Framing Women: Changing Frames of Representation from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism 9783110949391, 9783484401433

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Framing Women

Framing Women Changing Frames of Representation from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism Edited by Sandra Carroll, Birgit Pretzsch and Peter Wagner

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 2003

This book is dedicated to Roy Porter (1946-2002), scholar, gentleman and the kindest of friends.

Cover illustration: Lucas Cranach (the Elder), Judith with the Head of Holofernes. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. ISBN 3-484-40143-5 © Max Niemeyer Verlag G m b H , Tübingen 2003 http://www. niemeyer. de Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Ubersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Druck: Guide-Druck GmbH, Tübingen Einband: Geiger, Ammerbuch

Table of Contents

SANDRA CARROLL, BIRGIT PRETZSCH, PETER W A G N E R

Introduction

1

I. The Eighteenth Century ROY PORTER

(The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, UK) Fallen Women in the Eighteenth Century

27

THOMAS K R Ä M E R

(University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau, Germany) Masquerade as No-Man's-Land The Representation of Women in A Harlot's Progress 2

39

ANGELA H . ROSENTHAL

(Dartmouth College, USA) The Fall and Rise of Kitty Fisher Joshua Reynolds and the Sitter's Share

53

BERNADETTE FORT

(Northwestern University, USA) Framing the Wife Jean-Baptiste Greuze's Sexual Contract

89

WERNER W O L F

(University of Graz, Austria) Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and its Ambivalent Position in the 'Herstory' of Gender Roles Cibber, The Careless Husband·, Lillo, Sylvia; Richardson, Pamela

125

VI

Table of Contents

II. From Victorianism to Postmodernism JAMES A . W . HEFFERNAN

(Dartmouth College, USA) Love, Death, and Grotesquerie Beardsley's Illustrations in Wilde and Pope

153

BRIGITTE GLASER

(University of Eichstätt, Germany) Female Scientists / Women and Science New Characters and Themes in British Drama

189

SANDRA CARROLL

(Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland) Natural Born Quilter Framing Grace Marks in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace

207

PETER W A G N E R

(University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau, Germany) Cormac McCarthy's Joycean Woman or Epiphany Revisited

233

OTTMAR ETTE

(University of Potsdam, Germany) Sex Literally Revisited Being-a-Body and Having-a-Body in Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Luisa Futoransky and Juan Manuel de Prada

251

JAN HOLLM

(University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau, Germany) Streamlining Multicultural Feminism Shakespearean Traits in Disney's The Lion King

283

BIRGIT PRETZSCH

(University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau, Germany) Questioning the Frames of Lara Croft Body, Identity, Reality

295

Notes on Contributors

327

General Index

329

Sandra Carroll, Birgit Pretzsch, Peter Wagner

Introduction

Containing contributions by scholars from Europe and North America, this book covers the representation of women in the context of changing frames of mentalities in two distinct periods - the Enlightenment and postmodernism. If the nineteenth century is not covered here (James Heffernan's article is, admittedly, about the Yellow Decade, but more specifically concerned with Beardsley's reaction to Alexander Pope), it is because the age of the bourgeois is a well-trodden ground in view of the scholarly research on constructions of women in word and image.1 The present collection prefers to limit its scope in the hope of finding treasures that might otherwise escape us. It thus avoids the mistake of striding majestically across the centuries and ignoring major intricate problems. Written by historians, art historians, literary scholars, psychoanalysts and experts in women's studies, the articles in this book focus on the 'frames' that have shaped the representation of women in Western literature and art. By frames, we mean the various subtle ways in which visual and verbal representations of women are conditioned by discourse and the mentalities (often mute and taken for granted2) embodied in it. Several critics have covered the notion of framing, from Jacques Derrida's intelligent deconstructionist discussion of the frame as a paradoxical accessory3 to Goffman's analysis4 of frames as cultural norms, as constituents of behaviour that enable the individual to act, down to actual discussions (formal and deconstructionist) of picture frames.5 In her contribution to this volume, Sandra Carroll analyzes in detail the verbal and

1

There is, by now, a vast critical literature on women in the Victorian age. See, for instance, the works listed in Wagner 1996, 353-83, a book that is itself concerned with the portrayal of women in nineteenth-century art and literature. In addition, see the bibliographical essays in Peter Gay's monumenal studies entitled The Bourgeois Experience 1984, 4 6 3 509; 1986, 423-71; 1993, 605-55; 1995, 395-433; 1998, 267-303. As to particular analyses, it will suffice to quote four recent important studies: see Reynolds and Humble 1993; Smith 1996; Brody 1998 and Maxwell 2001.

2

In this context, the late Pierre Bourdieu (1992) discussed the vast cultural sediment (French 'socle') of unspoken but silently accepted attitudes, ways of thinking and acting. Derrida 1978. Goffman 1975. See, for instance, Mendgen 1995 and Wagner 1995, Warwick and Cavallaro 1998, Duro 1996, and Willems 1997, which is a response and critique of Goffman's study. In chapter IV (Frame-work: The Margin(al) as Supplement and Countertext) of his Reading Iconotexts (1995, 75-101), Wagner provides a detailed discussion of the function of frames in verbal and visual representations.

3 4 5

2

Sandra Carroll, Birgit Pretzsch, Peter Wagner

visual Screening frames Margaret Atwood has created in her novel Alias Grace. Both textual and painterly representations thus use the frame as a tactical and structural device to achieve a variety of effects. In particular, the essays in the first part of the book are concerned with the construction and deconstruction of women in the public discourse of the Enlightenment, in French and English art and in eighteenth-century literature and drama. The second part begins with an essay linking the Enlightenment to early modernism and then covers the postmodern period in articles dealing with the representation of women in recent British plays, contemporary North American novels, Hispanic erotic literature, and two typically postmodern genres, the animated movie and the computer game. For the reader's sake, the order in the book is chronological, but this order does not argue for or implicitly accept any sort of teleological development. Rather, what is presented here is a double focus on the age of Enlightenment and the age of Virtual Reality. Covering the time from Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress and what Roy Porter terms 'fallen women' in the Augustan period of the eighteenth century to the virtual and virtuous Lara Croft of the 1990s, the editors have made sure that there is coherence between the contributions in a book that is deliberately interdisciplinary. This takes cognizance of the fact that literature, like visual art and the new media, is always produced in a matrix of several cultural fields exerting influence on each other. In fact, the great majority of the contributions pay homage to what might be termed the intermedial nature of art and literature, to the fact that writing cannot do without the supplements provided by art - and vice versa. What should emerge from such a chronological and interdisciplinary arrangement is not only the insight that Enlightenment patterns of representation have persisted in surprising ways but also the recognition that literature and art (and the new media) are far from being sister arts - rather they are parasitical domains that have exploited each other. When artists and writers describe or depict women, the act of representation is/was always conditioned to some extent by what could be termed frames - the product of cultural practices partly manifested in discourse. Visual representations, literary genres, and even the virtual reality generated by computer games, function within frames that ultimately condition the creation of female characters. It seems, for example, that during the Renaissance (which is not the subject of this book but a crucial period that passed on certain frames to later centuries) images of women were decisively conditioned by two strands of discourse reaching back to the texts recorded in the Bible and classical mythology. Thus women figuring in the graphic and painterly works of Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Altdorfer and Martin Schongauer - the northern tradition6 - are either madonnas or Catholic saints, and it is precisely this religious frame of seeing and representing women which eventually also structures the depiction of contemporary females in their works. Albrecht Dürer's Nürnbergerin im Tanzkleid (1501), to choose one example at random, has all the attributes of a 6

See Landau and Parshall 1994, 33-103; 169-260; and Schoch 2001.

