Women and Their Bodies in the Popular Reading of 1910

Abstract

This article discusses the presentation of women's bodies in popular newspapers that reflects an awareness of reproductive health and access to the knowledge and language of sex, ?on or about December 1910?. Originating in Virginia Woolf's biographical writing, diaries and letters, it uses the popular reading of the British public in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, including features and adverts in newspapers, health manuals, and commercially successful novels, to show how Woolf's isolation of a single moment of change for human character was, for most of the population, part of a longstanding social evolution in popular sexual knowledge and moral standards. Novels by H G Wells, Joseph Conrad, Una L Silberrad and Arnold Bennett are discussed, as are coded adverts for abortifacients and menstrual irregularity.