| Gossip has been maligned for centuries as petty, frivolous, even evil, and as consistently as it has been criticised, gossip has been associated with women. Recently, several feminist critics have argued that gossip is often a source of empowerment for the disenfranchised, a way in which those with no official voice may be subversive. These arguments accept the association of gossip and women and attempt to view gossip as a positive activity. However, the assumption that it is primarily the disenfranchised who gossip and that the content of this gossip is largely subversive remains largely unexamined. Gossip, I argue, is most often conservative, enforcing unwritten gender codes. While the gossiping woman may be empowered as a speaking subject, the content of her gossip and its wider implications are likely to reinforce, rather than subvert, dominant ideologies. Furthermore, gossip's subversive powers seem limited, as its pressures are most acutely felt by the socially vulnerable.;An examination of four novels, Sinclair Ross's Sawbones Memorial (1974), Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1920), Joanna Wood's The Untempered Wind (1894), and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne Bronte, reveals the social and linguistic machinations of gossip. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