Introduction

3

saintly figure rather than those of a mortal human being (fig. 1), whereas the enigmatic woman in Dürer's Das Meerwunder (1498), a picture that still puzzles art historians (fig. 2), seems to be indebted to classical mythological stories. The illustration chosen for the cover of this book - Lucas Cranach's Judith with the Head of Holofernes (c. 1530) - is a typical Renaissance representation in its reliance on the Bible. An iconotext par excellence,7 it urges the viewer to bring into the play of meaning-making the story of Judith as recorded in the Book of Judith in the Old Testament - and any visual representation s/he might have seen of it. The text that has come down to us8 describes Judith's saving of the Israelites from the oppression of Nebuchadnezzar and his general, Holofernes. After a prolonged banquet, Judith was left alone in the tent with Holofernes, who lay prostrate on his bed, for he was sodden with wine. She had ordered her maid to stand outside the bedroom and wait, as on the other days, for her to come out; she said she would be going out for her prayer [...] When all had departed [...] She went to the bedpost near the head of Holofernes, and taking his sword from it, drew close to the bed, grasped the hair of his head, and said, "Strengthen me this day, Ο God of Israel!" Then with all her might she struck him twice in the neck and cut off his head. She rolled his body off the bed and took the canopy from its supports. Soon afterward, she came out and handed over the head of Holofernes to her maid, who put it into her food pouch; and the two went off together as they were accustomed to do for prayer.9

Painting his version of the Judith story, Cranach could rely not only on the potential viewer's knowledge of the biblical text but also on dramatic renderings from the early sixteenth century. Cranach's painting is an illustration in the sense explained by J. Hillis Miller: i.e., in a warfare between the media (text and image) it foregrounds certain aspects even while obscuring others.10 For Cranach's Judith is clearly also the portrait of a noble lady from the court of Saxony11 (in 1504, Frederic the Wise had called Cranach to Wittenberg). Claiming by its title to be a biblical history painting, it is also a portrait celebrating a beautiful courtesan in the pose of Judith, as beauty is aligned with cruelty, femininity with death (for the male), and sex with extreme danger. Some of these notions are Christian, and together with the male gaze they have persisted in art and literature to this very day. In contrast, the Italian tradition drew on a non-Christian (Asian, Roman and Greek) heritage that could still celebrate the joys of the body, including those enjoyed by women, in an erotic art12 (see, for instance, Marcantonio Raimondi's Woman with Dildo, s.d., c.1525, fig. 3) when Western art had already taken a 7 8

9 10

'1 12

For a discussion of the term, see Wagner 1995, 9-37. The Book of Judith counts, for Catholics, as a part of the Old Testament canon; for Protestants, it is part of the Apocrypha. The New American Bible 1973, 368. See Miller 1992. See Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien 1996, commentary by Karl Schütz, 164. The two best-known series of Renaissance erotic prints are the Modi, by Giulio Romano and Marcantonio; and The Loves of the Gods, by Rosso, Perin del Vaga and Caraglio. See Landau and Parshall 1994, 297-98; Wagner 1988, 263-75; and Lawner 1988.

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Sandra Carroll, Birgit Pretzsch, Peter Wagner

moral and religious turn. It is with the art of William Hogarth, who excelled in breaking and remaking old models of representation, that one becomes aware of the lasting influence of the Renaissance. As Frederick Antal and Ronald Paulson have shown persuasively, the very first scene of Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress (1732; fig. 4) can be read as an attempt to transport the representational frame of Dürer's virgin from the woodcut entitled Die Heimsuchung Mariä [The Visitation] (c.1504; fig. 5) into an urban, English and totally mundane context, thus creating a female prototype who, at this stage allegedly still a virgin, embodies both new ideas about women as well as a new aesthetic ideal.13 It could be argued that major canonical works of art and literature - e.g., Goya's La maja desnuda (1797-1800),14 Manet's Olympia (1863),15 Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857), Joyce's Ulysses (1922), Woolf s Orlando (1928), and, in our time, the subtly shocking fiction of Kathy Acker (Empire of the Senseless, 1988, a response to the Marquis de Sade's fiction) and Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace, 1996) - stand out precisely because they break traditional frames of representation, thus creating new paradigms of showing. One point of inquiry of this book is the question how and why this breaking occurs and what is actually broken. Paradoxically, the period in which women were supposed to enjoy the first fruits of liberation and equality - the French Revolution - witnessed a total backlash in two respects. On the one hand, feminist spokeswomen such as Olympe de Gouges were executed in 1793, and on the other hand, particular, ultimately patriarchal, notions of femininity were adopted that were to last for centuries.16 Thus the article on 'femmes' in Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopedic (1751-1772), an entry that stretches over twelve pages in double columns, raised the question, "Qui peut defmir les femmes?" - only to associate women with painting and music (as a third area as it were of art or artificial construction) while relegating them to the realm of allegory.17 During the Enlightenment, if ideas were embodied by women, it was only because, as Werner Hofmann argued astutely, masculine power masqued itself by employing women. In 1794, Robespierre conducted a pseudo-religious performance in which the allegories of atheism, egoism and nothingness were set on fire whereupon wisdom appeared, freed of her veil, in the living shape of a young woman.18 The Encyclopedic - that welter of Enlightenment ideas and prejudices - created an 13

14 15 16 17

18

See Antal 1962; Paulson 1989, 1991a and 1991b. Busch 1977, 322 discovered a Rembrandt connection in that the Hogarthian scene can also be read as an ironic echo of Rembrandt's Visitation (1640; now in Detroit, Institute of Arts). For different views questioning the virginity and innocence of the country girl in plate 1 of Hogarth's series, see Kramer's essay in this volume and Wagner on beauty spots in Hogarth's works in Fort and Rosenthal, 2001, 102-119. On Goya's construction of women see Tomlinson 2002, 15-88. For a detailed study see Friedrich 1992. See H o f m a n n ' s insightful discussion of these phenomena, 1986, 13-14. See Diderot and d'Alembert, Compact Edition Encyclopedie, [repr., s.d.], Vol. I (1751), 468-81 [original pagination]. Hofmann 1986, 15.

Introduction

5

important stereotype and prototype with its definition of the female character as unstable, ambiguous and incomprehensible: "Les femmes n'ont guere [sic] que des caracteres [sic] mixtes, intermediaries ou variables". 19 After what Peter Gay, in his meticulous study of the nineteenth century quoted above, has termed the bourgeois experience (which confined middle-class women to such roles as mother, wife and/or mistress), it is remarkable how much of the conservative thinking about women in the Enlightenment has come down to us. As the contributions by Jan Hollm and Birgit Pretzsch suggest, representations of women in postmodern media (be it the Hollywood movies or the cyberculture of computer games) are still largely produced in a patriarchal context, by men and for men with women as a silent, tolerated, part of the audience. Male painters continue to express their latent gynophobia and misogyny (partly inherited from previous centuries) in representations that are ultimately interesting not for their depiction of the other sex but for their expression of masculine anxiety about and fear of women (see, for instance, George Tooker's The Chess Game, 1947; fig. 6). It is such changing frames which these essays address, but also the cultural assumption, unspoken and unwritten, that found expression not in verbal and visual signs but in the ways these were re/presented 20 or organized. Among the topoi discussed here one will find, apart from the fallen woman and the prostitute, the (allegedly) inferior being in need of male protection; the angel in the house; the cruel and occasionally lethal femme fatale; 21 the marital partner and mother; 22 the aesthetic (male) ideal; and the electronically engendered superwoman. 23 Considering the power of various forms of discourse produced by what some theoreticians call the 'state apparatuses' (e.g., the law, religion, medicine, education, literature and art), 24 it should be obvious that every representation of women is fascinating for two reasons. Firstly, because it often appeals to women to position themselves in established frames and thus accept pre-determined roles; and secondly, because the very appeal of verbal and visual discursive forms is already an attempt by some institution to discipline the female individual and make her conform to rules she has neither invented nor condoned. The American artist Cindy Sherman has dedicated a large part of her work to the confining shackles kept ready for women in America (see fig. 7), societal roles imposed upon and used for framing women in the double sense of the term. 25 If Sherman is considered daring and iconoclastic it is precisely because like Margaret Atwood in her fiction - she attempts to break what she considers

