on form, adaptation / translation, and the woman and child Jewish immigrant identities in america in the first half of the 1900s

According to W.E.B. DuBois, the art created by white artists is deliberately or unintentionally propaganda of the beliefs on race and assimilation that is representative of the Western nation’s that they belong to. Thus, the art created by non-white individuals can function as propaganda to advocate for their beliefs and those from the cultures that they belong to on race (“Criteria of Negro Art” section 38). Anna Margolin, a Jewish-American author, adopts the personae of a Greek philosopher and a Roman ruler in her poem “Once I Was A Youth.” She adopts the cultural texts central to the Western canon, that are highly formative to Western societies, and cherished by the leaders of those societies. Like all of her contemporary poems, Margolin wrote in Hebrew, for a Jewish readership. In English, she writes, “Once I was a youth,/ heard Socrates in the porticoes,…/ I was Caesar (3).” Margolin’s taking up of these personae declares that a female, a Jewish, and a female Jewish writer, are able to be just as good as their male and white counterparts – a declaration that expands to any other identity than writer. The poet’s choice challenges that Jewish (and female) immigrants are just as capable of contributing to society as white Americans. Likewise, that Jewish individuals are as able to, and are as skilled to lead and to build society as are the white Americans who are fulfilling such a role; their Jewish heritage and culture, furthermore, improves their capability to lead. Her choices of subject matter, and of a Hebrew-speaking readership, could have been to teach the Jewish immigrant community not only about the historically, philosophically, and intellectually significant Western figures and what their contributions were to Western societies. While possessing this knowledge would have helped to educate, and therefore to improve their perception and opportunities extended by Americans, Margolin presents the thinking of Plato, and the spirit and approach of Caesar, as what would be required for them to achieve social mobility in America.

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Furthermore, as speaking as these Western figures, the poet is empowering her readership and their community – just as she has as much potential as they did, and will achieve as great as (or greater than) they did, so too do and could, Jewish immigrants. And like she can adapt what the Western figures had achieved to reflect what she had learned from her religion and culture, and from her experiences in society as one who is Jewish, she empowers her chosen readers that they can, and ought to, do the same. In her poem “My Ancestors Speak,” Margolin contrasts such Western figures with her own ancestry: “Women bejewelled in diamonds like icons,/ darkly crimsoned by Turkish shawls,/…Grand ladies…/broad-boned, strong and agile (14).” In her former adoption of the Western leader-figures, and this juxtaposition, Margolin foregrounds the violence against and denials of opportunity from Jewish populations in Europe’s history, and in America since Jewish individuals began to immigrate. By writing, she testifies to how they survived, and in her descriptions of her Jewish ancestors, she testifies to how, and to the concept that, Jewish populations have learned to survive – in the face of persecution, and across diasporas. It may be the history of Jewish culture, and histories of Jewish individuals and populations, that make stronger leaders than could be made from white, Anglo-Saxon Americans.

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In Salome of the Tenements Anzia Yezierska adapts the white American women's form of the second half of the 1800s / early 1900s melodramatic romance firstly, by connecting the concept of “true love” with the opportunity for social mobility. Yezierska foregrounds the negligence of labour opportunities for women, Jewish immigrants, and Jewish immigrant women in America by rooting Sonya's thinking of Manning's being her “true love” in his giving her wealth and (theoretical) the status of the American elite. And, the opportunities of education and a sought-after vocation that can come with the achievement of this status. Yezierska writes that young (orphaned) Jewish immigrant woman Sonya feels emotions of love for the elite educated and ancestrally wealthy white John Manning when he is improving the class and status of the poor Jewish immigrant community that she lives, and at the novel’s beginning, works in. As well as when he may, and does, offer her a good job working with his charity project in her community, and may make her his bride (111). Secondly, by dispelling the dominant belief that romance is the American Dream for women, Jewish immigrants, and Jewish immigrant women. The ending of her novel’s second third is Manning’s allowing himself to value his “true love” for the passionate young Jewish immigrant Sonya, and the representative of the white, Anglo-Saxon American elite marry. Not only does this adapt the aforementioned white form of literature, but the themes of race in traditional Jewish adaptations of this form – the most significant of which, was Langwell’s 1908 The Melting Pot. In regards to the messaging of this first form, the author shows how marriage is not a happy ending: Sonya is saddened upon moving into, and finds herself displaced in Manning’s inherited state. This is so for she is expected to adopt his highly conservative and polite manners, and to play the traditional role of an elite young wife – to be silent, be at her husband’s side and believe what he believes. And in the end, the two’s “true love” withers as the days go by, and dies.

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This issue of which, is further complicated by the issue of racial and class difference. Manning’s family members do not perceive her as belonging to their family, due to her race, class and origins, she could never belong, even if she chose to assimilate. Nor as deserving of the honour of being a member of their family, predominantly, on account of her race, nor as being of equivalent value, as the Anglo-Saxon race that Manning and these family members are. Furthermore, Sonya experiences a feeling of dysphoria in Manning’s elite Anglo-Saxon world. Manning himself, demonstrates the truth of the racial beliefs of ‘progressive’ white Americans, once he discovers that Sonya has accepted a loan from the stereotypically Jewish money-broker “Honest” Abe: he speaks his belief in the Jewish race as shady, cheap, morally corrupt, brutish, violent and less intelligent than white Anglo-Saxons (194). This Jewish female author seeks to show the reality of racial difference in the U.S., rather than the romance that the traditional Jewish melodramatic romance promised. Salome declares the true meaning of white Americans’ desire to “save,” by charity aid, or by marriage and the gifting of wealth and status in the form of marriage. In turn, the author represents Manning’s “true love” for Sonya as a philosophical project: he believes that he could save the issue of racial difference in America by forming a marriage and family union with a Jewish woman, perceiving Sonya as a figure, and not as who she is. Further, Manning’s charity work with Sonya’s community of Jewish immigrants, is a project for him to prove his own philosophical eliteness, progressiveness, and morality. Yezierska thus, challenges as propaganda for white, Anglo-Saxon America, the narrative of a marriage between Jewish immigrants and the members of America’s dominant white demographic – challenging as well, the former’s assimilation. Further, Sonya and Manning’s marriage thus, does not solve the issue of race, for he truly believes in the essentialism of racial difference. Such a promise in Jewish melodramatic romances and by progressive members of dominant white America could never be achieved for white Americans, represented by Manning, believe in the difference between the white and the Jewish races, inequality in their abilities, and the latter’s negative characteristics. Likewise, the examines the fallacy of the Jewish melodramatic romance authors’ and progressive white Americans’ belief that creating a lineage of mixed heritage would end racial difference in America, due to this same reason. Furthermore, Manning perceives Sonya and the two’s racial difference as race essentialism: he believes that she is fundamentally fiery, sensual, tempestuous, earthly, carnal, and primitive, and sees her in a perspective of exoticization. (And, adding more layers to the truth of his philanthropy, and to his belief in Sonya as a philosophical project) (195). Lastly, Yezierska concludes that finding any opportunity for a job, or a career, in an industry that one is gifted in, or at least, skilled for, should be understood as the true American Dream for women, Jewish women, and Jewish immigrants. Salome concludes with Sonya learning how to sew, to turn her passion for clothing, beautiful objects and beauty into a paid vocation, and accepting a position as a designer at a department store (228). Yezierska therefore, reverses the significance of the romance tropes that she adapts in the novel.

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Henry Roth adopts a Modernist style of prose in Call It Sleep, defined, in large part, by the free verse representation of (who begins as) six-year-old child protagonist David’s thoughts. This adaptation, in the Jewish immigrant cultural and social contexts, argues for the value of the interior life in who an individual is, and of the individual to a society’s progress and order. (Most representative in one place, in David’s walking up the dark steps of his apartment building’s cellar after witnessing Leo’s sexual acts to his cousin Esther.) In this, Roth demonstrates how significant what the Jewish religion, culture and family can teach (439). Moving from this belief, the novelist plays with the style and philosophy of American Modernist prose in a key scene, the novel’s second last scene, to formally positively represent Jewish social scientist, Horace Kallen’s, theory of America as an “orchestra.” A theory which advocated that the most societally progress-advantageous composition of America, would be for immigrant populations not to assimilate, but to share their cultures and knowledges with each other, and with dominant white, Anglo-Saxon America. Upon David’s loss of consciousness, a diverse group of immigrants sharing or in communities geographically near to his, speak right after, or on top of, each other, first, to find the child in danger and then, to try, as a collective, to diagnose and to get help for his ailment. Working together, they help a doctor reach him where he is close to lifeless on the street – concluding in his rescue, and the medical treatment that he needs (439).

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Aligned with Roth’s first purpose, he adopts the medical theories, terminology and language of Freudian psychology for David’s understanding of life. As Freud, like many early social scientists, was a Jewish immigrant, Roth is proving the equal abilities of a Jewish individual, and a white individual; and furthermore, that being raised in the Jewish culture and family, and having navigated in society as on that is Jewish, strengthens the ability to theorize on an understanding of society. David expresses thoughts of desire for his mother – with Roth employing the notions of a mother as a womb, and, as the first lust that a boy child has – and fear of his father; and beyond this, the novelist writes the characters of Genya, and of Albert, to represent such Freudian characterizations of a mother, and a father. Roth writes that the young boy must break away from Genya (he discovers that she may have lied about his father), and overcome his fear of Albert (he touches the electric rail, and discovers that he is in fact, more powerful than his father) in order to become self-actualized. Furthermore, this understanding of self-actualization proposed by Roth for a child in a family structure, speaks to how real Jewish immigrant children must move beyond unquestioning belief in their family’s teachings, and their family’s trauma, to find their own place in America (403). Roth’s final usage of form is the adaptation of Biblical proverbs – those of the Old Testament, to advocate for connection to Jewish culture to one’s moral strength, and of the New Testament, for a Jewish child’s own discovery for self-actualization. Genya’s speaking to her son in Hebrew, making traditional foods, Polish-Jewish mothering, and religious observance, are represented as embodying Old Testament proverbs’ teachings, and furthermore, as fundamental to her son’s growing of morals. Roth represents David’s finding spots of light on the train tracks, and his touching of the electric train rail as proverbs belonging to the New Testament – two of the like moments, crucial to his breaking from the safety of his mother, and of fear of his father, and to his self-actualization (432).

“Let them eat cake…That’s such nonsense. I would never say that.”: Sofia Coppola’s Fourth-Generation Italian-American Identity as Reflected In Marie Antoinette (2006)

In Gangster priest: the Italian American cinema of Martin Scorsese Robert Casillo describes the treacherous passage from the Old World to Ellis Island that first-generation Italian-Americans had to survive to make it to the land of the free (5-13). Once landed, these men and women were forced to take on the jobs that few natural-born citizens were willing to do for the wages that were offered to them; consequently, the first-generation and their children could live only in inadequate housing in squalid conditions (7-9). Third-generation Italian-Americans could envision themselves building beyond the means that they had grown up with: some blue-collar, comparatively unacculturated members of this generation chose to, while other blue-collar, comparatively acculturated members pursued education and climbed into the middle- and even upper-classes (56-61). As the daughter of Italo-American auteur Francis Ford Coppola, director Sofia Coppola grew up with proximity to the kind of wealth and access to the kind of privileges that many Italo-Americans born before her could not foresee someone with an Italian-American identity having.

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Casillo maps the careers of Sofia’s father and his fellow third-generation Italo-American director, Martin Scorsese: where the former’s introduction into dominant Hollywood filmmaking took the form of an adaptation of an Italian story (Mario Puzo’s The Godfather), the latter did not make a Hollywood film out of an explicitly Italian story, until 1973’s Mean Streets (62-67). Casillo argues that because of Scorsese’s perception of his Italian heritage (having grown up in Little Italy as the son of second-generation Italian-American parents that worked in New York’s garment industry) as being incompatible with American hegemony, the director focused on White Anglo-Saxon Protestant American characters (59-67). Fiona Handyside identifies a similar but not identical pattern in Sofia Coppola’s oeuvre: the fourth-generation Italian-American director has auteured films that are predominantly about well-to-do, white girls and young women, that are at-present, inhabiting physical locations that they feel displaced in (such as Lost in Translation’s Tokyo, or Marie Antoinette’s France) (96-103). In 2006’s Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola struggles to understand her own subjectivity, as an Italo-American who grew up in the highest echelon in society, and as a female who has been surrounded by people who recognize her last name and consequently treat her in relation to what they would like from her father. Through a cinematic style that parodies the desirability of expensive material objects, and cinematography that disturbs the idea that Marie Antoinette is in charge of her life, and of her own body, Coppola disrupts the belief that all of life’s problems can be solved by the acquisition of “enough” capital.

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In the chapter “Luminous girlhoods: postfeminist upbringing” in Sofia Coppola: a cinema of girlhood, Handyside itemizes the aspects of Sofia Coppola’s directorial style, introduces the director’s upbringing, and discusses how certain elements of her childhood whose causation was her father’s position as a successful auteur adds insurgent meanings to trademarks of her style. Handyside describes Coppola’s style with the following: “…luminous, drenched in light and featuring jewelry, glittery shoes, sequins and shimmering silks….Her [images are] cluttered with objects and designs linked to contemporary girl culture [:]…rainbows, meadows, flowers,…dainty cakes and macarons, shoes, coloured wigs, (often white, pink or floral) party dresses, (43)”. The author argues that this style is a parody of the achievement of ideal postfeminist girlhood (56-57). Since the emergence of neoliberalism and post-feminism, a time in which young females have been instructed to strive to be material consumers, and to be more successful than their male counterparts, but not to want any more equal rights to said counterparts than access to capital and to the workforce, ideal girlhood has come to be associated with quantities of girlish objects (56-64). Coppola’s hyper-stylized, hyper-feminine images do not suggest that post-feminist ideology is an adequate gender ideology, but alternatively suggest the emptiness of materialism and traditional gender roles (57-70).

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Anthony Julian Tamburri examines the semiotics of Michael Corleone’s sartorial choices in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. He concludes that a pair of opposite semiotic modalities are at play in the soon-to-be patriarch’s outfits: the first, that the encoded meaning is the sign’s (the clothing article’s) hegemonic American cultural meaning and the second, that the encoded meaning is the opposite of the sign’s American cultural meaning (for ironic purposes) (95-96). Fashion and other physical markers of identity play a similar role in Marie Antoinette. Anna Backman-Rogers introduces her chapter, “Chapter 5: Marie Antoinette (2006),” by contesting the dominant reading of Marie Antoinette’s Sofia Coppola-esque style (or Sofiaesque style, as I will be heretofore referring to the filmic style described by Fiona Handyside) as artifice that is empty of depth (115-118). Backman-Rogers cites Rosalind Galt’s argumentation of the revolutionary properties of what the latter author refers to as the “pretty” (116-117). Traditional practices of filmmaking think of visual excess that contains elements that are gendered as traditionally feminine in low regard: directorial styles which rely on such feminine and excessive stylishness are dominantly read as vacant of political meaning, and as an attempt to draw attention away from the inadequacies of a film’s narrative (116-123). The style of Marie Antoinette is very Sofiaesque: extremely decorated surfaces, be those surfaces, walls, ceramics, textiles, costumes, dinner tables, gardens, floors, or architecture, are an essential aspect of Coppola’s film. In “Sofia Coppola: Reading the Director,” Belinda Smaill considers how different contemporary male cultural commentators, read Sofia’s highly decorative surfaces as a distraction from the absence of quality that they perceived was apparent in Marie Antoinette (148-152). What Fiona Handyside writes about the definition of Sofiaesque style, “She references iconic painterly, photographic and filmic images of girls, from pre-Raphaelite paintings to celebrity paparazzi shots…[In this style] her characters participate in such girlish activities as pole dancing,…dancing and tea parties, (43)” is saturated into the auteur’s 2006 film.

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Fig. 1. Marie crying alone, in Versailles (Coppola, 56:03).

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Fig. 2. Marie, heartbroken, after reading a letter of condemnation from her mother (Coppola, 51:49).

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Fig. 3. The first French opera that Marie watches at Versailles (Coppola, 50:36).

Backman-Rogers suggests that the self-selected, avant-garde aesthetic of Marie Antoinette, the Dauphine-then-Queen of France, is an ideological move Sofia Coppola has borrowed from her father (134-136). Mimicry, the author argues, is a hyper-stylization of what a female subject thinks that femininity is (133-135). Backman-Rogers takes one of the final shots (58:16-58:45) of the film’s iconic montage of luxuriant goodies (56:13-59:11) to be the apex of Coppola’s mimetic cinematic language. In a decision that is dialogic with the sexist criticism that the real Marie received regarding the grandeur of her hairstyles in her portraiture, at a time when both men and women’s hairstyles were comparatively showy, the royal hairdresser fashions for Coppola’s Marie an extremely high, textured, and garishly decorated hairpiece (58:15-58:26). Where a dominant reading would attribute pro-capitalist and pro-consumerist meanings to Antoinette’s line, “Oh, Leonard, you’re the best! (58:26-58:29)” an anti-postfeminist reading would reveal this entire camera-pan to be a mockery of its dominant meaning.

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John Paul Russo suggests that the structure of the Corleone family (as a biological family and a business operative) aligns with Ferdinand Tönnies’ concept of “Gemeinschaft” (111) – a community of kin members within which nepotism, favouritism and hierarchy are the governing principles (112). “Gemeinschaft” juxtaposes “Gesellschaft” which is a familial structure that resembles an “impersonal civil society” (112) and where contractual bonds are formed on the basis of a mutual end goal (as opposed to Gemeinschaft, wherein bonds are formed on the basis of the potential for contractual obligation) (112). Two dependant variables can be considered as to why Sofia Coppola recreates the Corleone family’s Gemeinschaft structure in her interpretation of the structure of the community of King Louis XVI’s court.

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There is biographical documentation that three of Sofia Coppola’s paternal great-grandparents (her father’s paternal grandparents and his maternal grandfather) immigrated from Italy during the first generation of Italian immigration to the United States (Phillips, 7-10). As a third-generation Italian-American, Francis Ford Coppola’s father was a flute-player, and a conductor of traveling orchestras, (8-9) and his mother stayed at home, to raise him and his two siblings (8). Films with narratives that centered on child-protagonists that he could relate to, inspired Sofia’s father to pursue filmmaking (9). Francis Ford Coppola attended Hofstra University on scholarship, then attended the University of California, at Los Angeles, with the aim of acquiring a graduate-degree in filmmaking (10-11). Sofia’s father progressed through the American-academic system, then worked his way to the top of the American film industry; (8-13) naturally, Ford Coppola’s successfulness, would compound the pressure to be successful and the pressure to develop a similarly successful work ethic on top of his offspring. As Fiona Handyside has noted, (97-117) an almost unbearable pressure to make one’s parents proud, is saturated throughout Marie’s narrative in Marie Antoinette. For example, following the announcement of Louis and Marie’s nephew’s birth before the young royals of France have consummated their marriage, Coppola’s camera-man follows Marie’s actress, Kirsten Dunst, rush into an empty room in the palace (55:20-56:06). The camera is in extreme close-up to capture the tiny vagaries in Marie’s crying (55:21-56:01). Marie slides onto the floor, and cups her arms around her knees. She hides her face behind her legs – (56:03-56:04) resolving herself to the conclusion that she has failed yet again, to fulfill her duty, and her mother’s orders. A second iconic scene of Marie crying occurs after she wakes up the day after her eighteenth birthday party (1:14:07-1:14:20). Marie’s holding her legs in her hands against her chest, again (14:07-14:12). She dips down into the water, and the camera captures her expressionless stare out in front of her (14:12-14:19). The magic and freedom of last night are gone, and she must return to being the Marie Antoinette that everyone else – especially her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, and her oldest brother, Joseph II – wants her to be.

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A second rationality is that the image of the Corleone Mafia family in her father’s Godfather trilogy imprinted on Sofia Coppola’s psyche. While Michael Corleone’s wife Kay is unquestionably a feminist character, Francis Ford Coppola represents the relationship between the patriarch and his children’s mother as tumultuous and ill-fated. Michael Corleone’s first wife, the quiet, docile and gorgeous Sicilian woman Apollonia, is presented by Coppola as the better of the Michael Corleone wives (2:03:01-2:03:52). Coppola establishes the question in The Godfather of whether Michael would have still morphed into the recklessly violent Mafia boss he is at the end of said film, had Apollonia not been tragically killed by the car bomb meant for the patriarch when he was a young man (2:03:51-2:06:10). Anna Backman-Rogers argues that the aristocratic women of Versailles cannot act in opposition to the traditional gender roles that are forced upon them at Versailles, and that have been forced upon them over the course of their maturation, by the adults that were in charge of raising them. Because the only alternative to fulfilling their appointed roles as the wives of the French nobility, and the mothers of future generations of royalty, was to become marked as a female “Other,” Marie and her fellow court-women could never finitely break from the ideals and expectations of contemporary patriarchy (125-138). This is another connection between Sofia Coppola’s consideration of gender in Marie Antoinette, and Francis Ford Coppola’s appraisal of the docile, traditional Mafia wife.

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In Sofia Coppola: a cinema of girlhood Fiona Handyside analyses how the concepts of home and family are represented across the director’s oeuvre in the chapter “There’s No Place Like Home!’ The Exploded Home as Postfeminist Chronotype”. Handyside defines a chronotype as a place that is infused with personal memories (98-100). Because of such, returning to a chronotype can cause somebody to feel as though they are the person that they were at an earlier point in their life (99-112). The place somebody grew up in (their childhood home) and the place within which somebody felt as though they transitioned from childhood to adulthood (their coming-of-age home) are naturally chronotypes (101-117). Handyside extrapolates that places of domesticity in Coppola’s films are represented as either isolated rooms (as in the Lisbon sisters’ bedrooms in The Virgin Suicides or the rooms of Versailles in Marie Antoinette) or as prestigious public places (as in the popular nightclubs of The Bling Ring) (117-125).

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Fiona Handyside presents the model of the “gilded cage” for how Coppola understands, and subsequently plays with, the ideas of “home,” and of “family” (101-103). The typical identifier of the home in literature, a family’s domestic spaces, is shaken up by the director. The traditional “home” is a space of emotional emptiness, loneliness, and abandonment; large physical buildings such as the Lisbon sisters’ Michigan house (The Virgin Suicides) and the palace at Versailles (Marie Antoinette) read like haunted, abandoned manors (101-122). Coppola locates public spaces, full of excitement and liveliness, such as Marie and Louis’ lavish parties (Marie Antoinette) and the elite nightclubs of The Bling Ring, as the true homes of her predominantly teenage-girl protagonists (103-132). Handyside argues, that because domestic spaces are enmeshed with the concepts of performance, spectacle and girls’ suppression of genuine feelings, Coppola’s protagonists seek out public spaces – away from the prying eyes of their parents – where they can come to a sense of awareness about themselves, and how they would like to live authentically, when they are given the opportunity to do so (103-133).

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23:23-29:51 of the film follows a typical day of royal duties for the Dauphin and the Dauphine of France. Mary is awoken by Versailles’ courtly ladies, then they ritualistically remove her nightgown and dress her for bathing (23:23-25:56). The court watches as Marie and Louis sit down to eat a lavishly-prepared breakfast, and then the couple does, predominantly in silence, and off-screen (25:56-28:01). Marie attends mass at the palace’s Church (27:54-28:24), then dines with the closest confidants of Louis’ father, King Louis XIV (28:24-29:51). Everything Marie does is under surveillance; anytime she makes a mistake, she is reproached; and gossip accompanies a majority of the moves she makes. Marie Antoinette’s 1:11:32-1:12:58 juxtaposes the monotonous march of 23:23-29:51. Marie and her sparse group of friends that she has chosen herself from the court-women and -men of Versailles drunkenly frolic in the palace’s gardens just as the sun is coming up (1:11:32-1:12:17). The same pop song soundtracks this portion of this scene, yet its volume is lessened in the film’s audio mix, to express how this time alone with her true friends, is more intimate and tender than the party scene that precedes this one. The small group falls down beside the palace’s Grand Canal, and watch the sun rise, in peaceful and contemplative quiet (1:12:17-1:12:50). The musical soundtrack is replaced by the setting’s natural sounds – birds chirp and insects hum; for an ephemeral moment, Marie gets to be the gentle, amicable, and serene young female that she sees as her authentic self.

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Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider present a set of behavioural expectations internalized by the girls and women belonging to an organized crime family in “Gender and Violence: Four Themes in the Everyday World of Mafia Wives” that is based off of the verbal accounts of American and Italian Mafia wives and daughters (32-34). Schneider and Schneider examine the biopolitics of an organized crime unit. Daughters are usually expected to marry the son of members that belong to the Mafia family unit (35-36). Family rank is an essential factor in the arranged marriages of daughters. Because the Mafia is patrilineal, the eldest son of the patriarch is expected to inherit his father’s position after the patriarch’s death (35-39) (as Michael Corleone is tasked with after Vito’s heart attack in The Godfather). Because power is maintained through succession, daughters of a Mafia Family are expected to marry within their rank. In the period of European monarchical imperialism, the bloodlines which governed and inherited the rights to govern European nation-states, organized the biopolitics of the nobility similarly. The daughter believed by the Holy Roman Emperor, Francis I, and his wife, Maria Theresa, to be the most valuable – because of her youth, purity, obedience, and beauty – was the monarchs’ eleventh daughter, Maria Antonia (2:47-8:41). Maria was wedded to the French Dauphin, Louis XVI, and formally became a member of the French royal family (including translating her Germanic name into its French equivalent), at the age of fourteen (4:18-9:07). Because of Austrian Maria’s absorption into France’s ruling family, the Holy Roman Empire gained peace with France, an alliance with the more powerful nation-state, and access to the great quantities of sellable resources that the nation-state of France possessed.

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Schneider and Schneider characterize Gemeinschaft Mafia units as homoerotic; male members of an organized crime family might betray and even kill one another, but regardless, the community structure is organized around paternal and fraternal relationships between men (37-38). The authors write that Mafia females are disallowed from not just participating in, but even acknowledging, the business/the criminal aspect of a family unit (38). Because a Mafia man’s wife, children and possessions are symbols of his ranking within the family business, the role of a Mafia wife is to purchase the finest things that she can find with her husband’s business earnings for herself, for her children and for the couple as a nuclear unit (like a nice house, nice cars and nice household objects) (37-40). However, Schneider and Schneider also write that banquets are a key strategy for Mafia families (38-39). Spaces of celebration, like weddings, baptisms, and a Family’s dinners, are moments where Mafia business can be conducted most opportunely, precisely because of the comradery and casualness of said spaces (39-40). Mafia females are valuable players in pushing a Family’s agenda further: through momentary weaponizations of feminine beauty, sensuality, and sexuality, through the usage of gestures like flirting, dancing, and performing traditional female duties like serving and cleaning up meals, a Mafia unit’s special guests may be made more malleable (35-42). Backman-Rogers claims that Marie Antoinette turns to commodity fetishism to create for herself a social subjectivity that she more closely resonates with, when compared to the perfect image of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, that her birth family, and the court of Versailles, want her to fit into (131-136). 56:09-58:10 of Coppola’s film, is emblematic of this point. To quell the sadness she expresses in the first scene of Marie outwardly expressing her sadness that I have analysed in this paper, Marie orders all of the expensive items that she thinks she can without receiving reproachment from anyone at Versailles. Marie plays with trays of shoes (56:09-56:19); different patterns of fans (56:19-56:22); couture dresses in different colours and fabrics (56:23-56:40); an assortment of decorated confectionaries (56:40-57:24); glasses of champagne and gambling chips (56:56-57:39); and ornamented chokers and grand wigs (56:59-58:10). While Backman-Rogers also argues that since Marie is viewed by 18th-century French patriarchy to be a piece of her husband’s properties, and that therefore Marie’s consumption of things, is her consumption of herself, (126-137) within the constraints of Versailles, and more generally, within the gender politics of European imperialism, her consumption is an ephemeral moment of happiness for her.

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In Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure, Anna Backman-Rogers argues that in 18th-century France, female bodies were understood by contemporary French patriarchal ideology as another piece of property belonging to the man who owned; was married to, had fathered, or was responsible for taking care of; the female body (117-119). The author argues that in 18th-century French society, male homosexual urges were satiated through the trading of one man’s “possessed” female body – either permanently or temporarily – to another man; the latter of which could exchange the traded female body for other forms of property and material objects (117-125). As biopolitics are organized in a Mafia family, the Austrian princess Maria Antonia is married off to the French Dauphin Louis XVI on the orders of her Empress mother, the matriarch Maria Theresa (because her dynastic patriarch husband was deceased), when the two are both children, for treatise between the Holy Roman Empire and France.

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Anna Backman-Rogers opens “Chapter 5: Marie Antoinette (2006)” with three quotes, two of which are the following: Luce Irigay’s, “To this end, the commodity is disinvested of its body and reclothed in a form that makes it suitable or exchange among men, (115)” and Rosaliand Galt’s, “The rhetoric of cinema has consistently denigrated surface decoration, finding the attractive skin of the screen to be false, shallow, feminine, or apolitical. (115)” While I would not argue that Sofia Coppola, as a fourth-generation Italian-American who grew up with the kinds of luxuries and accesses to social and economic privilege that are only accessible to the highest socioeconomic echelon in America, faced comparable struggles in life to most of the Italo-Americans that preceded her, Marie Antoinette illustrates that the director similarly struggled on the matter of identity formation. As both Fiona Handyside and Backman-Rogers have argued, Coppola uses a hyper-stylistic, hyper-feminine cinematic style to undermine the postfeminist equivalencing of having everything a girl could want with “the secret to happiness,” that the female auteur had grown up hearing. From the kinship dynamics in Marie Antoinette, it is revealed how Sofia Coppola’s understandings of home and of family were influenced by her father, the third-generation Italian-American auteur, Francis Ford Coppola. Where Backman-Rogers is cynical on the idea that Marie is only able to experience genuine happiness and a feeling of bodily autonomy in ephemeral moments and through commodity fetishism, the smiles on actress Kirsten Dunst’s face, and her lifted mood in such temporary and materialistic moments, brings me a feeling of warmth for Marie, and for Sofia, alike.

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Works Cited

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Backman-Rogers, Anna. Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure. Berghahn Books, 2018. 
 

Casillo, Robert. Gangster priest: the Italian American cinema of Martin Scorsese. University of Toronto Press, 2006. 
 

Coppola, Francis Ford, director. The Godfather. Paramount Pictures and Alfran Productions, 1972. 
 

Coppola, Sofia, director. Marie Antoinette. Columbia Pictures and American Zoetrope, 2006. 
 

Handyside, Fiona. Sofia Coppola: a cinema of girlhood. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2017. 
 

Phillips, Gene D. Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola. The University Press of Kentucky, 2004. 
 

Russo, John P. “8 Thematic Patterns in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part II.” Mafia movies, edited by Dana Renga, University of Toronto Press, pp. 111-117. 
 

Schneider, Jane, and Peter Schneider. “Gender and Violence: Four Themes in the Everyday World of Mafia Wives.” Mafia Movies: A Reader, edited by Dana Renga, University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2011, 32-48. 
 

Smaill, Belinda. “Sofia Coppola: Reading the Director”. Feminist Media Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 
2013, dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2011.595425. Accessed 10 Feb. 2023.
 

Tamburri, Anthony J. “6 Michael Corleone’s Tie: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.” Mafia movies, edited by Dana Renga, University of Toronto Press, pp. 94-101. 

“darryl, did i hurt you?”: disrupting the “common sense” representation of the (statutory) rape of teenage girls as “invited” sex through an alternative reading of poison ivy (1992)

Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach consider how victims, perpetrators and all men and women’s recognitions of rape, whether as sex and/or violence, are influenced by social, legal and artistic representations of rape, reactions to rape and the aftermath of rape.[1] 1992’s Poison Ivy in its filmic representation of sexual relations between a fifteen year old girl and an adult man[2] engages with the dialectic of rape’s conceptualization as sex or violence.[3] By adopting Jiwani’s methodology of disrupting and examining hegemonic images to deconstruct “common-sense knowledge” and identify forms of structural oppression,[4] I will demonstrate how the film, in form and content, argues that at law statutory rape is sex.[5] Then, using Azoulay’s text on rape in visual culture, I will draw how confining visual images of rape,[6] defined as any sexual act that is not consented to freely/without inhibiting factors,[7] to pornographic films disables teenage girls’ recognitions of their rape as violence.[8]

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According to traditional psychoanalytic theory, women’s sexuality is tied to and sexual pleasure is derived from “pain and violence”.[9] The logic of sex for women is violence but the non-recognition of it as a form of violence reinforces two of the pre-1970s established theories of rape:[10] “that women are not raped against their will” and “that women want to be raped”.[11] The implications of rape as sex Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach consider relate to this idea that women are “ask[ing] for”, “invit[ing]” or motivating their rape.[12] The scholars’ account legitimated “reasons” which might “arouse” a man to rape a woman including her physical and verbal behaviours, appearance such as revealing clothing and choices regarding her body’s place and state – cues which are “invit[ing]” sex/rape.[13]

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Jiwani interrogates the discursive fields and devices that naturalize the ideology motivating and forms of systemic oppression into “common sense”.[14] By analysing the representation of violent crimes committed against girls and women of colour, the scholar reveals how hegemonic racist and sexist ideologies inform the burying and emphasizing of violence’s victims and perpetrators’ races and genders.[15] In the case the victim and/or perpetrator’s race or gender is unreferenced, there is the implication that that factor was natural, or “common sense”.[16] To evacuate the power male authority figures use to benefit themselves in a patriarchal culture[17] from an adult man’s sexual contact with a teen girl, Poison Ivy presents the narrative that the girl has a history of violent obsessions with men she desires.[18]

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To excuse the violence of middle-aged Darryl’s soliciting oral-, digital- and penile-vaginal penetrative sex from fifteen year old Ivy, the film’s narrative constructs Ivy as a “femme fatale”.[19] She methodically invites a sexual relationship with Darryl by creating private and intimate scenes for the two of them, complimenting him, verbally hinting at his having sex with her, wearing revealing clothing and moving so as to display covered up skin.[20] As the narrative presents Ivy as a skilled seductress who transforms her appearance and behaviour to that of Darryl’s fatally ill wife’s at the age the two of them met, more than burying his gender, the narrative emasculates Darryl.[21]  Poison Ivy argues it is “common sense”[22] that the grown man is seduced by the teen girl in part, because how he provides for his family and his family; his wife, dying and his daughter, withdrawing herself; are taken away from him.[23] To further moralize Darryl and absolve him of criminality in opposition to Ivy, Ivy kills Darryl’s wife and attempts to kill his only daughter in the explicitly stated operation to become both his wife and his daughter: an operation she hints has been unsuccessfully attempted many times.[24]

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Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach caution against reducing an understanding of rape to acts of violence because not all “coercive sex” is taken through “extrinsic” physical violence.[25] The scholars consider feminist theories on the agency of women’s consent in relation to the “technologies of heterosexual coercion” which train women and girls to be “permissive” of sex.[26] These technologies, as stated, are created by our patriarchal culture and used by men who dominate this culture to benefit themselves and subjugate and control the behaviour of women.[27]

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In the narrative of Poison Ivy, Ivy initiates the sexual relationship with Darryl, but what technologies tell a fifteen year old girl to desire sex with a middle-aged man that is her best friend’s wealthy father?[28] What forms of structural oppression informing the relationships between male authority figures and teenage girls, particularly underprivileged girls as in Ivy’s case,[29] in our patriarchal culture needed to be buried in order to present Ivy as the “perpetrator”[30]? Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach argue when economic gain or loss and the opportunity to better one’s life will result from “consenting” to sex that consent was not a free choice; this coercive sex “preserve[s] the patriarchy” by keeping girls and women “dependant on men for protection”.[31]

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Azoulay states since women first received citizenship, the female body in society and discourse has transferred ownership by particular men (a woman’s primary male relative, then her husband) to ownership by any man.[32]  Despite the political achievements that women have obtained since the 1970s, visual representations are detached from the transformed contract of civilian space, as in, the represented female body is not a reflection of the transformed status of woman in society.[33] Azoulay discusses how it is tradition in the visual arts that the female body as a sexual/rape-able form is reified as such.[34] The omnipresence of this kind of representation of the female body, as there to be raped, reinforces the post-sexual revolution logic of the sexual game between men and women wherein any woman’s consent to intimacy or privacy is consent to sex.[35]

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Figure 1. Ivy places her legs on the dashboard of Darryl’s car, consciously making her short skirt fall higher up her legs to reveal her upper thighs. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

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How Ivy’s body is presented to the spectator of Poison Ivy[36] contributes to the film’s argument that Darryl was moved to participate in sexual contact with the teenage girl because she consciously “invited”[37] him to do so. Representational of how Ivy’s body is presented through a single or a series of close-ups of sexualized body parts is Figure 1.[38] If Poison Ivy was making the argument that Darryl was responsible for committing statutory rape, this approach to the girl’s representation could illustrate the man’s viewing the girl in part, as sexualised body parts for his use.[39] Counter to this alternative reading, to reaffirm the narrative’s argument that Ivy is in control,[40] this formal technique argues that Ivy is “inviting”[41] physical contact with Darryl through the conscious usage of revealing clothing and behaviours which display sexualized body parts.[42]

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Azoulay problematizes the lack of images of rape accessible to the public on the grounds that such buries the “object [of] discourse” of rape.[43] The scholar argues hiding real images of or information about rape from girls and women disables them from recognizing situations that could lead to their rape as well as personal experiences of rape as rape.[44]

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Azoulay analyses how the general restriction of images of “rape” to pornographic films, wherein simulated rape signifies rape, naturalizes the eroticism of rape.[45] Pornography that represents coercive sex as erotic or “sexy” produces its conceptualization as such[46] like pornography which represents violent consensual sex makes more violent the conceptualization of sex;[47] both types of pornography which are popular.[48] Moreover when images of rape are predominantly engaged with in the form of pornography, where one can evacuate violence from the “rape” as it is imitated not real rape, the violence of rape becomes over time ordinary and even erotic or desirable.[49]

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Poison Ivy’s presentation in content and form of the rape of Ivy as sex motivated by Darryl’s lust and “invited” by the fifteen year old girl,[50] argues that one, at law statutory rape is sex, and two, that teenage girls that perform “invitational” bodily practices are responsible for their rape.[51] Whether a teenage girl participates/d in “invitational” practices,[52] if she does not have a real “situation-image” of rape and only “fragments of images” of her own rape,[53] Poison Ivy’s conceptualization of “rape”[54] would thwart her ability to recognize (her) rape as in part, violence.[55] Moreover, as a pornographic film which supports the conceptualization of rape offered by rape pornography’s “situation-image” of rape – that girls/women are not raped against their will and that girls/women want to be raped –[56] Poison Ivy informs that coercive sex is erotic.[57]

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Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach recommend that the agentic and consensual nature of heterosexual sex be determined through the framework of control: who is in control of sex, who controls sexuality and who benefits from this control.[58] The narrative of Poison Ivy buries the technologies that groom teenage girls to be “permissive” of sex and the structures which limit the freedom of choice of underprivileged girls[59] by constructing Ivy as a “femme fatale”.[60] The film’s form, by presenting Ivy’s body through close-ups of sexualized body parts,[61] reaffirms its narrative’s argument that through bodily choices the teenage girl is consciously arousing Darryl, “inviting” sexual contact, and thus this contact is sex.[62] In relation to the general absence of  rape from the gaze,[63] a girl victim of (statutory) rape after taking in the film’s conceptualization of coercive sex[64] could understand her rape as sex, her fault and even erotic, [65] which would erase the perpetrator’s violence.[66] Accepting hegemonic images and their narratives like those presented in Poison Ivy could naturalize forms of structural oppression like[67] “rape myths’” perpetuation in civilian and legal spaces that “control[s]” women’s behaviour, mobility and choices.[68] Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach explain how the perspective through which a man’s engaging in sexual contact with a fifteen year old girl was framed, was constructed and subject to change;[69] perhaps post the #MeToo movement this perspective is no longer “common sense”[70].

