love and desire in the penny press

Even though these article were published decades ago there is a lot of similarities between what was published in the penny press  then and the kinds of things that are published now in tabloids and represented in reality TV shows. People looked to those articles to read about scandal and romance.  Women who were stuck in the domestic sphere and longed for something outside the home found the escape in these readings. This is much like Emma Bovary she had her views of love based on the things she read in books, but unlike Emma’s characters, the people in the penny press where real. So women who had ideal weddings with men they loved or at least successful and wealthy, created an ideal for young women and what- could- have been scenario for some of the married women also reading the penny press.   Throughout the lecture I couldn’t help but think of the movie Chicago- which is a film and musical set in the 20’s about female inmates and how a lot of them maintained publicity and fame the more scandalous their crime.  These women put on a show and the audience ate it up.  I feel like this was also present now, the scandal was the reality TV of today. Today so many people get so involved in the relationships and whims of celebrities. As Roland Barthes says “Nous Deux is more obscene than sade.” The kinds of things that wind up in tabloids are at times outrages and exaggerated but the masses eat it up because it shows something of humanity- the extremes of love and desire.