" 20 21 22 23 24 25

Compact Edition Encyclopedie 1751, 472. See Neuman and Stephenson 1993. For a brief survey in modern and postmodern art of this type, see Gross 1986a, 209-21. A brief study of these types in art can be found in Gross 1986b, 223-28. For a study of surrealist predecessors see Conley 1996. See Althusser 1971. See also the work of Joyce Kozloff and others discussed in Heller 1991.

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Sandra Carroll, Birgit Pretzsch, Peter Wagner

shackles, frames of representing women that limit rather than liberate us in our seeing and showing of what the Enlightenment called the fair sex. 26 In Part I of the book, the late Roy Porter begins with one of his last works about fallen women in the eighteenth century. Starting with the supposition that within Christianity the category of 'fallen women' has been perennial - it is a subclass of 'fallen humanity' - Porter's article asks, more specifically: who were the fallen women of the Enlightenment - in particular, Georgian London? Using a mixture of journalism, social commentary and court records, Porter demonstrates that, at the beginning of the century, a rather wide range of women were at risk of gaining a reputation as sexually untrustworthy - indeed being labelled 'whores'. This followed in part from folklorish and medical concepts of female sexuality - women were traditionally viewed as sexually sensual and voracious. By the end of the eighteenth century, things were changing. There had been a crystallization of the categories of the professional prostitute and the 'innocent woman'. The reputations of women were judged less in danger of condemnation. Porter's contribution explores in detail the reasons behind this development including the emergence of the idea of the good and the bad prostitute. An engraving of one such prostitute provides the focus of attention for Thomas Kramer's essay on masquerading in plate 2 of William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress (1732). It is no exaggeration to say that the engraved art of Hogarth, especially since the celebrations of his tricentennial birthday in 1997, has been the subject of a great number of studies, 27 and so has the series of six prints entitled A Harlot's Progress depicting the life of a stereotypical fallen woman. Krämer's contribution is concerned with the second plate of this series: Mary or Moll Hackabout - in fact, we are left uncertain about her name, as the prints refer to her only as M2S - appears as the mistress of a rich, elderly man. Her protector has dropped in for a visit, and Μ does her very best to divert his attention from the background while her young lover tries to escape. There seems to be little doubt among Hogarth scholars about the genders of the various characters. The keeper, often described as a Jewish merchant, plays the cuckold, Μ is the middle-class mistress aping the manners of a courtesan, and the young lover leaves after a night of lovemaking. Krämer challenges these orthodox assumptions only as far as Afs lover is concerned. His ekphrasis of the print is based on the hypothesis that the person trying to sneak out of the room is a woman in a man's clothes. To provide evidence for his daring interpretation, he discusses firstly the term masquerade in several meanings and in its eighteenth-century context, and secondly, the opportunities for women in the eighteenth century to wear male attire. He also casts a look at lesbian ways of life reported to have existed in eighteenth-century London society, concluding 26

11

28

See Sherman 1993, with texts by Rosalind Krauss and Norrnan Bryson; see also Christadler 1997. See, for instance, Ogee, Wagner and Reill 1997; Bindman 1997; Uglow 1997; Wagner 1998; Hallett 2000; Fort and Rosenthal 2001; and Bindman, Ogee and Wagner 2001. See Bindman 1981,56.

Introduction

7

with some remarks about the undecidability and the artistic value of the polyvalent signs in Hogarth's graphic art. If Krämer looks at the artistic dramatization of the confluence of the discourse about women (in the Bible, in literature, journalism and drama) in Hogarth's art, Angela Rosenthal's article engages with painterly representations of women in eighteenth-century European visual culture.29 Using Julia Kristeva's probing question "How can one be a Woman?" she interrogates Montesquieu's cross-cultural query "How can one be Persian?" Both questions, although arising in very different contexts, share some fundamental, epistemological concerns with essential identities. Concentrating on portraiture, Rosenthal explores how within representation the frames of gender and race overlap, offering a space for the active participation of women in shaping visual culture. By looking at visual representations of the famous courtesan Kitty Fisher by the leading eighteenth-century British portrait painter and first president of the Royal Academy in London, Joshua Reynolds, Rosenthal pursues two argumentative lines. On the one hand, she shows how the genre of portrait painting heightens the paradox of discrepancy between the real and the imaginary, for it insists - like no other genre - upon the representational power of an actual, recognizable individual, with a specific biography and lived presence; at the same time it renounces this reality through the production of an illusion, a surface onto which is projected an idea of something that is necessarily absent. Mingling fictional and actual presence, the portraits Rosenthal examines show the sitter enacting particular cross-cultural roles. On the other hand, Rosenthal also addresses how women like Fisher have themselves contributed to the shaping of the frames of their own representations. Highlighting women's decisions to adopt, to conform to, or to rebel against normative gender roles, Rosenthal uncovers ways to address women as subjects not assuming prescribed roles of masculine desire, but as the objects of their own fantasies and longings amidst historically specific pressures defining femininity. The portrait as a field both reflecting and contributing to changing ideologies affecting gendering is also the subject of Bernadette Fort's article concerned with some portraits Jean-Baptiste Greuze produced of his wife. Indeed, as a cultural historian argued recently, in the Greuzian tableau, with its old and young "beatifically clutching one another, frozen in a moment of all-encompassing emotion", one can detect a major change (a change in framing as it were) as the "synchronic family of love had displaced the diachronic family of blood lines".30 Fort outlines the fissures and points of stress in the idyllic view of marriage long attributed to Greuze by critics who saw in him the French interpreter of what the historian Lawrence Stone called the 'companionate marriage'.31 One of the merits of this contribution is the very fact that by focusing on an early series of images of Madame Greuze, nee Anne-Gabrielle Babuti, 29

30 31

For a more comprehensive survey of visual representations of women including the (French) Enlightenment period, see Duby and Perrot 1995. See Maza 1997. See Stone 1979.

