently suppressed American undercurrent of veneration for titled nobility" (p. 195), and by referring to English nobles, advertisers were attempting to construct an American aristocracy attainable through consumption patterns.

9 While the last Overland advertisement is certainly the most blatant in its positioning of woman as fashion model/sexual object, the majority of the advertisements in this category place woman as a mode] in the illustration rather than as an active participant in motoring. Representations of woman as a fashion accessory to the car are not actually surprising given the partnership among fashion and automobile advertisers. The two industries merged to some extent as a result of the automobile's ability to get women outdoors and into cars, which forced a modification in women's apparel. Skirts became less full and shorter in length, cumbersome hats were discarded for smaller ones, and the fact that autos could now take women to leisure activities such as sports (rarely, but sometimes) led to more egalitarian forms of clothing for women (Anderson, 1950). Thus, automobile and fashion advertisers began joint advertising projects.

10 The notion of the public as neither dupes nor adept rhetoricians comes from Condit's discussion of the "Rhetorical Limits of Polysemy" (1989).

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E. Michele Ramsey (Ph.D., University of Georgia, 2000) is Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences and Women's Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, Berks College. She studies the rhetoric of visual and linguistic representations of gender in media and public discourse. This essay is taken, in part, from the author's dissertation which was directed by Bonrtie J. Dow and received the Cheris Kramarae Dissertation Award from the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender. Correspondence to the author may be sent to emr10(g),psu.edu.

Copyright George Mason University, Communication Department Spring 2005

Source: Women and Language; WL

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