Love and desire in the Penny Press

As corny as it sounds I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Burt's style of correlational research because this was the first time I had really seen it done in a proper and approachable way. In her presentation she outlined the exact way she went about doing the research in a manner that practically help our hand and guided us through the process. In most fields we are cautioned about correlational research because "correlation is not causation" said about 80 past and present professors of mine, however Dr. Burt used this style of research to its strongest advantage: the researcher cannot affect the trends of the data. Now while anybody can skew their data, historical research has the benefit of not creating an environment where the data will be altered due to the presence of an on going study. However that being said on to more important things like her presentation itself. Dr. Burt's presentation was very enjoyable, from my perspective it was like being taught the proliferation of "the rag", you know those of sub-par newspapers whose contents you might need a 3rd grade education at best to decipher its more complex stories. The wood block cuts and scans of old New York Times issues were like seeing early cave paintings that would evolve into US weekly, but I suppose the most interesting thing about her lecture was the view of a woman's place in the that day and time and thinking about it in retrospective I wouldn't have lasted a day. I guess its kind of taken for granted that nowadays we have the freedom to pursue higher education (or education of any kind for that matter). I cant help but to speculate if shortly after the time period covered by Dr. Burt did the readership of the penny press turn more sharply towards the female audience? and if so is this where the stereotype of the female gossip obsession stems from for America? Thinking about it now, if the only female oriented writing was about gossip then there wouldn't be much else out there for young women growing up, especially in the boring domestic sphere, in fact that kind of seclusion could have easily tailored the popular taste of women towards that kind of stimulation. While the sentimental writing was described by Dr. Burt as prescriptive literature used to teach moral values and act as examples and cautionary tales to vulnerable young ladies I can also see this kind of scintillating gossip rag being used as a different kind of prescriptive literature, the kind that cures boredom. As low brow as it may come across I believe that the popular literature among the working class american citizens in the industrial revolution offered a kind of romantic escapism for the women of the day, it was an accessible way to breath new life into old surroundings for those trapped housewives similar to the way Emma Bovary found her escapism in different affairs.