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Fort brings to the fore as a distinct visual corpus images of the painter's wife that have been almost totally neglected. Fort's critical analysis of Greuze's painterly visions of his wife opens up important insights into his view of femininity in general and of woman's place in the family and society at a time when these issues were at the forefront of public debate. It appears that Greuze's representations were double-edged, embodying as they do to some extent a new visual ideology of the family even while retaining conservative ideas of a patriarchal society. Fort's central argument is that the instability of these two frames in which Greuze encapsulates his images of women has some early manifestations in the portraits of his wife. Greuze's own experience of conjugal dysphoria, illustrated in a few arresting drawings made public in his Memoires, is itself testimony to a sweeping cultural change in a revolutionary period. Almost en passant, Bernadette Fort also demonstrates in a magisterial study of neglected yet vastly important visual documents showing a woman in the role of wife/ mother/lover/ companion how the Foucauldian "dispositif de l'alliance" gives way during the period under scrutiny to the "dispositif de la sexualite".32 Moving from art to literature, Werner Wolf is the first contributor in this volume to cast a more detailed look at the marginalization of feminine gender roles in eighteenth-century texts.33 Arguing that, before Victorianism, eighteenth-century sensibility can be considered as one of the most important frames for the definition and representation of women's roles that have persisted until today, Wolf begins with a brief look at feminist research. This has traditionally described the frame of sensibility as informed by a 'two-sex-model' that emphasizes the marginalization of women owing to their intrinsic difference from men. One consequence is the fact that a substantial section of eighteenthcentury culture has been decried as a particularly deplorable phase in the history of the patriarchal oppression of women. But as Wolf demonstrates most convincingly, sensibility had both a misogynist and an emancipatory aspect since it allowed a remarkable 'feminization' of literary culture. Wolf provides evidence for the thesis that a tendency towards feminization can also be observed in sentimental drama and fiction written by men. Even though he does not argue for a new view of sensibility as an emancipatory movement, he perceives it as an ambivalent frame which includes elements simultaneously marginalizing and exalting women. This ambivalence implies a representation or rather construction of feminine gender roles that cannot simply be subsumed under the notion of patriarchal oppression of women. Wolf makes his case by tracing this ambivalence in three feminocentric texts produced in the period in which sensibility emerged: Colley Cibber's The Careless Husband (1704), one of the earliest sentimental comedies in English literature, George Lillo's ballad opera Silvia (1730), and Samuel Richardson's seminal novel Pamela (1740),

32 33

These concepts are developed and explained in Foucault 1976. For an earlier study of the construction of women in eighteenth-century English prose see the essays by Ansgar Nünning and Gerd Stratmann in Fischer-Seidel 1991.

Introduction

9

which in some respects can be considered to have been anticipated by Lillo's comedy. If James Heffernan's contribution stands at the beginning of Part II, which focuses on representations of women from the end of the Victorian period to postmodernism, it is not only because he provides the link between the age of Enlightenment and the modern period. To begin with, he tackles what could be termed visual ekphrasis, in this case Beardsley's artistic response to previous dramatic and literary framings of women by Pope and Wilde. In other words, Heffernan assesses a double process of representing women, first in literature and then in art. Since ekphrasis34 normally works the other way round (it is usually considered as verbal representations of pictures), this is a most fascinating process, as Heffernan shows what happened when Beardsley rendered in images his reaction to the reading of complete texts. Whereas previous Victorian illustrators collaborated with the writer, Beardsley - like other artists of the yellow decade - took full command of the pictures. Hence he could be considered (and this is one of James Heffernan's premises) as the first person who combines several roles - that of first public reader, that of interpreter and that of critic. Heffernan demonstrates that Beardsley, as he illustrated Pope's Rape of the Lock and Wilde's Salome, read not only the texts but also the lives of their authors. In addition, his visual ekphrases are intriguing precisely because they project a fin-de-siecle perspective of women onto previous views such as Pope's allegedly misogynist rendering of Belinda. Heffernan argues not only that Beardsley penetrated to the very core of Pope's terrain, to his frame as it were, but also that there are close links between Wilde's Salome and Pope's Belinda and that we can find the ambivalence of both heroines35 (something they have in common) as we look at them through Beardsley's eyes. With Brigitte Glaser we move fully into the postmodern period as she turns to several recent British plays to explore the construction and deconstruction of women in the context of science. One of Glaser's major arguments is that female scientists as well as women's attitudes towards science are virtually absent from British literature before the twentieth century; the reasons behind this phenomenon can be seen, according to Glaser, in the historical exclusion of women from science, men's control over the field and the persistent privileging of socalled masculinist values in science and technology. For a long time, the major frames were male-dominated and challenged only by exceptional works like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which exposes the consequences of a scientific project (invented by men) aimed at the usurpation of (female) nature and devoid of ethical considerations. At a time when women in Britain seem to have better access to education and a greater degree of equal opportunity, Brigitte Glaser turns the searchlight on a selection of contemporary plays exploring the possibility of alternative frames for the figure of the scientist. In some of her 34

35

See, for instance, Heffernan's critically acclaimed study Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (1993). For a study of the paradoxes involved in the construction of heroines see chapter IV in Michie 1987.

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examples Glaser faces the same problems as James Heffernan: for example, with Shelag Stephenson's play An Experiment with an Air Pump (1998), Glaser encounters a postmodern dramatic text that engages with Joseph Wright of Derby's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768), a well-known candlelight painting that both instrumentalizes and marginalizes women in the context of Enlightenment science.36 Other texts she discusses in detail include dramas by Michael Frayn, Tony Harrison, Tom Stoppard and Timberlake Wertenbaker. Some of these new plays, Glaser argues, are influenced by attempts to propose a feminist epistemology of science, while others seem to regard the issues of gender and gendering as ultimately negligible. Since it is no doubt of some interest to compare to European procedures the framing processes at work in the literature and art beyond the Atlantic as well as outside English and French cultures, and in typically postmodern art forms, this book also includes contributions on these areas. Sandra Carroll has picked for her article a novel by Margaret Atwood, one of the most important contemporary North American writers and a witty feminist whose work appeals to both sexes alike. Atwood's Alias Grace (1996) is based on an actual Canadian trial that took place in 1843 and made headlines throughout the world. One of the two accused was a sixteen-year-old Irish immigrant girl, Grace Marks, charged with assisting in the murder of her employer and his housekeeper and mistress. While Grace's alleged partner in crime, James McDermott, was hanged, Grace Marks's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and she spent almost thirty years of her life in prisons and asylums before being pardoned. Working on the case, Atwood was fascinated by the half-lies, mysteries and fictionalized accounts that contributed to the weaving of a myth, the quilting of the story of a fascinating character. In fact, Atwood discovered three Graces - the alleged murderer, the clueless ingenue, and the Irish immigrant girl in search of an identity. A beautifully crafted work that both imitates and parodies patchwork quilting as a sustained metaphor, Alias Grace retells Grace Marks's story while mining the convoluted relationship between men and women and the nature of language as it represents, frames and distorts the truth. Carroll's meticulous and sophisticated analysis not only foregrounds the rich narrative and intertextual patterns of Atwood's fictional weaving (apart from its own fictional elements, the novel uses journalistic, legal, literary and autobiographical material as well as art), but also focuses on the construction of Grace, her framing as it were, in the context of the quilting metaphor of the novel which is closely related to Grace's trauma. Uncovering the dazzling splendour of Margaret Atwood's narrative screening in particular analyses of paratextual thresholds, intermediality, and the representation of madness, Carroll shows how the fictional construction of Grace's female identity depends on the framing in which it is engendered. Peter Wagner's essay deals with the representation of women in the bestselling novel of a belated star on the literary firmament of American literature 36

See Wagner's study of this strategic exclusion of women from science as embodied in Wright's painting, 1999.

