Treacherous Women on Trial: Sexual Transgression in the Age of the Flapper

我提议的书是文化史的跨学科研究。几个耸人听闻的英国法庭审判被视为一个棱镜，通过它来探讨妇女的性道德在第一次世界大战后立即焦虑。在战争结束时，由于获得了更大的独立性、信心和技能，许多妇女现在遇到了被战壕战深刻改变的怨恨退伍军人。“难以形容的经历的障碍”是维拉布里顿如何看待两性之间的鸿沟。这一鸿沟的一个表现是螺旋上升的离婚率和对女性所谓的“更自由”性行为的广泛关注。历史学家如何解释这种关注的性质和程度？ 我之所以选择关注耸人听闻的审判，不仅是因为法庭上和报纸上的辩论揭示了当代人对妇女和道德的态度，而且还因为广泛阅读的关于此类审判的新闻报道是争论和谈判道德与不道德、正常与异常之间界限的中心场所。我分析了这些审判的各个方面，不仅仅是审判记录，还有警察档案，法庭记录，新闻报道和评论，给新闻界的信，民意调查，回忆录，虚构的衍生作品。在这段“日报”全盛时期，耸人听闻的审判报道是大众报纸的主要内容，也是大众文化娱乐和奇观的中心形式。这些报道把有关性生活、性关系和婚姻的私人世界公之于众，引起了热烈的讨论，讨论超出了报纸的范围，进入了公众的辩论。 为了确定涉及女性被告的主要耸人听闻的法庭审判，我研究了1918-1924年期间的《泰晤士报》，《每日邮报》和《每日镜报》-战争的后果，当时社会和政治混乱处于顶峰。我选了六个案子，都是在伦敦审判的，因为它们吸引了最大的新闻报道。贯穿审判的主题包括爱国主义、民族主义和性变态、毒品、“种族”、异族通婚和东方主义、“现代女性”、寻求感觉、自信的女性性行为和适当的婚姻行为。我的目的是证明，所有六次审判都包含了一些关于女性的概念，这些女性既背叛了自己的国家、男人、“白色种族”、婚姻、母性、家庭和谐、社会秩序，又通过“性变态”、种族间性行为、主动性行为或通奸而进行性侵犯。新闻界通常给女被告贴上负面的标签，如“荡妇”、“现代妇女”、“非常低级的妇女”、“性变态”、“不育”或“滥交”妇女。此外，每一次审判，无论是在法庭程序中，还是在其报道和评论中，都体现了对与妇女休闲和生活方式有关的流行文化和现代性方面的批评：廉价小说、电影、舞蹈、夜总会。审判不仅成为对某个人或某一类妇女作出判决的工具，而且成为对更广泛的妇女的惩罚，特别是对她们追求独立和感觉的惩罚。我还将证明，对女性行为的关注同时表达了对现代性、大众文化、阶级、种族和国家的关注。尽管在英国两次世界大战之间的整个时期有相当多的关于妇女的著作，但在20世纪20年代初，关于妇女和道德的著作相对较少。因此，我的书将填补一个空白，有助于性别和性的历史，妇女的历史，社会和文化史的学术。它通俗易懂，也会吸引一般读者。

My proposed book is an interdisciplinary study in cultural history. Several sensational British court trials are taken as a prism through which to explore anxieties regarding women's sexual morality in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. At the end of the war, buoyed by the acquisition of greater independence, confidence and skills, many women now came up against resentful veterans profoundly transformed by trench warfare. 'A barrier of indescribable experience' was how Vera Brittain saw the gulf between the sexes. One manifestation of this gulf was a spiralling divorce rate and widespread concern with women's supposedly 'freer' sexual behaviour. How are historians to interpret the nature and level of this concern? I have chosen to look at sensational trials not only because the debates within the law court and on the pages of newspapers reveal contemporary attitudes towards women and morality, but also because the widely read press reportage of such trials was a central site for contesting and negotiating the boundaries between the moral and immoral, the normal and the deviant. I analyse all aspects of these trials, not simply the trial transcripts, but also police archives, court records, press reportage and commentary, letters to the press, public opinion polls, memoirs, fictional spin-offs. In this period of the heyday of the 'dailies', reports of sensational trials were the staple of popular newspapers, and were a central form of popular cultural entertainment and spectacle. In making the private world of domesticity, sexual relationships, and marriage shockingly public, these reports generated lively discussion which spilled out beyond the confines of the page into public debate. To identify the main sensational court trials involving female defendants, I examined The Times, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror for the period 1918-1924 - the war's aftermath, when social and political dislocation was at its height. I selected six cases; they were all tried in London, for they attracted the greatest press coverage. The themes threading through the trials included patriotism, nationalism and sexual perversity, drugs, 'race', miscegenation and Orientalism, the 'modern woman', sensation seeking, assertive female sexuality, and appropriate marital behaviour. I aim to demonstrate that all six trials entailed some notion of women as both traitorous - to their country, men, the 'white race', marriage, motherhood, domestic harmony, social order - and sexually transgressive - through 'sexual perversity', inter-racial sex, active sexual agency or adultery. The female defendants were labelled by the press, usually negatively, as 'flappers', 'modern women', 'women of a very low type', 'sexually perverse', 'sterile' or 'promiscuous' women. Furthermore, each trial, in the court proceedings, and in its reportage and commentary, manifested a critique of aspects of popular culture and modernity pertaining to women's leisure and lifestyle: cheap fiction, cinema, dance, night clubs. The trials became vehicles not simply for the passing of judgement on an individual or particular type of woman, but a castigation of women more broadly, particularly their pursuit of independence and sensation. I shall also demonstrate that the focus on women's behaviour simultaneously expressed concern about modernity, mass culture, class, race and nation. Although there is a fair amount written about women in the British inter-war period as a whole, there is relatively little on women and morality in the early 1920s. My book will thus fill a gap, contributing to scholarship in the history of gender and sexuality, women's history, and social and cultural history generally. Presented accessibly, it will also appeal to the general reader.