Ruskin, Women’s Reading, and Commodity Culture

Abstract

Selects key texts from Ruskin’s work to examine his views on the effect of reading on women. Sees in these works key elements of Ruskin’s concerns regarding the possible ill effects of misreading, his insistence on the relationship between reading and education, and his ideas for making reading meaningful in a modern and socially mobile society. Believes essays such as “Of Queen’s Gardens” and others demonstrate Ruskin’s preoccupation with the topic of women’s reading, which he believes has implications that spill over beyond individual education into the political sphere.