Introduction

11

Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing (1994). Published as the second volume of his "Border Trilogy", The Crossing (much like All the Pretty Horses, recently made into a movie) has often been discussed as a postmodern version of the Western novel. But McCarthy's predecessors and models are neither Zane Grey nor Owen Wister. In fact, his fiction is greatly indebted to Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway and European writers such as James Joyce and Franz Kafka. Wagner argues that the intertextual relations stretch beyond literature, that both McCarthy and the writers he draws on represent women in a process that resembles a mise en abyme, as we are sent on a voyage that leads us from verbal to visual representations without any end or origin in sight. The essay takes as its focal point a scene half-way through The Crossing, as the boy hero, Billy Parham, undergoes yet another initiation into the complexities of adult life. As he watches a Mexican gypsy woman bathing in the waters of the Casas Grandes, Billy has an epiphany, a recognition of the beauty and splendour of life and love. Any reader familiar with James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) immediately notices the similarity of this epiphanic scene to the one in Joyce's work where the hero observes a Dublin girl in the river. The article analyzes the similarities and differences between the two scenes, arguing that both McCarthy and Joyce construct their female characters as passive objects of adoration in the context of epiphanies experienced by male heroes. The concept of epiphany is explained as a religious-erotic and aesthetic experience leading to an allegedly better understanding of life. The article also shows how both Joyce and McCarthy clearly draw on visual antecedents, in particular on paintings reaching back beyond the light-drenched nudes of nineteenth-century impressionism to the ambiguous oils of Rembrandt showing bathing women. Set in this series of dissemination, suspension of meaning and supplementation, McCarthy's verbal representation of women can be seen as a framing process with a long history that includes visual art. With Ottmar Ette's essay, we leave the Anglo-centred world to get an impression of representations of the female body in Hispanic culture. Borrowing some ideas from Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990) about binary concepts in gender difference and from Roland Barthes's Mythologies (1956) about reading myths as historical discourse (and vice versa), Ette first addresses the issue of binary oppositions employed in the discursive depiction of women in Western culture. Ette argues forcefully in favour of Butler's fundamental critique of the attribution of allegedly natural sex/gender categories, a critique that has moved to the centre of a new post-feminist debate on gendering in cultural theory. In the second part of his aiticle, he advances to an assessment of the gendering dimension of literary texts while still relying on Butler's thesis that human bodies are created in narrative texts embedded in cultural-historical and literary traditions. The latter are yet another example of the frames at the centre of this book. In literature, biological sex proves to be culturally conditioned; it does not need any foundation outside language. Gender becomes intertwined with the literary notion of genre. It is genre, Ette maintains, which (as a frame) ultimately decides which corporeal features will be necessary for the construc-

12

Sandra Carroll, Birgit Pretzsch, Peter Wagner

tion of human bodies in a credible way. Hence the characteristics of genres can tell us a lot about the forms of construction of gender categories. In an attempt to prove the theoretical assumptions and conclusions of the opening sections of his essay, Ette then focuses on a few texts by Serna, Futoransky, and Prada. Forming a series of sorts by way of their singular and plural titles, these texts share the characteristics of erotic literature and the problem of the fetish as located in bodily parts. Ette demonstrates in a most persuasive way how these texts construct sex and/or gender in relation to parts of the body that have been traditionally associated with women. Among the more fascinating examples, moustaches, normally sexual markers for men, are shown to be doubly gendered in some Latin American countries. What emerges from Ette's detailed discussion is the insight that the discursive production of biological sex proves to be a necessarily additive construction. If the female sex in literature always escapes verification it is precisely because the descriptive forms of literary representations of biological sex are based on an infinite play of never-ending allusions. The last two contributions in the book turn to two popular postmodern media - the animated film and the computer game - to investigate the production processes of relatively new frames that employ both traditional and innovative aspects in their description, construction, and strategic use of women. Jan Hollm sheds some critical light on Disney's The Lion King (1994), starting off with the thesis that the multicultural and anti-patriarchal discourses of the counter-culture of the 1960s have reached mainstream American culture. On the surface, in Disney's animated film The Lion King feminist demands and gay liberation seem to be incorporated into a vision of a peaceful society based on ecological principles. Only at second sight does the strategy of the creators of the film plot become obvious. By attributing special abilites to female and homosexual characters and incorporating them into the big picture of American cultural harmony the edge is taken off of feminist and queer counter-cultural demands. At the same time that a streamlining of these voices is performed, Hispanic and black cultures are discriminated against in the cultural framework of social Darwinism and depicted as criminal subcultures that need to be castigated in order to avoid societal demise. Hollm's thesis is that a juxtaposition of the postmodern film and its main Renaissance sources, Shakespeare's Hamlet and Henry IV, opens the eyes to the differing frames of representing female characters. Surprising as it may seem, the Renaissance depiction of women turns out to be more progressive than its 1990s Disney counterpart of gender representation. By choosing a community of lions in a fable setting, the Disney company places its film within a social Darwinist frame of male dominance and creates female figures that are far more submissive than Shakespeare's women characters almost four hundred years earlier. Using the intertext of the great bard of Western culture gives further credibility to the Disney representation of the culture of the lion state. Hollm's conclusion is that through such affirmation techniques the creators of The Lion King manage to streamline discourses that question the very basis of the traditional Disney vision of an ail-American state of capitalist and patriarchal, heterosexual and ethnically cleansed bliss. Hollm demonstrates how femi-

Introduction

13

nist demands for an equal distribution of power among both genders are fended off as unnatural desire which automatically leads to chaos in the body politic. The reactionary Disney frame of representing women thus leads to the propagation of an equally repressive patriarchal frame of reference for women in contemporary American culture. Finally, Birgit Pretzsch assesses the creation and function of Lara Croft, a virtual and virtuous woman constructed out of a complex wireframe covered with pixels. An icon of the nineties and originally the main character of the action computer game Tomb Raider, Lara Croft has served as the cover girl for computer and lifestyle magazines, the protagonist of a music video, a model for clothes designers and the heroine of TV ads and a Hollywood movie. Pretzsch explores several frames employed in Lara Croft's representation, beginning with the idea of the independent fighting woman, which has its predecessors. One point of her inquiry is whether or not Lara fits into previously established role models. Pretzsch then moves on to a comparison of Lara Croft with other virtual characters (mainly female ones) that have come into existence in the last few years; and she concludes with an analysis of the depiction and strategic employment of women in computer games in which Lara Croft seems to be a sort of pioneer. By analyzing three concepts closely related to Lara Croft - body, identity, and reality - Pretzsch is able to determine the extent to which this artificially, electronically engendered, female character subverts traditional frames and/or reinforces existing paradigms. Birgit Pretzsch concludes that the figure of Lara Croft possesses the potential to break older models (which seems to be the revolutionary dimension of the new virtual woman) while simultaneously reinforcing frames that are more subtle and more fundamental. Lara Croft celebrates, and is used to celebrate, technological change, individualism and selfdetermination. While these aspects possess a high value in contemporay Western culture, they also induce fear, uncertainty and insecurity. The virtual character of Lara Croft seems to provide some help against these fears by reassuring us on another level that our basic assumptions about men and women will remain untouched. It is both significant and telling that Tomb Raider is played mostly by young male adults, so that Lara Croft is animated and activated by men. In that sense she reinforces an age-old role of women in art.37 If, as Pretzsch argues, the sexy heroine of Tomb Raider does not shake the main pillars upon which patriarchy continues to rest, it is because she conforms to the function of women in traditional Western art in which, as Werner Hofmann has argued, the picture of woman has been man's picture of woman.38 Juxtaposing and analyzing important representational frames (some of them with a long history) in major discourses in eighteenth-century culture (journalism, art, fiction and drama) and their equivalents in postmodern culture on both sides of the Atlantic, the essays in this book attempt to show what has changed and what has remained stable in our ways of seeing women. Outlining the so37 38

The same is true for literature; see Michie 1987. See Hofmann's introductory essay, "Evas neue Kleider" 1986, 13.

14

Sandra Carroll, Birgit Pretzsch, Peter Wagner

phisticated and occasionally invisible frames in which this seeing and depicting takes place, the book hopes to make a small contribution to a better understanding of the cultural limitations in which and with which we must live.

