Corsets and Covered Skirts

The most prominent adds on this page are directed towards women. This suggests that a large portion of the readership of Harper’s Weekly was female. This can be concluded by asking a simple question: why else would businesses be wasting their money on valuable advertising space? The answer to that is that they would not. This is the main factor that links the two publications of The Moonstone in their different geographical locations. Otherwise they could be seen to be purposely disassociating from one another like has been discussed and argued in the descriptions of other pictures in this exhibit. In this section of The Moonstone where these advertisements appear there is a section in which Miss Clack speaks about a book where specific sections have been adapted specifically for female perusal (Collins 222). The similarities of the societies in both countries and their attitudes towards women is something that spans across the ocean. Women are still viewed as inferior to men and targeted with very specific advertisements and literature. In this advertisement we have advertisements for corsets and covered skirts, in the novel there is literature aimed specifically towards women such as “Satan in the Hairbrush” or “Satan in the Sofa Cushions.” This connection proves that no matter how much America at this time wanted to disassociate itself from its colonial powers there were still strong societal connections between the two.