Thematic Analysis of Frances Benjamin Johnston's Pictures
Thematic Analysis of Frances Benjamin Johnston's Pictures
It was believed that, everyone was set for specific roles. So women believed that housekeeping was their role, for a while. Then, with the development of women rights and ideas, women wanted more freedom and respect. They wanted to have same rights, same freedom that men have. For example a woman, could never act as comfortable as a man in public. There were several reasons for this, “from clothing to terms of respect”. As an example for that, “a woman would never be able to ride a bike, as comfortable as a man because of their clothing, or, a woman would never be able to sit as comfortable as a man, in those years. (But Frances Benjamin Johnston did, as we can see in the picture).
Another fact was about business and jobs, women had simple Jobs, which never let them earn enough money, they could never earn as much as men did. It was believed that two genders could never be equal in work, or daily life. As a result of this, we can say that, the ideal of womanhood, has always been the idea of “total equality” and to prove that a woman can do anything that a man does.
The picture of Francis Benjamin Johnston reflects those ideals of women. First of all, in those years around 1800s or 1900s, women couldn’t have any jobs they want, even today we can rarely see women doing jobs which are considered as “Men’s jobs”. Johnston became a photographer, breaking all those narrow minded ideas or thoughts, according to her info. She never got married, becoming the ruler of her own and her own family even though she was alone. It was not very ordinary, because people got used to the idea of “men, taking care of women”. As and analysis of the picture of her, she sits like men does, not caring about her clothes, crossing her legs and revealing them which was not very normal in those days, she also holds her drink and cigarette like men does in a pub. She reminds me a man, who is proud of himself in this picture, therefore, Johnston is a female, maybe the first woman who is posing like this. Another thing I realized in this picture is the background. There are pictures of men, who are probably the rulers of her family in...