Introduction

15

Works Cited Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" in: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Transl. by Ben Brewster, London: NLB, 1971. Antal, Frederick. Hogarth and His Place in European Art. London: Routledge, 1962. Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. New York: Doubleday, 1996. Bindman, David. Hogarth. London: Thames & Hudson, 1981. — Hogarth and His Times. London: British Museum Press, 1997. — and Frederic Ogee and Peter Wagner (eds.). Hogarth: Representing Nature's Machines. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Bourdieu, Pierre. Les regies de I'art. Genese et structure du champ litteraire. Paris: Seuil, 1992. Busch, Werner. Nachahmung als bürgerliches Kunstprinzip: Ikonographische Zitate bei Hogarth und in seiner Nachfolge. Hildesheim: Olms, 1977. Christadler, Martin. "Cindy Sherman's Quest for Identity" in: Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 45,2 (1997), 148-60. Conley, Catherine. Automatic Woman: The Representation of Woman in Surrealism. London: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. deVere Brody, Jennifer. Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Diderot, Denis and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (eds.). Encyclopedic ou dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers, par une societe de gens de lettres [1751-1772], Repr. Compact Edition Encyclopedic. New York: Pergamon, s.d. Duby, Georges and Michelle Perrot. Geschichte der Frauen im Bild. Frankfurt: Campus, 1995. Dura, Paul. The Rhetoric of the Frame. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Fischer-Seidel, Therese (ed.). Frauen und Frauendarstellung in der englischen und amerikanischen Literatur. Tübingen: Narr, 1991. Fort, Bernadette and Angela Rosenthal (eds.). The Other Hogarth: Aesthetics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la sexualite. Vol. 1: La volonte de savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. Friedrich, Otto. Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet. New York: Arum Press, 1992. Gay, Peter. The Bourgeois Experience·. Vol. 1: Education of the Senses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. — The Bourgeois Experience: Vol. 2: The Tender Passion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. — The Bourgeois Experience·. Vol. 3: The Cultivation of Hatred. London: HarperCollins, 1993. — The Bourgeois Experience: Vol. 4: The Naked Heart. London: HarperCollins, 1995. — The Bourgeois Experience: Vol. 5: Pleasure Wars. London: W.W. Norton, 1998. Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. Gross, Friedrich. "Delila, Judith, Salome" in: Werner Hofmann (ed.). Eva und die Zukunft: Das Bild der Frau seit der Französischen Revolution. Munich: Prestel, 1986a, 209-21. — "Mutter und Madonna" in: Wemer Hofmann (ed.). Eva und die Zukunft: Das Bild der Frau seit der Französischen Revolution. Munich: Prestel, 1986b, 223-28. Hallett, Mark. Hogarth. London: Phaidon, 2000. Heffernan, James A.W. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Heller, Nancy G. Women Artists: An Illustrated History. New York: Abbeville Press, 2 1991. Hofmann, Werner. Eva und die Zukunft: Das Bild der Frau seit der Französischen Revolution. Munich: Prestel, 1986. Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien: Die Gemäldegalerie. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1996.

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Landau, David and Peter Parshall. The Renaissance Print. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Lawner, Lynne (ed.). I Modi: The Sixteen Pleasures. An Erotic Alburn of the Italian Renaissance. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988. Maxwell, Catherine. The Female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Maza, Sarah. "Introduction" in: "Only Connect: Family Values in the Age of Enlightenment", special issue, Eighteenth-Century Studies 30,3 (spring 1997). Mendgen, Eva. In Perfect Harmony: Picture and Frame 1850-1920. Zwolle: Waanders Uigevers, 1995. Michie, Helena. The Flesh Made Word: Female Figures and Women's Bodies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Miller, J. Hillis. Illustration. London: Reaktion Books, 1992. Neuman, Shirley and Glennis Stephenson (eds.). Relmagining Women: Representations of Women in Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. The New American Bible. Translated from the Original Languages with Critical Use of All the Ancient Sources by Members of the Catholic Biblical Association of America. Chicago: The Catholic Press, 1973. Ogee, Frederic, Peter Wagner and Peter H. Reill (eds.). William Hogarth: Theater and the Theater of Life. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1997. Paulson, Ronald. Breaking and Remaking: Aesthetic Practice in England, I700-/S20. New Brunswick; Rutgers University Press, 1989. Hogarth. Vol. 1: The 'Modern Moral Subject.'. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991a. Hogarth. Vol. 2: High Art and Low, 1732-1750. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991b. Reynolds, Kimberley and Nicola Humble. Victorian Heroines: Representations of Femininity in Nineteenth-century Literature and Art. London: Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1993. Schoch, Rainer et al. Albrecht Dürer: Das druckgraphische Werk. Vol. 1. Munich and New York: Prestel, 2001. Sherman, Cindy. Cindy Sherman 1975-1993. New York: Rizzoli, 1993. Smith, Alison. The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality and Art. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. Tomlinson, Janis A. (ed.). Goya: Images of Women. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Uglow, Jenny. Hogarth: A Life and a World. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. Wagner, Peter. Eros Revived: Erotica of the Enlightenment in England and America. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1988. Reading Iconotexts: From Swift to the French Revolution. London: Reaktion, 1995. (ed.). Icons-Texts-Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996. William Hogarth 1697-1764. Saarbrücken: Saarland Museum, 1998. "Penser la science en termes de differences sexuelles: Une exp0rience sur un oiseau dans une pompe ä air de Joseph Wright of Derby" in: Dix-huitieme siecle 31, (1999), 311-29. "Spotting the Symptoms: Hogarthian Bodies as Sites of Semantic Ambiguity" in Bernadette Fort and Angela Rosenthal (eds.), The Other Hogarth: Aesthetics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, 102-19. Warwick, Alexandra and Dani Cavallaro. Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the Body. Oxford: Berg, 1998. Willems, Herbert. Rahmen und Habitus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997.

Introduction

List of Illustrations Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Albrecht Dürer, Nürnbergerin im Tanzkleid (1501) Albrecht Dürer, Das Meerwunder (1498) Marcantonio Raimondi, Woman with Dildo (s.d., c.1525) William Hogarth, A Harlot 's Progress 1 (1732) Albrecht Dürer, Die Heimsuchung Maria [The Visitation] (c. 1504) George Tooker, The Chess Game (1947) Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, # 15(1978)

Albrccht Dürer, Nürnbergerin

im Tanzkleid (1M)1)

Fig. 2

Albrecht Dürer, Das Meerwunder (1498)

Sandra Carroll, Birgit Pretzsch, Peter Wagner

. 3

Marcantonio Raimondi, Woman with Dildo (s.d., c. 1525)

Fig. 5

Albrecht Dürer, Die Heimsuchung Mariä [The Visitation] (c. 1504)

23

Introduction

Fig. 6

George Tooker, The Chess Game (1947)

Fig. 7

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still, # 15 (1978)