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Citations:

1. Charlene L. Muehlenhard, Sharon Danoff-Burg, and Irene G. Poach, “Is Rape Sex or Violence? Conceptual Issues and Implications,” in Sex, Power, Conflict: Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives, ed. David M. Buss and Neil M. Malamuth (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996), 120-122.

2. Poison Ivy, directed by Katt Shea (1992; New York: New Line Cinema, 1999), DVD.

3. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 119-120.

4. Yasmin Jiwani, Discourses of Denial: Mediations of Race, Gender, and Violence (Vancouver, CA: UBC Press, 2006), xi-xiii.

5. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

6. Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, trans. Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli (New York: Zone Books, 2008), 242-251.

7. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 133-134.

8. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 242-251.

9. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 126-127.

10. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 124-131.

11. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 220.

12. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 130-131.

13. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 130-131.

14. Jiwani, Discourses of Denial, xii-xix.

15. Jiwani, Discourses of Denial, 66-96.

16. Jiwani, Discourses of Denial, 71-75.

17. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 121-134.

18. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

19. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

20. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

21. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

22. Jiwani, Discourses of Denial, xi-xii.

23. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

24. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

25. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 131-132.

26. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 124-126.

27. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 124-131.

28. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

29. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

30. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 120-122.

31. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 124-133.

32. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 222-265.

33. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 264-265.

34. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 235-268.

35. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 228-236.

36. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

37. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 130-131.

38. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

39. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 265.

40. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 133-134

41. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 130.

42. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

43. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 241-251.

44. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 258-267.

45. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 251-279.

46. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 276-279.

47. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” -.

48. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 276-278.

49. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 272-280.

50. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

51. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 121-132.

52. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 130-131.

53. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 259-261.

54. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

55. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 258-279.

56. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 220-279.

57. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

58. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 133-134.

59. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 124-134.

60. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

61. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

62. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 130-131.

63. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 241-251.

64. Poison Ivy, dir. Shea.

65. Azoulay, Contract of Photography, 253-280.

66. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 130-133.

67. Jiwani, Discourses of Denial, xi-xxiii.

68. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 129.

69. Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Poach, “Sex or Violence?,” 124.

70. Jiwani, Discourses of Denial, xi-xxi.

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Bibliography:

Azoulay, Ariella. The Civil Contract of Photography. Translated by Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli. New York: Zone Books, 2008.

Jiwani, Yasmin. Discourses of Denial: Mediations of Race, Gender, and Violence. Vancouver, CA: UBC Press, 2006.

Muehlenhard, Charlene L., Sharon Danoff-Burg, and Irene G. Poach. “Is Rape Sex or Violence? Conceptual Issues and Implications.” In Sex, Power, Conflict: Evolutionary and Feminist Perspectives, edited by David M. Buss and Neil M. Malamuth, 119-137. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Shea, Katt, dir. Poison Ivy. 1992; New York: New Line Cinema, 1999. DVD.

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[on Lisa Reihana's in Pursuit Of Venus (Infected)]
 

In her article “Viewing Time and the Other,” Looser states, “With no natural beginning or ending and no uniform center or periphery, the spiral embraces multiple itineraries of departure and return and fluid passages between its inner and outer reaches, enabling a mutual interpenetration of past, present, and future that does not [embody] stasis, but rather a dynamic continuity (461).” Lisa Reihana’s video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] takes the form of a pan of a wallpaper – adopting Dufour et Cie’s Les Sauvages de la mer du Pacifique – composed in four synchronized channels featuring performances of contemporary Maori actors as the Maori living when James Cook made contact with the indigenous group and white actors as Cook and his crew, composited and organized across the channels and the installation’s ‘panels’. The artist’s using novel technologies to reinterpret long 19th century European paintings of indigenous global peoples contributes to the body of world that is being produced by contemporary indigenous artists of these people groups, and specifically, to traditional indigenous object-making formal usages of new electronic technologies. Noongar artist Christopher Pease and Mohawk artist Alan Michelson describe a tradition of indigenous people groups before European contact to embrace novel tools of technology (including to create to express and to find knowledges), and indigenous peoples finding ways to adapt their traditional culture for it to survive over centuries of colonial violence (Michelson et al., “Unsettling Landscape” 16). Like Pease and Michelson, Reihana’s work adapts the technologies and processes of settler artists that firstly, brings in the materials, object-making practices, and worldviews traditionally implemented by indigenous artisans, and secondly, reflects or embodies traditional indigenous forms of knowledge and creates new knowledge for these knowledge bodies.

Reihana’s installation’s formal choice, figural organization across the depths of her planes and from one ‘panel’ to the next, video movement (or figures and events appearing for a particular time-portion), and speed, or the time given for each ‘panel’ to be observed in their wholeness, makes the viewer observe and recollect each individual figure. Such counters the large, densely-packed clusters of Pacific islanders represented in Dufour et Cie’s Les Sauvages – presenting these indigenous peoples as bodies, rather than as humans, that do not have to be differentiated from each other, and that ought to be removed from this land which the English have conquered as their own, before the English can settle it. Reihana is challenging European representations of indigenous people groups from the long 19th century that combined different groups and specific indigenous cultures, and presented this combination as one indigenous people – beyond calling to the non-objectivity of European representations of indigenous peoples, the artist considers how European artists made choices to depict these peoples as primitive, or anti-modern (that also involved fantasy). These representations determined how European powers ordered and treated the indigenous groups on the territories that they colonized, and Reihana considers how such perspectives on shaping indigenous peoples – as needing to be ‘civilized’ – in the eyes of European colonizers affected their choices in ‘civilizing,’ or ‘cleansing,’ these groups. in Pursuit thus transforms the meaning of the European imperial project and colonialism, and the latter’s ‘bringing’ of ‘civilization’ as a fallacy – demonstrating the violence and illness that was brought in truth, and countering that the regions that European colonizers ‘settled’ were uncivilized – that relies on representations of indigenous peoples as animalistic and primitive. The artist implements her Maori performers’ speaking in their language, in addition to her colonizer actors’ English speech, the sounds of the Maoris’ tasks, of the Maori-English encounters, and natural to the environment, layered on top of one another and creating novel sounds, to capture the expanse of the historical scenes being recreated, and, related, to demonstrate the limitations of historical European paintings and photographs of indigenous peoples. Reihana foregrounds by this, those silent representations’ manipulation and non-objectivity – her, in contrast, realist recreation of sound, testifies to the truth of her representation of the Maori of the mid and late 1700s, and of James Cook and his crew’s encounters with these peoples.

in Pursuit’s spatial layering of the Maori performers challenges European painting logics of perspective and space – Reihana challenging the ‘objectivity’ of European representations of indigenous peoples (and of themselves), and the belief of temporal development as coming at the hands of Europeans. Hand-in-hand, the installation’s ‘tangata whenua’ position and the spiral, or ‘koru,’ organization of figures, present traditional indigenous knowledges as superior in their character of development, than those brought by Europeans during colonization. Still in “Viewing Time and the Other,” Looser states that Reihana’s work, “challenge[s] and reposition[s] the colonial gaze, presenting nuanced and empowering images of Pacific peoples that frequently cite the historical and ancestral past and employ a heuristic methodology whereby art-making is a form of experimentation that creates new knowledge (456).” Reihana’s spatiotemporal composition of in Pursuit embed the past, present and future with each other, to testify to the survival of traditional indigenous knowledges in the minds, bodies and spirits of contemporary indigenous individuals and their ancestors, to connect contemporary indigenous work to that done by their ancestors across history, and to think about what kinds of futures could be created, knowing all that we know now. Reihana’s Maori performers, and the artist’s performance art practice, testify to the indigenous idea of “survivance” – a celebration of traditional indigenous knowledges and ways and their contemporary adaptations, indigenous art, and indigenous lives, that is as important as discussing the survival of indigenous peoples. in Pursuit of Venus [infected] is to witness the contrary to long 19th century Europeans’ belief that indigenous peoples were a ‘dying race,’ their cultures, in decline. in Pursuit’s not having a delineated beginning or end (like Les Sauvages, any of its ‘panels’ could be taken out of place and placed somewhere else in the lineup of ‘panels’), and its video form, make it so that the installation can replay infinitely, which achieves a similar objective. The possible infinity of the installation’s running stands up against the centuries of Europeans depicting the theme of colonization and indigenous peoples, Reihana announcing that she, and fellow Maori artists, will be the representers of the truths of the traditional Maori way of life, and of the nature and cruelty of violence of colonization. The artist is not just retrieving authority of the historical narrative of the Maori peoples and their contact and encounters with English (/English-descended) colonizers, but establishing futures of retrievals and adaptations of the Maori peoples past and ensuring a remembering of the violence of settler colonialism over the centuries, and still today.

“Pretty shitty city”: A Study of Mischief, Casual Sex, and the State of Intoxication in Trainspotting, Twin Town, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley

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Jamie Brittain’s Skins (UK) (2007-2013) was a worldwide success. Following a different group of Bristol teenagers every two years, Brittain wanted Skins to be an alternative to the romantic and sanitized depictions of teenage life that populated the televisual landscape of the 2000s (Zayd, 0:00-6:37). As a college-age person, Brittain felt disconnected from the largely American media portrayals of adolescent and young adult experiences that were accessible to U.K. teenagers in the early and mid 2000s (Zayd, 0:50-6:37). Skins’ (UK) regional-specificity aligns with Sarah Street’s judgement on Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting’s regional-specificity (183): the pubs, nightclubs, busy streets, nice and not-so-nice schools and suburban areas can be read as belonging to any area of the United Kingdom. Skins’ question as a television series is similar to the story of Boyle’s Edinburgh-set film: what do young people get up to from day-to-day and how do they cope with the obstacles and pressures of modern living? In both British media products the answer is the same – getting into trouble, sex and drugs.

Conflict between Anglo-Saxon Protestant English rule and culture, and a contestation of (white) Anglo-Saxon Protestant imperialist ideology and influence over the internal and global decisions of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, are core themes of the Scottish, Welsh and Irish national cinemas. Scotland’s Trainspotting, Wales’s Twin Town and Ireland’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley (or The Wind) are united in their Celtic heritage, but how the national films make sense of their Celticness vary between the Celtic points. The concepts offered by Trainspotting as the alternative to (and a rejection of) modern life – mischief, casual sexual relations and intoxication – are contoured by the histories of the different Celtic points and by contemporary social realities. This paper will look at how three of the aspects of Celtic Cinema – the representation of character interiorities through mis-en-scène, the characterization of regionally-specific Celtic culture as feminized, and culturally-specific gender ideals – are represented in relation to the two factors described above.

Duncan Petrie writes that a prominent aspect of Scottish Cinema is the interplay between setting, and the biography and psychology of the film’s central character (or characters) (151-152). Released thirteen years after Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero (1983) and partly backed by the British Channel Four Films, Trainspotting shares stylistic similarities with Forsyth’s film and challenges English domination within parameters. While Anglo-Saxon colonialism and English political domination are the explicit antagonists of the Irish films I will be analysing, Trainspotting’s Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Tommy blame the sociological pressures of living in a post-Thatcherite British state for their dispossession. Renton’s sardonic monologue at the top of the film clearly expresses disenfranchisement with the pressures to, “Choose a job…, choose a family, choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars. Compact disc players and electrical tin openers (00:15-00:25).” How Renton feels about Scotland is similarly clearly articulated in the scene at the highlands: “It’s shite being Scottish! We’re the lowest of the low!…The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash!…Some people hate the English. I don’t. They’re just wankers! We on the other hand, are colonized by wankers, (31:45-32:04)” he says.

Keeping in mind Petrie’s observation, the highlands scene and the montage that introduces the spectator to London reveal Trainspotting’s relationship to Scotland and to England. Produced in the swell of potentiality for Scottish independence, Boyle’s film is ambivalent about both Scotland and England. Scotland is not perfect, but it is Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Tommy’s home. England is the U.K.’s land of opportunity, but the Thatcherite approach to living is no less corrupt than how the gang of lads keep themselves alive in the film’s original setting of Edinburgh. The lush green meadows and towering mountains of the West Highlands beneath the fluffy white clouds and a blue sky produce a sublime portrait of the Scottish countryside. Despite Renton’s verbal adamance on the misery of being subordinate to phallic England, the spectacular mis-en-scène points to the gang’s more nuanced feelings of being a Scot living in Scotland. From 58:27 to 59:08 different aspects of London – iconic national symbols that are also tourist attractions like the British Museum, signs of money like horses and large ice cream cones, markers of modernity like contemporary street signs, and aspects of urban degeneracy like a motorcycle gang  – are thrown together at a dizzying speed. The montage form calls back to the montage sequence which typifies the Trainspotting gang’s lives in Scotland that follows the film’s opening scene. Danny Boyle therefore links the ethics of thieving drugs and wasting their days and potential down the drain in Scotland, to the ethics of Thatcher-style capitalism (even before Renton swerves from the above-the-board lifestyle he wants to live in London and relapses into the criminal activity he has a natural tendency to lean towards).

Trainspotting’s Diane participates in Scottish lad culture, but unlike the film’s male gang, she is supportive of Thatcherite thinking. Ruth Barton argues that a key aspect of Irish Cinema is the usage of female characters as caveats for the director’s understanding of Ireland (127). The Wind’s Sinead represents the Irish Republican State fighting against cooperation with England while the character of Peggy is a romantic representation of pre-colonial Ireland (Barton 127). As the daughter of parents that are members of a superior socioeconomic class than the class the rest of the film’s characters come from, Diane’s rebellious behavior comes across as a teenage phase rather than as a manifestation of counterhegemonic beliefs. Throughout Trainspotting Diane urges Renton to heed the call to acquire a “straight” job, abandon his “trainspotting” ways and get clean from substances. Through the lens of Barton’s theory, Diane is the deciding ballot in the film’s dance between hostility towards English authoritarianism and allegiance to Britain and Thatcherite ideology.

Twin Town’s Bonny Cartwright is similar to Diane; the former comes from a family with more wealth than any of the characters in the film that are not also a part of the Cartwright family, she believes in materialism and the doctrine of working hard (enough to achieve upward mobility), and her acting out is framed as rebelling against her parents’ wishes. Kevin Allen’s Welsh film differs from Trainspotting in that Bonny – a figure representing Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal capitalist economic ideology – is framed as a figure deserving of derision and humiliation (Jeremy and Julian Lewis, Twin Town’s protagonists, literally piss all over her (40:37-40:47)). Kate Woodward writes that the semiotic language Twin Town speaks belongs to a Welsh-Gaelic tongue (192). A dichotomy between the comparatively rich Cartwright family from the Mumbles end of Swansea Bay and the barely working class Lewis family from the Swansea end of the bay is the subject of the film. Allen juxtaposes the underprivileged lives of those Welsh that live in underdeveloped areas and the selfish characters and snobbish attitudes of the Welsh that can afford to live in the country’s more built-up localities. The ideology of Twin Town is oppositional to English nationalism. While Twin Town is also against Wales’s belonging to the United Kingdom, the Welsh film does not offer a genuine solution to the dysphoria that the Welsh majority feel in regards to their colonial subjugation.

Woodward argues that Welsh films produced during the 1990s – amidst the nation’s cultural shift towards conceiving of itself as a modernized country – pervert two points of view on Wales: that it is a land of green valleys whose chief industry is coal mining, (189) and that it is a “cool” region that produces “cool” culture (190). The Welsh lives of the Lewis brothers are similar to the Scottish lives of the Trainspotting gang: both groups steal, sell and take drugs, and enjoy causing issues for those that belong to their Celtic nation’s upper class. Notably, neither of the Lewis brothers participate in sex acts. Sex is more violent in Twin Town than it is in Boyle’s Scottish film. Jeremy and Julian fulfill their sexual desires for Bonny Cartwright (28:09-28:14) by peeing on her as she is singing before the crowd of a pub. Adie Lewis is employed in sex work at a brothel masquerading as a massage parlour (31:57-32:42). If Bonny is the “Welsh daffodil” (40:11) (Wales’s very own “English rose”), then Adie is a stand-in for the modern, everyday Welsh woman or man that has to deal with the undesirable jobs that are available for Welsh people to do.

Twin Town’s response to Swansea (Kevin Allen’s distillation of all of Wales) being a, “Pretty shitty city (5:11-5:21, emphasis added),” is hypermasculinity. A fight breaks out in the pub after the Lewis twins run away from the stage where Bonny was performing Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. Men indiscriminately throw fists at and tackle one another, and young women literally butt heads (41:03-41:23). Allen ultimately has no answer to the issue of English rule. Where in Trainspotting the West Highlands scene’s mis-en-scène points to a hidden fondness for Scotland, the mis-en-scène of Twin Town’s final scene reaffirms how the Lewis twins have spoken about Wales. Dark night sky and waters so dark Swansea Bay looks black foretell that the brothers’ journey to Morocco will lead to nowhere but death somewhere in the Atlantic (1:28:41-1:30:37). Cross-cutting between the ill-equipped Lewises on a dinky boat and the traditional male choir on the pier with Swansea in the background paints Wales as a land frozen in time and devoid of opportunity for the generation that is coming-of-age (1:30:37-1:31:44).

Where Welsh Cinema had to work against the stereotypical images of the Welsh presented in John Ford’s 1941 How Green Was My Valley, Irish Cinema had to come up against the American auteur’s representation of the Irish in 1952’s The Quiet Man. Ken Loach wrestles with the figure that Ruth Barton identifies as the “white male redeemer” (123) – an Anglo-Saxon outsider (that is either British or American) that finds himself in a Celtic country and must heal the Irish’s pathological psychologies and modernize pre-modern, pastoral Ireland (123-126). Maria Pramaggiore writes that Ford’s stereotype of an Irish female, Mary Kate, is not exclusively a product of the American-national imagination – in the Irish-national imagination, ideal womanhood is defined by maintaining one’s chastity, abstaining from excess, and devoting oneself to working hard to take care of one’s biological family (90-95). Pramaggiore attributes what she identifies, as the Irish male desire to prove one’s own masculinity to oneself and to one’s family through physical assertions of dominance, to Ireland’s historical subjugation beneath English rule (87-95). The Irish Isles’ history with Anglo-Saxon-Protestants differs from the history shared between Scottish Gaelic people groups and the Anglo-Saxon-Protestants, in a key aspect: the Irish Celtic, have historically been less complacent with the prospect of unification with Anglo-Saxon-Protestant states.

As is discernible in Trainspotting and in Twin Town, The Wind’s main Irish characters are compelled to assert themselves through behaviours that they feel are being enacted upon them – in this latter’s case, this takes the form of taking British lives. Ken Loach’s approach to screening conflict between British militia and Irish paramilitary forces is to generally represent both the British and the British-allied Black and Tans, and the Irish Republican Army, as similarly cruel and merciless. The British army’s killing of Micheail Ó Súilleabháin versus Damien O’Donovan’s shooting of the local boy who provided a list of names belonging to the local IRA-group is a representative sample of how Loach screens British-imperialist violence versus Irish-nationalist violence. A British troop storms the Ó Súilleabháin family’s ancestral home, where a group of IRA-fighters and -allies plot paramilitary attacks against the British army stationed in the area (4:53-5:30). They barbarically howl orders for everyone on the property – men, women, and youths – to line up in a row; the Irish are unarmed, whereas the British troop hold large rifles against the Irish (4:55-5:34). Micheail, Ó Súilleabháin refuses to say the English translation of his name, and for this sign of disrespect, the British general orders all of the young men to strip (6:28-6:43). Micheail refuses, and the general begins to remove his clothes for him (6:43-6:58). The former punches the latter, the latter punches the former, the general’s men bludgeon Michael with their rifles, and then Micheail is dragged away to be executed (7:00-7:22). The British-allied Tans recruit a disabled Irish boy to deliver a list of all of the names of the men that are members of the O’ Donovan brothers’ IRA troop (29:09-30:20). After Teddy and Damien work out who would have had access to such knowledge that was not themselves a member of the group, nor an ally whose allyship could be vouched for, (42:44-49:56) the brothers’ lure the boy out onto the fields where they train their paramilitary unit (47:44-51:53). Damien shoots him three times in the torso, before letting him explain the reason why he gave up confidential IRA information to the British’s side (52:45-). Loach does not frame Damien’s killing of the boy as heroic, nor an action that a spectator should attempt to justify. However, had the Tans not plucked the boy away, Damien would not have killed him.

Maria Pramaggiore identifies how in Irish national films made during the Troubles, female characters are placed into two categories – the feminine and pacifist type that symbolizes pre-colonial Celtic Ireland, or the masculine and rebellious type that symbolizes the Ireland that is in conflict with Britain (85-95). Ruth Barton identifies The Wind’s Sinead as the latter type, and the film’s Peggy as the former type (127-128). Barton argues that Sinead and Peggy represent Ireland’s relationship with Britain not just at the time of the Irish Civil War, but also during the Troubles (124-129). While Barton maintains that Sinead is still symbolically associated with the lush and spectacular Irish countryside, I believe Loach’s singular female-main character is The Wind’s female equivalent of local IRA troop leader, Damien. She ferries goods in from the British-occupied urban area that is closest to her family’s home (18:34-18:50); preying upon the local British troops’ preconception that a woman would not play an active role in the IRA, she also ferries information in to the paramilitary group that Damien operates as the leader of (18:34-19:31). She is tough, resilient, clever, and, as her carrying cigarettes back to the Ó Súilleabháin farmhouse in her clothing demonstrates, (18:36-18:41) she is, like Damien, willing to sacrifice her body for the wellbeing of the IRA (cigarettes being, a benefit for the troop’s morale). Sinead’s engagement in the paramilitary juxtaposes her grandmother’s disengagement from the war effort. Besides providing the base for Damien and Sinead’s IRA troop, Peggy’s service to the Irish Republican Army is aligned with the character of Mary Kate in Ford’s The Quiet Man. Despite her disagreement with their contributing to the number of Irish-Gaelic bodies that have been killed because of the conflict, she houses the troop and oversees their healths when they are at the home that she is the head of. At Micheail’s funeral, she performs an English-translation of an Irish-Gaelic funerary song to mourn the Irish youth that would not yield and renounce his Irish heritage (8:56-9:54). As the character whose native tongue is Irish-Gaelic, (4:12-4:17) and whose domestic, family-oriented, and non-violent nature aligns with the Irish-national ideal of womanhood, Peggy’s primary function in The Wind is to stand as the symbol that Barton identifies as “Mother Ireland” (127)

Ultimately Sinead is unsuccessful in defeating the British troops that she, Damien and the IRA have aimed to remove from Irish soil, and Peggy’s pastural home has been made inhospitable by the film’s end. However, the aging “Mother Ireland” is not alone, for Sinead has dedicated her own life to ensuring that the rest of her grandmother’s life is as good as it can be. When read through Barton’s theory of Irish Cinema’s treatment of female characters like iterations of the Irish Isles, (127-128) the older and the younger woman’s relationship can be interpreted to mean that Mother (pre-colonial) Ireland, needs the modern, violent Ireland if the former has any chance at surviving. The Wind’s opening sequence also functions to communicate this idea. A group of young Irish men play a game of hurling – a competitive physical activity that is a Celtic traditional sport – with wooden paddles on an open field in southern Ireland (0:00-3:25). Damien is established as not just the most adept hurling player, (1:16-2:54) but as the character amongst the group that the audience should keep their eye on (1:30-1:47). As the one situated most prominently in a handful of shots, (Petrie, 151-152) Damien would be the character whose interiority is being represented by the scene’s rolling green fields, forests and mountain-tops. Like the Scottish highlands in Trainspotting, the untouched Irish countryside appears to be sublime.

If one maps John Brown’s idea that the natural world and Scottish women are symbolically linked in Scottish Cinema (41) onto The Wind’s opening scene, than to Damien, both Ireland and the nation’s women (like Sinead and Peggy) require protection from the violence of the Irish Civil War. While Damien is The Wind’s protagonist, and the leader of the film’s IRA, his is just one body in the team of hurling players (0:11-3:15). Damien is not Barton’s “white male redeemer” (123), but is instead, the leader of his IRA troop. As the competitiveness of the hurling players and the taunting and injury-causing that are manifestations of such competitiveness signify, hurling is not just a game, but a proxy (or rather, an act of preparation) for paramilitary combat. The film’s director makes this paralleling between sports and violence as comparable manifestations of Irish men’s assertions of masculinity, by a second scene in The Wind, wherein Damien and his brother Teddy teach the opening scene’s team of players how to use the kind of rifles that the British troop had pulled on them and others at Peggy’s farmhouse (15:51-18:31). In the absence of enough guns for each of the young men, some of the IRA-combatants-in training flip their hurling paddles upside down, and practice how to aim and shoot using the wooden device (16:10-18:30).

How The Wind translates the quotidian concepts of mischief, casual sexual relations, and intoxication that Twin Town and Trainspotting, like the Channel 4-produced Skins, explores, illustrates the inequality amongst the Celtic points. The Wind – as a representative of Irish Cinema (Barton, 124-127) – demonstrates that mischief becomes political insurrection, allocating a sizable portion of one’s time to casual sexual relations becomes the gender politics of the Irish paramilitary, and chasing intoxication from the (white) Anglo-Saxon Protestant agenda becomes pursuing British bloodshed. This is not to say that Scottish and Welsh Cinemas are detached from Irish Cinema. While Trainspotting, Twin Town, and The Wind express different alternatives to each of the film’s contemporary White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Britain, they are all unified in their buttressing of certain Celtic-specific ideals. A rejection of Thatcherite economic ideology, a desire for nature’s protection (even if Renton is unwilling to recognize this in himself, the Lewis brothers’ piss on wealthy Bonny’s appropriation of Wales’s national flower, and the IRA soldiers are contributing to the physical destruction of the Irish Isles), and an idealization of females are observable in each of the Celtic films that I have analysed.  

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Works Cited

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Barton, Ruth. “Irish history and trauma.” Irish cinema in the twenty-first century, Manchester University Press, 2019, 117-135.

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Brown, John. “Land beyond Brigadoon.” Sight & Sound, vol. 53, no. 1, Winter 1983-84, pp. 40-46.

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Petrie, Duncan. “Chapter 7: "A Scottish Art Cinema".” Screening Scotland, edited by British Film Institute, 2000, 148-171.

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Pramaggiore, Maria. “"I Kinda Liked You as a Girl": Masculinity, Postcolonial Queens, and the “Nature” of Terrorism in Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game.” Contemporary Irish Cinema: From the Quiet Man to Dancing at Lughnasa, 1999, 85-97.

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Street, Sarah. “Trainspotting.” European Cinema: An Introduction, edited by Jill Forbes and Sarah Street, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000, 183-192.

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The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Directed by Ken Loach, Sixteen Films and Matador Pictures, 2006.

Trainspotting. Directed by Danny Boyle, Channel Four Films, Figment Films, The Noel Gay Motion Picture Company Ltd, 1996.

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Twin Town. Directed by Kevin Allen, Polygram Film Entertainment, 1997.

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Woodward, Kate. “Small Nation—Big Screen: Film in Wales during the 1990s.” Culture and the State: Nationalisms, edited by James Gifford and Gabrielle Zezulka-Mailloux, CRC Humanities Studio, 2003, 189-197.

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Zayd, Yhara. “The Remake That Couldn't: Skins "U.S.".” YouTube, uploaded by Yhara zade, 4 Jun. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kqu9Jfiulo&t=1413s.

[on the kardashian-jenner daughters' theft of 'the black female body']
 

A Marxist reading of what has happened sociologically to what popular culture has termed the, “Instagram model body,” is dialogic with Brophy’s discussion of stickiness, race, and social media. The “Instagram model” figure emergent in the mid-2010s and pedestaled as the “ideal-I” for girls and women throughout the second half of the 2010s. Darkly tanned skin, large eyes, a thin nose, full lips, large breasts, a small waist, wide hips and a racially-fluid hair texture on a raced-white woman has been the image of hegemonic female beauty for Gen Z. (Certain) natural physical parts of  black women’s bodies make white women more commodifiable labourers.

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This cultural and economic phenomenon has been due in large part to Western cultural icon Kim Kardashian and the other women that make up the “Kardashian-Jenner” family/business. The stickiness of their Instagram images launched the possibility of the “Instagram model” career. Since the early 2010s the Kardashian-Jenner women have been acquiring different body parts that are historically associated with, and natural on some, black women, through surgical procedures. Puar’s consideration of the performativity of race is relevant in a discussion of the Kardashian-Jenners, as many of the family’s female members have put on and taken off certain physical attributes that possess the denotation of blackness, across the timeline of their careers as celebrities and advertisers (or, “influencers”). Black writers and thinkers have spoken on the eeriness of witnessing racially white women put on their race’s body parts and resultingly being offered sponsorship opportunities by brands and professional opportunities in the fashion and entertainment industries when black women that naturally possess such body parts are not extended those same opportunities. As a theorist I have cited in many of my discussion posts, Tee Noir, has expressed: over the first fifth of the 21st century, much cultural, economic, and social capital has been mined from the artificial appearance of blackness, while anti-black political ideologies like Neo-Nazism and far-right religious extremism, have seen a rise (“When the Black Gaze Expires: A Kardashian Commentary (Part One)”).

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Citations

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Noir, Tee. “When the Black Gaze Expires: A Kardashian Commentary (Part One).” YouTube, uploaded by Tee Noir, 12 Dec. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1-uh-ADzDE&t=1846s.

Further Reading

Brophy, Sarah. “The Stickiness of Instagram: Digital Labor and Postslavery Legacies in Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety.” Cultural Critique, vol. Fall 2019, no. 105, 2019, pp. 1-39.

Puar, Jasbir K. "‘THE TURBAN IS NOT A HAT’: QUEER DIASPORA AND PRACTICES OF PROFILING." Sikh Formations, vol. 4, no. 1, 2008, pp. 47-91.

“it is not a desire. it is a clenched jaw and an aching back…it is a terrible self-loathing that sends your teeth sinking into your lips. it is a gut pushed out, and shoulders slumped”: lorde’s transformation of “poetry”, the transformative possibilities of poetry and halsey’s i would leave me if i could

“For women,…poetry is not a luxury,” (126) declares Audre Lorde for “poetry” (127) – as feelings, dreams and ideas captured by, sharpened into language – is that place where desires and needs for freedom, for change, for pleasure are first made manifest, there to be transformed into action, turned into reality (Lorde, 2021: 125-127). In “Poetry is Not a Luxury”, the writer contrasts two antagonistic schools of thought on poetry: the first, that guarded yet empty writing of the “white fathers” (126), bound in chains by structure; the second, that which is the place where the light of sight and the “ancient, black, non-european” (126) basin of women’s spirit merge to birth captured voices (Lorde, 2021: 126-127).

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That which Lorde advocates, the case she builds to inspire particularly, black women to distill their interiorities into writing (Lorde, 2021), is foregrounded as a formal approach and embodied subjectivity, and as a theme, a form of empowerment and a site of conflict, in artist Halsey’s anthology, I Would Leave Me If I Could (Halsey 00:01-1:32:00). “I Want to Be a Writer!” (Halsey 4:44-55:19) struggles against poetry as the elitist, white supremacist dominion of the “white fathers” (Lorde, 2021: 126), with the speaker resisting the “canards” (126) in taking (the form of) poetry as a “language [of] express[ion] and…revolutionary awareness” (127), while on “Lighthouse” (Halsey 44:06-47:36), poetry acts as the place for that which is hidden to “dare [to become] real” (Lorde, 2021: 127), poetry as “sanctuary[y], fortress and spawning ground” (126), preparation for the manifestation of “survival and change” (126).

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On “I Want to Be a Writer”, Halsey articulates, like Lorde, the fundamentality of the externalization, the putting pen to paper, of women’s interiorities – from desires, “whining like an infant to your lover, begging to be spit shined like…silverware” (5:11-5:16), to pains, “It’s six months since you’ve talked to your dad,” (5:08-5:11) to dreams, “It is towering arrogance…say[ing], ‘Let these passages be free in an existence that will cherish and worship them,’” (5:38-5:42). The speaker confesses that as they transpose feelings into writing, an action that is, “A demon waiting at the foot of your bed…a gnat burrowing into your ear…not a desire…a clenched jaw and an aching back,” (4:52-5:26) they come up against the “canards we have been socialized to fear, [and] the withdrawal of those approvals that we have been warned to seek for safety” (Lorde, 2021: 126) – established linguistic rules determining quality and criticisms coming out of Western academic traditions (Halsey 5:25-6:06).

