Mujeres modernas y máquinas parlantes: Cultura visual del consumo sonoro

Abstract

This paper examines the visual and textual construction of women as central agents in the adoption of phonographs and gramophones in early twentieth-century domestic culture. Drawing on illustrated press and advertising preserved at the Biblioteca Nacional de España and featured in the exhibition Máquinas parlantes, it analyzes women as consumers, selectors of recorded repertoire, and mediators of domestic soundscapes. The study argues that advertising linked sound technologies to modernity, refinement, and domestic harmony while redefining musical consumption and women’s symbolic position within emerging cultures of recorded sound.