I. The Eighteenth Century

Roy Porter

Fallen Women in the Eighteenth Century

Who were the fallen women of the eighteenth century? And what did society make of them? If we look back before 1700, two truths stand out. First, all women are (potentially at least) fallen women. Second, that was true because all humans were fallen. Planted in Eden, Adam bites the forbidden fruit. Almost the primal human deed, it is Original Sin. The first couple instantly become aware of their nakedness. By hiding their shame, they acknowledge the debased human body, in effect the mortification that was sex. Transgression meets exemplary punishment; they are summarily pitched out of Paradise into a fallen world, where mankind will ever after be plagued by pain, disease and death; as a memorial of paradise lost, man is doomed to toil, while "unto the woman", the Lord declared, "I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy travail; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee". In this Judaeo-Christian lapsarian story, women are especially fallen, that is, sexually suspect, because it was Eve who seduced Adam. Traditional biology, it should be emphasized, in no way regarded the female as more chaste and continent than the male. The reasons for this have been explained in a major but controversial book by Tom Laqueur: Making Sex. Gender and the Body from Aristotle to Freud, published in 1990. Laqueur traces a transition in the gendering of sexuality, from the Greek concept of sexual difference ("the one-sex hierarchical model") to the two-sex model of difference familiar in modern times, the watershed being the eighteenth century. Classical anatomy did not teach the notion of 'opposite sexes' integral to modern received wisdom: nor were male and female regarded as radically distinct 'types'. Instead, influential Greek writers held there was only one human prototype, and that was the male. From Aristotle and Galen up to around 1700, the basic assumption was that there was only one true sex: the male. The female of the species was but a botched man. Unlike Freud, early biology didn't imply that she'd actually lost her penis; rather hers had never grown properly in the first place. As organs developed in the womb, the embryonic boy's penis matured and extruded. But if something went awry in pregnancy, the penis never 'came out'. It remained fast inside the baby's body, and became a 'vagina'. Such unformed, or deformed, boys were called girls - in fact, 'monsters', according to some of Aristotle's followers. Prejudices, however, have enigmatic implications. Or course, the 'one-sex' model - the second sex as veritable 'seconds' - massively disadvantaged

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women. But it also granted them some power. For if women were incomplete men, they were at least like men. And, in erotic terms, that meant their desires must be equally demanding. And, if the vagina was an 'outside-in' phallus, women must have orgasms just like men, and they too must 'ejaculate'. In fact, so early writers on generation taught, pregnancy could not occur without mutual and simultaneous orgasm. Thus women, like men, were constantly lascivious, on heat - from Chaucer's wife of Bath to Defoe's Moll Flanders. No woman could be trusted - fathers should lock up their daughters and husbands must look to their wives, for, as Alexander Pope put it: Ev'ry woman is at heart a rake

Such underlying beliefs are clearly exemplified in what we know about sexual conduct from the surviving documentation of early eighteenth-century England. Many of the records focus on the dissolute and illicit behaviour of women. A woman's sexual reputation was defined by her relationship to men, and by her status as a wife, a widow, or a maid. A wife could legitimately have sex only within marriage. Other married women enforced this rule by making any violations the subject of gossip discrediting the couple, these being recorded in defamation suits in the Consistory Court. Husbands were often taunted: Lucy Heartley thus told Roger Phillips to "go you home you cuckold dog to the whore your wife". Jane Morris said that Thomas Miller was a pitiful fellow because he had married a common whore. Thomas Fry told Edward Sedley that Mary, his wife, was a whore and that her brother Joseph Somner "stood pimp to your wife whilst a man fuckt her". Sometimes one man told another that he had screwed his wife, as John Farrington said to Michael Bliss: "your wife is a whore and my whore, and I have lain with her at the Goat Tavern in Hatton Garden and at the Red Lyon in Vane Street near Clare Market". Arthur Nunnely accused Rebecca Pitt of keeping her husband's servant John Anderson for her stallion; to which she replied, "damn you, if I was to keep a stallion I would choose an handsomer than him". Women were endlessly accused of being 'whores' - in particular by other women. They would retaliate with endless denials. Accusation and denial centred upon the profound suspicion, in that patriarchal society, that no woman could be trusted. Given the chance, all women would act like fallen women. The economy of reputations changed during the course of the eighteenth century. For one thing, mankind at large stopped being fallen. The rational and liberal theology which gained ground amongst the elite from the time of John Locke and Archbishop Tillotson came to deny or dilute the theology of original sin. Humans were not fallen, damned and doomed; man could redeem himself by reason and effort, good works and so forth; God was benevolent, Hell and Satan were just metaphors. For liberal Christians - and all the more so for Deists, sceptics and unbelievers - evil was no longer the radical sinfulness consequent upon the Fall but reflgured as ignorance and error, the products of poor education and bad environments.

Fallen Women in the Eighteenth Century

29

For another thing, biology was formulated. To return to Laqueur, research was beginning to lay bare the female reproductive and nervous systems. By the early nineteenth century it was recognized that women ovulate spontaneously, obeying an inner rhythm. Such egg-production clearly was not a faulty version of anything males did: it was unique to women. And investigations into the menstrual cycle proved that women could conceive without orgasm - in fact, without sexual arousal at all (for instance, as in many marriages and rape). Meanwhile it was maintained that women possessed more sensitive but less robust nervous systems than men. Neurology and biology seemed to be proving that, sexually, male and female were worlds apart, and women were perhaps prisoners of their womb. So the scientific image of woman as man-like - therefore libidinous - yielded in due course to the Victorian model of woman as unlike-man, indeed chaste, and sexually demure, perhaps veering towards the passionlessness of Queen Victoria's "lie back and think of England". The other side of these theological and biological coins was the social. The social reputation of women was also changing. Here I wish to draw attention to another major recent book by the American historian Randolph Trumbach, distinguished for his pioneering studies of the 'egalitarian' family and gay culture in eighteenth-century England. Trumbach 's claim is that male and female heterosexual roles and pratices underwent 'revolutionary' change from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Thanks in part to the 'sentimental' movement, the typical woman came to be seen as (ideally) virtuous, a good daughter, wife and perhaps above all mother, whilst for an increasingly delineated minority - professional prostitutes - the old reputation still stuck, only to an intensified degree. Male images and behaviour were changing symbiotically with the female. In big anonymous cities like London, men at large were growing less sexually restrained. The consequence was a greater drive to indulge in extramarital fornication, typically with the prostitutes and the young unmarried servants, shop-girls etc. so prominent in the big city. The hard evidence for such a shift in sexual practices is to be found in the high incidence of rape, of venereal disease, and of illegitimate births, documented in the courts and in Poor Law records. What brought about those shifts in male and female heterosexuality? By way of explanation, Trumbach points to the sudden emergence, for the first time in European history, of a homosexual subculture. By this he means not the simple practice of sodomy - either in the Greek mode between men and boys, or as an expression of 'libertinism' - but the emergence of 'molly clubs', well documented for Georgian London. So deeply despised and feared was the molly, Trumbach maintains, that other males went in for exaggeratedly macho and homophobic heterosexual actions to pre-empt any aspersions of homosexuality, with inevitable consequences for women. I don't find Trumbach's explanation in the least convincing, but that need not trouble us here. What is more plausible and pertinent is the claimed refiguring of the female. No longer was it the case that "Ev'ry woman is at heart a rake". Now there were, to reduce it to the most simple terms, two sorts of

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women, the virtuous on the one hand and the fallen on the other. Georgian writers put the virtuous woman on a pedestal. James Thomson dictated their duties to the 'British Fair': Well-ordered Home M a n ' s best delight to make; And by submissive wisdom modest skill, With every gentle care-eluding art, To raise the virtues, animate the bliss, And sweeten all the toils of human life: This be the female dignity and praise.