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Halsey’s personae identifies with Lorde that the latter’s theorization of “poetry” (Lorde, 2021: 127), “what we need…to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise,… the core – the fountain – of our power, our womanness,” (127) is “the future of [their] worlds” (127) and therefore embraces an unapologetic voice and resilient form: “I’ve given so much to the page, please tell me I’m not worthless… It is…a disposition to spite everything around you. To find the world not worthy of your words,” (Halsey 5:18-5:33). The speaker resists internalized regulations set by canonized white, European, masculinist poets, their works and the legacies of their works and resonances of their techniques to take up and command not just space nor freedom, but respect and recognition for their poetry (5:24-6:25).

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On “Lighthouse”, the personae confides in poetry, in unobscured language, the intimate realities of a physically, mentally and emotionally abusive relationship that, through their self-sacrificial actions of concealment, apologizing and taking blame, has yet to be discerned or disclosed as abusive but on the contrary, appears as idyllic (52:27-55:19). Lorde’s reconceptualization of “poetry” (127) prioritizes the figure of the woman as writer above the white, patriarchal, European literary model of “poetry” (126); the scholar displaces the objectivity and absence of personhood of form (the theorization that poem and poet are disconnected), for the radical action of process, of subjectivity creation vis-à-vis writing – that the writer can make themselves and their future through language (Lorde, 2021: 126).

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As Halsey the writer, “wraps [their] arms around his head…and stroke[s] his hair, and whisper[s] that ‘It would be okay’”, (46:12-46:20) “lie[s] awake as he slept…star[ing] at the ceiling, too afraid to let a single tear escape lest the subtle movement be enough to wake him”, (46:39-46:51) in language, can externalize the truth that they are, “kerosene running low in the tower, praying the gods would unleash their fury and send waves so strong they’d crash through the hills…and the ground would collapse and bury us both in the rubble” (47:18-47:33). Through the process of distilling feeling into language, “giv[ing] name”, (Lorde, 2021: 125) the poet can transform suppressed desires for “survival and change” (126) that they find “incomprehensible and frightening” (126); embedding, “disciplining”, (126) the “nameless” (126) into imagery – divine-ordered floods which cause apocalyptic destruction – and symbolism – their being as a lighthouse, the rescuer and protector of their abusive partner (Halsey 54:54-55:19) – motivates it to “be thought” (Lorde, 2021: 126).

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“Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us…But there are no new ideas…waiting…to save us as women, as human…only old and forgotten ones, new combinations…and recognitions from within ourselves, along with the…courage to try them out,” (127) advocates Lorde in summation of her proposal for a re-theorization of the concept and form of “poetry” (126) – an undertaking that holds as its objective, women of colour feeling empowered to write (125-127). The scholar does not deceive her conceptualized audience of women of colour from intersecting marginalities that not capturing in, but refining into, language, their interiorities and movements through the world is a painless duty, one that does not demand sacrificing one’s time and strength, when such could be or must be channeled into that which is necessary for their or their loved ones’ survival (126-127): “Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours,” (127). Halsey, empathetic to and speaking into recognition, the complex, busy, messy realities of as is emphasized, in particular, black women as they move around space, through the structures and systems of domination, and the ideologies which work to minimize their mobility while at the same time, making invisible their (as in, the systems/structures) own existence, articulates the precarity while retaining, like Lorde, (126-127) the necessity and enormity of poetry: “It is not a desire. It is a clenched jaw and an aching back…It is a terrible self-loathing that sends your teeth sinking into your lips. It is a gut pushed out,” (5:24-5:49).

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Works Cited

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Halsey. I Would Leave Me If I Could. Narrated by Halsey, Audible, 2020. Audiobook.

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Lorde, Audre. “Poetry is Not a Luxury.” Teaching Black, edited by Ana-Maurine Lara and drea brown, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021, pp. 125-127.

“…until I had grabbed the book from his breast” / “…and begging me, in vain, to give the book back” : the masculine/feminine and the freedom of the “honest courtesan” in lines 64 to 75 of veronica franco’s “capitolo 17”

Born without genealogical ties to the aristocracy and their chains of luxury and opportunity (Jaffe 341) like many published female poets preserved for contemporary readers, nor constrained of freedom of ambition, character nor behaviour by any patriarch by blood (Rosenthal 1-17),Veronica Franco’s need to survive enabled her to defy the male and female binaries of Venetian society (De Tollis 75-81). Marilyn Migiel argues (58-62) that the courtesan poet adopts what Emily Renee Eikost identifies as the Lacanian mirror-stage terms of Petrarchan poetry produced by male writers (Eikost 13-22). Across the first half of Terze rime the courtesan poet transfigures the “male” poetic strategy (Migiel 58) of “managing aggression, responding to it, using it when necessary, and redirecting it” (58), as well as recasts her male poet addressee into her “unknown…interlocuter” (58; emphasis added). Lines 64 to 75 of “Capitolo 17” embody not just Franco’s transformation of the hegemonic organization of “man” and “woman” (Lamanna 70-71) in “courtly love” poetry and in the societies of Venice and the Italian Renaissance, but the parameters within which autonomous (Rosenthal 1-15) female agents like Franco were allowed to transgress (15-25).

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Hailing from the Occitan culture and arriving in Venice vis-à-vis the northern regions of Italy (Chaytor 95-108), “troubador” practice of poetry is structured around a male gazer – the poet, a courtly man – declaring his feelings of reverence, desire and even carnal lust for the noblest lady of the court (Bryson and Movsesian 121-136). A declaration made in public, before the presence of her husband, the patriarch of the court (122-130). Emily Renee Eikost fixes the relations of looking embedded in “troubadour poetry” and its literary descendants taking up the plot of “courtly love” (Bryson and Movsesian 123-136) – including Petrarch’s “Sweet New Style”, the poetic model of the European Renaissance (Bassanese 302-303) – in the language of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The poet (“infant” (Eikost 2)) sees himself and the surrounding world through the sight of his beloved Lady (2-4).

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At the scene (or court) of “courtly love” the male poet sees in his beloved woman the “image” of himself “whole”, or the self/subject which he has been “anticipat[ing]” becoming (Eikost 2):

[courtly love] needs to be mediated…through Lacan’s mirror stage. [The mirror stage] examines how selfconsciousness can only be formed when confronted by the other. The look must be a shared recognition of the self within one another to form that sense of selfhood (541-542). Without it, one cannot understand themselves singularly [nor]…in relation to the other. (3)

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Eikost theorizes: above the physical plane of the court, on the metaphysical plane “courtly love” poetics is the “Real” wrapped in the “Symbolic” (4). The “Real”, ““the element of the unconscious desire and fantasy that exceeds articulation and knowability”, (13)” inspires the writing as poets struggle to grasp it and invest in or rely on “fiction”, the “over there” – in the linguistic sense, language, and in the philosophical sense, fantasy – to externalize the “Real” (4-8).

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In “Capitolo 17”, as radical practice across Terze rime, Franco one, takes up the vocational and social position of the writer – as opposed to the subject – of the poem, and two, takes up the poetic position of the agentic (as opposed to the receptive) physical partner – the gazer not the gazed at, the masculinized not the feminized body (Migiel 60-72).

“He hid in his breast that book praising another, / this stubborn man, so that I wouldn’t see it; / mismatched desires opposed, alas, in love! (Franco, lines 64-66)”

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She appropriates the hegemonic gender organization of the “servant/Lady” dynamic in Petrarch’s model, in which the Lady is a silent, powerless ideal and the servant is the Lady’s literary maker, the agent that puts her into being (Eikost iii-11).

“…I didn’t give up / until I had grabbed the book from his breast, (Franco, lines 67-68)”

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Franco meets her addressee as an equal – as two “infant[s]” (Eikost 2) making sense of the world through not the sight, of the beloved, but the touch of the beloved, and all of the real merits and consequences that arise not just because of their love for, but out of their love with, the beloved. While appropriating the tradition for male Petrarchists’ to denounce the “Lady” for not returning their affections, or subordinating and acquiescing to their desires for the “servant” and the “Lady’s” relationship (13-26), Franco recognizes its absence of fairness and selflessness (as a “Lady” such as herself (Rosenthal 2-8), would).

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Margaret F. Rosenthal demythologizes how Franco, recognized in title; if not in signification by her male and female adversaries in the Venetian court; as a member of the feminized economic and social class, “cortigiana onesta, or honest courtesan, (6)” made her earnings through refining and enacting her “intellectual capital” (6). Profiting in the private and public spheres from the patronage of local and foreign influential male figures in recompense for “social and intellectual refinement” (6) and “poetic and epistolatory works” (Lamanna 15) respectively. Present and threatening in any autonomy the courtesan poet had in her writings, speech, and movements made in the private or public spaces of Venetian court or society was the patriarchal conditions allowing the “honest courtesan” to survive – never mind prosper – off of the resources and opportunities extended to her in recompense for such (De Tollis 70-83).

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The “Symbolic” (Eikost 3), therefore, functions as a device in the writings of Veronica Franco not just to allegorize the poet’s feelings for, and relationship to, the beloved for literary purposes (2-19). Nor, to transfigure baser desires and acts for the reader’s moral and religious convictions (Bryson and Movsesian 125-129). But, to protect one, the physical body, and two, the livelihoods, of the courtesan. 

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In 16th century Venetian society to protect the virtuous – Madonna – womanhood of the females belonging to the aristocratic class, a prosperous sex work economy funded by men of various births, classes and occupations (De Tollis 80), operated on the axiom that prostitutes (“meretrice”) and courtesans (“cortigiana”) (Lamanna 21) were “painted [ladies]”, “Mary Magdalene[s]” (De Tollis 80). Absent and vanishing of men’s morals (80-81). As was demonstrated by their persecution and punishment by the Venetian Inquisition beginning in the 1560s, any illusion of meretrice or cortigiana autonomous power, was a falsehood (Lamanna 17-19).

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Articulated in “Letter 22” to a mother introducing her daughter into the “cortigiana” profession (Lamanna 21), to inspire a sum of earnings adequate for survival; in the competitive courts of Venetian court and Venetian society (Rosenthal 3-15); across both of an “honest courtesan’s” forms of income (2-10), known expertise in her private and public labours was required (Franco 38-39). Like threading the needle between verbal and physical engagements that would sustain or increase patrons and sums of patronage, and discouraging violences like rape and theft in the private (38-40), in her written works, Franco had to represent that which would be profitable to her (a courtesan poet), without endangering her self, her vocations or their futures.

“As the case called for, I told you my pain, / ungrateful lover; book tight in my hand, / I turned my steps elsewhere, fleeing from you, (Franco, lines 70-72)”

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The symbol of “breast” repeated across Lines 64 to 75 encapsulates the eroticism and the physicality of her relationship with her male addressee, as the symbol of “book” functions as an allusion to Franco and her addressee’s – most likely, Marco Venier (Lamanna  15-16) – shared vocation of writing published materials (Jaffe 346-352). Neither the specificities of the pair’s intimate, complicated relationship (347-361), the causes of the lovers’ conflict at subject, nor the public nor private actions Veronica took to match Venier’s betrayal, are revealed to the reader: the lines are dialogic, but they are not expository.

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Benedetta Lamanna reads the sexual subjectivity Franco creates and reaffirms in her writing as dialectic with 20th century French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s conceptualization of “woman” as the “inessential Other” (70). In relation to man’s definition of himself as the “One” – agent, maker, essential to progression, bringer of new freedoms – woman; who should, in ontology’s logic, be the “One” for her ability to create life; is made into the “Other”, the subordinated, the reliant (70-71). In Beauvoir’s theorization of marriage and childbirth, woman is “confined” in body and subjectivity to fertility, domesticity and “acquiescence”, or a “situation” of passivity and subordination that is synonymous to a state of objecthood, and removed from participation in the action and progress of “[m]an” (Lamanna 70-71).

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In 16th century Italy, marriages between a valuable “woman” – a female body belonging to a powerful family or who was tied to the most significant dowry – and a man were imperative for the circulation of political, social, economic and cultural power amongst men (Fonte 2-17) Franco was born into the “cittadini originari (Venetian citizens by birth)” (Jaffe 341), what Jaffe relates as the Venetian “middle class” (341) – “situated between the nobility and the common populace” (Lamanna 9). To recompense either for her father Francesco Franco’s death or, inability to provide for his daughter and her family, by at latest 1562 (at oldest, nineteen-years-old), Veronica Franco was purchasable for sexual favours (Lamanna 10). Her introduction into the life of a courtesan, attributed to her mother’s, Paola Fracassa’s, order (10).

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Fracassa and Franco – but primarily the former (11-12) – had put aside a dowry for their daughter, and at eighteen-years-old Veronica was married to the doctor Paolo Panizza (10-11) – a marriage that had terminated in all practice, with both spouses going forward as individual economic and social subjects, by 1564 (11). The courtesan had also given birth to six children across the years of 1564 to 1570, and while Jaffe considers the potential, genuine kinship Franco may have developed with the fathers of her children – as she had with a number of the men she shared sexual intimacy with (341-342) – she, like Lamanna (13), concludes that the courtesan had no investment in “acquiescence” (Lamanna 71).

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As a courtesan, innately coupled with an absence of Madonna-hood and therefore displacement from respectable femininity (De Tollis 74-81), Veronica Franco could appropriate behavioural and aesthetic signs of dominant masculinity (Bassanese  295-303). However, in her poetry – a terrain where “unconscious desire and fantasy” (Eikost 4) could be realized through the language of the imaginary (4-7) – Veronica could adopt for herself the corporeality of “man”, take on, temporarily, the rights and freedoms of action of the “One” (Lamanna 70). While she does not apply such a dynamic as the basis for her poetry, from time to time (as in Lines 67 to 68 of “Capitolo 17”) Franco asserts the “servant” (in veracity, the “master”) (Eikost 21-28) position occupied by male “courtly love” poets (1-7) and casts her male addressee into the silent, passive role of Beauvoir’s “Other”:

“Then, all aflame with rage, I didn’t give up / until I had grabbed the book from his breast, (Franco, lines 67-68)”

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Immortalized in the travel journals of male visitors to the city from across the continent, 1500s Venice was a land of Homeric legend (Rosenthal 11-12).The great number of “beautiful…prostitutes and courtesans” contrasted against the stable nature of the republic’s governmental structure created the personification of the region as a woman (11-14). Specifically, a combination of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, and Venus Anadyomene, the Roman goddess of love with a maritime epithet (12-13). Though writing herself into the subjectivity of Beauvoir’s “man” (Lamanna 71) at certain times and in certain places (Migiel 58-61), Franco by no means displaced herself from women. Whom, she understood as possessing those traits of “tender[ness] and delicate[nses]” (Franco 163) and “sweetness” (165) seldom found by men, as well as the capability to develop those skills of “weapons and valor” (165) that men deny women permission and access to for that very reason. Evoking that combination of womanly touch (Venus) and virtue (Mother Mary) that personified the city she was attributed as a symbol of (De Tollis 87-95) and a sign for (Lamanna 13-14), Veronica Franco in Lines 73 to 75 of “Capitolo 17” forgives her male addressee:

“though I failed to put you far enough behind / to avoid you at my side, still making excuses, / and begging me, in vain, to give the book back. (Franco, lines 73-75)”

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Of Beauvoir’s formation of “[m]an[’s]” (Lamanna 70) construction of binary opposition between woman and man Lamanna states, “This dialectic emphasizes the interconnected ontological dependency upon which man and woman’s sense of self is based. Consequently, an unstable, conflicting relationship between the sexes is created in which mutual equality and individual liberty are incompatible (72).” To survive in 16th century Venetian society as a “cortigiana onesta” (Rosenthal 6), Veronica Franco was forced to develop, to put into practice, a careful balance of “wit and talent” and “beauty and amatory skills” (Stortoni and Lillie 169). Yet, to ensure the protection not just of her work’s patronage by, but of her body’s safety from (Bassanese 297-298), the city’s and the continent’s most powerful male figures, the courtesan writer could not unambiguously articulate transgression from the Italian Renaissance’s hegemonic understandings and ideals of “woman” and “[m]an” (Lamanna 70). Despite, or perhaps in the face of, the complicated web of expectations and restrictions, rules and demands placed on the “honest courtesan”, Veronica Franco’s writings illustrate the formidable (and therefore enviable) (Rosenthal 1-10) skillset of women writers living and writing during the Italian Renaissance. As can be studied from “Capitolo 17”.

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Primary Source

Franco, Veronica. Poems and Selected letters: Selections. Translated by Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret F. Rosenthal, University of Chicago Press, 1998.

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Works Cited

Bassanese, Fiora A. “Private Lives and Public Lies: Texts by Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 30, no. 3, Fall 1988, pp. 295-319, www.jstor.org/stable/40754861. Accessed 19 Oct. 2022.

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Bryson, Michael, and Arpi Movsesian. Love and its Critics: From the Song of Songs to Shakespeare and Milton’s Eden. Open Book Publishers, 2017.

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Chaytor, H. J. THE TROUBADOURS. E-book, Project Gutenberg, 2004.

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De Tollis, Marianna. Finding a Room of One's Own: Veronica Franco and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. 2019. Florida Atlantic University, PhD dissertation.

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Eikost, Emily R. The Mirrored Return of Desire: Courtly Love Explored Through Lacan's Mirror Stage. 2022. Bowling Green State University, MA thesis.

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Fonte, Moderata. The worth of women wherein is clearly revealed their nobility and their superiority to men. Translated by Virginia Cox, University of Chicago Press, 1997.

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Jaffe, Irma B. SHINING EYES, CRUEL FORTUNE: THE LIVES AND LOVES OF ITALIAN RENAISSANCE WOMEN POETS. Fordham University Press, 2002.

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Lamanna, Benedetta. (Re)Creating the Self: The Female Subject in Veronica Franco’s Poetry. 2020. University of Toronto, Phd thesis.

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Migiel, Marilyn. “Veronica Franco's Gendered Strategies of Persuasion: “Terze rime” 1 and 2.” MLN, vol. 131, no. 1, January 2016, pp. 58-73, www.jstor.org/stable/43932930. Accessed 19 Oct. 2022.

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Rosenthal, Margaret F. The honest courtesan : Veronica Franco, citizen and writer in sixteenth-century Venice. University of Chicago Press, 1992.

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Stortoni, Laura A., and Mary Prentice Lillie, editors. Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies & Courtesans. Italica Press, Inc., 1997.

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Works Consulted

Bayer, Andrea. “Art and Love in the Italian Renaissance.” Met Museum, November 2008, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/arlo/hd_arlo.htm. Accessed 19 Oct. 2022.

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Griffin, Susan. The book of the courtesans : a catalogue of their virtues. Broadway Books, 2001.

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Paruta, Paolo, and Henry Carey, Earl of, Monmouth. The history of Venice. London: Printed for Abel Rober, and Henry Herringman, 1658.

women letter writers of the Italian Renaissance: Moderata Fonte's Brides & Marguerite de Navarre's "Temptress"
 

On Day 1 of Moderata Fonte’s The Worth of Women, the main topic discussed and debated by the seven women is the merits of marriage: what rights and pleasures are lost in marriage, the morality of husbands, fathers, brothers and other male relatives granted charge of females, and the benefits to women of autonomy. The dimessa Corinna and the young widow Leonora lead the group of women in dialogue about the unfairness of the distribution of rights to property, rights to financial independence and rights to education in studies and skills of mind and body (including weaponry and medicine) between men and women in Italy.

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It is the married Cornelia that speaks the passage: a passage revealing of Fonte’s own ideas about the inhumanity of the dowry system, and the injustice of alternative routes of survival – either sex work or imprisonment in the home and charge of their male guardian – available to women whose dowries have not been secured and promised to them by their fathers. Fonte, whose father had nearly squandered her own dowry, who had married twice in life, and who had eventually settled into Madonna-hood at an older age, could see her potentiality of becoming, and therefore sympathize with, and imagine better futures for, those women who were not as lucky as she.

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In The Worth of Women Fonte recognizes the construction of women as a social, as opposed to biological, group, by men (brothers, fathers, husbands, the government, dominant Catholic doctrine), for the purpose of implementing and maintaining their subordination in society to men. A work which moves beyond the individualist scope of proto-feminism and its figures, the writer articulates, as in this passage, the social movement successes women could achieve if they acted collectively to pursue renunciation of their family patriarchs’ orders, financial independence and solidarity amongst themselves.

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***

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The writing of Story 4 in the Heptameron is attributed to Marguerite de Navarre. The plot of Story 4 is as follows. A wealthy, respectable man steals away into the room in which the Prince’s sister is sleeping, of the belief that the Princess would react positively to his presence and engage him in sexual relations. In contradiction to this belief, the Princess, a virtuous woman of noble birth and rank, does not appreciate his nakedness beside her and resists his attempts to “make love” to her: she scratches and bites at him, eventually screaming for her lady-in-waiting. Initially thinking of silencing her with the bedsheets, the gentleman recognizes the immorality of his actions and flees back to his room (in his house, where he had invited the Prince and his sister for the purpose of sexual intimacy with the woman). Contrary to the representations of rapes and attempts at such by Boccaccio – whose Decameron provided the style for imitation for works of fiction in the Italian Renaissance – in Navarre’s Story 4, the gentleman sees as such, and is repentant for, his violation of the Princess’ trust and virtue.

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Story 4 provided the opportunity for Marguerite de Navarre to publicize, through the recasting of herself, the sister of a King, as a sister of a Prince, an autobiographical account of rape as a young lady of noble status by a man who should have, as her inferior, paid her but respect. Navarre teaches a lesson on how to proceed with one’s life, virtue and reputation, following a similar betrayal. The Princess’ lady-in-waiting recommends that she refrain from taking the Prince to court. Firstly, the veracity of the Prince taking only the noble woman’s scratches and bites could be too easily disproven, and if, speculation or ruling of the virtuous and respectable woman’s wavering (and therefore loss) of chastity were to emerge, her life and her position would be endangered. Secondly, the warmth she extended to the culprit, and the liveliness of her character, would lead the courts to believe that she was responsible for stirring the Prince’s desires. Instead, as instructed, the Princess does not speak a word of what had occurred, and turns in gratitude to God for allowing her to escape from the event with her life, her innocence and her reputation.

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“like beauty locked up in the beast’s castle”: hugh hefner (& his “girlfriends’”) “ideal self”, “ethic of uncaring” and the latter’s freedom of choice in contributing to such an ethic

In her formulation of the framework upon which relations between human beings should be examined at least in the discourse of moral philosophy, Noddings takes as logical, when there is an absence of “pathology”, “care” as a universal impulse, potential, in all humans (Noddings, 1984: 74-82). As an alternative to masculinist models that place “duty” as the optimal, universal principle guiding relations,  Noddings’ “ethic of caring” depends on two conditions present in a non-pathological person (74-78). One, the “natural” impulse to “receive” one that is suffering and aid the “free[dom]…of his projects”, and two, the faculties to make oneself “care” for one that they do not have naturally, the impulse to care for, done of the desire to preserve their “ideal self” and by reflecting on memory of being “cared-for” (74-81). The philosopher’s ethic is grounded in the ideal that all humans absent of pathology or, in a set of material circumstances that is non-pathological, are capable and willing; as the impulse to care and/or the reasoning to care are universal principles; of coming to a one-caring as a cared-for, and in turn of being cared-for (sometime in their life), can be a one-caring (74-80). What if, however, “care” and “pathology” are not incompatible (74-84)?

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Following his separation from his second wife in 1998, Playboy founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner revived his practice of “multiple girlfriends” (Madison 51:30-1:47:59). In its contemporary composition, a practice in which septuagenarian Hefner would provide teen and young women’s means of (basic, physical) survival, “allowances” and (theoretically) professional opportunities internal and external Playboy, in exchange for sex acts, the illusion of desirability and obeying of his “rules” for his “girlfriends’” bodies (2:04:00-2:57:00). A “girlfriend” since 2001, and occupying the “main girlfriend” position from 2002 to 2008, Holly Madison was witness to three of five periods of Hefner’s “multiple girlfriends” practice from the late 1990s to the early 2010s (50:56-9:23:28). Discerning concretely, one, the truth of the “girlfriend” occupation and two, the reality of being a “girlfriend” at the interior of the Playboy Mansion society is critically problematic, as the impetus to falsify in the “positive” (to exaggerate) and the “negative” (to conceal) such information has historically, paid off (4:22:49-4:23:22). Madison’s nuanced account in, Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, however, offers a valuable source to consult.

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Whether Hefner or any of his “girlfriends” possessed a “pathological” psychology or were capable of that “natural” impulse to care for those whom they want or desire to care for is not the information I set out to determine (Noddings, 1984: 74-82). Rather, through reading Madison’s documentation of  the seven “girlfriends” of 2001 to 2002, I will consider the logics reasoning Hefner’s refusal of apolitical “ethical caring” of any of his girlfriends and the philosophical frameworks through which the girlfriends’ perceived their choices to be/not be a “girlfriend”, and to be/not be a participant in such an “ethic of uncaring” (74-78).

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Noddings assigns causality, the “I ought”, of ethical caring to one’s “ideal self” (75-82). In the “ethic of caring” philosophy, one’s “ideal self” is the agent that makes choices to care, how to care and when care must be limited for optimal caring of those the one-caring must care for most, and the schema, or measurement, that determines capacities and delegations of care that is limited by one’s experiences of being cared-for (74-89). If in an “ethic of caring” ethical caring is the outcome of an “ideal self’s” – which is interested in preserving if not bettering, and not diminishing, itself – determining giving care is the moral choice, then Hefner’s “ideal self”, that is, what are the ethical (not necessarily moral, or virtuous) beliefs and values that he holds as “ideals”, as well as those of his “girlfriends’” would be the source of his “uncaring ethic”, and their not/reproducing it (74-80). 

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To draw the axes of “Hef’s” “ideal self”, (88-89) Madison graphs three ideals “Hef” developed his actions, his relationalities and relationships in relation to: the achievement of praise, fame derived of respect for him, his accomplishments and authoritative social position, and (the appearance or imitation of) desirability of his masculinity and virility (Madison 1:06:43-2:13:50). Of the seven “girlfriends”, Madison distinguishes two sub-groups: the “ideal self” of the “mean girls”; those that accepted and/or internalized, circulated and expanded onto Hefner’s uncaring logics and political strategies by constructing hostile in-groups, harassing and/or manipulating other “girlfriends”, and contributing to a precarious society of “girlfriends”; could be understood as successful in celebrity and beauty, possessing capital and social power, and self-preservation (1:05:27-2:57:59). The “ideal self” of the second group; Madison’s “allies” who found “Hef’s” moral and political philosophies incompatible with their ideologies, and retreated into themselves in order to disengage from the “ethic of uncaring”, applying the patriarch’s ideals by reconstructing their external and internal selves to be “good girl(friend)s”; could be conceptualized as “virtuous” (as Nodding uses the term) and “beautiful/possessing value” in Hefner’s aesthetic criteria (2:34:06-4:14:59). As will be considered later, the reasoning for the girlfriends’ internalization and expansion of “Hef’s’” “ethic of uncaring” must be traced to their understanding of their being a “girlfriend”, or more significantly, their position of “girlfriend” (Ullmann-Margalit, 2006: 158-168).

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If becoming a “girlfriend” was a juncture of “converting”, where to remain in their current situation was not an option, their decisions as a “girlfriend” are made in a different context than if that initial decision was perceived as “opting” or “drifting” (Ullmann-Margalit, 2006: 158-171). “Care” is an ethic of relationality: Noddings centres the feeling and memory of being cared-for and the confirmation of the (virtuous) “ideal self” offered by being one-caring as the universal principle; for the “non-pathological”; motivating human relations as opposed to duty (Noddings, 1984: 74-92). The potentiality of being a cared-for, to have one’s “caring” be “completed” in another, should be figured as the self’s benefit for the self-sacrificial act of caring (74-82). Fundamental to the “ethic of caring” is such a naturalness – “I must” – or logic – “I ought” – of obligation to care (76-79). Inversely, to understand Hefner’s logics and political strategies of “uncaring”, the condition of justification – what reasons being met with “uncaring”, how is “uncaring” ethical in relation to “Hef’s” ideals – would be more appropriate to consider (76-89).

It is logical to state Noddings’ “ethic of caring” takes as the principle model of relationality, that which all subsequent relations are grown in relationship to, that of a parent and their child (74-87). Of “Hef’s” parenting, such is presented – he allocated only a few hours of one evening per week to quality time with his nine- and ten-year-old sons, and thought unacceptable his conceptualization by the public as a father (Madison 1:36:30-1:50:25). Behind such an aversion to the duties and image of fatherhood, Hefner purchased the matching property next to the “Playboy Mansion” for his wife (in a legal sense) and their sons, and provided the necessary funds for each cared-for to achieve their desired ends (1:38:46-1:50:42). Therefore, a model of “care” which replaces physical or internal caring with not adequate but excess financial provision as caring for the cared-for’s external and internal needs and desires, emerges as his “ethic of caring” (Noddings, 2006: 74-89). “Hef’s” “ethic of caring” perverts into an “ethic of uncaring” as the conditions of his reception of his “girlfriends” as ones-caring and cared-fors shifts from a foundation of apolitical, natural or ethical caring, to an ideological – and Noddings would argue, pathological – caring (75-89). Where “caring” is excess financial provision, and the justification for “caring” is that the “girlfriends” preserve Hefner’s “ideal self” (76-89), an “ethic of uncaring” emerges to ensure that the group of young women, each individually, accomplish such.

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“Hef” was motivated to stabilize his “girlfriends’” “wallowing in our own insecurities, and pawing for his acceptance” (Madison 50:34-2:13:50). He juxtaposed the newly “recruited” “girlfriends” with those owning greater “mansion-capital”; compared the “good behaviour” – obedience, participation, commitment – of some, to the “bad behaviour” – individuality, wanting, the potential of infidelity – of others; and rewarded and praised the recreation of the hegemonic (to Playboy) ideal of women's beauty – youthful, thin, large breasted, blonde, tanned, with Eurocentric features, absent of body hair or blemish (1:40:51-4:24:14). Madison, whose case was a synecdoche of the “girlfriends’” collective experiences, articulates the logics informing the “uncaring-girlfriend” political scheme: “Girlfriends that didn't get along, gave him the feeling of being fought over, and being fought over made him feel desired, something he was desperate to feel in his old age. A stable environment wasn't much fun for him, so he began using me as a means to [victimize the other girlfriends],” (2:13:52-2:14:08). For Hefner, justifying such with the “caring” of financial security and (theoretical) professional opportunities, maintained a society with a code of adversarial “girlfriend-” relationalities and relationships (17:08-3:59:59).

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The different “mean girls” complicated and/or perpetuated the “ethic of uncaring” in sliding intensities (50:34-2:53:56).“Vicky” approached and pitched the position to to-be “girlfriends” without disclosing its sexual obligations so as to gain “girlfriend-capital”; she and "Tina" concealed the temporal obligations, enforced rules and the bodily expectations of “girlfriends” so as to comparatively appear “virtuous”; the whole group targeted Madison and her internal friends or “allies” with cruel actions, non-actions and rhetoric in the objective of eroding their self-esteem and wills to survive (1:32:09-3:25:37). In Ullmann-Margalit’s theorization of “big decisions”, once such a “life-transforming” decision is made, the decision-maker undergoes a change in their fundamental identity, or “core” (Ullmann-Margalit, 2006: 158-164). The post-decision self and her interiority is incompatible with the pre-decision self and hers, and necessarily, out of the size of the decision, a “lingering shadow” haunts of what-could-have-been (158-168). Ullmann-Margalit re-examines the conditions of choice in the context of junctures of “opting”: places in one’s life where a decision must be made that transforms one’s “core” self, causes “irrevocable” effects, and “casts a…shadow” over the option that was not chosen (157-171). Though an objective juncture, to the decision-maker, “opting” may be viewed as “converting” or diminished through “drifting” (158-171).

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Madison addresses the “mean girls’” reasons for choosing – in actuality, “converting” – to become a “girlfriend” through the unfurling of their relationality to him – they sought to procure increased allowances and gifts, to avoid (all forms of) closeness and intimacy with him, to obtain recognition and care from individuals with economic, industry and social power, they (loudly) articulated disgust and pity for him (1:41:17-3:22:44). Such young women viewed becoming Hefner’s “girlfriend” as the opportunity to their ideal futures and therefore, accepted, took on and/or added to the “ethic of uncaring” and the precarious, adversarial internal “Mansion” society, because returning to their past lives was unconceivable (Madison 57:24-3:22:53). Madison’s circumstances (42:23-2:44:16) – like “Lisa”, who became a “girlfriend” to become a Playboy centrefold and found her former self, after months, disconnected from her post-“girlfriend” self – (2:33:14-2:40:57) was an instance of  “drifting” (Ullmann-Margalit, 2006: 169-171). She believed her ideal future (success if not as an actress, than in the entertainment industry) could be achieved through being a “girlfriend” (50:33-1:32:05); believing she was unable (or it would be impossible) to return in self, life and image to that she had pre-participation in “Playboy”, she convinced herself she was contented as being Hefner’s single, permanent partner (1:32:06-2:05:07); internalized the logic of the “ethic of uncaring” and transformed her self into that which would reaffirm/build onto “Hef’s” (1:32:05-2:52:30) “ideal self” (Ullmann-Margalit, 2006: 88-89).

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To conclude this examination of Hugh Hefner, Playboy founder/editor-in-chief/septuagenarian man who had a decades-long custom of victimizing very young women, (Madison 1:00:07-2:58:43) I foreground the reflective and defiant voice of Madison, as well as of her “allies” and even of the “mean girls”: “But I was young, and blinded by his fame and accomplishments…Like Beauty locked up in the Beast’s castle, I developed my own brand of Stockholm Syndrome – identifying with my captor…I thought I could trust him. All [along]…overlooking the fact that we were mice trapped inside the glamorous maze he created. It was survival of the fittest,” (2:23:18-2:27:11).

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Bibliographic Information

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Madison, Holly. Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny. Narrated by Holly Madison, Audible, 2015. Audiobook.

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Noddings, Nel. Caring: A Relational Approach to Ethics & Moral Education. University of California Press, 2013.

Ullmann-Margalit, Edna. “Big Decisions: Opting, Converting, Drifting.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, vol. 58, no. 1, 2006, pp. 157-172, doi.org/10.1017/S1358246106058085. Accessed 11 Oct. 2022.

“What the F*ck is Beauty Anymore and Does Anybody Still Care?”: A Survey of the Representations of Mainstream, Alternative and Revolutionary Concepts of Beauty on the Social Platform, Instagram

Women and men are allowed to have bodies in different ways. Men are allowed to have a mental body and an emotional body, and a physical body, and it is understood that the latter body does not determine whether the former bodies are worthy of value. Women are allowed to have a mental body and an emotional body, and a physical body, and it is accepted that the latter body can deny the value of the former bodies whether the physical body is too valuable or not valuable enough.

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It is an established fact about Western society that in it, beauty is a kind of capital and beauty can earn and grant power. A woman’s beauty can provide her with wealth, opportunities and privileges, and on the other hand, it can take away her respect, autonomy and humanity. A woman that does not have beauty can have her agency, privacy and honour respected, and in a different context, she can have her thoughts, voice and presence ignored. I lay out the benefits and disadvantages of possessing and not possessing beauty as a woman, to lay bare the interconnectedness of a woman’s appearance and her worth in the eyes of (Western) society.

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Social media is the new reality of the 21st century. Since its launching in 2010, nowhere has been a more omnipresent representation of reality than Instagram. What you post on Instagram defines who you are to the world; what you do, how you live and what you look like have come to be the primary signifiers of a person’s self. Because of the significance placed on personal appearance on Instagram and thus in the modern day, appearing beautiful is valorized; because the lines between Instagram’s reality and reality itself are imperceptible, not being as beautiful as someone ‘beautiful’ on Instagram can have severe social and psychological impacts.

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Naturally, in the years following Instagram’s domination, the profession of modelling has undergone many alterations. There are a lot of benefits; economic, as well as social and psychological; of being ‘beautiful’ on Instagram, and therefore occupying a position as one of its ‘most beautiful’, is highly sought-after and influential. Objectively, there is no one criteria to fulfill to be considered and subsequently treated as ‘beautiful’, but, specific forms of ‘beauty’ can be conceptualized and certain criteria can be drawn up in order to fulfill that form of beauty. As stated, not fulfilling the criteria for a form of beauty can have extremely negative effects on one – chiefly for this conversation of the social and psychological kinds – and consequently they may go to dangerous lengths to change that.

