| This thesis is a comparative study of the discourses around women and aviation in the USA and anglophone Canada between 1909 and 1920. Starting from a materialist feminist perspective I use a critical discourse analysis to assess the ideological role of newspapers and magazines in limiting the emancipatory potential of aviation for white, upper middle-class women. Shaped by the analyses of Rosemary Hennessy, I argue that aviation was articulated through existing stratified social relations and this articulation was most clearly expressed through metaphor. I look in detail at aviation magazines and contrast them with newspapers, general interest and women's magazine articles. I explore the relationship between spectatorship, sports, consumption and the representations of aviatrixes, particularly in the USA. I discuss how two aviatrixes, Harriet Quimby and Matilde Moisant, represented themselves in order to secure employment in the aviation industry.;Drawing on the work of Benedict Anderson, I then focus on Canada and the effect nationalist and imperialist discourses had on aviation discourse. I argue that aviation created an aerial perspective which was linked to the imperialist landscanning eye identified by Mary Louise Pratt. I discuss the ways in which this perspective drew on notions of vision as knowledge, and how such notions included an implicit promise of transcendence. I then explore the representations of two aviatrixes, Katherine Stinson and Ruth Bancroft Law, to assess how this promise of transcendence was played out in relation to women during wartime. I conclude by briefly outlining the narrative strategies deployed by the next generation of aviatrixes in the USA as they sought employment, and how these reflected those of the earlier generation. |
