Page 261 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

250 ENGLISH STUDIES

text and to stabilize the narrative points of view, specifically those centred on
romance and gender. The particular female cast to those lives and problems is
both subordinated to and offered transcendence by the idea of an identity defined
communally rather than sexually:

She was not outside it. What she had taken from life, they all paid for.
What she had still to give, was not her gift alone. She was in debt to life
and to these people; and she knew that she could repay no loan unaided. 69

The nature of this article—overviews and extracts—limits what can be said.
Therefore we conclude this section by indicating briefly the fuller analysis from
which this extract is taken. In the first instance, although South Riding gives a
particularly vivid representation of thirties’ feminism, it is not typical of, or
equivalent to, all women’s writing of the period. As we have indicated, it
occupies a particular relation to the literary field, and our fuller analysis
considers women’s writing and the literary field in more general detail. Second,
there are aspects of South Riding which are not dealt with here—for example,
thematic representations of family and motherhood, which pursue a feminist axis
in the absence of secure nuclear families and a citizenship axis in subordinating
families to communities and stressing the accountability of ‘the nation’ to
responsible, questioning citizens.

Work in progress 2

Popular fiction: reproduction and common sense in feminine
romance
In each of the main traditions of popular/mass cultural analysis there have been
both affirmations and denunciations of that culture. Is it the authentic art of the
people, to be set against ‘high’ or ‘elite’ culture, or is it a degraded form of
deception and distraction, to be distinguished from a critical and deconstructive
art? If popular culture is contradictory, then it is not surprising that analyses of it
seem contradictory too. We may take as an example Walter Benjamin’s claim
that his affirmative account of the liberating potential of film complemented
rather than contradicted Adorno’s critique of popular music: ‘I tried to articulate
positive moments as clearly as you managed to articulate negative ones.’ 70
There have been four main conceptualizations of popular/mass culture: as the
product of a culture industry; as coterminous with working class culture; as myth;
and as an ideological apparatus of the state.
The ‘culture industry’ analysis sees cultural products as commodities,
dominated by the structures of propaganda, advertising and consumerism.
Writing during the Second World War, in reaction both to Fascism in Europe and
to the impact of American mass culture, the ‘Frankfurt School’ (Adorno,