I am invested in exploring three different conceptualizations of ‘beauty’ that have been established on Instagram: mainstream beauty, alternative beauty and revolutionary beauty. Mainstream beauty constructs its concept of beauty in relation to modern beauty standards; the concept of beauty that is alternative beauty deviates from modern beauty standards but does not seek to challenge them; the concept of beauty that is revolutionary beauty deviates from and attempts to defy to disempower modern beauty standards. To gain an understanding of what mainstream beauty, alternative beauty and revolutionary beauty look like I have taken as my sample to study, (the three newest Instagram images [featuring their body] posted by the) five models advanced as the most representative of one kind of beauty, per each kind of beauty.

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The authority putting forth those advancements which I have formed the basis of my investigation on, is the fashion and lifestyle publication Vogue. The media plays a fundamental role in the conceptualizations of beauty, shaping, recognizing, disseminating and upholding concepts of beauty. Vogue is a leading publication on fashion and lifestyle, a prominent voice in the discussion of what and who society should think of as associated with the visually and sensorily pleasing, attractive and enjoyable – the ‘beautiful’. Vogue is a synecdoche of the fashion, beauty and cultural worlds, and as such, it has been affected by the call for representation and inclusivity of bodies that cannot and do not conform to the classic Western ideal of beauty, that has grown louder over the last two decades. The publication has responded to the demands made of the fashion, beauty and cultural industries to present as ‘beautiful’ bodies that are not white, thin, lean and tall – a practice that they had gotten away with without much consequence, for most of their lifetimes.

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I have collected three articles from Vogue written from 2015 to 2021, a period during which Instagram experienced supremacy amongst its class of social media platforms, that propose which models are the most ‘beautiful’ in terms of mainstream beauty (“The 10 Most Influential Models on Instagram”, 2015), alternative beauty (“The Alternative Models of Instagram Who Are Making a Case for the Anti-Selfie”, 2015) and revolutionary beauty (“12 personalities you need to follow to bring body positivity and self-love to your Instagram feed”). Coinciding with the ascension of Instagram, is the spilling into the mainstream of conversations surrounding the toxicity of the classic Western ideal of beauty, as well as the standardization of the belief that perpetuating this ideal of beauty is negligent and harmful. While we inhabit a moment in time that presents itself as protesting the ideology of ‘those who fulfill the criteria for the classic Western ideal of beauty are the only ones that can be considered and treated as ‘beautiful’’, according to my findings, how mainstream beauty, alternative beauty and even revolutionary beauty have been developed and represented on Instagram do not diverge from this ideology too significantly.

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Each type of beauty’s upholding in a particular sense this criteria – whiteness, thinness, leanness and tallness – causes specific negative effects on the consumers of the images of these ‘beautiful’ models that do not fulfill the criteria themselves. Haller outlines why it is potentially dangerous for women who do not fit the criteria for a certain concept of beauty to be subjected to it as frequently as they would be on Instagram: “when women are exposed to environmental, social, and cultural influences that promote a particular body image, it impacts how they view their bodies…and can lead to changes [towards disordered and/or risky] behaviours to achieve a more desirable physical shape/size[/look]. (7)” With reference to my findings as well as Haller’s and others’ work on the effects of beauty ideals promoted through (social) media on women, I will be demonstrating how mainstream beauty could encourage cosmetic surgeries and/or disordered or risky eating and exercise behaviours; alternative beauty could cause negative perceptions of one’s own body (ex. negative body image, body dysmorphia); and revolutionary beauty could isolate and/or injure individuals whose bodies exist outside of most of the criteria for the Western beauty ideal.

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Between the male and female genders, how the latter is socialized from an early age has a greater emphasis upon the importance of appearance than how the former is socialized. We are taught to think about how we emote, how we sit and how we dress amongst a myriad of other conditionings we are given which are based upon our relationships to our surroundings. How we should present ourselves to the world depends upon each of our agents of socialization; in the modern age of social media, Instagram has established itself as one of the foremost agents of socialization, especially for girls and young women. Haller discusses how all, but particularly young female, users of Instagram compare themselves to the images they consume on the platform; they evaluate themselves, develop their own identities and determine their opinions of themselves in relation to these comparisons (9).

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In order to introduce my findings on how mainstream beauty is presented on Instagram, I must preface by providing what modern beauty standards are in our present moment. As is the foundation of this paper, despite the prominence of the argument that the classic Western ideal – or the “thin ideal” as it is referred to by each of the scholars consulted for this paper – of beauty is being protested in discourses surrounding what ‘beautiful’ looks like today, that is not the case. The “thin ideal” of beauty consists of the criteria of flawless (blemish free, and hairless) skin, narrow shoulders, developed breasts, a thin waist, long and slender legs and narrow hips (McComb and Mills, “Young women’s body image” 49). That this concept of beauty is naturally unattainable for most women is objective, and despite the fashion, beauty and cultural industries’ rhetoric that they have recognized that and are working to disempower the ideal, they have not stopped perpetuating it to any substantial degree. Over the course of Instagram’s lifetime, another ideal of beauty emerged, and from the mid-2010s onwards it and the thin ideal, have made up Western beauty standards. This ideal is the “hourglass ideal” of beauty, whose criteria is as followed: well-developed breasts, a thin waist, wider hips and a well-developed behind (Hernández et. al. 86). Because of the wider breast, hip and behind proportions of the hourglass ideal, its valuing of curvedness, softness and fleshiness and its criteria’s basing off of (what can be) the natural composition of black women’s bodies (Cherid 362-363), the inclusion of the hourglass ideal into modern beauty standards is often cited as why mainstream beauty is ‘diverse’ and ‘inclusive’ in the current moment.

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From the sample of the five models advanced by Vogue as the most representative of the ‘mainstream beauty’ concept of beauty; Kendall Jenner, Cara Delevigne, Miranda Kerr, Candice Swanepoel and Gisele Bündchen (Simon); all of the models fulfilled the criteria for the thin ideal of beauty, and two of the models fulfilled some of the criteria for the hourglass ideal of beauty, Jenner and Kerr. Mainstream beauty as it is presented on Instagram according to this information, therefore hierarchizes adherence to beauty standards set by the thin ideal above adherence to beauty standards set by the hourglass ideal. The frequency of the thin ideal’s criteria, most notably (for this discussion) narrow shoulders, a thin waist, long and slender legs and narrow hips, was much greater than the frequency of the hourglass ideal’s criteria, of which Jenner and Kerr fulfilled only partly (Jenner, a well-developed behind and Kerr, well-developed breasts).

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The interconnectedness of mainstream beauty and the thin ideal on Instagram, reinforces how the contemporary standard of beauty is not a ‘diverse’ or ‘inclusive’ concept of beauty, as prominent voices from the fashion, beauty and cultural industries in discourses on how ‘beauty’ is qualified in the present, would like all of society to believe. The (general, natural) unattainability of the thin ideal and its dominance in what the mainstream concept of ‘beautiful’ looks like, indicates that in the present day, there is likely the perpetuation of attempted achievements of the thin ideal through unnatural means. If one seeks to be considered – and treated as – ‘mainstream beautiful’, or beautiful in the mainstream context, and they do not fulfill the criteria of ‘mainstream beauty’ naturally, then they must make their bodies fulfill the criteria. Rather than reconstruct the beauty standards and subsequently ‘open up’ the concept of mainstream beauty, the fashion, beauty and cultural industries continue to encourage that mainstream beauty be achieved through an individual’s own efforts (if it cannot be, through their genetics).

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While McComb and Mills point out that not all women, young or otherwise, are negatively impacted by Instagram images of women that possess the thin ideal through natural or unnatural means (49-50), Haller proposes that certain women with increased sensitivity to bodily comparisons (such as those with perfectionist tendencies or whose identities are interlaced with their being beautiful), can develop negative evaluations of their bodies, negative body images and tendencies of disordered eating and exercising, because of them (10). She writes, “body dissatisfaction increases when women [predisposed to physical comparisons] are exposed to images of women that depict the thin ideal…These increases in body dissatisfaction then pave the way for disordered eating [and exercising] (8).” The overconsumption of images which portray the thin ideal, has the ability to motivate women who have put personally demanding and/or self-imposed standards on their appearances to develop fasting, calorie counting, binge eating, vomiting, laxative use, dieting, and over-exercising behaviours.

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Jenner’s and Kerr’s partial fulfilling of the hourglass beauty ideal should not be discounted as a finding – 40% of the sample studied fit some of the criteria for the hourglass ideal. Finding that this 40% specifically, fulfilled only part of the criteria for the hourglass beauty ideal speaks to how generally unattainable, like the thin ideal, the hourglass ideal is. The hourglass beauty ideal takes as its criteria a very particular variation of the hourglass body type – one that includes well-developed breasts, a thin toned waist, a flat stomach, a well-developed behind and thick thighs (McComb and Mills, “The effect of physical” 165). Possessing both, specific body parts that are natural to a curvier body type and other body parts that are natural to a thinner body type, is not common for most women. In contrast to the thin ideal, achieving the hourglass ideal through ‘natural’ procedures such as disordered eating and exercising behaviours is less hypothetically possible for more women. In order to make one’s body possess both kinds of body parts, to make the hourglass ideal attainable, cosmetic surgery is for many women, the most if not only viable option. Invasive surgeries like breast augmentation, breast lift, liposuction, tummy tuck, buttock lift and buttock augmentation surgeries, come with the associated risks of anesthetic, blood and/or infection complications. The hourglass ideal’s presence in mainstream beauty’s concept of beauty has the ability to cause it (mainstream beauty) to pose – additional – serious health risks to frequent consumers of mainstream beauty that do not fulfill the hourglass ideal, due to its (the hourglass ideal’s) general impossibility without invasive surgical interference.

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Unlike either mainstream beauty or revolutionary beauty, alternative beauty does not have an immediate relationship to modern beauty standards. Alternative beauty is not conceptualized to be representative of modern beauty standards, nor is it conceptualized in opposition to them. If mainstream beauty upholds modern beauty standards and revolutionary beauty (in theory) tears them down, alternative beauty exists outside of them. Vogue in the article from which the sample of models studied as representative of ‘alternative beauty’ was collected, conceives of alternative beauty as in relation to subcultural beauty standards (Satenstein). Dominant culture, from which modern beauty standards derive, is by nature homogenous; every part of it is controlled and monitored by the dominant power. Subcultures are heterogenous – there is not one dominant power that controls all of the subcultures, but rather within every subculture there is a different dominant power. Therefore, considering what ‘subcultural beauty standards’ are and how alternative beauty is represented on Instagram in relation to them, cannot be a comparable procedure to examining how mainstream beauty and revolutionary beauty are represented respectively in relation to, and in opposition to, dominant cultural beauty standards.

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The concept of alternative beauty must be more abstract than the concepts of beauty formed around or contrary to dominant cultural beauty standards. Each subculture is built around a specific ideology that differentiates from dominant culture’s ideology. This ideology is central or at least linked, to everything that the subculture develops around the ideology. Who the dominant power is (/or whether there even is a centralized power) and how they control and maintain each part of the subculture (/or the method[s] through which each part of the subculture is controlled and maintained), are individualized. Subcultures are ‘internal bodies’: they function according to their individual, internal logic. A subculture’s beauty standards are therefore born out of its specific internal logic. Rather than attempt to define an overarching set of ‘subcultural’ beauty standards of which alternative beauty can be understood as conceptualized in relation to, ‘alternative beauty’ can be understood more abstractly as the alternative to dominant cultural (‘mainstream’) beauty.

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Mainstream beauty is purposed with being “beautiful” according to the terms of dominant cultural ideology. What groups every subculture together is that their ideologies differentiate from the dominant culture’s ideology; therefore, a set of ‘subcultural’ beauty standards can be thought of as differentiated from modern beauty standards. Alternative beauty is purposed with being “beautiful” not according to the terms of dominant cultural ideology. Going further than the artificial criteria for beauty, beauty in dominant cultural terms is conceived of as causing visual pleasure (Sartwell). Beauty in subcultural terms, therefore can be conceived of as causing alternative visual responses. Vogue refers to the appearances of the models representative of alternative beauty as unique, unconventional, rebellious and edgy (Satenstein); rather than ‘please’, alternative beauty shocks, startles, confuses, intrigues and inspires.

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As I discovered with my findings, alternative beauty as it is presented on Instagram is an alternative form of beauty to mainstream beauty. Each of the models surveyed, Lida Fox, Mona Matsuoka, Alice Metza, Ruby Aldridge and Kiki Willems (Satenstein), differentiated from the beauty of the models surveyed in the mainstream beauty category. The essential difference between the beauty of the two groups of models is that the appearances of the alternative beauty models were idiosyncratic and natural and the appearances of the mainstream beauty models were reminiscent and perfected. Whereas the mainstream beauty models shared similar features; features that are generally difficult to achieve genetically or without surgical intervention and align with the classic Western ideal of beauty; the alternative beauty models were incomparable to one another. Each of the models representative of alternative beauty were unique and distinctive; because they deviated from (some) modern beauty standards they looked like real women: complex, authentic and flawed. Their attributes which strayed from the criteria for mainstream beauty (ex. Fox’s less lean waist, Matsuoka’s blemished skin, Metza’s upper lip hair, Alridge’s masculine bone structure, Willem’s smaller breasts) increased their visual interest – they made the models more captivating, exciting and compelling to look at.

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Though alternative beauty is differentiated from how beauty is defined in dominant cultural terms, as evidenced by the individualistic and unconventional (imperfect, realistic) appearances of the sample of models representative of it, it is not absent of the ability to cause potential harm. Across all five of the models studied, thinness – but not the thin ideal – appeared consistently. Thinness is not inextricable from nor nuclear to modern beauty standards (the fashion, beauty and cultural industries are not strangers to ridiculing a woman’s body that is ‘too thin’). However, it has been established that (Western) dominant culture’s conceptualizations of beauty have continually emphasized the importance of thinness from the 18th century onwards into the modern day (Strings 118).

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Quick and Byrd-Bredbenner write, echoing Haller and McComb and Mills, “social comparisons with the ‘ultra-slender’ female body type typically portrayed in media may promote body dissatisfaction (57)”. Body dissatisfaction refers to the negative perception of one’s body caused by the perceived discrepancy between one’s body image – views, perceptions, beliefs, thoughts and feelings surrounding one’s physical appearance – and the ‘ideal’ body image – the body one idolizes and aspires towards (Heider et al. 158). Body dissatisfaction can lead to negative body image, where one perceives their body as ugly or wrong, and in turn, negative body image can lead to body dysmorphia, a disorder causing one to visually perceive their body not as it is, but as they mentally perceive it to be. While alternative beauty differentiates itself from mainstream beauty like subcultures differentiate themselves from dominant culture, if thinness is a standardized attribute of alternative beauty as my findings would imply, there is a high likelihood consumers taking in large concentrations of images depicting alternative beauty would develop body dissatisfaction issues.

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Unlike mainstream beauty which is circulating in the mainstream (dominant cultural) spaces of Instagram, to consume images of alternative beauty one must be seeking out and occupying alternative (subcultural) spaces of the platform. On the possible connection between subcultures and body dissatisfaction Swami notes, “[subcultural behaviours] can be used to critique mainstream culture and explore alternative subjectivities…but they may also stimulate dysfunctional cognitions about the importance of appearance and contribute to risk for negative [perceptions of one’s] body (30).” The social experience of belonging to a subculture is much different than that of belonging to the dominant culture; a subculture is a community, kinship relationships (from personal relationship to parasocial relationships) link individual members inhabiting the space together. If fulfilling specific criteria for appearances is a fundamental part of gaining acceptance into and by the subcultural community, then those criteria will be valorized by community and wanting-to-be community members. If thinness is an overarching criterion for fulfilling alternative beauty, the ‘look’ that is valorized by the subcultural community, then women that want to be accepted into the subculture – to have access to its available kinship relationships – will idolize thinness. The idolization of thinness by one who perceives their body as in discrepancy from the ‘ideal’ body image (the thin body image), has a high risk of leading to the development of body dissatisfaction issues. van den Berg et al.’s research speaks to the potential harm of thinness’ connection to alternative beauty; its being a ‘subcultural beauty standard’; on the self-perceptions of non-thin women that seek to gain acceptance into or by alternative (subcultural) communities: “Having a higher BMI and being exposed to environments that emphasize the importance of thinness are likely to increase the self-relevance of thinness; therefore these factors are likely to be associated with an increase in body comparison, which could lead to body dissatisfaction (258).”

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While alternative beauty is an alternative to dominant cultural (mainstream) beauty, a different kind or meaning of beauty, it does not seek to deconstruct dominant cultural beauty. As stated, it exists outside of dominant cultural beauty – it is separate from dominant cultural beauty. Though subcultural beauty standards differentiate from modern beauty standards, they do not seek to transform what beauty is in dominant cultural terms. Dominant cultural beauty is not being broken into, ripped apart and reshaped because of the existence of alternative beauty. Revolutionary beauty, is positioned in opposition to dominant beauty – it is conceptualized against what dominant beauty looks like, it is everything that dominant beauty excludes from its definition of beauty. Revolutionary beauty challenges particularly, the classic Western ideal of beauty; by being exactly what this ideal is not, revolutionary beauty challenges the very meaning of the word “beauty” (as it is perceived in the West). Revolutionary beauty’s purpose is to disempower mainstream beauty, to dethrone it as the ultimate concept of beauty according to which all women are judged against and determined as either beautiful, or not beautiful.

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Phrased another way, revolutionary beauty is aspiring to tear down what mainstream beauty currently is, and put in its place a new conceptualization of “beauty” – one that is inclusive of all shapes, sizes, colours and looks of bodies (Lechner par. 9). Revolutionary beauty wants its conceptualization of beauty, to become the dominant cultural beauty. In social and academic discourses on what “beauty” is and its relevance in the modern day, revolutionary beauty has been termed “body positive” beauty. “Body positive” (or revolutionary) beauty, constructs its concept of beauty as including all of the forms a body can be a body, that are excluded from mainstream beauty; if a body does not fulfill a certain criterion of mainstream beauty, it will fulfill the negative (as in the inverse) criterion for revolutionary beauty (Lazuka et al. 86). In principle, the criteria for fulfilling body positive beauty is to have a body that does not conform to modern beauty standards: the foundation of revolutionary (or ‘antihegemonic’) beauty is upending “beauty”, and therefore there should be no precise, restrictive ‘antihegemonic beauty standards’.

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As mine and Lazuka et al.’s Instagram research revealed (90), conversely, body positive beauty is by no means devoid of particular, enforced beauty standards. Across the five models most representative of revolutionary beauty according to Vogue; Lizzo, Neha Parulkar, Megan Jane Crabbe, Nyma Tang and Sarah Nicole Landry (Khandelwal); there was a diversity of bodies presented. Lizzo, Parulkar and Crabbe have bodies that would be considered by Lazuka et al. as “overweight” (87); Lizzo and Tang are African-American, Parulkar is Indian and Crabbe is biracial of black and white parentage; Landry has what Lechner would describe as the “bodily faults” (par. 9) of loose skin, cellulite and stretch marks. Each of the five models’ bodies challenge the dominant cultural ideal of beauty; in comparison to either mainstream beauty or alternative beauty, what revolutionary beauty is had proven to be a much broader, less narrowly defined concept. My findings on how revolutionary beauty is in practice on Instagram, and what revolutionary beauty is in theory – “[the protestation of] unattainable, narrowly-defined beauty ideals [, the] encourage[ment of] individuals to challenge current societal messages regarding beauty and t[he] accept[ance of] more diverse body sizes and appearances as attractive (Lazuka et al. 87)” –, showed to be compatible.

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Though revolutionary beauty as it is presented on Instagram aligns with what revolutionary beauty’s conceptualization of beauty is in theory, this presentation of revolutionary beauty was not without commonalities. A principle of revolutionary beauty should be that there are no ‘antihegemonic beauty standards’, as the beauty seeking to dismantle “beauty” as an exclusive, discriminatory concept should not itself, uphold precise, restrictive standards. Across all of the five models studied however, each of their bodies existed on a spectrum of hourglass shapes, from a thin, well-defined hourglass shape to a wide, loosely-defined hourglass shape. The consistency of the hourglass shape amongst the ‘most beautiful’ of women that embody revolutionary beauty, is an extremely problematic finding.

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According to this finding, there is a disconnection between the ‘rules’ of revolutionary beauty and the awarding of revolutionary beauty. ‘Revolutionary’ beauty should not, as it appears to judging by its representation on Instagram, uphold the hourglass shape as a significant criterion for its achievement. I reiterate, if revolutionary beauty is intended to genuinely disrupt, interrogate and dismantle the classic, Western perception of “beauty”, then there should be no standard barring its fulfillment. Echoing Lechner (par. 11), if the ideology of revolutionary beauty only seeks to protest for, encourage and accept antihegemonic hourglass bodies – if this one form of body is that which the body positive movement takes as its cause for advocacy – who is fighting for antihegemonic non-hourglass bodies to be perceived as “beautiful”? How is ‘revolutionary’ beauty, ultimately revolutionary, if it is fighting on behalf of a single category of bodies?

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Rather than democratize, or, disintegrate, “beauty”, revolutionary beauty has as its objective the expansion of current dominant cultural beauty standards to include antihegemonic hourglass bodies. In their respective research on the representations of body positive beauty on Instagram, Lechner writes, “the contemporary body positivity [movement] has de-centred those more radically different bodies (par. 11)”, and Lazuka et al. found, “the majority of posts portray[ed] culturally-based beauty ideals (90)”, of which (in the West) hourglass bodies for women are one. Revolutionary beauty proposes that it recognizes any body that does not conform to mainstream beauty’s criteria as ‘beautiful’ in its terms, therefore, its only recognizing bodies that fulfill the antihegemonic hourglass body ‘ideal’, has consequences. For one, any woman that does not fulfill this ideal will be excluded from the body positive movement community which, like a subculture, is home to possible kinship relationships. Any woman who has been considered and treated as “not beautiful” by dominant culture, will be able to relate in some capacity, to another woman who has experienced the same, making the social, emotional and psychological value of kinship bonds formed within the body positive movement community, great.

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Revolutionary beauty defines itself as a beauty that dominant culture has discounted and disparaged as ‘non-beauty’; the body positive movement, in claim alone, promises to fight for the acceptance of every woman who has been labelled as ‘non-beautiful’ by dominant culture. In addition to feelings of isolation caused by their exclusion from both body positive beauty and the movement, women who do not fulfill mainstream beauty’s criteria nor the antihegemonic hourglass ideal, will have very minimal external representation and validation of their particular body as being beautiful. Not having external positive reinforcement that one is beautiful is not definitively harmful for, nor is the perception of oneself as beautiful valued by, every woman, but, this consequence of revolutionary beauty’s lack of inclusivity can potentially have negative effects on some of these women’s mental and physical healths.

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My discussions of mainstream beauty, alternative beauty and revolutionary beauty have emphasized the risk factors that the mass circulation of images representative of and vis a vis promoting them on Instagram can have on women who do not themselves fulfill their criteria. Mainstream beauty’s importance placed on the thin ideal can inspire disordered eating and exercising behaviours, and concurrently, its valuing of the hourglass ideal can encourage dangerous cosmetic procedures. Alternative beauty’s apparent centering of thinness as a fundamental attribute of it, can engrain in women who belong to alternative (such-) cultures the importance of thinness which can then lead to body perception issues, such as body dissatisfaction and body dysmorphia. The falseness of revolutionary beauty’s claim that it seeks to dismantle dominant culture’s beauty standards by advocating for the celebration and acceptance of bodies that do not conform to such standards, can isolate and disempower women who fall outside of such, as well as its, standards.

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Unspoken throughout most of the course of my discussion of the three different, established conceptualizations of beauty, is that there is an inherent importance to beauty. In the introduction to this paper, I ruminated on the relationship between women and appearance in (Western) society – how there are consequences for both, being too beautiful and not being beautiful enough. Of the two, I believe most of the scholars consulted for this paper, would agree that the first is more socially, psychologically and even financially beneficial. Especially in a world dominated by Instagram; a technological and cultural phenomenon which’s permeability has enabled it to bleed into reality and muddy the difference between the two; having a “beautiful” physical appearance, is generously rewarded. However, as touched on lightly in the consideration of revolutionary beauty’s risks, not all women care about ‘being beautiful’. Similarly, not all women are impacted by Instagram, and its affects on everyday life.

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Another (seeming) undercurrent throughout my discussions of mainstream beauty, alternative beauty and revolutionary beauty, is the demonization of the women who do fulfill the criteria for any of them. This paper is by no means a condemnation of any of the models surveyed during my research nor any woman that is considered and treated as ‘beautiful’ according to the criteria for any of the three conceptualizations of beauty. Rather, the examination of my findings from my Instagram research and the contemplation of the risk factors of specific beauty standards for certain women, are to add to the scholastic body of work on the impact of modern beauty standards promoted by the media on women in general. My paper is not purposed with vilifying one kind of woman – accusing her for the impact an image of her can have on another kind of woman –, but considering the meaning of “beauty” on Instagram, and the affects of these meanings of “beauty” on women after they have closed the app.

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In that regard and to close out this paper, I think it is valuable to evaluate one of the ways in which idealization and internalization of the beauty standards explored throughout this paper can be prevented, so as to discourage women who do not necessarily fit their image of beauty, from potentially dangerous attempts at achieving them. Thompson and Heinberg developed a framework for engaging with messages about beauty advanced by social medias like Instagram, that will reduce their ability to negatively impact a content (/image) consumer’s self-perception. They propose that any body in a social media post, should be looked at with the following questions in mind: does the model really look like the image (ex. has the body been digitally enhanced or edited), how long did it take the model to come to how they look in the image, what are the motives behind the image and is affecting the consumer’s perceptions of themselves (for the positive or for the negative) among these motives (346). By taking into consideration whether the body in the image is the body of the model, what steps were required to make the body of the model look how it does in the image, why it was necessary for the body to be in the image and whether the body in the image appears as it does to have a specific affect, will enable any woman to engage more healthily with a body that is presented as “beautiful”. Though it is impossible for all women (especially, young women and girls) to not be impacted by the mass concentration and widespread circulation of Instagram images featuring a body (or bodies) that possesses a largely unattainable, set of  “beautiful” attributes, populating a practice of looking that questions the realness and the motivations of that body, might have the power to save at least some.

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Works Cited:

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Cherid, Maha Ikram. “’Ain’t Got Enough Money to Pay Me Respect”: Blackfishing, Cultural Appropriation, and the Commodification of Blackness.’” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, vol. 21, no. 5, 2021, pp. 359-364. Sage Journals, doi:10.1177%2F15327086211029357.

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Haller, Sarah L. “Chapter 2: Phase I Introduction and Literature Review.” An Examination of Instagram Use and Body Image in a Sociocultural Model of Disordered Eating, edited by Sarah L. Haller, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2020, pp. 6-27.

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Hernández et al. “Hourglass Body Shape Ideal Scale and disordered eating.” Body Image, vol. 38, 2021, pp. 85-94. ScienceDirect, doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.03.013.

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Heider et al. “Body Dissatisfaction Revisited: On the Importance of Implicit Beliefs about Actual and Ideal Body Image.” Psychologica Belgica, vol. 58, no. 1, pp. 158-173. Ubiquity Press, doi:10.5334/pb.362.

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Khandelwal, Shireen. “12 personalities you need to follow to bring body positivity and self-love to your Instagram feed.” Vogue India, 5 Feb. 2021, vogue.in/wellness/content/instagram-influencers-championing-self-love-and-body-positivity-that-you-should-follow-now. Accessed 20 Mar. 2022.

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Lazuka et al. “Are We There Yet? Progress in Depicting Diverse Images of Beauty in Instagram’s Body Positivity Movement.” Body Image. Vol. 34, September 2020, pp. 85-93. ScienceDirect, doi: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2020.05.001.

Lechner, Elisabeth. “The Popfeminist Politics of Body Positivity: Creating Spaces for ‘Disgusting’ Female Bodies in US Popular Culture.” Revue française d’études américaines, vol. 158, no. 1, 2019, pp. 71-94. Cair.Info, doi: 10.3917/rfea.158.0071.

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McComb, Sarah E. and Mills, Jennifer S. “The effect of physical appearance perfectionism and social comparison to thin-, slim-thick-, and fit-ideal Instagram imagery on young women’s body image.” Body Image, vol. 40, 2022, pp. 165-175. ScienceDirect, doi: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.12.003.

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McComb, Sarah E. and Mills, Jennifer S. “Young women’s body image following upwards comparison to Instagram models: The role of physical appearance perfectionism and cognitive emotion regulation.” Body Image, vol. 38, 2021, pp. 49-62. ScienceDirect, doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.03.012.

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'Pleasure Is Not Consent and Pleasure Defined By A Man Is Not Pleasure' – Rape and Sexual Assault Portrayed as ‘Sex’ In Tale Seven of Day Two In Boccaccio’s 'The Decameron'

Alatiel, the beautiful daughter of the Sultan of Babylon is sent to the Kingdom of Algarve to marry the King, when upon by bad fate encountering a storm, is left shipwrecked mostly alone, on Majorca. There the nobleman Pericone overcome by desire, tricks her into having sex with him after getting her drunk and pressing himself into her. Fate, unhappy (at Alatiel) with this change in course persuades Pericone’s brother, Marato, to steal Alatiel for his own possession. He kidnaps the young sultana one night, escaping aboard a ship helmed by two Genoese men set for Rumelia: he too, admiring her proceeds to initiate intercourse, which she despite not speaking his language consents to and accepts her new course, for if not anticipated, it is pleasurable.

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Both the Genoese sailors fall quickly into obsession over Alatiel and force Marato overboard wherefore, after each approaching her with their wishes to have her, begin to quarrel about whom should lie with her first - resulting in a knife-fight. This leaves one deceased and the other, severely wounded, the latter whom upon reaching Chiarenza, takes the sultana into his abode, at an inn. Soon after arriving ashore, the sailor is approached with the word that the Prince of Morea, having heard of the Babylonian royalty’s fairness about the town, requests that she be given into his custody. The Prince, admiring her gracefulness, treats her well like his wife and she enjoys his company - their intercourse being mutually sought after. The Duke of Athens, himself besought by the idea of Alatiel’s beauty, visits his friend the Prince, whereupon the royal introduces the nobleman to his princess and immediately, the Duke is enamoured by the sultana. Gradually, this desire consumes his kinship for his friend leading to the nobleman’s secret planning and then executing of the murder of the royal and the kidnapping of the princess - this last act occurring, after he rapes her while she is asleep.

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The Duke of Athens forcibly takes the inconsolably distressed Alatiel as his mistress, and deposits the sultana on a coastal town - not Athens, for that would upset his wife. The Prince’s body is found, which forces his brother, the new Prince, to declare war on the Duke which causes their ally, the Emperor of Constantinople, to do the same, sending his sons to meet with their sister, the Duke’s wife. They, one of which was Constantine, ask to see the beauty. Upon sitting with Alatiel, Constantine is overwhelmed by her fairness, then deciding to abandon his mission for which he was sent and instead, offering to his sister, to selflessly take from Athens her husband’s mistress. After agreeing to meet him, the young Babylonian is hurried through the Duke’s gates sobbing, and into a ship set for Aegina, whose journey results in the young man approaching the woman for intercourse and her conceding to help to forget the strife of her destiny.

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Uzbek, King of the Turks, at war with the Emperor of Constantinople, once hearing of Constantine’s leading a lustful life in Chios with his famously beautiful mistress sets to storm the island. He slaughters, steals from and imprisons its people, among which he recognizes as the sultana whom he then takes as his wife and brings back to Smyrna - the couple, partaking in their union’s conception for nights. The Emperor called upon the King of Cappadocia meanwhile, to help in the war against Uzbek, the Cappadocian King’s eventual agreement and marching towards Turkish lands, forcing the Turkish King out of Smyrna, with his wife left temporarily in the hands of his servant Antioch. Upon Uzbek’s death, Antioch becomes her proper caretaker - he, Antioch, speaking Alatiel’s language and they, happy to get to know one another intimately: emotionally and physically. Hearing Uzbek’s murder and the King of Cappadocia’s advancement, the princess and the servant disappear to Rhodes, where Antioch, of old age, falls sick, and trusts his possessions and Alatiel, to the charge of a friend with them in hiding, a Cyprian merchant. After the servant’s death the two sail with his blessing to Baffa - the merchant, treating her with the kindness of a brother and the pair, aboard the ship, beginning a full alliance.

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One day, from her window, the gentleman Antigonus recognizes her as the Sultan’s daughter and she, him, as once a solider of her father’s. As they reunite, he informs her that her family believes her to be dead, and she confides in him the course of her bad fortune, grieving how she had been ‘revealed’ to other men and that thus her former value had been ‘sacrificed’. He reassures her, that so long as she lie about the events in her past the Sultan would ‘restore’ her to her original status. Antigonus reports to the King of Cyprus that the Sultan of Babylon’s daughter had been found alive and she, after offering this feigned course is welcomed, then sent back home (the trip, celebrated in bliss by the sultana and the gentleman). Alatiel recounts the ‘tale’ of what had happened while she was away to her father: how she had been shipwrecked at Aigues-Mortes, saved by great men and taken to a convent, where she worshipped a provincial saint whose anonymity to her lead to her lying about her origins which, was the reason she was found in Baffa, being delivered there by the good, mistaken graces of a French ship aboard a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Subsequently, Alatiel is promised to be given once more, to the King of Algarve as his wife.

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Alatiel, the main subject or character of the story, is given very little to no agency within it. Her bad fate, misfortune ordered by the Wheel of Fortune or Rota Fortunae, and bad fortune, the sufferings which happen to her, deny her, her own free will - a theme at the core of the Second Day, as Philomena had called that each story should tell of a happy ending coming to a man or woman battered by fate, and not foreseeing such a fortunate twist (Quesada 3).

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Alatiel thus can be understood as representing two ‘spheres of action’: roles (character types) found uniformly across diverse stories first introduced into the study of narratology by Vladimir Propp as, ‘morphology’. She is both, the hero (she leaves home, is tested, delivered, pursued [in many, successive orders], recognized and redeemed) and the princess and her father (she is sought-after; her farther orders for her [as ‘the hero’, she is simultaneously, at his mercy]) (Barry 218-221). Her subjugation and almost complete lack of - bodily and otherwise - autonomy is unusual when taken in the context of The Decameron, for in Boccaccio’s book five of the seven storytellers are women and as is indicated by the Introduction to Day One, are not constrained to the “laws relating to pleasure”. Moreover, the women in the stories the storytellers tell are not confined to misogynistic depiction - they are fully formed, sometimes virtuous, sometimes adept, and assert their agency to fulfill their desires and ambitions (Turello, par. 10).

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What is most troubling to the author of this tale’s teaching, and thus has formed the purpose of its consideration, is that concurrent to Alatiel’s lack of agency is the tale’s recurrent depiction of ‘sex’ - a theme which to the storytellers, is indulged in without shame (in contrast to contemporary, prominent Medieval views which would necessitate such be punished). In The Decameron, the coitus between Alatiel and the men she is under the charge of is meant to be understood as ‘pleasurable’. The tale is structured as a comedy not a tragedy, because the sex in the tale is supposed to elicit elation: Alatiel, besought by bad fortune is subject to a series of strife, be it the death of what the storyteller treats as her ‘lovers’, captivity and transportation to strange lands, involvement in wars, which results in an insecure and unknown course. But, through the ‘pleasure’ of sex, an act which would have otherwise been forbidden (had she kept to her original course), her misfortunes are alleviated.

