Conclusion: Reading for the Middle of the Everyday

Abstract

The “middles” or light filler of periodicals, like the middlebrow, are as difficult to define as the everyday itself. This brief conclusion explore late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discussions of the woman journalist in relation to her distaste for writing lighter fare. Though discussions of the middlebrow have generally focused on the interwar period, in this conclusion I consider the feminist “middles” of turn of the century periodical culture as precursors and as complicating examples, since the “middles” of feminist periodicals so consistently troubled dominant visions of domestic femininity.