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In the articulation of the tale, Alatiel engaging in (being apart of) sexual intercourse is a character-building act - since she is ‘participating’ in sex, she is defying the laws which constrain and repress female sexuality and conduct in both, the tale’s canon, Babylon and the Kingdom of Algarve, and the storyteller’s reality, 14th century Italy. Thus, she is a liberated woman, partaking in the pleasure of sex with multiple partners, while not married in spite of the laws which forbid her from so. Alatiel is written in the context of Boccaccio’s society’s understanding of sex (what sex constitutes), that of the storytellers’, to be a proto-feminist character that satisfies her carnal desires - reclaiming her autonomy of action from the patriarchy, and acting to fulfill her own desires. This is a reading of the tale’s events that would hold in contemporary feminist discourse; sexual liberty from patriarchy, being a central argument of second-wave feminism; if what it presents as sex was sex.

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The sexual acts that occur in Tale 7, are written in The Decameron in significantly different language than as they are retold. The ‘sex’, that Panfilo tells and the storytellers receive with delight, are in a modern understanding of sex; a multidisciplinary not simply physical matter; not or not fully, consensual acts of a man penetrating a woman that range in consent from rape to exploitation of emotional distress. The ‘pleasure’ of the sexual act, not requiring a consideration of its consent in the articulation of the tale. Though each encounter (except the Duke of Athens’ that happens while she is asleep, and therefore cannot be either) explicitly or implicitly, describes Alatiel as either consenting before, or enjoying during, the ‘sex’, it cannot be read as consensual sex as we now know what each term in fact refers to. Tale 7 instead, tells of a young woman with no agency nor experience being made a victim of sexual assault and sexual exploitation by a successive order of men during a period of great strife. Alatiel is not sober during nor made aware of Pericone’s penetration; him, nor Marato, the Genoese sailor, the Prince of Morea, Constantine, Uzbek nor the Cyprian merchant can gain confirmed consent for they do not speak her language; the Duke of Athens assaults her while she is unconscious; Constantine forces in his not quitting asking the consent she does give; if she denies Uzbek the probability of her torture or death is inevitable; and Antioch and Antigonus, as did each of the others’, abuse the fact that she is under their power and in a vulnerable mental state.

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In their challenging of the conception of a historical moment by scholars (in their case of art) in the present, being limited to the perspectives history (then and/or since then) has demarcated, as allowing to be told (at that time), Miek Bal and Norman Bryson, acknowledge the plurality and thus, unpredictability, of those same moments. This includes the repressed codes and the developing codes of perceiving, which when consulted, produce different meanings and change the understandings of what is being perceived (Bal & Bryson 186-188). Bal and Bryson explain how the perception (or “spectatorship”) of women is overwhelmingly absent from the representation of historical accounts, for they were not permitted, up until very recently, access to methods of offering their, nor believed to be capable of possessing the intellect or ‘knowing’ required to compose valuable, perspectives. Their “receptions” were discounted then, by the institutions which differentiated from the worthy and the unworthy, and thus omitted from understanding (“discourse”) (186-188).

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Though rape (‘abduction and/for forced sex’) has been perceived as a punishable crime since Ancient Greece, its reasons for being so throughout history has not been the woman’s right to autonomy over her body. Instead, it was either because it is a disrespect of her ‘head of household’s’ authority or an offense against God’s order (D’Cruze 378-379); the violation of a woman’s consent, not a factor of the crime itself. This is made evident, in the non-punishable rape of conquered towns in the Roman Republic, colonized lands during Western colonialism, and African-American slaves in the United States (History.com Staff, par. 8).

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The understanding of rape and sexual assault, crimes which throughout history have disproportionately affected women, had been wholly determined up until that time of Boccaccio’s creation of The Decameron, by men in power whose rule was not concerned with women’s agency nor their enforcement of the law, violation of that agency. Women had no access to represent their perception of rape nor sexual assault (as painful, violent, traumatic, etc.) and they could not change the understanding of the crimes because such would not be considered ‘worthy’. Thusly without the “meaning” of rape and sexual assault involving the violation of a woman’s consent over what happens to her body and a meaning of sex which does not (as it had not for all of history preceding Boccaccio) involve connotations (constituent meanings) outside of ‘procreation’, Alatiel’s rape and assault are not perceived by the storytellers nor presented as such. The ‘code’ of rape and assault, the system of meanings that allow for correct interpretation and understanding, had not yet been present for consultation.

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In the Kingdom of Algarve as well as would be inferred the other states Alatiel journeys through in Tale 7, women and their bodies are the property of their fathers and then their husbands, reflecting the laws/beliefs that govern women’s agency in Boccaccio’s Medieval Italy and throughout most of the Medieval world. This understanding of a woman’s autonomy over her body only began to be reconsidered by the 18th and 19th centuries (McGee & Moore, par. 12-18).

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Chastity or ‘purity’ as it was viewed, was a woman’s worth: compromised chastity, caused a woman’s opportunities in life to deteriorate and regardless of whether the intercourse was consensual, she would be blamed for it. If she had been assaulted, her ‘purity’ taken against her will, it still would have been believed to be her fault, hence, Alatiel is required to conceive of an alternative story to the events of Tale 7 (D’Cruze 379). In addition to preserving her prospects, Alatiel’s lie works to protect her life - until approximately the 19th century, women were subjugated beneath their fathers and their husbands who legally and customarily would enforce their authority; such as the punishment for ‘sacrificed’ or ‘fallen’ value; through physical or the threat of physical violence. An additional threat to her life, is that once a woman had ‘consented’ to losing her chastity, it was believed that she had ‘consented’, to all sexual activity from anywhere (D’Cruze 379).

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If a woman had attested that she had been sexually assaulted, even as a case before the law, that case would have been sufficient to render her culpable of the crime: since she is under the protection of her father or her husband, she must have sought out the assault. Until extremely recently, since the emergence of second-wave feminism in the early 1960s, has the culpability of a woman for her own assault been contended (D’Cruze 379). The concept of consent given, needed for a sexual act to be sex and not assault, is still a new idea having been assimilated into most Western contemporary societies, only within the last 35 years, though confirmed consent (consent), as opposed to ‘implied consent’ (not consent), is still an issue of troubled understanding. Up until the moment of the ‘consent means sex, non-consent means rape’ concept’s introduction, as feminist journalist and political activist Gloria Steinem explains, “rape (and assault) and sex(ual acts), were accounted as indistinguishable from one another (Steinem & Watson)”.

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The ‘code’ of understanding rape and sexual assault as the crimes that we can conceive them as contemporarily had not been developed even in its most foundational, as a violation of bodily autonomy, before or during Boccaccio’s lifetime. This was due to the repression of women’s abilities to represent their perceptions of rape and sexual assault in a form (all, which were disallowed them) that would impact the institutions (an impossibility, intrinsic to them being women) that determined those understandings, and could subsequently change them. The women and girls (the age at which someone female was expected to begin bearing children in medieval Europe, was twelve) (Bullough, par. 2) of the poet’s period would themselves, not have been able to recognize what is rape and assault, as rape and assault, regardless of if their own perceptions, such as personal experiences, had resulted in a meaning similar to ours. Without an institution (law, family, religion, etc.) to acknowledge their “receptions” (the term, as defined by Bal and Bryson 184), they could not interpret what was happening to them. Rape trials which concluded in the perpetrator’s acquittal or the victim’s punishment (over ‘false’ rape claims or an ‘implication’ of ‘complicity’ in the act) (D’Cruze 379); stories of violated women being blamed and disinherited by their ‘heads of household’ for speaking out against their assault; and The Church’s enforcement that being a ‘participant’ in non-consensual sex was still a sin of pre- or extra- marital sex, all would have testified the misconception that rape and assault aren’t acts of violence and, the fault of women. As women did not have access to methods of communication nor thought to be capable of worthy insight (ex. they were not permitted schooling), in regards to voicing their perception of rape and sexual assault, neither were they on (penetrative) sex. Its depiction as pleasurable (when granted any ascribing other than ‘procreation’) in The Decameron and similar contemporary works of art and literature by ‘progressive’ “authors” (def. Bal and Bryson 180) such as those produced slightly later, during the Italian Renaissance, could not be contested, as painful or unfulfilling. There was no medium of expression through to be heard, nor any listening, because men knew better.

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The development of unified women’s rights groups in the late 19th and 20th centuries were revolutionary in the changing of international societal perceptions of rape and assault. They made the violation of women’s agencies and consent the matters of crime. The ‘first-wave’ of women’s rights movements (c. early 1900s), fought for such terms, to apply to the coercion or pressuring of sexual acts by any man even if familiar to the woman, and the second-wave (early 1960s), any abuse of power which would qualify a sexual act to be not-fully-consensual, that might not (could not) have been met with the “utmost force (of resistance)” (Freedman, pars. 5, 12).

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Works Cited

Bullough, Vern L. “Age of consent.” Encylopedia.com, 27 Jun. 2018, www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/law/age-consent. Accessed 29 Oct. 2021.

Bal, Miek & Bryson, Norman. “Semiotics and Art History.” The Art Bulletin, vol. 73, no. 2, Jun. 1991, www.jstor.org/stabl/3045790. Accessed 28 Oct. 2021.

Barry, Peter. Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory. Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press. 1985.

Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Translated by G.H. McWilliam, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972.

D’Cruze, Shani. “Approaching the history of rape and sexual violence: notes towards research.” Women’s History Review, vol. 1, no.3, 16 Feb 2011, pp. 377-397. Taylor & Francis Online, doi.org/10.1080/09612029300200016. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.

Freedman, Estelle B. “Women’s long battle to define rape.” WashingtonPost.com, The Washington Post, 24 Aug. 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/womens-long-battle-to-define-rape/2012/08/24/aa960280-ed34-11e1-a80b-9f898562d010_story.html. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.

History.com Staff. “When Sexual Assaults Made History.” History, 9 Oct. 2018, https://www.history.com/news/sexual-assault-rome-slavery-columbus-jim-crow. Accessed 29 Oct. 2021.

McGee, Suzanne & Moore, Heidi. “Women’s rights and their money: a timeline from Cleopatra to Lilly Ledbetter.” TheGuardian.com, The Guardian, 11 Aug. 2014, www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/aug/11/women-rights-money-timeline-history. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.

Quesada, Norma N. “The Dichotomy Between Fate and Free Will in Medieval Literature.” ISFD, vol. 41, no. 9, 11 May 2012, www.slideshare.net/norque/paper-cultura-4. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.

Steinem, Gloria & Watson, Emma. YouTube, uploaded by Our Shared Self Group, 29 Feb 2016, youtube.com/watch?v=Tm6ESsMlvYE.

Turello, Dan. “The 14th-Century Sexual Revolution: On Guido Ruggiero’s “Love and Sex in the Time of Plague.”” Los Angeles Review of Books, 20 Oct. 2021, lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-14th-century-sexual-revolution-on-guido-ruggieros-love-and-sex-in-the-time-of-plague/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2021.

the privilege and pressures of the rich girl experience: the portraits of betty jane kimbark (by estelle muriel kerr) and marie antoinette (by elisabeth louise vigée le brun)

A young girl’s hollow stare bores through the canvas of Estelle Muriel Kerr’s Portrait of Betty Jane Kimbark (Kim Ondaatje at age of 10) (1938), her made up face and coiffured ringlets, deep emerald velvet dress, fur manchon and feathered fascinator and bubblegum pink with floral lace details backdrop, making her look like a doll in a dollhouse. A young woman’s tender gaze enchants the observer of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s Marie Antoinette with a Rose (1783), her powdered skin and piled high hair, pressed violet robe à la française with frill trim, feathered silk turban and pearls and baby pink cabbage rose garden setting, giving her the appearance of a queen in a castle. Kerr was a celebrated child portraitist in Toronto in the first half of the 20th century (Butlin 228), and Vigée Le Brun was a renowned portraitist of European (but for most of her career French) royals and elites in the last half of the 18th century and into the 19th century (Smith).

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Kerr studied under Canadian Impressionist painters, Mary Ella Dignam and Laura Muntz Lyall, and practiced at the The Art Students League of New York (in New York City) and the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris; from her teachings, she developed a style that mixed Impressionism and Neoclassicism (“Kerr, Estelle Muriel”). Vigée was given instruction by her father Louis Vigée, a pastel portraitist, as well as French painters, Gabriel François Doyen, Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Claude-Joseph Vernet (and would go on to attend Paris’ Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture); her style, was a melding of the Rococo and Neoclassical styles (Smith). While their educations in the arts and the hybridity of movements of their styles are alike, the social conditions in which the women respectively, built their careers greatly differed: Toronto in the early 1900s was a growing place in a time of development, while France in the late 1700s was a place in crisis during a time of revolution.

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The portraits’ subjects, Betty Jane Kimbark; a girl beginning to come of age from a family made wealthy off of their local dealings (Tostevin 35); and Marie Antoinette; a queen whose husband ignored the financial crisis in France and opposed democratic financial reforms and, who was despised by French revolutionaries for her extravagant spending; are coincidentally, symbolic of the national periods during which the portraits were completed. Likewise, the portraits’ journeys to the museums in which they are on display in the present – Betty’s from her parent’s residence, to her possession, to the Art Gallery of Ontario (as a gift of hers) (Wall text for Portrait) and Marie’s from the palace of Versailles, to the property of Paris, to the possession of most likely a former purveyor to the court of King Louis XVI (her husband) or one of his cabinetmakers (“Versailles After the French”), to the possession of King Louise-Philippe I, and to the museum of Versailles (“Marie-Antoinette, reine de”) – are representative, respectively, of growth and development and, of crisis and revolution. While the similarities between Kerr’s Portrait of Betty Jane Kimbark (Kim Ondaatje at age of 10) and Vigée’s Marie Antoinette with a Rose in artist, subject and history are noteworthy, it is their akin capturing of their subjects’ defying societal expectations and empowering addressing of the observer, and, comprising of visuals signifying decadence selected and rendered to be a balance between two contrasting artistic sensibilities, that I take as the topic of this essay.

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How Kimbark and Antoinette are positioned in the portraits differ, as they are being informed by different references: Kerr takes as her reference, Laura Muntz Lyall’s portraits of young girls, (done from 1891-1915) and Vigée, Hyacinthe Rigaud’s portraits of French royalty (done from 1680-1740). Canadian Impressionist Lyall, often painted young girls up close to capture the essences of their personalities and convey the truths of their inner emotional lives (Atanassova), while Catalan-French Baroque Rigaud, had a custom of painting the royalty from afar to capture all of the significant connotative (frequently, of patriotism) symbols on their person as well as in the background (“Hyacinthe Rigaud: 1659-1743”). Lyall’s girls were encouraged to look at her while they were being painted as a form of their asserting their agency and announcing their presence (Atanassova), and it was a convention for Rigaud’s royalty to have their eyes looking through the canvas – at any potential observer – to reinforce their status (as the ‘watcher’, not the ‘watched’) and strengthen their image in the observers’ minds. The result of Kerr’s recreating Lyall’s iconography is Betty’s addressing of the observer inherits identical attributes to Lyall’s girls’, and likewise, Vigée’s recreating Rigaud’s (predominantly male) royalty’s confronting the observer’s eye, attaches such’s connotations to Marie’s doing the same.

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Betty and Marie are placed similarly on the canvas; in the centre, occupying a majority of the space; to connote these ideals of power, independence and strength, however, how, they occupy this space, differs. Kimbark’s body faces the observer, her shoulders are straight, her hands are clasped in front of her and she stares emptily at the painter; Antoinette’s body leans right towards a cabbage rose bush, her hands hold a single cabbage rose, her head is turned to greet the observer and she looks warmly at the painter. Though they are fairly dissimilar, both of these poses signify the same meanings: defiance of the rigid expectations placed on Betty and Marie, and empowerment, the seizing back of control over their own identities. Such significations require a bit more knowledge of Betty Jane Kimbark and Marie Antoinette: the former’s portrait was commissioned to be displayed as an icon of the young girl for visitors of her family’s home to regard (Wall text for Portrait), and the latter’s portrait was made to shift the French citizens’ perception of the queen, upon its presentation to the public at a salon (Herrera).

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Betty’s parents ordered her identity to be that which is personified by the cosmetics she has on, the clothing she wears and the background she stands against in her portrait, but in truth, her identity was that ideal’s antithesis (Wall text for Portrait). Her mannequin-like posture and the lifelessness of her gaze, betray the façade of Betty’s performance of that ideal. By not playing the part of her parents’ ideal daughter believably, by allowing the unnaturalness and mechanicalness of her performance of that girl to leak through, Betty is challenging her parents’ demands for her to be that girl in reality. To the people of France, by that point in her rule as queen, Marie’s identity was understood to be an extravagant and scandalous hedonist, an unfaithful wife and a neglectful mother, and a betrayer of the French people, due to how out of touch with the issues affecting their lives, she was. To counter this misperception, Vigée’s portrait represents Marie as she perceived herself: she is working in the garden (she labours, she is not lazy); she favours nature (she is grounded, she is not prissy or materialistic); she is domestic; and she looks at the observer with tenderness (she embraces, invites and cherishes all). She interrupts and argues against contemporary French society’s narrative about her, by highlighting one of her actual greatest interests which diverges from this narrative; in doing so, she takes control of the construction of her identity.

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The ideological meanings of Portrait of Betty Jane Kimbark (Kim Ondaatje at age of 10) and Marie Antoinette with a Rose, are largely, that their subjects’ deviate internally, from either their external selves (in Betty’s case) or perceptions based off of their external selves (in Marie’s case). Many of the visuals included in the portraits of both Betty and Marie, nonetheless, signify the essence of the identity that Betty performs and the identity of Marie in the eyes of the French citizens’; to a great extent, it is Betty’s disconnection from how she appears in the portrait, and Marie’s acting in the portrait, in opposition to how she appears, that connote such ideological meanings. Both Kimbark and Antoinette, are symbols of opulence – as they appear, they are representative of the elite, and the royal, respectively. From a plastic perspective, each subject’s portrait, signifies richness. The observer’s eye enters the portraits through both subject’s eyes, but after that, it travels from one symbol of their class to the next. From Betty’s eyes, their upwards’ momentum moves our eye up to her hat; it then falls, following the gravity of her curls’ down past her made up face to her dress; it takes in her dress, eventually landing on her manchon; the horizontality of her manchon encourages it to move horizontally across the bottom of the canvas; the frame’s vertical lines motivate it to move upwards, along them, taking in the decorative background for the first time. From Marie’s eyes, the upwards tilt of their glance pushes our eye towards her hair and her hat; the downwards pointing of her hat’s feathers gestures it down to her pearls and her decolletage; It takes in her bodice, then follows her arms to the plucked cabbage rose; the rose’s stem points to her dress’s skirt so it goes there; her dress’ skirt points towards the planted and upkept bush of cabbage roses; from there, due the bush’s left-and-upwards momentum it travels to the flourishing, sculpted tree; it moves from the tree’s trunk to its foliage.

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The colours of these symbols of wealth, add to their connotations of decadence as well: the gold of Betty’s ringlets and the rouge of her makeup, the deep emerald of her dress, manchon and hat, and the conch shell pink of the mural and the ivory and rose of its details; the creams of Marie’s turban and its feathers, the silver of her hair and the alabaster and rouge of her makeup, the pressed violet of her dress and the ivory of its lace and ribbons, the chartreuse and blush of the cabbage rose bush and the hazelnut and peacock green of the tree. The striking complementary contrast between the cool greens of Betty’s sumptuous garments and the warm pinks of her ornate space communicates drama, and the powerful contrast between the lightness of the hues of Marie’s extravagant appearance and the intensity of the colours of her cultivated surrounding communicates dynamism, both of which, contribute to the ‘rich’ qualities of the portraits.

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Portrait of Betty Jane Kimbark (Kim Ondaatje at age of 10) was done in Kerr’s established style, a mixture of Impressionism and Neoclassicism, and Marie Antoinette with a Rose was completed in Vigée’s iconic style, Neoclassicism incorporated into Rococo. Impressionism renders subjects in relation to movement and dynamism, while Neoclassicism aims to capture subjects’ austerely, to grasp their quiddity; the two movements conflict in their aspirations and techniques, but Kerr blends them by applying Impressionist techniques in a way which succeeds in the aspirations of Neoclassicism. Kerr ‘builds’ her painting out of ‘broken’ lines of mixed and unmixed colour placed mostly beside and occasionally on top (as in Betty’s hair, the buttons on her dress, the lights of her hat and the floral wall art) of each other. These lines naturally form both organic (ex. the curls of her hair, the lace of her collar, the feather in her hat, the flowers and leaves behind her) and geometric (her hat, her dress’ buttons, her dress and its texture, the painted ribbon of lace behind her) shapes. The accumulation of these shapes creates Betty and the background: the shapes fuse together, and from a distance, the wholeness and stability of the real Betty and what she is standing in front of, are presented. More than developing a portrait that is representational, Kerr’s capturing of her subject material is symmetrical, harmonious, naturalistic and self-effacing.

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Rococo’s ambition is to depict subjects through a lens which emphasizes or adds to their theatricality (their drama, excess, fantasy), while as considered, Neoclassicism intends to render subjects according to principles of aesthetics and realism; Vigée evokes Rococo by capturing through Neoclassicism’s aesthetic and realist principles, theatrical subject matter. Vigée’s portrait is essentially, a photograph: she paints Marie Antoinette holding a cabbage rose in a garden of Versailles as it is occurring in front of her. Marie Antoinette – looking like the embodiment of the Rococo essence and displaying its characteristics of ornamentation, curvedness and softness – and the garden – a recurring setting in Rococo art and comprising of waving lines and billowiness – are inherently Rococo. Vigée translates her ‘Rococo’ in real life, subject matter into a work of Neoclassicism. Balance, order, reason, restraint and clarity – the fundamentals of the Neoclassical approach to art – are not just evident in, but govern, the artist’s portrait.

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Upon first glance there is a stasis and a oneness to Kerr’s Portrait of Betty Jane Kimbark (Kim Ondaatje at age of 10) and Vigée’s Marie Antoinette with a Rose: the girl and the young woman are carefully posed and placed into their settings – beautiful models, in beautiful costumes, in beautiful locations. On the surface, all of the visual cues work to reinforce a set of themes – beauty, status and wealth; the sumptuous palettes of the works bleed these themes, and as the eye digests the scenes, these themes are consistently in play. Someone with a background in art history might have the idea that Kerr’s and Vigée’s works signify stasis and oneness challenged for them, once they perceive the heterogeneity of the art movements that are found within them, the push-and-pull between Impressionism and Neoclassicism in Kerr’s case, and between Neoclassicism and Rococo in Vigée’s.

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Upon a closer inspection, the ugliness of the first portrait – Betty Jane Kimbark’s hollow eyes and lifeless body – and the masculinity of the second portrait – Marie Antoinette’s protective stare and capable stance – complicate the ‘simple’ signification that the paintings appear to have. Whether the references for Betty’s or Marie’s looking at the observer are known, that there is a boldness and a determination in their doing so, that confronting the observer to put forth a point (like Betty) or upholding dominance in the interaction with the observer as a form of power (like Marie) are in the portraits, deepens everything that the portraits represent by multiple levels. Betty, with her mechanical posture, looks like a mannequin, while Marie, standing powerful amidst nature’s bounty, looks like a king; their posed-ness and their placed-ness contain significations against the rules and pressures placed on them, and the expectations and misperceptions of them. Portrait of Betty Jane Kimbark (Kim Ondaatje at age of 10) by Estelle Muriel Kerr and Marie Antoinette with a Rose by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun are not beautiful paintings of beautiful rich girls: they are works of empowerment, protesting the accepted and perpetuated mistreatment and abuse of young women, made in incompatible time periods and in disparate locations.

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Bibliography:

Atanassova, Katerina. “Laura Muntz: A Woman Artist Navigating the Art Scene at the Turn of the Century.” National Gallery of Canada, National Gallery of Canada, 8 Mar. 2021, www.gallery.ca/magazine/your-collection/laura-muntz-a-woman-artist-navigating-the-art-scene-at-the-turn-of-the. Accessed 4 Apr. 2022.

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Butlin, Susan. The Practice of Her Profession: Florence Carlyle, Canadian Painter in the Age of Impressionism. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009.

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Herrera, Rebecca. “1783 – Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Marie Antoinette with a Rose.” Fashion History Timeline, FIT, 9 Aug. 2019, fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1783-vigee-le-brun-antoinette/. Accessed 5 Apr. 2022.

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“Hyacinthe Rigaud: 1659-1743.” Chateau de Versailles, Chateau de Versailles, en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/great-characters/hyacinthe-rigaud. Accessed 4 Apr. 2022.

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“Kerr, Estelle Muriel.” Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, 12 Aug. 2013, cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=28. Accessed 30 Mar. 2022.

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“Marie-Antoinette, reine de France (1755-1793).” Chateau de Versailles, Chateau de Versailles, collections.chateauversailles.fr/#92a381bf-ea4b-4ba2-af13-6c2b805fce6f. Accessed 30 Mar. 2022.

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Smith, Roberta. “She Painted Marie Antoinette (and Escaped the Guillotine).” The New York Times, 11 Feb. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/arts/design/review-vigee-le-brun-metropolitan-museum.html. Accessed 4 Apr. 2022.

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Tostevin, Lola. Who Is Kim Ondaatje?: The Inventive Life of a Canadian Artist. Inanna Publications, 2022.

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“Versailles After the French Revolution.” Chateau de Versailles, Chateau de Versailles, en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/key-dates/versailles-after-french-revolution. Accessed 30 Mar. 2022.

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Wall text for Portrait of Betty Jane Kimbark (Kim Ondaatje at age of 10), by Estelle Muriel Kerr. Kim Ondaatje: The House on Piccadilly Street, 24 July 2021-27 Mar. 2022, Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto.

“Like Mother, Like Son: Eve as the Original Predecessor to Jesus Christ in Paradise Lost and Jesus’ Presentation as a ‘Second Eve’ in Milton’s Account of the Fall and Redemption of Mankind”

Andrew Kau proposes the idea of Jesus Christ being a “second Eve” rather than a “second Adam” as he is conventionally understood in John Milton’s Paradise Regained (Kau 162). Within the poem’s text Milton names the “second Eve” to be the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ mother, and Jesus is referred to as a “second Adam”. The Fall of mankind though initiated by Eve, is associated with Adam wronging God and cursing humanity in falling for temptation, and Eve is associated with mothering all of humanity; Adam’s sin is redeemed by Jesus’ upholding God and saving humanity by not falling for temptation, and Eve’s value is resurrected in Mary’s birthing the savior of humanity.

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In the traditional understanding of Eve and the rebirthed Mary there is a moral bifurcation: in the Garden of Eden, Eve is evil and through her “humbl’(ing)” she is made good - pre-Fall Eve is associated with being the ‘first woman’ and after, post-fall Eve, the ‘mother of mankind’ from which Mary draws her counterpart (PL XI. 150). Accompanying the presentation of pre-Fall Eve; referred to by Kau when in contrast with her post-Fall self as ‘Eve’; and post-Fall Eve, the predecessor of Mary; referred to as the ‘mother of mankind’; are opposite attributes assigned by such a traditional reading - a disobedience of God and an immorality to Eve, and an obedience to God and morality to the mother of mankind. Andrew Kau challenges this binary separation of presenting the character as wholly evil pre- and during, and then wholly good post-, the Fall in Paradise Lost, arguing instead that Eve in the Garden of Eden acts as a “negative assessment of feminine stupidity” and a “positive figure for moral autonomy” (Kau 169).

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While I agree with Kau’s objection that Eve is not an evil character - not just the antithesis to her later role as the mother of mankind, nor her successor Mary - I argue that she does not function as an agent of feminine stupidity in addition to moral autonomy but rather feminine wisdom. This combination of feminine wisdom and moral autonomy makes her the original predecessor of Christ without the purification from such “feminine stupidity” (achieved by its adaptation by Satan and consequent destruction through displacement) of the figure of Eve, Kau proposes as necessary for Jesus to be the figure of the first woman rebirthed - such a characteristic is but not present in Eve.

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Kau examines the moral bifurcation between ‘Eve’ and the ‘mother of mankind’ most specifically when he presents as intentional contradictions to one another of the character’s (Eve/mother of mankind) pre-Fall and post-Fall self, the narrator’s hailing of her beauty as, “the fairest Goddess feign’d / Of three that in Mount Ida naked strove”, and the angel Raphael’s greeting her with, “the holy salutation us’d / Long after to blest Mary, second Eve” (PL V. 381-82, 386-388). Kau interprets the first two lines’ allusion of Eve’s beauty to the beauty of Hera, Athena and Aphrodite in the Greek story of the Judgment of Paris as an allusion of her forthcoming cause of the Fall of humanity to the Fall of Troy which results from Aphrodite’s gifting of Helen of Troy, the motivation for Paris’ judgment of her superiority (Kau 167). He discerns the last two lines foretelling the redemption of Eve by the blest Mary, the redeemer second Eve - as opposed to she who is not blest, but will soon be cursed by her own disobedience - contrasts the early reference to Eve as the goddesses, particularly Aphrodite, whose “foolish” temptation of Paris causes the punishment and fatality of all of Troy (167). Kau suggests Milton illustrates Eve’s feminine stupidity causing destruction before such is even demonstrated by linking her to the goddesses’ feminine foolishness causing destruction as it is being demonstrated and against Mary’s feminine blessedness of producing (birthing) salvation.

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While he perceives Eve unconventionally, in that her “moral autonomy” contributes towards her being a “positive figure” when such autonomy is traditionally read as the origins which makes her an evil/immoral figure, Kau does not wholly interpret Eve as a figure from which Jesus, a symbol of obedience, goodness and morality could conceivably be reincarnate of, because he locates the reason for this moral autonomy to be feminine stupidity. In his linking of her actions which cause the Fall to the goddesses’ which cause the Fall of Troy he connects their reasons - lapses of feminine stupidity/foolishness - motivating such temptations (of Paris/by Satan): Hera, Athena and especially Aphrodite’s, desire for superiority of beauty and Eve’s desire for superiority of knowledge. Though the idea of Eve exhibiting moral autonomy may contribute to her presentation as a predecessor of Christ, the ambitions behind the acts of practice of that moral autonomy greatly deny the concept that at once ‘the first woman’ could be an agent of “positive” moral autonomy. If she acts on the same immoral impulse as the goddesses’ selfishly wanting pre-eminence, Eve therefore cannot truthfully be a “positive” figure from which Jesus is the reincarnation; if motivations matching Milton’s God’s instruction of sin are Eve’s, then she cannot be considered a positive (good/moral) predecessor of Christ.

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“the fairest Goddess feign’d” juxtaposed against “blest Mary, second Eve”, strengthens a traditional analysis of Eve being evil/immoral, like the foolish, selfish, lustful goddesses and only becoming good/moral once she transforms into the mother of mankind after the Fall and her “humbl’(ing)” punishments for disobedience, expulsion from Eden and pain of childbirth. This ultimately traditional perception of Eve’s disobedience of God’s order not to touch nor taste from the Tree of Knowledge is explained as still true of Milton’s representation of the first woman and, that the ability for Jesus to be the second incarnation of the Eve figure is still possible, by reasoning its destruction from the figure of Eve occurs by its adaptation by and displacement to, Satan.

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Kau justifies the definitiveness of Milton representing Eve’s feminine stupidity and the validity of his argument of Jesus being a second Eve, by proposing the displacement of that foolish, weak and ungodly (both, being ‘feminine’ and ‘stupid’) fatal flaw onto the temptations of Satan, of which are characterized as “feminized”, nonsensical visuals (173). Jesus describes “Cities of men, headstrong Multitudes”, “a herd confus’d, / rabble, who extol / Things vulgar” and the narrator, “numbers numberless / …light armed Troops, ... / bore, the flower / Of many Provinces” and “The fairest Angelica / sought by many Prowest Knights” that were “Impenitent, / …distinguishable scarce / From Gentiles, by Circumcision vain” (PR, II. 470, III. 49-51, 310-15, 341-42, 423-25). In Satan embodying feminine stupidity, displaying it through the female and confused nature of his temptations, Kau advocates that this seizes that evil/immoral attribute from the Eve figure, thereby purifying the figure so Jesus can inherit without ideological dissonance (Jesus being the incarnation of a partly evil character with ungodly flaws), her “positive” moral autonomy and be the second Eve.

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As opposed to examining whether Eve herself possesses feminine stupidity, he reasons Jesus can conceivably be in Milton’s traditional interpretation of Christ, the second coming of Eve by associating the “feminized images of confusion” of Satan and his “swarm of thoughts” to the same stupidity/foolishness the poet presents she shares with Hera, Athena and Aphrodite (Kau 173). As representative terms of “feminine stupidity” Kau attributes “foolishly” to Eve and the goddesses’ actions and “confusion” to Satan, connecting the devil to Eve as equivalent in this attribute, but in comparing the women’s temptations (by Satan/of Paris) and the devil’s (‘of’ Jesus), the former is not ‘confused’ and the latter is not ‘foolish’.

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Eve’s falling for Satan’s temptation like the goddesses’ temptation of Paris was not confused: she intentionally chose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge because she wanted to possess knowledge - she asks each question of uncertainty she has in regards to the act, working through any/all confusion she does have before reaching the decision to disobey God and acting on the disobedience; a determined action, like the goddesses offering gifts to Paris with the purpose of possessing his favour. Inversely, Satan’s temptations are not ‘foolish’ - ineffective, futile and impotent, but made with a measured sense and judgement, Jesus being the only individual divine enough who could resist their such infallible desirability: the “headstrong Multitudes”, strong, powerful cities meant to tempt a desire to rule; the “herd confus’d rabble”, prodigious, successful empires to tempt a desire for glory; the “Troops,.. / bore, the flower”, skillful, accomplished army, a desire for military respect; “Prowest Knights” of “Circumcision vain”, a mighty, glorious kingdom, a desire for worldly order (through violence). If what is defined by Milton as Eve’s ‘feminine stupidity’ (established in allusion to the goddesses) is not the same ‘feminine’ ‘stupidity’ as Satan’s, then he cannot be the adaptation of this form of evil/immorality she possesses, which is required for granting obedient, good, moral Jesus’, ability to then take on the figure’s being.

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Contrasting the contradiction bifurcating the first woman/Eve as evil/immoral against the mother of mankind/Mary’s good/moral (the fairest Goddess feign’d versus blest Mary, second Eve), and focusing in on a more explicitly canonical, authorial passage (Milton’s voice as opposed to Kau’s interpretation of Milton’s voice, explaining Satan’s temptations), is the dialogue Milton gives to Eve as she is committing her act of ‘feminine stupidity’ and ‘moral autonomy’. Though the traditional reading of the poet’s representation of the character’s self pre-Fall, upholds the view that her reasons for being tempted by Satan were foolish, selfish and lustful like the goddesses’ temptation of Paris and that her exhibition of autonomous action following her own morals contributes to or causes her being an evil/immoral - ‘negative’ - figure, I do not believe that such is a correct treatment of her presentation. What if, Eve was displaying feminine wisdom and not a lapse/absence of logic and reason and like Kau suggests but does not follow in arguing for the radical thought, she was a praiseworthy figure of virtue and brave agency in her disobedience of God’s command not to touch nor taste from the Tree of Knowledge?

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In his analysis of the Fall and Eve and Adam’s respective participation in mankind’s original sin, Kau does not consider how Milton presents Eve’s expression of her thoughts as she judges the benefits and consequences of gaining knowledge, leading up to and following, choosing to disobey God. How the poet represents the first woman’s will to transgress the rules laid out for her and Adam; why she determines having knowledge would be superior to being “conceal(ed)” from it; is a crucial demonstration of how the figure should be perceived as evil/immoral or good/moral, as well as how Jesus Christ’s rebirth as her second coming could be conceivable from Milton’s perspective (PL IX. 751).

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Just before reaching out for the Tree to eat from its fruit, Eve reasons her purpose for defying God, communicating her ambitions in acquiring knowledge, “Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine, … / Of virtue to make wise: what hinders then / To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?” (IX. 776-79) Fundamentally, Eve’s choice is not made out of ‘stupidity’: she recognizes her incapability to know and seeks to change that inability, and in processing independently that the fruit would be the “cure” to the problem she wants to solve, she methodically determines to become “wise” by utilizing the object that “of virtue” can “make” her so. Stupidity refers to an absence of thought, and it is demonstrated systematically as such lines unfold that her rationality of thought fully develops before she wills to pursue the fruit; she works through the properties of the fruit, then the benefits from obtaining those properties and only then does she conclude that “to reach, and feed” would be a sensible action that would logically result in her quality of life benefitting. Eve’s decision to eat from the Tree of Knowledge is therefore not an act of stupidity, but of wisdom - she analyzes the needs in her life, applies (what Milton will provide pre-Fall as) intellectual thought to the problem and its potential solution and ultimately, employs sound judgement in curing the affliction that ails her by seeking out what she has examined would achieve such.

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Unlike Hera, Athena and Aphrodite’s quest for superiority (over one another) in their temptations of Paris, Eve is not similarly motivated when she falls for Satan’s temptation: she wants to be “fed” in “both body and mind”. While Eve’s disobeying of God’s command to acquire knowledge he forbids mankind from possessing, is traditionally interpreted as her motivated by the want to be as superior as God, her ambitions are, as she expresses, not that grand nor ungodly - she wants to be “cure(d)” of what “hinders” her; to make herself better from an incompleteness she perceives. These aspirations of personal growth, to become wise in both body and mind, do not make her evil/immoral - Milton provides her the honourable and understandable, if naïve, desire to ‘fix’ what she feels is ‘broken’ about herself (and, by extension humanity).

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Milton writes Eve’s pursuit of knowledge is similar terms associated with his traditional Christian reading - and treatment in Paradise Regained - of Jesus Christ, who wants (as is his duty) to make wise mankind by feeding them in both body and mind the knowledge of God; Eve and Jesus being identically, motivated by bettering through discovery. Attaining a higher truth, elevating oneself past the obscurity of ignorance to know true knowledge, is the objective Christ seeks for humanity: he is purposed with delivering humanity from an inferior place, blindness to God, to an exalted state, seeing and knowing God, expanding them so they can become better - this expansion or advancement, being (the epitome of) good/moral.

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Kau presents Eve as being a “positive figure of moral autonomy” and utilizes such in his argument that she is Jesus’ predecessor however, he does not outline how her exhibition of moral autonomy - eating from the Tree of Knowledge because she decides to, transgressing the command ordering her - could be the foundation for Christ’s moral autonomy. The idea of moral autonomy is fundamental to both the figures of Eve (in Paradise Lost) and Christ (in Paradise Regained), but a traditional reading of each’s acting upon such autonomy would make them antithetical to one another - her disobedience of God, making her evil/immoral, and his loyalty to God, making him good/moral. Despite perhaps a radical reading of Milton’s representation of the cause of humanity’s Fall, Eve’s acting on her agency despite the powers which attempt to repress and constrain her for the purpose of betterment (enlightenment), could be interpreted as the original “positive moral autonomy” Jesus displays in his resisting of temptation by the devil.

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It would be significant to consider how the poet presents Eve’s response upon receiving knowledge after tasting the forbidden fruit, “Far otherwise th’event, not death, but life / Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys, / Taste so divine, that what of sweet before / Hath touched my sense, flat seems to this, and harsh.” (IX. 984-87) Milton describes knowledge as superior; “life augmented”, “new hopes, new joys”; to blindness/ignorance (being ‘conceal(ed)’); “flat”, “harsh”; drawing parallels between Jesus’ goal to transform the blindness/ignorance of humanity into the superior state of seeing and knowing God. Through her following her moral autonomy - the belief that having knowledge would be a salvation to what is absent (‘broken’, ‘wrong’) in her life - she experiences and possesses “life”, “opened eyes”. The act of defying the force that had repressed her (and mankind) from this inconceivably superior state of true knowledge is presented as an act of bravery; her independently going against the mighty powers that confined her to an inferior existence in order to achieve enlightenment and advance past it, requiring much courage, worthy of respect if not praise.

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As discussed, Eve is a figure of “positive moral autonomy” as she defies the powers repressing her (notably as Milton values it, from knowledge) in order to affect her own life, to better herself by moving towards seeing with “augmented, open eyes” true knowledge. In presenting such as her exhibition of ‘positive’ - righteous or honourable, praiseworthy - ‘moral autonomy’ - independent action on personal morals, made more significant by predominant opposition to them -, Jesus being a second Eve is made conceivable as the poet interprets and treats the figure.  This form of ‘positive moral autonomy’ I believe Milton gives to Eve in her tasting of the Tree of Knowledge can be read in how Jesus inversely, resists Satan’s temptation (as is examined in Paradise Regained).

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Jesus disobeys - an expression of his agency - Satan’s; a force that does not wield power over him like God does Eve, but a force which wields the power to potentially turn him from God; attempts to make him stray from God, independently acting on his belief that it is his duty to follow God’s will and purpose for him, as Eve paradoxically defies God acting on her belief in knowledge’s importance. As Eve’s loyalty to her virtues in acting autonomously brings enlightenment, Jesus’ tested loyalty of his (God’s presented) virtues as he acts autonomously, results in not just his enlightenment, transcending past a stage in his spiritual journey preparing him to become the messenger of God’s instruction for mankind, but humanity’s as going forward, he has the ability to move it from blindness to “augmented, opened eyes”.

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Therefore, while Andrew Kau proposes that Jesus can be the “second Eve” even as a “negative assessment of feminine stupidity” by being a “positive figure for moral autonomy”, with the evil/immoral attribute able to be displaced through Satan’s adoption, leaving the good/moral attribute for Christ to rebirth, Milton’s presentation of both attributes, ‘feminine stupidity’ and ‘moral autonomy’, may not be the essentially traditional reading Kau gives them. The interpretation of Eve’s motivations for causing the Fall of mankind as the evil ‘feminine stupidity’ of Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, antithetical to the goodness of Mary who ‘redeems’ her ungodly wrongdoing, greatly neglects the wise thought, reason and judgement she is represented as exhibiting preceding her decision to touch and taste from the Tree of Knowledge. The moral autonomy she displays in doing so, disobeying God’s orders to acquire knowledge; the logical solution to the dilemma she has accurately discerned in her life; could be the poet’s advocacy of humanity fighting for its independence when such agency is repressed by a power/force which seeks to maintain its obstruction from true or higher knowledge.

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Rather than develop a not infallible justification for Eve’s act of defiance against God being the original model of behaviour Jesus is the second coming of like Kau’s theory of Satan’s purification of the act from the figure, reading her own representation as honourable, respectable or praiseworthy, if radical, provides an authorial conceivable reasoning for Jesus to be the second Eve. As she ‘opened’ mankind’s ‘eyes’ to ultimate knowledge, the ‘truth of God,’ to better the quality of life for them, so too does Jesus open their eyes to the ultimate knowledge of ‘God’s truth’; as she defies God to fight for what she believes is good and moral, possessing knowledge for herself and humanity, so too does Jesus fight for what he believes is good/moral, against Satan’s temptations. The moral bifurcation of Eve/the first woman before the Fall and the mother of mankind/Mary she is made into after, through her ‘humbl(ing)’ punishments, is a gross oversimplification of both figures into archetypes of uncomplicated ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to the disservice of the moral complexity Milton grants the individual characters. As has been demonstrated, the first woman establishes the moral example the son of God takes up.

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Bibliography:

Kau, Andrew. “The Eve Function in Paradise Regained.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 76, no. 1, 2013, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/hlq.2013.76.1.161. Accessed 14 Nov. 2021.

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Milton, John. Paradise Lost, London, Penguin Classics, 2000.

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Milton, John. Paradise Lost & Regained, New York, Signet Classics, 2010.

“the epic, a hero’s journey to find their home”: ‘the quest’ as laid out by virgil, followed down and diverged from, in joel barlow’s columbiad and gwendolyn brooks’ the anniad

A core theme underlying Virgil’s Aeneid is the patriotism of Aeneas to his birthplace Troy, the hero’s loyalty to the fallen state inspiring in part, his objective of founding Rome. Aeneas’ devotion to his home he has been forced to flee from is a central motivation for his quest as he seeks to rebuild the devastated city elsewhere and return it to power through his descendants. This strong sense of allegiance of Aeneas to his homeplace, first Troy and then Rome, is reimagined in two works of adaptation of the Aeneid: Joel Barlow's Columbiad and Gwendolyn Brooks’ "The Anniad".

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The Columbiad adapts Aeneas’ quest to found Rome, to Columbus’ quest founding America; the theme of patriotism, central to the development of the United States of America as it were to that of Rome. The Columbiad translates the Aeneid’s sense of patriotism into the construction of the United States by its early settlers and founding fathers, reflecting the coming power of the founded city in the power of the founded colonies. "The Anniad" transforms the motivation of patriotism of Aeneas to Troy/Rome and the (early settlers and) founding fathers to America, into a lack of devotion to her homeplace, America, of Annie Allen. As patriotism emphasizes the greatness of a nation, Annie’s disillusionment with life in America as a black woman, emphasizes the deficiencies of the nation – its inability to provide for all of its people.

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Barlow’s Columbiad and Brooks’ "The Anniad" consider patriotism in the context of the United States of America at different periods in its history, the former at its founding and the latter in the 20th century. Just as the “America” each author is examining is different – Barlow as it is a nation developing and Brooks as it is a developed nation – so too is the perspective through which each examines its America. The Columbiad discusses the development of the nation of the U.S.A from the perspective of its European/American founders, and "The Anniad" considers the developed U.S.A of the mid-20th century from the perspective a poor black woman.

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The Columbiad declares of the early development of America, “Freedom’s unconquer’d race, with healthy toil,/ Shall lop the grove and warm the furrow’d soil,” (Columbiad, 4. 383-4). The poem’s distinguishing of the land’s settlers as “freedom’s unconquer’d race”, presents the ‘first Americans’ (first Europeans creating ‘America’ the nation) as a strong, honourable people. “Freedom” being their first identifier introduces them as a force of liberty, and “unconquer’d” presents this force of liberty to be so powerful, that it can never be toppled nor dominated. Their representation with such powerful, intimidating words as “freedom” and “unconquer’d” informs that these people are worthy of and should be considered with respect and praise. “Healthy toil” further characterizes the early Americans as a wholesome, hard-working people. “Lop(ping) the grove” represents them as venturing through the inhospitable nature, ‘cutting through’ the yet civilized land. Their “warming’ of this uncivilized land refers to their bringing it into civilization - providing heat, moving it closer to a contemporary home - as well as their “furrow’(ing)”- preparing the land for agriculture.

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Representing the character of the first Americans as righteous, their cause as selfless (liberty) and their work as commendable, the Columbiad demonstrates the founding of the nation to be warranting of pride. The poem’s theme of patriotism is strongly tied to America, the new founded homeplace, and differing from the Aeneid’s patriotism as the original established homeplace Europe, is not represented with a sense of patriotism. The Columbiad states, “Our sons shall try a new colonial plan,/ To tame the soil, but spare their kindred man.” (Columbiad, 4. 395-6), contrasting the sons of America against their European ancestors/‘fathers’. The “new” colonial plan, refers back to the unconquer’d freedom of the first Americans, and the nation that they are building according to that foundational principle. The Columbiad’s patriotism celebrates the unconquer’d freedom in which the U.S.A’s founding fathers, the “sons” of the nation, will employ in its development, unlike their ancestors, the powers of Europe. Unlike the rulers of Europe, the rulers of America will fight for the freedom unconquer’d of the nation by “sparing” their “kindred man” – fellow American challengers of how they choose to “tame” its “soil”.

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Contrasting this loyalty to the United States, the great praiseworthy nation, is "The Anniad" with its representation of the nation in the mid-20th century, contradicting its depiction as of “unconquer’d freedom”. Through Annie Allen’s disillusionment with her life, America the nation is presented as disappointing, unfulfilling and at its core, unequal, with the opportunities promised by it in its founding as possible for all Americans, a lie. The poem illustrates, “Think of thaumaturgic lass/ Looking in her looking-glass/ At the unembroidered brown;” (Annie Allen, 29-31). “Thaumaturgic”, meaning miracle performance and magic, describes Annie, the “lass”, as herself magic and a performer of miracles in her life, but it is contrasted by the later “unembroidered”, it matching the rhythm of the earlier word. The “looking glass” is physically a mirror in which she sees herself, but works like a symbol for American society, with her reflection being how she is seen by America the nation. While she may be a performer of miracles, she is seen as she sees of her reflection, as “unembroidered”: not special, refined nor pretty, but simple, plain and unnoticeable. Particularly, Annie’s reflection is “unembroidered brown” – despite how she may herself be thaumaturgic, all she is to America is unembroidered, and the colour of her skin.

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The sole and fundamental attribute of hers which does make her stand out in mid-20th century America is her race. Annie’s treatment by America, as “unembroidered” and “brown” does not encourage her nor "The Anniad" to be patriotic to her homeplace. This treatment is discussed in the lines, “And a man of tan engages…/ Nibbles at the root beneath/ With intimidating teeth.” (Annie Allen, 36, 39-40) The lines depict the light-skinned (“tan”) partner (husband) of Annie, who as a man and of lighter skin in America, makes him seen as superior to her in the nation’s “looking-glass”. This light skinned man feasts slowly on the core of her soul, “nibbl(ing) at the root beneath”, without consequence. Annie is given no choice (by America) but to allow her husband to break down the root of her being until there is nothing left of it. His description as “intimidating” means she is first, scared of her husband and two, unable to fight back against him – he overpowers her. His “teeth” refer to biting, inflicted physical abuse, and his being “intimidating” in his wielding the weapon of teeth, paint him as a terrifying, monstrous presence. Annie lives under the ongoing threat of abuse from her husband, but as a black woman, there are no other options for her but to endure it; no opportunities to pursue nor benefits to achieve if she escapes.

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The presentation of Annie’s life in America in "The Anniad" is depressing and hopeless: being poor, black and a woman has greatly limited the opportunities able for her to take ahold of, that are theoretically provided by the nation. The “unconquer’d freedom” advanced in the Columbiad as foundational to the nation as it is being developed by the early (European) settlers and its founding fathers, is not truly unconquer’d freedom for such freedom is ‘conquer’d’ by inequality. The perspective represented in the Columbiad is patriotic because it has not been hindered nor harmed by the discrimination of America the nation like "The Anniad"’s perspective has and therefore cannot be.

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Joel Barlow’s Columbiad reimagines the patriotism of Virgil’s Aeneid to be patriotism not for both birthplace and founded homeplace, but solely the latter, while Gwendolyn Brooks’ "The Anniad" rejects altogether patriotism of birthplace and homeplace. Aeneas has been forced to flee his (original) home of Troy because of its destruction, but his loyalties remain with the fallen city and he seeks to recreate it, therefore his patriotism stands with Troy and Rome alike. The ‘first Americans’ have been forced to leave Europe because of the inequality of their birthplace: they were denied opportunity by their birthplace and thus sought to create and achieve such themselves, their patriotism therefore lying with the new America. Annie has been born into and experiences discrimination in her home of America, but because she is discriminated from opportunity there she has no reason to develop patriotism – the inequality of her home, preventing her from finding another.

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Sources Referenced:

Barlow, Joe. The Columbiad. Michigan,1809.

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Brooks, Gwendolyn. "The Anniad." Annie Allen, edited by Gwendolyn Brooks, Greenwood Press, 1971, pp. 33-66.

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Virgil. The Aeneid. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Vintage Classics, 1990.

“of ideal communicators and unheard spectators”: interpreting rape of and sexual violence against women in medieval literature across western europe through bal and bryson’s theories of reception and representation in semiotics

Life has, disproportionate to history, not been made for women: from the ‘beginning’ of time in Christian theology with Eve’s attribution of the original sin of humanity to the modern day with the restrictions on freedoms of choice, disparities between compensation of labor and limitations of reproductive rights, nearly all societies have been built around and to preserve the power of men and the oppression of women. The Middle Ages, approximately the 5th-15th centuries AD, was a period of disorder, turmoil and eventual rebirth in Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire and the order and culture it had provided to the continent to the reemergence of its and other Ancient European civilizations’ classical works and the contemporary humanist ideas which developed out of them.

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Throughout the millennium the individual ruling and structuring force that survived was Christianity: the church, governing how the continents’ societies should operate and the state, enforcing that the religion’s laws be obeyed with the pope and The Bible perceived and relied upon as the supreme authority of order and power (Bovey par. 4). The Bible cleaved men and women into superiority and inferiority as consequence of Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden, thus the Middle Ages was heavily stratified according to gender, with women provided the freedom of choice between becoming a wife or a nun and after selecting so, expected to dedicate their lives to either the home or to God (par. 8). Restricting women’s autonomy was the medieval understanding that they ought to be subservient and silent and governing their bodies/the actions they made with them, was the natural sinfulness of woman, physical and spiritual, that could be redeemed only by following in the path of the Virgin Mary - of pure chastity and motherhood (par. 4).

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Out of this lesser value of women and belief of their intrinsic immorality (devilishness, connection to Satan) sustained a continental; with slight local variations; attitude towards rape and sexual violence that displaced the crime as against a female victim (the victim) to a male victim (the victim’s husband or father) or nullified the act as a crime due to the victim’s identity (virginity, class/status, marriage), the perpetrator’s (status, relationship to the victim) or the act’s (if in fact forceful or fought against) (Finke 340). As explained by Kathryn Gradval and as will be referred back to throughout this analysis, the depiction of rape and sexual violence in medieval literature - which significant to note would have been written from a man’s perspective and comprehension of the ‘acts’/crimes - was not as against the woman violated and/nor was represented as a crime: “The mimesis of rape (was) made tolerable when the poet trope(d) it as moral, comic, heroic, spiritual, or erotic (Gradval, Ravishing Maidens 13).”

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The representation of rape and sexual assault and its relationship to the ecclesiastical and secular law of individual continental regions now England, France, Italy, Spain and Germany, developing out of Roman rule during the Middle Ages will be analyzed through the formative literary works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Chrétien de Troyes, Giovanni Boccaccio, Juan Ruiz and Hartmann von Aue as well as the sagas of Icelanders from what is now Iceland not a part of the Roman Empire but a part of the Roman Catholic Church by the medieval period and contemporary Western Europe.

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As opposed to studying the literature; Chaucer’s ‘The Reeve’s Tale', Chrétien’s ‘Érec et Énide’, Boccaccio’s ‘L’elgia di Madonna Fiammetta’, Ruiz’s ‘Libro de buen amor’, von Aue’s ‘Erec’ and a selection of the family sagas; strictly as their authors had represented the meanings of rape and sexual assault in the works’ historical, regional and religious contexts, the theory of representation pioneered by Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson in ‘Semiotics and Art History’ will be applied to each, because as Bal and Bryson state, “The relation between ‘context’ and ‘text’ that these terms often take for granted is…that context generates, produces, gives rise to text, in the same way that a cause gives rise to effect (Bal and Bryson 178).”

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Christine Rose using Gradval’s concept of the ‘troping’ of rape and sexual assault to dismiss its violence against the victim and make the acts acceptable to the reader outlines how they are depicted as comical, moral vengeance in Chaucer’s The Reeve’s Tale, “We are invited by the poetic narrator… to see sexual violence towards women as ‘pley.’ Here, Chaucer’s Reeve-narrator (John) and the character of the student Aleyn perform the rape of the miller’s daughter Malyne as ‘pley,’ and ‘quyting’ [requiting] the miller for his social pretensions and his larceny of the students’ cornmeal (Rose 22).” The act of the rape of Malyne is represented as lighthearted and playful meant to be humorous and to exist in the story foremostly to draw focus to her father and his crimes; the rape is a consequence for a male that offended the rapists and the physical action is significant to the story not to the plot in itself but as an allegory for revenge against the miller. Chaucer encourages the severity and trauma of the physical rape to be disregarded and instead for its value as imagery of punishing the miller for his social impropriety and criminal behavior to be accepted as its correct understanding - it does not matter that Malyne the female victim is violated but that her father is being repaid by having his property (his daughter) ruined as were the students’ goods.

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The Reeve’s Tale contributes to the idea of rape as morally acceptable if for an arguable legitimate reason, coming from the difficulties in 13th-14th century English secular law to determine and enforce the criminality of the act, with its illegality decreasing to just a trespass of the law and proven often not to be a trespass worthy of punishment in its inability to be argued as a crime by the victim (the woman and her father or husband) (Gradval, Ravishing Maidens 123). However as female readers of the story naturally see themselves represented within its text as the character of Malyne, the existence of the rape as “pley” or only the vehicle through which John and Aleyn challenge the miller has the likelihood to change, due to what Bal and Bryson would explain as the meaning of the sign of the rape (“enunciated”) being disconnected from how it is depicted (“enunciation”) because of the disconnection between the two to the reader whose life experiences differ from Chaucer’s (Bal and Bryson 179). Women were denied from voicing through any medium their experiences with the violence and trauma of sexual assault for they were not believed - by the period’s predominantly male intellectual authorities - to be capable of valuable or significant thinking and therefore the sign of rape is acceptedly presented as lighthearted/humorous or an empty act usable for an allusion to something more serious; because the enunciated and enunciation of rape for the woman reader would have been suppressed, Chaucer’s enunciated and enunciation were understood as accurate.

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In Chrétien de Troyes’ ‘Érec et Énide’ the attempted rape scenes of the protagonist Érec’s wife Énide’ are at times represented as erotic, not of rape but of ravishment, and in all cases reduced to the physical act’s moral value, with the danger of the threat to the woman’s body introduced as tests for her male protector to prove his heroism by defeating the assaulters and demonstrating the necessity of men to maintain dominance over women, to defend them from such dangers. Gradval studies the poet’s distinction between rape and ravishment, “…Chrétien blurs the lines between seduction and aggression. (He) uses sexual violence in two very different types of scenes: episodes of violent sexual assault…and also the more romanticized representations of ‘ravishment’” and how through disguising the violation in sensuality and teaching, “the act is systematically erased, elided, displaced, and rationalized (Gradval, Signs 565, 569).” Chrétien accentuates the eroticism of the act by focusing on the incapacitating beauty of the victim that compels the assaulters to desire her as if they were helpless and refrains from displaying any of the harrowing visuals that accompany rape like blood, tears and shouts, too masking its physical violence behind aligning sympathies with the male protector and rationalizing it as crucial for establishing the moral discussion of chivalry’s (defending female honor’s) importance. Once more this representation of rape in literature as erotic and moral can be seen similar to The Reeve’s Tale as the result of the exclusion of women from the discourse and conception of sexual assault, what Bal and Bryson would point to as the absent presence of all of a society’s groups often those non-respected, in the understanding of a phenomenon resulting from their inability to produce a respected method of communicating their commentary relative to those that are and can.

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While all members of a society may view or experience and consider with their own knowledge and insight (“empirical spectators”) rape, it is only certain privileged groups that are allowed to formally discuss and define it (“ideal spectators”) - the same dichotomy applying to empirical spectators of literature being silenced so that the work’s ideal spectators; in this case as in many throughout the Middle Ages, affluent, upper-class men; can be spoken to (Bal and Bryson 185). This same exclusion of women from communicating for themselves the phenomenon of rape throughout Europe in the medieval period was part of the reason behind the legal codes which governed and punished it not considering the physical violation of the female victim to be itself the crime - in Chrétien’s late 12th century France for instance the crime of rape was determined by whether the victim was taken from her father’s house; this and the penetration were done through violence; and the prospects for marriage between the victim and assaulter had by then not been discussed (Signs 567). 

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The existence of dissimilar ideas on rape during the medieval period from a different perspective than that of its celebrated male authors like Chaucer and Chrétien such as has been described thus far from that of a woman interpreter of either texts, references an additional idea of Bal and Bryson’s of the multiplicity or “polytheism” of perspectives of seeing a phenomenon which despite disallowed from developing into physical communication such as a piece of literature nonetheless are a part of its history of societal reception. For example, the artificial uniformity or “monotheism” of rape belied by considering official accounts of thought from privileged communicators; what they refer to as the “synecdoche”; in mid-1300s Italy would falsely convince one that universally the act was made to be a natural sexual practice because of the teaching by contemporary medical treatises that a woman could not conceive without orgasm and therefore pregnancy by rape was not corrupt because it was ‘pleasurable’ (Bal and Bryson 187). This esteemed belief popular amongst privileged groups and thus considered universal and uncontested serves as the foundation of Boccaccio’s ‘L’elgia di Madonna Fiammetta’ as Barbara Zecchi notes, “L’elgia di Madonna Fiammetta starts with a rape (Fiammetta does not call out for help because she fears that the presence of a stranger in her bed might be misconstrued as adultery.) Yet, in accordance with medieval views, Fiammetta does not dislike such an intrusion and the rapist is immediately turned into her lover (Zecchi 281).”

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Zecchi links Boccaccio’s work to the particular belief in 13th century Italy that sexual assault was a natural continuation of the ordered victimization of women and shouldn’t be viewed as unnatural or worthy of punishment, as well as both the common practice in medieval Europe for the rape of a married woman to be seen as adultery on her behalf and tried as such in a court of law and that if punishment should occur for the perpetrator, marriage to the victim to absolve the moral violation would be suffice (Gradval, Ravishing Maidens 123). L’elgia di Madonna Fiammetta displays this context and Gradval’s theory of troping rape to be erotic and moral to camouflage its violence against women; though the tradition of courtly love that dictates the novel displaces sexual assault from the physical violation of women it does not eliminate it, with its presence looming as the threat of sexual attack presented as the fulfillment of male carnal desire and punishment for women who transgress the virtues of ‘chastity’ or ‘purity’ required of them by the tradition. Returning to Bal and Bryson’s theory of reception and representation as not “monotheistic” of the “synecdoche” but “polytheistic” from all of the perspectives throughout a phenomenon’s reception, while the conception of rape in L’elgia di Madonna Fiammetta accepts and fortifies those proposed by prominent authorities in medicine, politics and literature it is not representative of the groups denied from communicating their contributions to the discourse (that were by consequence relegated instead to underdeveloped, secret and personal forms of seeing and analysis).

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On this point, due to the repression of non-respected or privileged groups in society from expressing their ideas and experiences in writing or verbally, their lenses or modes of observation - in semiotics the “codes” of interpretation - were prevented from developing into full realization; the possibility of these perspectives growing in support amongst society’s ‘inferior’ groups to such that they would rival those made dominant by ‘superior’ groups. a reason for the people’s initial repression. An intrinsic benefit of art or literature or as has been extended in this analysis any phenomenon observed/engaged with, according to Bal and Bryson is that the “convergence” of causes-and-effects which have led to the creation of a matter must be evaluated in equal weight as the “lines of signification” that open out from it and produce a consequential “diffraction” of meaning detached from the creator’s intentions (Bal and Bryson 179). Ruiz’s ‘Libro de buen amor’ is a convergence of sorts between these last two aforementioned ideas from Bal and Bryson - of the “codes” of interpretation of non-respected groups and the “refraction” of meanings in the reception that are not in the representation - because the author does not write its scenes of not necessarily consensual sex to be rape; the protagonist the Archpriest of Hita believes rape to be immoral and a crime and yet the intercourse led up with one woman, Endrina, is by trickery, predation and her expressed uninterest in the Archpriest.

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In this first scenario in the Libro of sex not presented as rape but constituting of the core features of rape as it is known as a violation of a victim’s body, the Archpriest convinces his messenger Trotaconventos to trick Endrina into coming to her house after he has been rejected by the widow - in a boisterous state he appears, and after a gap (physically missing) in the text Edrina is sobbing and cursing herself for trusting the woman who has made her into “prey” (Parodi 57). A woman reader experienced with rape would through her lens of observation link the events before and after the interval; the story’s ending being the aftermath of non-consensual sexual acts with the Archpriest; as rape despite Ruiz’s not outlining the actions of the churchman and the messenger which caused it as conditions of rape and his self-evident belief of rape as a crime worthy of punishment by death. Further signifying the acts of the interval as such however is Trotaconventos’ solution to the shame and embarrassment Endrina feels because of them as marriage to the Archpriest, reflecting the sentencing of a rapist to marry his victim as a legally and religiously satisfactory punishment established throughout the Catholic world - Spain amongst it - during the 11th century, especially for an archpriest exempt from the severer consequences of any crime and a widow who would otherwise be cast out of society (Ravishing Maidens, 8-9).

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The difference in codes of interpretation between the female reader and the male Ruiz like the female reader and Chaucer, involves another of Bal and Bryson’s ideas on the possession of codes throughout any given society: how codes are learnt through viewing and developing a familiarity with the systems according to which that which is observed and gained as knowledge or experience functions, and how this familiarity with and thus recognizability and appropriation of the codes varies across a society’s groups. German von Aue reformed Chrétien’s Érec et Énide into ‘Erec’, a poem with a similar structure and foundation of the protagonist defending the honor of his beloved from the approaching threat of sexual assault to foreground the power of men over women in the tradition of chivalry though, in addition to the threat of ravishment by other non-respectable men it is posed as a prospect of the respectable husband as a form of punishment of his wife as well. While there are no scenes of Enite being at the immediate risk of physical penetration, its looming possibility is increased with her disobeying Erec’s orders not to speak to signal upcoming dangers as Albrecht Classen interprets, “Erec gets extremely angry with her… because she has disobeyed his order and thereby undermined his patriarchal authority. …Erec never thanks her for her warning him; instead he only gets angrier… making her the victim of his own aggression with which he hopes to compensate for his lack of (caution) and ignorance (Classen 16-17).”

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Like Libro de buen amor the absence of physical penetration requires a reader to apply a perceptive lens that has a familiarity with the systems through which the abuse of women occur whether aggression, intimidation and endangerment or physical violation, to read and recognize the former as representative of the latter; particularly as both literatures uphold chivalric romance which denies a ‘respectable’ man’s ability to physically antagonize his beloved and displaces rape itself to be a symbol coded with spiritual or heroic and moral meanings. As touched on when analyzing Boccaccio’s L’elgia di Madonna Fiammetta, courtly romance transforms explicit instances of male physical assault into implicit risks of physical assault to reinforce behaviors that fit inside the tradition’s demands of female purity, so to most male accounts courtly love and chivalry would have been the antithesis to a pro-rape culture, but as Bal and Bryson propose, the absence of “unheard” female viewers can be noticed from within the accounts of “documented” male viewers (Bal and Bryson 186). The perceptions of chivalric romance that would recognize how rape and sexual assault had preserved through the tradition in phenomena like a husband commanding his wife and threatening her with violation as punishment for disobedience; a reflection of mid-1100s German, like all contemporary European law, that did not consider marital rape a crime because Erec would ‘hold’ the autonomy over Enite’s body; though not represented could be discerned through Erec and further learnt how they were repressed (through ordered silence, intimidation, etc.).

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In the 9th century Iceland (as well as a majority of Scandinavia) was introduced to Christianity and from the 11th-13th centuries the region was synthesized into a part of the Roman Catholic European world, thus, within Icelandic secular and religious laws there is the impact of both, the importance of honor and humiliation of dishonor inherited from the Old Norse world, and the importance of purity and punishment of social and religious ruin taken from contemporary Europe (Ljunqvist par. 5-7). Rape as a force of humiliation to enforce male dominance by punishing female transgressions of submission is strongly evident in the stories (from the sagas of Icelanders, 13th-14th century) of Grettir and Queen Ólǫf: in the first, a servant girl is brutally forced into Grettir’s bed after she is heard mocking the size of his anatomy and it is palpably inferred what events occur once she has been trapped and in the second, the aggressive Queen Ólǫf is raped repeatedly by her husband King Helgi after she has attempted to humiliate him in his sleep to seize his power to remind her of her place and not to surpass it (par. 13, 19).

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The combination of the significance of honor and valuing of purity naturally produces a belief of rape and sexual assault as the dishonoring of a woman or due to the presence in Iceland pre- and post- European Christianization of the perception that a woman’s body was the property of her male relatives, the dishonoring of a man through a woman; the influence of the physical violation of a woman to be displaced onto moral teachings there at the foundation of the sagas as well. This dishonoring or humiliation of male family members in the rape of a woman from a given family motivates the resolutive actions of both the stories of Klyppr, who is driven to kill King Sigurðr in revenge for the king raping his wife after being accused by his brother of betraying their ancestry if he did not, and Þrándr, who similarly murders the Earl Jón after the earl has raped his wife lest he himself and his descendants be disgraced with dishonor (par. 21-24). Klyppr and Þrándr are outmatched by the authority and strength of their wives’ assaulters and end up respectively dead in combat and alive but as a fugitive with his living family members killed or tortured, and yet the men seek out the redemptive act knowing the dangers it would mean for them and potentially their relatives as it is desirable to die in honor and humiliating to live in its absence; a cultural code that once transferred into literature would become what Bal and Bryson would describe as having a “hegemonic influence” (Bal and Bryson 182). The construct of rape as a symbol of humiliation for a man related to the female physically violated and that it is his right to redeem for himself, shares with each of the principles communicated by the works discussed thus far in being an authored in a respected text, and therefore authoritative, idea that once in circulation begins to popularize or naturalize a collection of impactful ideologies, that which Bal and Bryson express as and as are relevant to this topic, “genius as masculine”, “masculinity as unitary” and “the authentic work as the most valuable” (187).

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As the masculine redemption of rape is naturalized by the Icelandic family sagas so too is rape as a symbol of male against male crime (The Reeve’s Tale), rape as a trial of male heroism (Érec et Énide), rape as a punishment for defying gender roles (L’elgia di Madonna Fiammetta), rape as easily redeemable (Libro de buen amor) and rape as a consequence for disobeying men (Erec) as evident in the dominance of their ideologies within the literature - even within each other - and law of Europe in the Middle Ages. However, as has been observed by applying the theories of representation and reception proposed by Miek Bal and Norman Bryson in the field of semiotics to such depictions of rape by their authors Chaucer, Chrétien, Boccaccio, Ruiz, von Aue and the authors of the sagas of Icelanders, the ideas and concepts pertaining to the physical acts of rape and sexual assault are not definitive nor all-encompassing but rather a particular, prominent perspective on them from male communicators. As they (Bal and Bryson) support, studying the representations as signs subjective to firstly the authors’, but consequently the historical, regional and religious contexts that informed/inspired the authors’ perspectives, the “plurality” and “unpredictability” of the representations’ relations to the physical acts are foregrounded, as the alternative perspectives and different understandings and interpretations of rape and sexual assault are highlighted in opposition (and in determining why the former is communicated and not the latter, the latter’s reasons for an absence of expression are observable) (185).

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Additionally, in studying the texts as they have been preserved since the Middle Ages in the forms that they have, a wealth and diversity of perspectives of representations of rape and sexual assault are presented within them, for - as Bal and Bryson acknowledge - in every period throughout their communications the authorities that have consented to do so have transformed them (the representations) so as to carry and proliferate the ideologies of theirs (the authorities) and their given “contemporary social group”. As they (Bal and Bryson) state on the nature of the ‘artistic’ or authored representations of phenomena like rape and sexual assault, “What has entered (the historical record) are highly specialized responses to exhibitions of (art), literary productions that promoted or defended particular artists and schools and participated in various running debates about questions of taste”, with authors and laws being applied in place of ‘artists’ and ‘schools’, and ‘taste’ being adapted to truth (185-186).

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The introduction to this essay proposed that the course of the history of societies has not been shaped to support the liberation of women from submission under men up until the contemporary day as is the reason for why representations of rape and sexual assault in the texts studied have remained as ignorant of female perspectives as they have, what feminist literary critic Annette Kolodny specifies as, “male readers who find themselves outside of and unfamiliar with the symbolic systems that constitute female experience in writings will necessarily dismiss those systems as undecipherable, meaningless, or trivial (Gradval, Ravishing Maidens 13).” The history of representation and reception of rape and sexual assault in literature - especially, that as foundational to the modern global society as coming from Western Europe - have shaped the understandings and interpretations of the physical acts that have been naturalized and made prominent in our time: the consideration of the crimes in medieval works, building the structures upon which what they mean for an individual victim and for the society that they belong to can be recognized today.

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Primary Sources:

Bal, Mieke & Bryson, Norman. “Semiotics and Art History.” The Art Bulletin, vol. 73, no. 2, 1991, www.jstor.org/stable/3045790. Accessed 8 Nov. 2021.

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Classen, Albrecht. Sexual Violence and Rape in the Middle Ages: A Critical Discourse in Premodern German and European Literature, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2011.

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Gradval, Kathryn. “Chrétien de Troyes, Gratian, and the Medieval Romance of Sexual Violence.” Signs, vol. 17, no. 3, 1992, www.jstor.org/stable/3174623. Accessed 8 Nov. 2021.

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Gradval, Kathryn. Ravishing Maidens, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.

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Ljungqvist, Fredrik C. “Rape in the Icelandic Sagas: An Insight in the Perceptions about Sexual Assaults on Women in the Old Norse World.” Journal of family history, vol. 20, no. 4, 2015., doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1177%2F0363199015599520. Accessed 8 Nov. 2021.

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Parodi, Karime. “Seduction to Sexual Assault : Consent and Heterosexual Interaction in the Libro de buen amor.” La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, vol. 49, no. 1, 2020, doi.org/10.1353/cor.2020.0028. Accessed 8 Nov. 2021.

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Rose, Christine M. “Reading Chaucer Reading Rape.” Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M. Ross. Palgrave MacMillan, 2016, pp. 18-124.

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Zecchi, Barbara. “Rape.” The Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature, edited by Rinaldina Russell. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997, pp. 278-282.

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Secondary Sources:

Bovey, Alixe. “Women in medieval society.” British Library, www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/women-in-medieval-society. Accessed 8 Nov. 2021.

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Finke, Laurie A. “Eastern Orthodox Christianity.” Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, edited by Vern Bullough and James A. Brundage. Garland, 2000, pp. 344-368.

‘
she must be subdued’: woman as chaos and her required repression in the pentateuch and babylonian mythology

In the Book of Genesis, it is told that for the proliferation of humanity, woman is ordered both, to suffer and to submit: “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Gen 3:16 KJV). Likewise, in the Enūma Eliš, for order to be brought about in the universe, woman is forced to be violated and slaughtered, “As Tiamat opened her mouth to its full extent, / He drove in the evil wind, while as yet she had not shut her lips. / The terrible winds filled her belly, / And her courage was taken from her, and her mouth she opened wide. / He seized the spear and burst her belly, / He severed her inward parts, he pierced her heart. / He overcame her and cut off her life…” (King 58-59).

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As evident in their creation myths, Genesis and Enūma Eliš, respectively, the Pentateuch and Babylonian mythology set forth the idea that the establishment and reinforcement of an ordered universe and, the survival of mankind, are contingent upon the subordination and punishment of women, or female beings, by men, or male powers. If the nature of man is order, then that of woman is chaos: independence and power, allow the opportunity for women to halt or prevent humanity and the world’s progression, ceasing divine creation or guidance, as in the cases of Eve and Tiamat; both religious/mythological canons associating men with creation, and women with destruction.

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The female force is thus, a danger to earthly growth and heavenly or cosmic balance, which must be tamed for the health, safety and continuity of mankind, and its favourable relationship with God, in the Pentateuch, or gods, in Babylonian mythology. This claim is reasoned in the most rudimentary terms in the defeat of Tiamat, the primordial sea whom created the universe and its deities, by Marduk, the young patron god of Babylonia. Tiamat is dually, a mother and omnipotent; upon her elder children begging her to silence those younger, those destructive, she engages in battle with Marduk; evolving from a passive, altruistic figure, apologetic of her offspring’s violence, to one active and aggressive who confronts it, being killed consequently, because of her decision to oppose them. Karen Sonik, considers the subjugation of Tiamat to domesticity, and the fatal implications of her transcending the imposed expectations of being a mother, “Over the course of the action, then, the elemental Tiamat must be transformed first into a wife and a mother, resembling a proper domestic goddess, and then into a monster, an unnatural ‘Other’ who fails to abide by the gender roles defined by the great gods and who consequently threatens the very fabric of order and civilization” (Sonik 86).

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The danger of her strength and power is imminent, when she is independent - the necessity of her restriction and removal reasoned in the text, by the physical threat she poses to the great, patron gods but, determined in the subtext, by her liberation from the restraints chained upon her by male forces and, her challenging of them (the forces). Only once Tiamat has been destroyed, is order able to be bestowed upon the universe; the reconstruction of an ordered world, from the remains of the vanquished sea monster analysed by Sonik as, “Marduk celebrates his ascension by dismembering Tiamat’s corpse, endowed with breasts (V 57) and a tail (V 59) in this scene in final emphasis of both her femininity and her monstrosity, her ‘other’ness, and creates from it the structure and features of the world” (96-97).

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Transcending motherhood or the, submissive maternal identity, such as active actions or choices, is punished indisputably, in the Pentateuch, for it is upheld that God has prescribed a natural course which will lead, to the manifestation of his ideal world thus, that transcendence, is a disobedience, and an endangerment, of his vision, for humanity (Mauer, par. 23). Assertive intervention is forbidden, disproportionately so for women, each case resulting in, consequences, conflict and retribution for their families, such as for Rebecca’s, whose fulfillment of a delivered prophecy, for her younger son Jacob, to receive the divine inheritance over the elder, Esau, causes the disunion of their lineages. Shana Mauer summarizes this trespassing, “Rebecca steps outside of her limited role, becomes a primary actor, manipulates the divinely initiated course of history, and causes fraternal hostility and the jealousy which becomes one of the ongoing plagues for her children and their future generations” (par. 13).

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The engendering of ‘necessary’ repression, can come from both, a disobedience of subordination and, the inability to achieve motherhood - evident respectively, in the courses of Dinah and Sarah. The former, challenges the patriarchal, patrilineal society by not being a wife, nor mother - resisting subordination to the norms of maternal behaviour, and the course of God’s pre-ordained plan, she is problematic; a threat to her family and, to fate (par. 16). Shana Mauer reflects on Dinah’s independence and why she must consequently be punished (she is raped, and the act [and the great pain it causes her], is ignored by her family), “By going out to look over the land’ (34:1), Dina, like Rebecca, violates the female role by taking independent action. She transgresses the norm of total subjugation to male dominance. This is threatening to the patriarchal structure, wherein women are restricted to a role of complete subservience” (par. 17). The latter, Sarah, is infertile, unable to bear children for the patriarch Abraham and begin his divine progeny, threatening the realization of God’s ideal world - if Abraham has no sons, he cannot pass on the Covenant -, and thus, she is punished with the fertility of Hagar, her slave, with her husband’s first-born, Ishmael, and all of the threats his lineage, will pose to her bloodline.

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Though both punished, Dinah by a man, Shechem, and Sarah by a male force, God, ‘necessarily’ repressed from their independence (Dinah’s own, and Sarah’s son’s [which she values above her own]) and respective, chosen purposes, there is a dichotomy between Dinah and Sarah. Sarah, is pious and passive, and is thus rewarded, eventually, with the birth of Isaac - she is a matriarch, the original mother of God’s great nation while Dinah, is curious and unconventional and she, is allotted the role of incentivizing her brothers (one a saint, and the other a founder) to massacre the Canaanites, which endangers both, their family’s safety and legacy. As illustrated, the Pentateuch outlines what makes a good woman, and what of a bad, and consequently determines a woman’s fate depending on her fulfillment or rejection, of the criteria which constitutes that first delineation.

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Woman, chaotic in nature, must be reduced to either, good or bad, and is treated by the Pentateuch and Babylonian mythology, dichotomously different, on the basis of which she is. The centrality of this principle to both religious/mythological canons is foregrounded in the understanding and teaching of Tiamat, as an uncontrollably violent, and aggressive sea monster, which, disregards, wholly, her role as mother. It is evident in the text, that contrarily, she possesses characters associated with the conceived criteria of ‘good mother (woman)’ - she is patient with her children’s bad behaviour, cares for (defends) their wellbeing and is forgiving of the destruction they cause.

Zairong Xiang, explains how the discounting of Tiamat’s being (in part) a good mother, is required for the transmission of the creation myth’s patriarchal message, “Cutting Tiamat into either the ‘bad monster’ who kills or the ‘good mother’ who protects, two supposedly incompatible entities, is a result of colonial categorical logics, unable to fathom the coexistence of two supposedly oppositional characteristics” (Zairong 56). For the story to function; to establish the greatness of Marduk and thus, the greatness of Babylon; the conception of Tiamat must be, as a fearsome aggressor, “...the misogynist representation of Tiamat as pure monstrosity results from a necessity, in the very logic of difference, to erect the positivity of Marduk, who is constructed in this process as the norm/order opposing the stigmatized difference as monstrosity/chaos. Feminization thus runs together with monstrification” (53).

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The ‘monstrification’ of power and strength in women, is evident in the Pentateuch as well. Cat Quine, considering the books’ equation of ‘femininity’, with emotionality, victimhood and fragility, concludes, the religious/mythological texts, “elevat(e) motherhood over queenship” (Quine 408). Femininity is at once, defined by that which the canon considers ‘weak’; femininity is, weakness. Women, that display femininity as the canon defines it, are, however, viewed favourably - they are believed to be good characters, and their stories are intended to be positive, sympathetic and supportive. Consequently, women that are perceived to be weak, are dually, supposed to be understood as good.

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Quine asserts that any action or choice made by a woman which deviates from (the Pentateuch’s) femininity, is (identified by the text as) an exhibition of masculinity, which is perverse, or wrong; ‘masculinity’ in a woman is monstrous - she is a bad character, and she must be appropriately punished. Power, strength and independence - all wielded by queens within the Bible - cannot be present within or wielded by, good women, and thus, their motherhood and all of its associated connotations, must be disregarded due to the more effecting condition, of their queenship. Quine demonstrates this principle - the usage of power, independence, strength and force - as masculine, and requiring of retribution, “And Athaliah’s extraordinary performance of masculinity, wiping out a whole house in order to reign by herself, presents her as ‘an anti-mother’ who also cannot fulfil the masculine role of ruling and is appropriately slain without burial” (417).

Motherhood is too, however, not liberated from dichotomies with one, being ascribed ‘goodness’ and the other, ‘badness’ - nurturing a child (to be a progenitor of God’s great world, as he, has preordained them to) is viewed in the Pentateuch as objectively, good, but, conception, has religious/mythological (related to the books’ religion/mythology) and cultural (to their culture) implications, which relate it to badness. Infertility, is indeed a threat to divine order (it is deserving of punishment, thus it is ‘bad’), however, in sustaining faith and reverence to God - proving one’s devoutness during what would be the greatest of tests to a good woman - , she who persists through barrenness, is inherently more pious, more dedicated to God and his world, than she who conceives easily. Conception, as in the act of becoming pregnant, is inferior to the act of toiling through infertility, with the immovable will to achieve conception - earning conception, is ‘good’, conception without trial, is ‘bad’.

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Then, there are the metatextual connotations of ‘easy conception’ that pertain to the forceful, patriarchal culture, fraught with practices of women-vilification, in which the Pentateuch both, exists in, and was produced in - becoming pregnant quickly or easily, an apt allegory (substantiated, by the books) for unrestricted sexual activity; a sign of immorality or inferiority. As David J. Zucker and Moshe Reiss acknowledge, women with identities the text values - coming from ‘favourable’ origins, occupying a ‘respectable’ place in society, acting according to the rules of a good woman - seldom conceive easily - such is disproportionately allotted to women whose identities are the inverse: “Rachel is Jacob’s favored wife, but for many years she lacks direct heirs, while Leah, the less favored wife, is fruitful but emotionally frustrated. Likewise, Sarah, Abraham’s longtime first wife, is infertile, while the woman of lesser status, Hagar, conceives easily. (The theme of a loved wife who eventually gives birth is a continuing thread in the biblical narrative)” (Zucker and Reiss 22).

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Sigmeund Freud’s Madonna-Whore Complex can therefore, be seen within the concept of motherhood in the Pentateuch. As established thus far, whichever is the inferior, in a contrast of goodness vs. badness in the Pentateuch, must be punished for their lack of virtuousness which, in this instance, is the autonomy of the female body to conceive, without atonement before God: Leah, in her marriage, is void of love, desire, respect and humanity, and Hagar, is banished from her home (by Sarah) and brought nearly to death, in the wilderness. At once, a woman can be in extreme subservience to men - lacking fertility, her fundamental right by nature, and begging it back, from God - and ultimately, rewarded, or, possess such a fragment of autonomy - bodily - and be prospect, for repentance. Though, there is no consolidated canon of Babylonian mythology from which to discern, exactly, a central and continual, religion/mythology and culture, as there is of the Pentateuch, similar, masculinity-femininity (as applied, in the understanding of Tiamat), and Madonna-Whore complexes, can be observed across the myths of Babylonia (as testified, by Donald A. MacKenzie).

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Tiamat’s detachment from motherhood, due to the power, strength, independence and force she wields, parallels that of the queens of the Bible - the dichotomy between femininity and masculinity, expanding to that of mother vs. monster; in both cases, to justify the necessary repression, of them, by the ‘great male powers’, which the religions/mythologies are built upon. Across Babylonian mythology, the dichotomy between good woman and bad woman, is central; creation (motherhood), healing, love and support (of their husbands), define the characters of deities valued, by their stories, while ruling, aggression, ‘wildness’ and ‘copulation’, mark those viewed as antagonists, or dangers. MacKenzie describes,

(Ishtar) was a great mother goddess, who was worshipped by those who believed that life and the universe had a female origin in contrast to those who believed in the theory of male (Apsu’s) origin. Other (creator goddesses) included Mami (Ninhursag), Aruru, Bau, Gula, and Zerpanitum (Sarpanit). These were all ‘Preservers’. At the same time there were ‘Destroyers’, like Nin-sun and the Queen of Hades, Eresh-ki-gal or Allatu. They were accompanied by shadowy male forms ere they became wives of strongly individualized (inferior to Great Father) gods, or by child gods, their sons. (MacKenzie par. 256)

That “Destroyers” were denied their independence and forced, under the supervision of a male presence until, they were ‘given over’ to their husbands - gods that were outcast, that is, ‘strongly’ differentiated from the central, far-reaching gods or, even the children (and thus, less revered) of those gods, demonstrates the need in Babylonian mythology, for ‘bad women’ to be restrained or punished, appropriately.

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While the vilification of ‘copulation’ aligns with that of, ‘easy conception’, and the Madonna-Whore complex is present within, the mother-monster delineation, it is most palpably exhibited, in the figure of ‘Lilithu’, adopted from the Sumerian ‘Lila’: a female demon that,

…resembles (a temptress/trickster) of the (ancient Sanskrit text) Ramayana, who made love to (the text’s hero and his brother), and the sister of the demon Hidimva, who became enamoured (upon being sent to kill) one of the heroes of the (Sanskrit) Mahabharata, and the various fairy lovers of Europe who lured men to eternal imprisonment inside mountains, or vanished for ever when they were completely under their influence, leaving them demented. (par. 173)

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The Madonna-Whore complex present within Babylonian mythology can therefore be viewed as a division between ‘good femininity’ and ‘bad femininity’: the former, is associated with mothers, creators and healers, and the latter, with deities who seduce, trick and evoke lust. Bad femininity differs from masculinity (monstrosity), for its attributes are connected to female sexuality and its negative cultural connotations - inextricably tied to womanhood; though, it is often observed in women which also, display masculinity.

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The principles of good femininity and bad femininity are integral, in understanding the female figures in the Pentateuch the former, being defined in this religious/mythological body, by piety, selflessness, loyalty and purity, and the latter, sexuality, deception, indulgence and lust. The matriarchs of the books, the foremothers of religions/mythologies which derive from them, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel, are distinguished as the most valuable women within them, to the formation of the ideal world of God, and are thus, given a quantity of respect, and respite, from the necessity of repression or punishment.

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They each ultimately epitomize ‘good femininity’, and moreover, aid crucially, in the fulfillment of the divine order of reality: they are able or allowed to transgress into ‘bad femininity’, or even become, ‘bad women’, for it is reasoned, ultimately, that their transgressions are necessitated in order to achieve, God’s true intentions. Olivia DePreter affirms how Sarah’s cruel, aggressive banishment of the pregnant Hagar is interpreted positively by the text, awarding her further merit, “While Sarah may appear demanding and unreasonable, it is telling that God instructs Abraham to listen to her... She appears as a strong willed woman determined to uphold her status by sending away the woman who had tried to usurp her standing with Abraham. She makes sure that it is her son, the son who God promised the covenant, who inherits Abraham’s blessing and continues the covenant” (DePreter 48).

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This great quality, of the matriarchs is strategically contrasted against the inferiority of a female character which embodies or (conclusively) represents bad femininity; a practice most significant in the selection of women that are to be assigned the responsibility, of carrying down the line of succession of God’s anointed people - women who must be ‘good’ enough, to be worthy of preserving the covenant. DePreter evaluates how Rebecca’s goodness qualifies her for such a labour, and how important goodness is, in the progenerating of God’s legacy, “…the narrator makes it known early on that Rebekah is a virgin, untouched by man (24:16). …She is presented as the perfect wife for Isaac and the rightful mother of future carriers of the covenant. It is through her that the people of Israel must continue; just as in the case of Sarah, the biblical narrator once more highlights the insistence on descent through the proper mother” (50). The misogynistic employment of the good femininity vs. bad femininity belief system, in assessing the ‘proper mothers’ to be ‘future carriers of the covenant’, is subsumed by the matriarchs themselves - the fear of a woman of bad femininity, becoming apart of an anointed family, is the motivation behind many of their prominent actions - Sarah’s banishment of Hagar or Rebecca’s dismissal of Esau (for receiving the covenant) over the ‘immoral’ women he engages with. In a sense, the matriarchs have internalized and consequently, act the part of, the patriarchy (male forces) which rule over and control, the Pentateuch.

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An aspect of the repression and punishment of women in the Pentateuch and Babylonian mythology not considered thus far, is the (unfortunately) common occurrence of such, being in a form of sexual assault or abuse, or a similar act in which her agency is denied or stripped from her. The force of male aggression asserting itself over a female presence in such a matter, is evident in both the creation stories/myths belonging to the Pentateuch and Babylonian Mythology, Genesis and Enūma Eliš, and (harrowingly), continues as a habitual theme, not weightily criticized, throughout the canons. In the Babylonian story, the sexual assault of Tiamat by Marduk is explicit: he forces a harsh wind into her mouth, disallowing her from closing her lips, and causing her insides to swell uncomfortably - when he shoots an arrow into her mouth, her body is viciously torn apart. Amanda Vajskop furthers how his ‘punishment’ of her, is an allegory of a man overpowering a woman, abusing the power imbalances extant between the genders,

He uses what I interpret as some very male weapons to kill her in a manner that I believe a reading of the text with a hermeneutic of suspicion could identify dynamics associated with sexual assault. It seems as though Marduk is using traditionally male aggression as his weapons. ‘Fierce battle and Conflict’ and ‘Strife that overthrows all’ can be interpreted as characteristics of the traditionally male occupation of war-making while the ‘Terror-inspiring splendor’ can be interpreted as Marduk’s assumed patriarchal authority over Tiamat. (Vajskop 65-66)

In Genesis, God’s forcing of Eve to relinquish all autonomous control she has over herself, her right and ability to choose to consent, to Adam, necessitates her free will be either surrendered, or discounted: “…her punishment is to have her moral agency taken away from her. For her act of disobedience, she is made to be forever obedient to her husband, who somehow manages to retain his moral agency ([which makes him] “like God”, rul[ing] her). Eve must be made subservient to her husband - robbed of her agency so that she will not create additional chaos” (69-70).

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In producing discourse on the repression of women, natural agents of chaos, in the Pentateuch and Babylonian mythology, it is valuable to weigh the courses of their significances through history - what has become the outcome, that is to say the overall meaning or importance, of these female figures and their stories.

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In the case of the women, of Babylonian mythology, their independent significances were predominantly, erased by the advancement (temporally) of Babylonia as a society; from the third millennium BC to the end of the first millennium BC, the representation of female deities in the religious/mythological canon decreased to near absence. In the early periods of the culture, a pantheon of goddesses ruled alongside the gods: from nature - earth, air, water, to human practices - agriculture, language, craftwork, and divine intervention - healing, divination, provision, each had a patron female deity (“Gender and Religion: Gender par. 10). As Babylonia became increasingly structured around imperialism and militarism - fields wholly dominated by men - and a more pronounced and forceful patriarchal system emerged, the judged value and thus existence, of women within the religion/mythology disappeared - to such an extent, that even creation stories began to feature man, as the supreme conceiver of life: “(the Babylonian myth) ‘Enki (Ea) and Ninhursag,’, describe(s) a fertility contest between Enki and a mother goddess. The story ends by acknowledging…Enki, the male principle, triumphs” (18).

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Ishtar, once associated with love, fertility and wisdom, became a deity of war and the sole woman retained in Babylonian mythology, whose morphing into the embodiment of masculinity - a process which did not make her a ‘bad woman’ requiring restraint but rather, ascending her from ‘being female’ altogether (her anatomy, being her only difference from male gods) - made her still, worthy of worship. The goddess’ sustained representation as a ‘woman’, ironically, served a patriarchal function for the female inhabitants of Babylonia, “Ishtar's ongoing popularity has been attributed not only to her martial qualities but also to her gender-transgressive nature; in her physical violence, insatiable sexual appetite, freedom from pregnancy, and flouting of patriarchal family mores, the divine Inanna (another name, for Ishtar) defines by negative example the proper behavior of mortal women in a patriarchal society - a dynamic that underlies the Greek(‘s) Amazon tradition” (13).

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With the physical manifestation of the Pentateuch’s religious/mythological canon, the significance of its female figures has not merely endured, but intensified, since the books’ (written) canonization in approximately 90 A.D. - successive followers of the religion/mythology, possessing a profound value and respect, of its stories involving women, interpreting their meanings, multitudinously. Since its advent, feminist hermeneutics, has analysed the nature, message and purpose of such diverse and at times, conflicting, representations, the most prevailing readings, being considered within this exploration, and its oppositions, not yet accounted for.

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For certain feminist scholars, such as Sharon P. Jeansonne, the ‘bias’ understanding of the role of women in the Pentateuch, is undermined by the importance they each have to the founding and progression, of God’s nation and its people - not solely, as progenitors, but as independently impactful, guiders,

“Although Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah fulfilled God’s plan for them to be the mothers of the promised descendants, they also participated in the crucial covenantal beginnings of Israel. They ensured…that God’s designated choices receive the significant blessings of their fathers, and in some cases they guaranteed the safety of their families” (Jeansonne 107).

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Though these women all, indisputably experience a great amount of hardship at the hands of men and male forces during their respective courses, (according to this reading) they are rewarded for their moral strength and perseverance with mortal achievements, divine blessings, a vital lineage and/or an eternity in heaven. The Pentateuch’s female figures are not reduced, to any diminutive position, they are courageous, ambitious and hard-working; in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, they defy expectations and save themselves, “Hagar is mistreated and brought to the threshold of death; the daughters of Lot are threatened with rape by all the men of their city; Dinah is raped by Shechem and mistreated by her brothers; and Tamar is abandoned and denied her marital rights. Yet, in the face of adversity. These women demonstrate great resilience and resourcefulness” (2).

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To that final point, I cannot contest - while the restraints forced upon the female figures in both, the Pentateuch and Babylonian mythology, attempt to quell, banish or terminate, the presence and value of their natural womanhood, whether it be, order or chaos, evidently, fail to achieve so resolutely, nor finitely; woman, refuses to be subdued.

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Bibliography:

DePreter, Olivia. “Women of Genesis: Mothers of Power.” Denison Journal of Religion, vol. 10, no. 5, 2011, digitalcommons.denison.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=religion. Accessed 8 Oct. 2021.

“Gender And Religion: Gender And Ancient Near Eastern Religions.” Encyclopedia.com. 22 Sept. 2021, www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gender-and-religion-gender-and-ancient-near-eastern-religions. Accessed 9 Oct. 2021.

Jeansonne, Sharon P. The Women of Genesis: From Sarah to Potiphar's Wife, Fortress Press, 1990. Google Books, books.google.ca/books?id=gewbj8QZ31cC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false.

King, Leonard W. Enuma Elish: The Seven Tablets of Creation. Kindle Edition: 1901; Sacred Texts, 2009. www.sacred-texts.com/ane/stc/stc07.htm.  

MacKenzie, Donald A. “Myths of Babylonia and Assyria”. Project Gutenberg, 5 Sept. 2005, www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16653/pg16653-images.html.

Mauer, Shana. “The Female Threat in Genesis”. University of Toronto, 14 May 2000, sites.utoronto.ca/wjudaism/contemporary/articles/a_mauer1.html. Accessed 5 Oct. 2021.

Sonik, Karen. “Gender Matters in Enuma eliš.” In the Wake of Tikva Frymer-Kensky, edited by Richard H. Beal, Steven W. Holloway, and JoAnn Scurlock. Gorgias Press, 2009, pp. 85-101.

The Holy Bible, King James Version. Cambridge Edition: 1769; King James Bible Online, 2021. www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-Chapter-3/.  

Quine, Cat. “Bereaved Mothers and Masculine Queens: The Political Use of Maternal Grief in 1–2 Kings”. Open Theology, vol. 6, no. 1, 2020, www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opth-2020-0120/html. Accessed 6 Oct. 2021.

Vajskop, Amanda. “Finding Patterns in the Chaos: Woman as Chaos Agent in Creation Myths”. Denison Journal of Religion, vol. 5, no. 7, 2005, digitalcommons.denison.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=religion. Accessed 8 Oct. 2021.

Xiang, Zairong. Queer Ancient Ways: A Decolonial Exploration, punctum books, 2018. OAPEN, library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/25395/1004700.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

Zucker, David J. and Reiss, Moshe. The Matriarchs of Genesis: Seven Women, Five Views, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2015. Google Books, books.google.ca/books?id=1S_sCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false.

femininity, self-making and disruption in the life writing of amanda plett and diablo cody

Amanda Plett and Diablo Cody employ a diaristic writing style crafted to oppose and challenge hegemonic guidelines for women’s respectability and coloured with the worlds of cherished pieces of popular culture in their respective pieces of life writing, “When Bravery is Fiction: Despair, Hope & Expectation in the Writing of Transsexuality” and Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper. Through a radically feminine usage of language and according to an ideology on the rights of women to voice the dimensions of their positions of marginality, Plett and Cody put into writing autobiographical subjectivities of and experiences as respectively, a woman writer that is a trans woman and a woman writer that is employed in sex work.

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Though the binarization of what is fundamentally/in a biological sense the inclination of a woman or a man has been disproven by several scholars, Plett and Cody use language as a form of resistance against the rules placed on what qualifies as a skilled/masculine use of language and therefore what should be counted as an unsophisticated and feminine grasp of language. To create the works the women’s personal patterns of speech as well as popular cultural and subcultural slang and references are employed – an approach to writing that challenges patriarchal rules regarding the respectability of a writer’s writing one, because of it’s sampling from the lowly and feminized mass culture and two, because it borrows rather than exclusively creates. Moreover, in many cases the language that is used or the pieces of culture that are appropriated engage directly with dominant and subcultural expressions of femininity, or aspects of and issues within the experiences of girlhood and young female adulthood. The frequency of the incorporation of such elements of style lends the works a message of hyper-femininity – radical because of its magnitude and unapologetic embracing of articulations of femininity and female subjectivity.

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Inclusion of pieces of popular culture as imagery to more fully embody the personal experiences of the authors as well as metaphors to represent how each author is understanding and relating to an experience in their lives is a signature of Plett and Cody’s styles of writing. Plett incorporates the plot of her own novel Little Fish to illustrate emotions and thoughts on her subjectivity as a transwoman through the ideas and thoughts of another transwoman with different circumstances in life that, while not a literal reflection of her life’s course, represent the circumstances the writer felt she struggled through (4-7). Cody interweaves news and fiction stories (whether articulated through music, cinema, books or the internet) with recounts of her real life, and cites the selfhoods and decisions of and occurrences to real and fictional young females she idolizes to communicate and make sense of how she feels about herself, and how she is moving through her life. By borrowing pieces from elsewhere Plett and Cody provide opportunities for self-making – both theirs, and their readers.

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Plett and Cody foreground as prominent aspects of their lives possessing the subjectivity of a trans woman and a sex worker respectively, yet contrary to and to refute dominant representations of what it is like to “come out” (Plett 2) and live as a trans woman or to “choose” (Cody 19:27) and work in sex work, the writers equally foreground other aspects of their selves and lives they view as similarly significant. Writing and trans rights activism are aspects of her life and which she defines her subjectivity in relation to that Plett does believe are brave of her to pursue: if she is “brave” (2), it is for creating and putting her writing into the world (3-4), and for fighting for issues impacting the trans community in her writing and in her organizing (2-4). In contrast to the ease with which she understands herself as a stripper and how sensible she understands her life as a stripper, Cody speaks about – when outside of that subjectivity and profession – the “bravery” required for her to become a mother figure to her boyfriend’s young daughter (2:17:43-2:19:48), as well as to rationalize the “back-breaking” labour of her low-wage paying copywriter job (1:22:06-1:22:39).

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Plett and Cody disrupt themselves the dominant understandings of the sociologically constructed process of transitioning, and of a young woman becoming and working as a stripper. Plett explains how the double-edged rhetoric of “You’re so brave” (2) Others the condition of being trans as an identity of not just non-normativity, but of wrongness, that the act of living as the self one knows to be their true self is courageous. Being a transwoman, she informs, is not some “brave” (2) act of “choos[ing]” (7), but just of living. To borrow Plett’s framing, Cody does not see herself nor any of her fellow strippers as “brave” for possessing the subjectivity of a stripper, but rather as so for braving the reality of being a stripper in an industry operating on the wallets of (largely) male patrons and in a world that decries them. The subjectivity of “stripper” Cody wears with pride. She presents her entrance into the sex work industry as a choice that she made in order to pay her share of the rent on her and her boyfriend’s apartment in Minneapolis (1:15-5:16). Cody presents a portrait of the profession of stripping that is counter-hegemonic: despite the systematic injustices and the threat of  men’s violence, she finds it fun and exciting to dance (46:48-47:10), shopping for and wearing slinky work clothing instills new confidence in her (21:26-23:21), and the environment among the dancers at a majority of the clubs she works at is supportive and inspiring (2:07:30-2:12:53).

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Significantly, Cody and Plett’s argumentations against the particular systems of patriarchy that reinforce the pathologizing and vilification of trans women, and of sex workers, differ. Where Cody criticizes in abstracted and nonspecific terminology how traditional establishments of sex work take sizable portions of their workers’ profit (1:01:21-1:03:27) and male patrons simultaneously solicit explicit sex acts from strippers and malign them as devoid of morals and self-respect (1:35:06-1:36:58). Plett underscores the violence of dominant discourses of heteronormativity through the deconstruction of processes of Othering of being trans that cause violent policing of one’s trans self (3), as well as propagate anti-trans ideologies and collective organizing (3).

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Works Cited

Cody, Diablo. Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper. Narrated by Natalie Moore, Audible, 2009. Audiobook.

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Plett, Amanda. “When Bravery is Fiction: Despair, Hope & Expectation in the Writing of Transsexuality.” Hamilton Arts & Letters magazine, vol. 13, no. 2, 2020-21, samizdatpress.typepad.com/hal_magazine_thirteen2/when-bravery-is-fiction-by-casey-plett-1.html. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.  

an anatomy of the peace movement as a sociopolitical force against the vietnam war and how, according to the theory  of social movements and social change, it succeeded as such

The peace or 'antiwar' movement, conceived and most significant in the United States as the people's protest against American involvement in the Vietnam War, was a model demonstration of achieving real, political change through the organization of citizens, and pressurization of the government, to acknowledge their voices, to make national decisions that represented them, as all free democracies theoretically should, innately. In addition to being a truly momentous feat in modern history ;that seldom young people have a conception of beyond the overall idealology and aesthetic; it adhered identically, to the structural theory of social movements and social change which, likely was the fundamental reason responsible for it succeeding in its goal: terminating the U.S.' military support of South Vietnam altogether, in just slightly over a decade.

An Anatomy, of the Peace Movement’s Evolution and Significance

An Abstract

Though a vast majority of the American population in 1965 still supported the government’s military involvements in Vietnam, a small group of leftist students, artists and intellectuals - young people who rejected authority and embraced drug culture - began expressing their opposition to the way things were being conducted.

In 1967, the peace movement collided with the Civil Rights movement and gained a big boost, when Martin Luther King Jr. announced his opposition to the war on moral grounds: condemning the war’s diversion of federal funds from domestic programs and disproportionate number of black casualties. The New York Times published the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971: a Department of Defense report concluding that the administrations of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, had systematically lied to Congress and the American people about the extent of the U.S.’ involvement in the war; sparking outrage and political distrust.

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The final fight of the peace movement occurred in April 1975, when 8,000 U.S. military personnel and their dependents were lifted out of Saigon in America’s final evacuation of the war, for protestors believed more South Vietnamese could have been saved, and that the mission was unfairly influenced by political clout, personal ties and wealth.

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Movement Origins

The movement began in 1964 and 1965, when left-wing political activists organized into peace groups that disagreed with the Cold War and America’s interventions within global conflicts. Around the same time, college students who had grown up during the Southern Civil Rights movement organized themselves into similar peace groups to question the government’s willingness to divert its gaze from injustice.

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When the war expanded in 1965, the fledgling movements developed two main goals: to give all activists enough information about Vietnam so that they could inspire others to join the cause, and to normalize opposition to their country even in a time of war. The peace groups educated the public and the press, and the students invented new ways to train activists, namely through campus teach-ins that occurred over 120 times across the United States in the Spring of 1965. To normalize opposition, the peace groups organized public protests with the first, planned by the group “Students for a Democratic Society” in April 1965, and the second, by the peace organization “SANE”: both of which had turnouts of 20,000.

Causation of Growth

The North Vietnamese Tet Offensive’s success against the U.S. and South Vietnamese troops shocked the home front, and caused mass discontent; so much so, that by February 1968, a poll showed that only 35 percent of Americans approved of Lyndon B. Johnson’s handling of the war, and a full 50 percent disapproved. The My Lai Massacre occurred in March 1968, where American soldiers initiated guerrilla activity in the hamlet of My Lai, and ended up opening fire on several hundred innocent women and children: the lieutenant who had given the order was acquitted, and moral outrage swept through peace groups.

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In 1968, Republican Richard Nixon won the presidential election and the following year: he claimed that antiwar protesters were vocal, but that they constituted just a small minority, and therefore they should not be allowed to drown out the “silent majority” of Americans.

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In May 1970, National Guard troops shot into a group of student protestors at Kent State University who were demonstrating against the U.S.’ invasion of Cambodia: four were killed and tensions were caused to run higher than ever, with a series of mass demonstrations following the incident. The shootings at Kent State and Jackson State inspired one of the most national, youth-lead protests in history as students at Cornell University, The University of Washington, Ohio University and several universities across the northeast all walked out of their campuses on strike in May 1970; forcing some schools to shut down temporarily.

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Activist Efforts

In the 1970’s, as public opposition to the war had become widespread, the peace movement abandoned their militancy in favour of inclusive tactics that tried to build political forces able to thwart Nixon’s policies and overrule his wishes to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese government.

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Activist groups opened direct talks with the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam, and delegations were sent to the North, while antiwar candidates ran for office with platforms that exposed Nixon’s escalations of the war’s bombings and publicized the torture of the South’s political prisoners. The Indochina Peace Campaign was a nationwide organization that denounced the use of toxic defoliants, pushed scientists to boycott war research and moved law firms to defend the movement’s work, by producing educational material, coordinating protests, promoting lobbying and publishing a newspaper. Medical Aid for Indochina raised money for medicines and medical equipment that were sent to the North Vietnamese hospitals treating the civilian victims of American bombing, and in doing so, the peace groups created a network of donors they could use for other international aid organizations.

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Political Involvement

Though Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War did not cease, as the South Vietnam regime continued to be funded by America - with Congress’s dollars - and thus, the antiwar movement still had progress to make in order for the war to end, fully.

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Antiwar groups; with support from labour and religious networks; created the “Coalition to Stop Funding the War”, which was an enormous lobbying campaign to cut Congress funding for South Vietnam with the help of national networks and experienced organizers. Peace groups lobbied aggressively in congressional districts across the U.S. for two years, and as each of several congressional appropriations came up for South Vietnam, the coalition whittled them down successfully until the South Vietnamese military, eventually ran out of fuel and ammunition.

The peace movement’s ongoing protests were what lead Congress to finally refuse sending additional U.S. aid to the South Vietnamese regime, so when the final offensive occurred between troops from the North and troops from the South in April 1975, the South’s regime collapsed, and the Vietnam War was over once and for all. Antiwar efforts made by peace groups were what conclusively ended the Vietnam War, thus they changed the course of history for each of the powers involved in the conflict, with what Graham Martin, the final American ambassador in Saigon described as, “one of the best propaganda and pressure organizations the world has ever seen.”

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Contemporary Relevance

Peace groups invented many nonviolent protesting practices that can still be observed by political demonstrators today: mass protests and vigils, sit-ins, occupations and blockades, conscientious objection, obstruction of military personnel and petitioning. Modern peace movements in the U.S. are working towards making the right connections that will help them complete the goal of addressing the American empire, war, poverty, environmental devastation, racism and domestic violence.

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The conversations had by peace groups today often revolve around the dismantling of NATO and the honouring of the United Nations, as they consider the treaty an extension of America’s militarized foreign policy and an enabler of the nation’s “war machine.” National attentions are turned to the impact of powerful weapons; whether they be nuclear bombs or firearms; on the wars at home in the U.S. - police brutality and civilian shootings - and abroad - wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe over oil, water, land and more.

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A Study, Through the Context of Social Movement and Social Change Theory

‘Structural Conduciveness’

“Students for a Democratic Society” was one of the first peace groups to contribute to the movement, with their critique of the Cold War - 1964’s “Port Huron Statement” - being one of the first published pieces to publicly address America’s hostile foreign policies and frequent military involvements in international affairs.

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The first military bombing of North Vietnam President Johnson ordered, was a retaliatory attack, but by the time American planes were routinely bombing the country in early 1965, critics had begun questioning whether the fighting was part of a Democratic war meant to liberate the South Vietnamese from Communist aggression.

From the early to mid 1960’s, peace groups gained inspiration and momentum from the Civil Rights movement, as they had laid the foundations of theory and infrastructure on which the antiwar movement could grow upon, and independently published newspapers that preached generational togetherness for the youth. By the end of 1965, the fledgling peace groups had come into their own and were widely successful, as most activists possessed an intensive knowledge on the Vietnam and Cold Wars, and protests though small, were steadily normalizing opposition, in spite of accusations that they were “un-American.”

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‘Structural Strains’

In early 1966 the war escalated, as troop deployments, American casualties and draft calls increased, and subsequently, college students and their middle-class families; whose presences in the military were not requested; took notice and launched the antiwar movement forward.

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Protests gained popularity, while establishment voices like senators Robert Kennedy and J. William Fulbright and columnist Walter Lippmann, spoke out against the war, and did their best to bring antiwar views into American homes through televised hearings. Over 1966 and 1967, leaders from politics, science, medicine, academia, entertainment, the press and business announced their oppositions to the war; showing that even the people in power were disappointed by how society was progressing.

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In 1967, American-troop strength in Vietnam was approaching 500,00, U.S. casualties were reaching 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded and the war efforts were costing the nation roughly 25 billion dollars per year: the public were starting to feel disillusioned. More casualties were reported in Vietnam every day as American commanders were demanding more troops, and as such, up to 40,000 young men were called into service each month under the draft system, thus fueling more flame to the antiwar movement.

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‘Generalized Beliefs’

By 1967, the peace movement’s objectives were firstly, to unite various strands of antiwar opposition behind widespread draft resistance and secondly, to build an opposition that would force a political end to the war. Bigger protests began to occur across the United States, with one in New York in April 1967, breaking the record for being the largest such gathering in history, with an attendance of 500,000 people.

More young men began to avoid the draft for moral causes rooted in opposition to the war, than for self-preservation, and while many youths refused to kill or fight in Vietnam, they were willing to sacrifice themselves to incarceration or exile in order to loudly resist it.

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As support for the peace movement grew, a parting developed between political protest and confrontation, with the first illustration being in October 1967, when 100,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for a demonstration, and nearly half of them broke away, to participate in a march on the Pentagon.

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'Precipitating Factors'

More Americans, namely those young, angry and frustrated,  were willing to commit nonviolent acts of civil disobedience now, than in any other time in history (par, the current day), with thousands, succeeding in breaking through police and military lines during demonstrations. Some protestors tried to shut down induction centres in Berkeley and New York City, while those in college, blocked access to the military and C.I.A. recruiters, those in the clergy, poured blood on draft records and those who organized protests, captured the media’s attention with publicity stunts.

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By 1968, racism became a focal subject in both America, and the antiwar movement, with the convergence of Martin Luther King Jr. being assassinated, police violence outbreaking at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and it being outed, that black drafted soldiers were assigned to combat units with much higher rates of being killed.

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That year, both the country and the Vietnam War were falling into chaos, with the assassination of President Robert Kennedy and the Tet Offensive, evidencing that the political system would not stop the war, the racism, nor the poverty, that were crippling the nation. By the beginning of 1969, peace groups had succeeded in building a mass movement, but failed at converting it into a political force, as demonstrated by the election of Richard Nixon into office, and thus: they had to re-strategize their approaches to protest.

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'Participant Mobilization for Action'

Though large protests continued, most activists believed that they alone, could not stop the war, and thus, peace groups moved towards widespread civil disobedience: rejection of conventional living, confrontations with the police and militant opposition against the government. (Rightful) rage and alienation lead to the movement's antiwar strategies becoming less subdued and organized; believing the only way to realistically force an end to the war abroad, in Vietnam, generating commotion and disruption at home, in the United States.

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Certain protest groups impactfully, rejected and challenged the social order, such as Black Americans in revolt, following a number of city rebellions across the country, college students motivated, by the killings at Kent State and Jackson State universities, and professors and youths, adopting and teaching, Communist ideologies.

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In the early 1970’s, soldiers who had returned from the war formed groups like “Vietnam Veterans Against the War”, to openly divulge the numerous atrocities that were committed in combat, through antiwar newsletters published, with the support of antiwar (protest) organizers. Organizers were instrumental in rallying soldiers and veterans behind the peace movement's cause, distributing informative, antiwar literature to military bases, and encouraging military centric stunts; like the tossing of combat medals over fences; during protests.

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'Social Control'

Despite all of the peace movement’s success, President Nixon expanded the bombing of North Vietnamese cities throughout1972, sabotaged peace talks due to 'unsatisfying terms' before the upcoming presidential election and senselessly bombed Hanoi, in the final days of that year. Hanoi’s bombing destroyed Bach Mai, the city’s largest civilian hospital, which caused massive outrage back home in the U.S., including, a well-publicized drive to rebuild the hospital on American donations, and still, Nixon’s position on negotiation, didn't improve.

Finally, in January 1973, Richard Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords, whose key provisions included a cease-fire all throughout Vietnam, the release of prisoners of war and the reunification of North and South Vietnam through peaceful means: the U.S.’ military involvement in the war, had largely been brought to termination. Though, it was not until 1975, that the South Vietnamese regime had collapsed from an absence of support from U.S. troops and American financial aid - both of which, were decisions forced, from the government, by the peace (antiwar) groups' persistently and tirelessly, lobbying Congress: ending the conflict, and accomplishing historical, social change.

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Resources:

History. (2019, June 6). Vietnam War Protests. Retrieved from  

https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-protests  

Kutzelliott, K. (2016). The student movement and the antiwar movement. Khan Academy. Retrieved from  

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/1960s-america/a/the-student 

-movement-and-the-antiwar-movement  

Slater, A. (2016, July 11). What a 21st-Century Peace Movement Looks Like. The Nation. Retrieved  

from https://www.thenation.com/article/what-a-21st-century-peace-movement-looks-like/  

Zimmerman, B. (2017, October 24). The Four Stages of the Antiwar Movement. The New York  

Times. Retrieved from  

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/opinion/vietnam-antiwar-movement.html  

Zunes, S., & Laird, J. (2010, January). The US Anti-Vietnam War Movement (1964-1973). International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. Retrieved  

from https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/us-anti-vietnam-war-movement-1964-1973/ 

undoing - the victim of impact and influence: a critical reading of oscar wilde's 'the portrait of dorian gray', as studied through aesthetics, ethics, social philosophy and metaphysics

As a preface to the following piece, how would an observer analyse the following quote: “…his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before (Wilde and Elfenbein 14).” Perhaps they would conjure images of an inspired artist powerfully moved by an alluring muse; a creator so entrancingly persuaded by their subject matter. Now, to serve as a contrast to the aforementioned, how would an observer respond to the following quote: “…to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow…. There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence (Wilde and Elfenbein 38).” This time, perhaps they would imagine a more sinister power exacting their influence over a naïve being; a philosopher determined on transforming their student. Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is the location for which both these seemingly contradictory quotes may be found, with the former referring to the painter Basil Hallward’s idolization of the young Dorian Gray, and the latter referring to the hedonist Lord Henry Wooton’s desired control over the same beautiful boy.

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The “Picture of Dorian Gray” is an exemplary exposition on the sheer impact one individual may have on another’s existence; both for the far better and for the much worse. To expand upon the ideology of interpersonal influence, the novel explores how an individual’s initial impact upon another may be kindred and beneficial, though the imbalance of power between the inspiring and the inspired can soon grow to be fatally hazardous. In relation to the titular character Dorian Gray, the young man is almost constantly the subject of impact and influence; with his person acting as both the inspiring and the inspired on different occasions and to different people. To reference the quotations discussed in the aforementioned paragraph, Gray acts as the inspiring to the painter Basil Hallward, and as the inspired to the hedonist Lord Henry Wooton.

Delving further into Dorian’s relationship with impact and influence, the ways in which he both affects and is affected by the existences of those around him; Hallward and Wooton included; is far from benevolent, with almost every scenario ending in tragedy. Each encounter Gray has with influence is so tumultuous, that both their causes and conclusions can be critically analysed according to the philosophical fields of aesthetics, metaphysics, social philosophy and ethics. Similarly, the causes and conclusions of Dorian’s part as both the inspiring and the inspired can be extended to explain how he is both the causes of, and the conclusive consequences of, moral undoings. To explain how Dorian Gray is responsible for the undoings of his friends, his impacts on the death of Basil Hallward and the suicide of Sibyl Vane will be analysed, while Lord Henry’s impacts on Dorian Gray through the passions of greed and with the aid of the yellow book will be discussed to explain how he is responsible for the undoing of Dorian.

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Basil Hallward’s Death As Studied Through Aesthetics:

Basil Hallward is objectively the individual most impacted by Dorian Gray, with his idolatry of the once enchanting young man pursuading him to initially compose the titular portrait. Ironically, it is this artistic idolatry that leads to Hallward’s prophetic demise in Chapter 13, at the mercy of his own muse. Serving as a parallel to Basil’s proposal that Gray’s morality must be more than what his reputation precedes on account of his timeless beauty (“Mind you, I don't believe these rumours at all. At least, I can't believe them when I see you. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face [Wilde and Elfenbein 148]”) , Dorian reveals the now-shielded portrait to Hallward. Aghast by its morbidity, Basil weeps at the gruesome remnants of what once was his magnum opus. Dorian relays upon him how the portrait is burdened with the curses of infamy, age and conscience, while his physical self is blessed with eternal youth and endless beauty, regardless of his immoral vice pursuits. Consequently, Basil begs for the devilish man’s salvation - to which the artist’s former muse does not take fondly. Overcome by vigorous bouts of rage and frustration, Dorian aggressively drives a knife through Basil’s neck until the artist lays deceased: as if the portrait had turned against it’s maker.

The study of aesthetics is integral to the impacts on which Dorian Gray had on Basil Hallward, specifically in relation to the responsibilities of which art either has or does not have to morality and virtuousness. To illustrate Hallward’s and Gray’s conclusively fatal relationship, perhaps they should be ascribed an aesthetic philosophy; with the former adhering to Confucius’ and the latter adhering to Immanuel Kant’s. Confucius proposed that all art should mirror morality if it were to be effective, with the principles’ of the piece’s creation planted firmly in virtuousness. To Basil, beauty and idolization were principles worthy of creation, and so subsequently his fondness for Dorian became the focal point of his masterpiece. Immanuel Kant proposed that art should be judged strictly on how objectively beautiful it was as a physical creation, with its pleasing appearance adequate enough to garner it notoriety and praise. To Dorian, his portrait’s merit relied entirely on its objective form, not on the apparent morals and virtues that propelled its composition. So, when Basil begged for Dorian’s salvation upon witnessing the newly morbid painting, he indirectly expressed his aesthetic opinions regarding the piece. Furious with the artist’s expression of virtuousness in relation to his own portrait, he brutally murdered the man in an attempt to reunite the piece’s merit with its objective form and not with its apparent moral connections.

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Sibyl Vane’s Suicide As Studied Through Metaphysics:

Sibyl Vane was a young actress, who's impact on Dorian Gray should have prevented him from fully transforming into the immoral hedonist that Lord Henry was influencing him to be. Upon their engagement Dorian confided in Henry and Basil, the sheer adoration he had for her; declaring how she ironically had the ability to make him rethink his philosophies on vice. Gray exclaimed how her admiration made him a virtuous man, one faithful and  good, with the ability to love another more than he loved sin, pleasure and sensuality. The Dorian Gray that loved Sibyl Vane, was nothing like the Dorian Gray that admired Henry Wooton (“When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. I become different from what you have known me to be [Wilde and Elfenbein 79]”), as the newly infatuated Dorian found flaws in the previously hedonistic Dorian's ways. Unfortunately for Sibyl, the impact Gray was to have on her would be far too unkind, with his influence eventually persuading her to take her own life.

To comprehend the unnecessary cruelty of Dorian’s impact on Sibyl Vane, perhaps the philosophical concept of “idealism” (a concept discussed in the field of metaphysics), can be employed. Idealism states that reality is essentially a gallery of perceptions formulated by the mind, and understood to be physically tangible. To relate this back to Gray and Vane, the love both people had for each other was built on the foundations of the perceptions they had mentally made about the other. Whether these perceptions were tangible and real, or imaginary and made-up, were yet to be tested: until the following event.

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After a less than favourable performance as Shakespeare’s Juliet, Dorian chastised his new lady love on why she performed so poorly that night when after all, she was the most talented actress he had ever seen! Sibyl expressed to him how her wonderful acting abilities were sourced from her ignorance on what true love felt like, but now that she was breathtakingly and blissfully smitten, she was simply unable to utter words of admiration to a loveless stranger (“before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. [...] You came -- oh, my beautiful love! -- and you freed my soul from prison [Wilde and Elfenbein 87]”). Dorian’s feelings towards Sibyl drastically altered upon hearing her star-crossed confession, as he loved her almost exclusively because she was an exemplary actress. His perceptions made him believe that he was in love with her as a person, but really he was in love with her as a character. She, however, perceived him to be a fully real human being with emotions and feelings, and subsequently, she was in love with him as a person. Realizing swiftly that he loved Sibyl for her ability to realistically mimic other peoples’ emotions and not for the emotions she autonomously expressed herself, Dorian bid the young lady a cruelly final adieu, and stated how he never wished to see her again. Distraughtly heartbroken having lost her “Prince Charming”, Sibyl Vane killed herself by way of poison - another malevolent impact the beautiful Dorian Gray had on an admirer’s existence.

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Lord Henry’s Greed As Studied Through Social Philosophy:

The immense impact of which Lord Henry has on Dorian Gray is expressed in a plethora of different scenarios, with the helm of each scenario reliant on Gray acting as an operating agent and Henry acting as an observing agent. The relationship between the two men is one primarily built on greed and ignorance; with greed naturally being exhibited by Henry and ignorance by Dorian. As clearly expressed in Chapter 4, Lord Henry believes Dorian to be the most perfect psychology experiment (“…else caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleased by it. It made him a more interesting study [Wilde and Elfenbein 58]”), and because of this, he treats the boy’s feelings, opinions, perspectives and ideas as though they are variables, preciously awaiting to be altered. Dorian is a vessel by which Henry can impose his own physical and philosophical ideas upon, without any remorse or concern for the potential repercussions that these ideologies may cause for the young man. Henry enjoys pondering just how heavy an impact he has made on Gray’s life in a way that appears self-servicing, almost as if the power he has over Gray is to be tallied as statistics and not contextualized as emotions.

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To analyse the chronology of Henry’s impact on Dorian, it is important to consider the  theories proposed by Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes in the field of social philosophy. Machiavelli argued that the ends justified the means in terms of power dynamics, meaning that those held in a higher status (in this case Henry) could righteously rule over those beneath them (in this case Dorian) without necessarily good intentions. Similarly, Hobbes argued that forcefully acquiring power over another could be mutually beneficial, so long as the all-powerful leviathan (Henry) provided protection for those beneath them (Dorian) in exchange for blind submission. To translate these power dynamics into the pair’s operator/observer relationship, Lord Henry acts as the powerful leader who imposes his philosophies onto Dorian without necessarily good intentions, and Dorian acts as the follower who gradually submits to the leader’s ideologies under the (in this case false) pretenses that he will receive some kind of reward.

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Arguably the most prolific illustration of Henry’s greedy power over Dorian is observed in Chapter 2, when the hedonistic man informs the naïve boy of the immense importance of youth and beauty (“When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats [Wilde and Elfenbein 25]”), thereby permanently altering his worldly perspectives. By discussing, in depth, how faded beauty is the most unfortunate of sorrows, Dorian slowly begins to believe these sentiments - whether they were delivered to him with good intentions or not. When Dorian exclaims to Basil how he wishes to trade fortunes with his portrait (opting for the image to age so he can stay young and beautiful), he is actively operating on the philosophies imposed by Henry. As Gray curses his soul to trade places with the portrait, Henry is able to objectively observe the definite results of his powerful impact on another being without having to deal with any of the repercussions himself.

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The Yellow Book’s Immorality As Studied Through Ethics:

While the novel’s preface clearly outlines the apparent lack of connections between a piece of literature - such as a book -, and an obvious change in morality - such as an inclination towards immorality - (“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written [Wilde and Elfenbein 3]”), Joris-Karl Huysman’s 19th century novel “A Rebours”, still served as a massive inspiration to Dorian Gray. Referred to exclusively as the “yellow book”, the decadently pleasure-seeking novel was gifted to Gray by Lord Henry Wooton, serving as yet another one of Wooton’s many impacts on the increasingly sinful man. The book details wild retellings of outrageously scandalous experiences; the kinds of actions that Lord Henry tirelessly praises and constantly engages in. Acting in accordance to Wooton’s view of Dorian as a “psychology experiment”, the pleasure-seeking fiend gifted the novel to further assert his influence over Gray, specifically his control over Gray’s increasingly hedonistic tendencies. To engrain the “fin-de-siecle” philosophy further into Dorian’s mind (perhaps to such an extent that it would serve as his sole motivation), Henry offered him a novel rampant in immoral, yet seemingly consequent-less, deeds, opinions and actions.

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Objectively, one of the most prevalent  motivations within the novel is this idea of “hedonism”; a philosophical concept discussed in the study of ethics, and a social movement romanticized by the vice-chasing Lord Henry Wooton. Adhering strictly to the philosophical definition of the term, hedonism is an approach to life taken by those wishing to experience as much pleasure as they can afford, whether this bliss be of the body or of the mind. To Henry, hedonism was a lifestyle where one was expected to chase the desires of the flesh and the sinful pleasures brought about by vice, instead of the classic Victorian ideals of religion and theology. This lifestyle was eventually adopted by the novel’s protagonist, largely in part to Wooton’s gifting of the obviously impactful “yellow book”. Immediately upon reading its contents, Gray began to treat the book as though it was scripture: a wonderfully insightful series of detailings that could be subsequently used to dictate his own actions (“There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night, and they troubled his imagination in the day…Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book [Wilde and Elfenbein 145]”). Dorian demanded for numerous other copies of the novel to be made so he could worship it fully, allowing the motivations and intentions of the book’s characters to become his own. Huysman’s “A Rebours” was a vessel for Lord Henry’s sinful influences to fully transform the increasingly hedonistic Dorian into a fully-realized, immoral pleasure-seeker.

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In conclusion, Dorian Gray is indeed responsible for the undoings of his friends, as evident by his immense impacts on both the death of Basil Hallward and the suicide of Sibyl Vane, while Henry Wooton is equally as responsible for the undoings of Gray, as observed by the lord’s greedy intentions and his gifting of the yellow book. Philosophical analyses are incredibly helpful in understanding the true malevolence of influence within the novel, with aesthetics providing insight into Basil Hallward’s murder, metaphysics granting clarity on the tragedy of Sibyl Vane, social philosophy explaining the subtleties of Lord Henry’s hunger for power and ethics giving a final clarification on the yellow book’s immorality.

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Dorian Gray brutally murdered Basil, as he was not fond of the idea that his worshipped portrait was really a piece with moral connections, while he snobbishly revoked his engagement with Sibyl Vane solely because he loved her as a hollow character and not as an emotional human being. Gray had both direct and indirect effects on the deaths of two different admirers, consequently illustrating how potent his power was over those who adored and idolized him. Lord Henry corrupted the mind of Dorian by imposing upon him a malicious power imbalance - one excused by the belief that outcomes warrant moral sacrifices -, while his donation of Huysman’s “A Rebours” was the final agent in catalysing the beautiful man into an outrageously sinful hedonist. Wooton had both direct and indirect effects on Dorian’s; a man who worshipped him as the optimal intellect’s; moral devolution, subsequently displaying how intense his influence was over those who praised his philosophies.

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As a final note, Oscar Wilde’s novel preface should be taken into account when analysing the influence of Dorian Gray in the undoings of his friends, and of Lord Henry Wooton in the undoing of Gray. The preface maintains the belief that no form of art has any autonomous control over the advancement or digression of an intellectual observer’s morals; though the novel paradoxically stands in objection to that entire premise. Impact and influence, power and control, are such pursuading sentiments of art on an observer’s morals, that they serve as essentially the entire foundations of the novel. Art impacts people the same way inspirations impact creators or muses impact artists; powerfully, definitively and often without positive conclusions . So, to finalize the argument and act as the perfect rebuttal to the preface’s concluding sentence; “All art is quite useless [Wilde and Elfenbein 4]”; Dorian Gray is conclusively responsible for the undoings of his friends as Lord Henry Wooton is responsible for the undoing of Gray because idols, inspirations and admirees, are not “quite useless”.

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Primary Source:

Wilde, Oscar, and Andrew Elfenbein. Oscar Wilde’s the Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. Print. 

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Secondary Sources:

Gardner, David. “Thomas Hobbes and Niccolo Machiavelli: A Comparison”. E-International Relations Students, 1 Sep. 2010, www.e-ir.info/2010/09/01/thomas-hobbes-and-niccolo-machiavelli-a-comparison/. Accessed 26 Jun. 2019.  

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Robinson, Daniel S. “Idealism”. Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 1 Jul. 2010, www.britannica.com/topic/idealism. Accessed 25 Jun. 2019.  

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“The Picture of Dorian Gray Theme of Innocence”. Shmoop, 2019, www.shmoop.com/picture-dorian-gray/innocence-theme.html. Accessed 24 Jun. 2019.  

Weijers, Dan. “Hedonism”. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011, www.iep.utm.edu/hedonism/. Accessed 28 Jun. 2019.  

Wenzel, Christian H. “Aesthetics and Morality in Kant and Confucius. A Second Step”. PhilPapers, 2010, philpapers.org/rec/WENAAM. Accessed 24 Jun. 2019.  

video games as high art: considering the aesthetic value of the former, according to the philosophies which define what constitutes the latter

If we are to determine whether or not video games are high art, it is imperative to determine what high art is in the first place. As a simple phrase, it’s hollow and empty. People adore Van Gogh’s Starry Night in this day and age, but his contemporaries viewed both him and the entirety of his artistic movement as childish; immature. His works were unfinished and inane, while the movement he drew from; Impressionism; was widely regarded as the key destructive agent in the fall of France’s Academy of High Art. How is something that was once so shocking and off-putting, now widely regarded as an absolute staple in the history of all things “high art”? If Impressionism can complete such a feat, who’s to say video games can’t either?

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To search further into the true definition of “high art”, perhaps we’ll take to the dictionary. The scholastic definition of “high art” reads quite frequently as, “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”. If we are to properly distill the concept of high art to just the absolute basics, the following definition may be considered as well; “subjects of study primarily concerned with the processes and products of human creativity and social life, such as languages, literature and history”. Quite frankly, a valid argument could be made for video games being art based solely off of those restrictions alone.

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Logistically speaking, video games may be considered a conglomeration of many different kinds of high art. The audience experiences a game primarily through a first-person point of view, thereby allowing them to act, and react, in the most authentic ways imaginable. Objectively speaking, a collection of today’s games are rich enough in emotional triggers, that the generalized audience is able to evoke sentiments of happiness and joy; misery and agony. There are few other forms of media that allow the observer to directly empathize with the characters they’re observing in a way as intimate and obvious, as video games.

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Leo Tolstoy: Art is Emotion

Leo Tolstoy defined art as the creator’s expression of an individual feeling or experience, in a way that was accessible enough for a directed audience to revel in said feeling or experience as if it was their own. He believed that art didn’t belong to a certain fragment of society, but rather belonged to the entirety of human civilization. If art was to lend itself strictly to one class, then obscurity of message and unnecessary decadence would assault the art world. As well, limiting art to the perspectives and ideals of one class, denies all of society from sharing in the importance of artwork.

Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons is a game that highlights the true importance of mastering one’s family dynamics in a way that allows absolutely all parties to prosperously benefit, and thereby allows the audience to evoke emotions reminiscent of harmony, joy, bliss and exuberance. In order to successfully progress throughout the game, the player must become accustomed to it’s awkward control scheme. Solely the older brother is able pull heavy levers, while only the younger brother is able to squeeze through tight bars and similarly small spaces. In order to complete the challenges throughout the game, the brothers must learn to balance their abilities, thereby forcing the player to make the most out of each character. In order to succeed past the levels involving water, the younger brother must climb aboard his brother’s back for he is unable to swim. This tiny detail within a much larger character arc signifies how important it is for the brothers to work alongside one another, thus instilling sentimental emotions within the players themselves.

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Immanuel Kant: Art is Abstract

Immanuel Kant argued that art could strike the perfect balance between agreeability with aesthetic judgements; “tastefulness”; and soullessness in the face of a contrastingly real, beautiful natural object. He proposed art was artificial, and without the driving force of an aesthetic idea, fine art was simply an artificial version of a real object. An aesthetic idea was a set of sensible presentations to which no concept would be adequate. The rival of an aesthetic idea was a rational idea, or a concept that could never adequately be exhibited sensibly, and would subsequently have no soul.

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The art style utilized in Limbo, leaves a plethora up to the imagination of the player; the graphics are minimal and simplistic, while the storylines are bizarre and frequently come from the left-field, thereby highlighting the levels of detached pleasure in which the game’s visual elements have. Objectively speaking, the art within Limbo is absolutely captivating, regardless of if the storytelling is any good, or the action sequences are any exciting. The game’s visual elements have allowed it to maintain a pretty prominent cult status within the video game community; even though the storylines themselves are not inherently sensical. The characters and structures within the game’s foreground are darkened, while the less important background elements tend to be brighter and more colourful. In order to maintain the functionality of the game’s visual elements, and to preserve the complexity of its’ gameplay, none of  the characters’ silhouettes appear in block colours, nor do those of its’ physical structures.

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Plato: Art is Imitation

Plato perceived art as the imitation of the objects vital to, and events customary in, ordinary life. Art was in essence, the copy, of a copy of a form. Naturally, the original forms are the objects that exist within everyday life, as well as the events and actions that occur within an ordinarily functioning society. The first copy, would be the artist’s interpretation of said object or event; how the individual creator viewed the shape, structure or composition of the inspiring image. The second copy, would be the piece of art itself, for it was a reflection of an actual phenomenon through the eyes and perceptions of an artist. Art was an illusion, not an ordinary experience: entertainment or delusion, not reality.

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While the finer details regarding Vella’s storyline in Broken Age, are nothing short of imaginative fantasy, the overarching ideals of personal freedom amongst an adolescent-age protagonist is definitely something that most players are able to relate to; albeit amidst the imitation’s loose frame and heavy dramatization. This game acquires most of its charm from its dialogue and puzzle-solving as opposed to its action and fast-paced-ness -with an obvious precedence placed upon adorable artistry and wonderful writing. Upon first glance, Broken Age’s storylines may come across as insanely non-sensical, though it is not until the player fully realizes the game’s underlying messages of how difficult chasing personal freedoms is while under intensely pressurized time constraints, that they completely understand the game’s intentions. Once the player is able to comprehend the game’s core aspirations, they are able to invest themselves fully in the strange world their character must navigate.

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Martin Heidegger: Art is Community

Martin Heidegger related the essence of fine art to the concepts of truth and being. Foremostly, art is a vessel for expressing the elements of truth within a culture. However, through its planning and creation, art is also able to reveal “that which is” within a certain society. Works of art represent the way things are on the surface, and their creation represents how the community views and understands the way things are. When a new piece of artwork is added to a culture, that society’s interpretation of existence’s meaning is inherently changed.

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Final Fantasy X saw respectable popularity throughout the longevity of its initial career, though its true cultural relevancy may be sourced from the immense staying power in which it’s imagery, symbolism and storytelling have been able to acquire amidst the densely populated realm of the modern-day video game industry. Upon first glance, the game’s imagery is serene and comforting, with drawn out shots of mellow seasides, small entrenched villages, and lakes dotted with tiny lights, upon a bed of soft, sad instrumentals. Final Fantasy’s beauty is everlasting, and its overall sensation of sadness seemingly grows more and more familiar, as the players themselves age over time. At its very roots, the game is a sad story composed of hopeful characters attempting to come to terms with the inevitable cruelty of human existence, and eventually realizing that most of their heroic efforts are frequently for not. The emotions hidden within its’ storytelling are subtle and obscure, thereby allowing the players to settle into new mental states every time they replay the game. While one may have loved the lessons Final Fantasy taught about life and the nature of existence the first time around, it is not until their second or third try that they fully realize the game’s message of, “the world is wide, and no one ever really knows where they’re going next.”

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Charles Dickie: Art is Institution

George Dickie’s philosophy on art is quite simple: the classification of a body of work relies primarily on its reception from well-informed critics. A piece of art is an artifact upon which a respected curator is able to analyse its form, and subsequently draw conclusions on its acceptability. This curator confers the status of the piece and determines whether or not it is candidate for appreciation. The curator must not be the artist himself, nor an individual with no prior knowledge on the elements of worthy fine art, but rather a collector, an art critic or a fellow artist. No form of media can be considered artwork, unless it is labelled as so by an unbiased source.

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Virtually every asset of Bioshock Infinite’s composition, has been heavily criticized since the dawn of its creation, but whether the critique comes from a satisfied player, or a disapproving third party, the sheer volume of commentary in which it has received, allows the game to easily establish itself as a work of high art. Most notably, Bioshock Infinite’s imagery sparks a massive debate amongst players, subsequently bisecting the community into either fans of the soft intricacy, or haters of the hollow emptiness. The game attempts to convey the aesthetics of old-fashioned Americana, with cotton candy, boardwalks, gift shops and Independence Day relics. To some, this mirage is seen as promising and imaginative; intriguing the player to explore further and further into the scenery. To others, this frontier is seen as off-putting and disappointing; providing false hope and a sensation of half-aliveness to the player. Both perspectives on the game’s design are perfectly valid, thereby allowing Bioshock Infinite to be a hub of pseudo-professional critique.  

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Clive Bell: Art is Form

Clive Bell believed art could be viewed as one of two concepts; either a source of aesthetic emotion, or a display of significant form. The two ideas are fairly interchangeable, for significant form leads to aesthetic emotion, though aesthetic emotion is required for significant form. The significant form of an art piece, is the combination of lines it possesses, as well as the relationship of colours it holds. Naturally, the arrangement of lines and colours leads to an evocation of aesthetic emotion amongst the viewer. If a painting has significant form, it is considered art, for it evokes an aesthetic emotion.

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As a game existing entirely amidst a realm of paint splashes and block lines, the astronomical levels of well-thought out shape, shadow and structure that compose the Unfinished Swan’s form, truly display the piece’s innate aesthetic emotion. The painstaking revelations and uplifting breakthroughs that occur throughout the game are all set upon a storybook-esque stage, thereby setting up the game’s prioritization of specific form fairly early on. The Unfinished Swan is technically designed like a first-person shooter game, though the bullets are replaced with paint splashes and water droplets, and the gun is replaced by the protagonist’s bare hands. This setup allows the players to generate empathy, while the game’ short run time immediately enables connections to be drawn between it, and a full feature film. The interactions within the story are sweet and dreamlike, thereby allowing the player to turn their full attentions to the sheer and authentic beauty of the game’s imagery.

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R.G. Collingwood: Art is Process

R.G. Collingwood proposed the “Technical Theory of Art”, in which he believed the process of composing artwork was comparable to that of watchmaking, joinery and carpentry - trade-like crafts. According to the theory, art is the kind of craft where the artist produces a notable form of work, in order to elicit a certain sensation from the desired audience. The key aspiration an artist has is to declare a certain state of mind, while simultaneously searching for the same state of mind within the observant audience. Art is simply the means to an end, and quite honestly has no idea where it is going, until it finally gets there.

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Life Is Strange is primarily dialogue based, with heavy emphasis on storytelling and plot evolution, due massively in part to the fact that the player controls the important decisions and weighted choices of the in-game characters. In the broadest of terms, this means that the initial art piece has no idea where it’s going, until the player allows the storyline and character developments to get there. The player’s heuristics are entirely dependant upon the contextual situation in which he or she is in, with certain dialogue options being obviously appropriate in some situations, and heinously offensive in others. To delve even further, a majority of the heuristic choices provided to the players are far from morally binary, with the altruistic alignments of the options given to each character landing primarily in the grey. The decisions themselves are not inherently good nor bad, but rather beneficial to strictly the main character, or beneficial to the game’s broader community. Determining whether or not the protagonist is to prioritize their individual success over the greater good of their platonic relationships, is absolutely vital to the overall intentions of the game, and is therefore such an important illustration of fine art.

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Art has always been, and will continue to be, a personal performance to some degree; the evocation of emotion, purpose and meaning through the incorporation of storytelling, abstract systems and imitation. As conceived by art theorists throughout human history, high art requires the innate attributes of performance and play; the expression, creativity and flair of human storytelling as a reflection of our reality. Both video games and universally recognized art forms have regulations and historical lineages, thereby allowing the observers and players to engage within the body of artwork itself. This allows art to be discussed amongst groups of observers and players, subsequently allowing the meaning of the artwork to be further explored and analysed.

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Video games are indeed works of art, for they perfectly adhere to the various restrictions and requirements inflicted upon potentially-respectable forms of skillful, craftsman-like creations. On all accords, video games completely comply with the vastly varying definitions of what well-educated individuals consider masterful art; from Tolstoy’s emotion to Heidegger’s community to Collingwood’s process. If one was to challenge the philosophy that video games; mediums that fulfill virtually every facet required of an artistic body; weren’t art, then they would be indirectly challenging the concept of art as an entire ideology. In the most literal sense: some games are just pretty; devoid of complex characters, plotline evolutions or even simple storylines. These games may be regarded as obvious pieces of artwork. In a more philosophical sense: other games are just cathartic; evocative of intense emotions, sudden sensations or even slight excitations. These games may be consumed as complex pieces of artwork. Regardless of whether “fun” or “play”, are at the very forefronts of a game’s focus, they are quite simply pieces of high art, and to challenge such a conclusion, would be to challenge the existence of art as a whole.

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Resources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/berlinschoolofcreativeleadership/2015/10/13/an-argument-that-video-games-are-indeed-high-art/#2ca57eaf7b3c 

https://roughdraft.review/how-brothers-a-tale-of-two-sons-ses-the-controller-to-tell-a-story-75ec04841591 

https://www.popmatters.com/128848-limbo-art-and-frustration-2496162350.html 

https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/28/8507967/broken-age-act-two-review 

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/219588/Lets_revisit_Final_Fantasy_X_Anyone.php 

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https://kotaku.com/now-is-the-best-time-a-critique-of-bioshock-infinite-472517493 

https://kotaku.com/the-unfinished-swan-the-kotaku-review-5951860 

https://medium.com/@kaleb.nekumanesh/life-is-strange-a-narrative-analysis-43c98586ba58 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQTkYGheY_Q 

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