This is the world of Pamela and Fanny Burney's heroines. Males set about producing virtuous ladies, rather as Thomson ordered. Take Thomas Day, member of the Lunar Society, enlightenment luminary and a great admirer of JeanJacques Rousseau's view that women should be soft and submissive. Day put theory into practice by acquiring a living doll of his own to transform, Pygmalion-fashion, into the perfect wife, an angel educated to despise fashion, live in retirement and devote herself to her husband and offspring. Day selected for his experiment a blonde girl of twelve from the local Shrewsbury orphanage, whom he named Sabrina Sidney (after his political hero, the Whig martyr, Algernon Sidney). He then went to the London Foundling Hospital where he found her an eleven-year old brunette companion, Lucretia. To ensure privacy, he took his protegies to France, where he endeavoured to inculcate in them a Rousseauvian contempt for luxury, dress, title and frivolity. His educational plan followed Rousseau's: he taught basic maths and geometry and got the girls to observe such natural phenomena as sunrises. They quarrelled, however, plagued him, and finally caught smallpox, and Lucretia proved "invincibly stupid". Day's experiments in training his chosen one's temper proved disillusioning. When he dropped melted sealing wax on her arm to inure her to pain - a good Rousseauvian experiment - she flinched; worse, when he discharged pistols at her skirts, she screamed. Concluding she was a poor subject, he packed her off to boarding-school, before finally deciding that she too had a weak mind. Some time later, he at last found a congenial wife, Esther Milner. Thanks to her husband's repeated experiments, she was hardened into Spartan health, allowed no servants and made to abandon her harpsichord. Evidently Esther was not at heart a rake. Here lies the context for that drive amongst Georgian feminists, from Mary Astell to Mary Wollstonecraft, to desexualize the virtuous woman, in a strategy of purification or sexual Puritanism. In her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), Mary Wollstonecraft gloried in woman as nurse of the rising generation, expressing her profound contempt for whimpering, simpering, flirtatious, babyish ladies - those who, in making love their vocation, "always retain the pretty prattle of the nursery, and do not forget to lisp, when they have learnt to languish", with them sex became the key to oppression. "Imbecility in females", spat Jane Austen, "is great enhancement of their personal charms".

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The elevation of virtuous women spelt the fall of others, that is, harlots. Indeed the two sorts got played off against each other. Thus in his Defence of the Public Stews (1724), Bernard de Mandeville maintained, from a utilitarian viewpoint, that the commercial sex provided by prostitutes was a social necessity, given the nature of male sexual drives, it being a lesser evil which would prevent the molestation or 'virtuous' women. How did fallen women work? The classic London street-walker indeed walked the street, approaching men, inviting them to go with her to a tavern, or to her lodgings, or simply to a dark place. Walking between Charing Cross and Ludgate, Defoe complained that, even though he walked at full speed, women moved into his path and stopped him with an 'impudent leer'. At other times they twitched at his sleeve or greeted him with a lewd suggestion: others simply grabbed him by the elbow and demanded to be treated with wine before they would let him go. Defoe escaped. Simon Jeffrey described how as he was going with a parcel of money up Fleet Street, a girl called to him, and asked him to go and drink with her. They went to Mrs Sweetman's at the George Tavern at the bottom of Water Lane and had two pints of beer. Then they went to another tavern. When they came out, the woman picked up another woman, and the three of them went in search of a bed. They found one and spent the night together, calling for more drink in the process. The next morning the women were gone, and so was Simon Jeffrey's money. James Boswell spent 1762 in London. His hopes of a winter's genteel and safe sex came a cropper when he was infected by the actress Louise. So he had to make do with a series of whores. With the first four he carefully wore a condom. Then he rashly acceded to the request of a fifth girl to leave it off as the "sport was pleasanter without it". The next two girls he took together to the Shakespeare's Head Tavern and treated and enjoyed them. On the king's birthnight he sallied out like a gentleman in disguise and had two girls in succession and was refused by a third because he would not pay. On another night another woman picked his pocket of his handkerchief. It is unclear whether he had stopped using a condom. In the midst of these adventures Boswell met Samuel Johnson. When the two men were approached by a girl as they walked in the Strand, Johnson sent her away and the two friends then "talked of the unhappy situation of these wretches, and how much more misery than happiness.... is produced by irregular love". But a week later when Boswell was on his own and "a fine fresh lass" tapped him on the shoulder, he went off with her. Boswell never used a directory, the Georgian equivalent of phonebooth tartcards. Harris's List, for instance, described the women of the town in elegant and Arcadian language. You could have Miss Lister, whose imagination was "filled with every luscious idea [that] refined sensibility and fierce desire can unite". Physically speaking, she sported an "Elysian font in the centre of a black bewitching grove". Miss Burn was a nymph, and Miss Hallond "a first rate ship" in which "to sail to the island of love". Miss Dodd was forty and kept a house of girls off Fleet Street but could still be alluring. Moreover, she had

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erotic pictures to revive the impotent and would give a "comfortable cup of tea in the morning". Who were the prostitutes? What seems significant about their public identities is that, not only were they to some degree increasingly set apart from the majority of ordinary women, but they were sentimentalized and even exonerated. Something similar happened with another category of wicked women: witches. The witch-craze in early modern England resulted in the trial and execution of a thousand or so people, mainly women. By the late seventeenth century prosecutions were in rapid decline. This was not due to the triumph of Hobbes's a priori denials of Devilry and witchcraft but a widespread de facto waning of belief on grounds of experience and humanity. "I believe in general", held Addison in The Spectator, "that there is, and has been such a thing as witchcraft" - a tactic that established his bona fides·, yet he could "give no credit to any particular instance of it". That deft formula established, he went on to explain how those mistaken for witches were pitiable old women victimized by the "ignorant and credulous". Great dangers were in store once some old crone - call her Moll White - had got the "Reputation of a Witch", If she made any Mistake at Church, and cryed Amen in a wrong place, they never failed to conclude that she was saying her Prayers backwards.... If the Dairy Maid does not make her Butter come so soon as she would have it, Moll White is at the bottom of the Churn. If a Horse sweats in the Stable, Moll White has been upon his Back

And thus he concluded with a call for an end to persecution: I hear thee is scarce a village in England that has not a Moll While in it. When an old woman begins to doat, and grow chargeable to a Parish, she is generally turned into a Witch, and fills the whole Country with extravagant Fancies, imaginary Distempers, and terrifying Dreams.

Addison's views squared with those set out in the Rev. Francis Hutchinson's influential An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft (1718). Hutchinson was the epitome of the moderate, progressive humanitarian Whig thinker so influential in enlightened England. While Hobbes the ultra reduced 'superstition' to rank fraud, the Anglican divine judiciously made allowance for self-deception, hysteria, social pressure and labelling. It was all too easy for people to be talked into believing they were witches - "old women are apt to take such fancies of themselves". "Imagine a poor old creature", he appealed to his readers" sympathies: Under all the weakness and infirmities of old age, set like a fool in the middle of a room, with a rabble of the town round about her house: then her legs tied cross that all the weight of her body might rest upon her seat. Then she must continue her pain four and twenty hours, without any sleep or meat ... what wonder was it, if when they were weary of their lives, they confessed any tales that would please.

A case like that or Jane Wenham, the last English 'witch' to be condemned (1714), showed "how impossible it is for the most innocent Persons to defend

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themselves". A meek crone living in a "barbarous parish", she it was, in Hutchinson's opinion, who was the real victim of maleficium, the one who truly deserved compassion. In that age of conspicuous humanity, the witch, like the prostitute, could even become the heroine of a narrative, typecast as a sad, lonely, bigot-beset woman. Such sentimental strains were already present in Hutchinson - when Jane Wenham "was denied a few Turnips' by vicious parishioners, readers were told, 'she laid them down very submissively". The Genuine History of the Good Devil of Woodstock (1802) invited similar imaginative and moral identification. The villagers were brutish to poor Jane Gilbert, called her witch, and did her injury; but, sustained in part by compassionate social superiors, she bore it like a good Christian; finally she came into a legacy and behaved with exemplary benevolence to her erstwhile persecutors. Shakespeare's witches had been sinister and supernatural. A century later, Allan Ramsay's pastoral drama, The Gentle Shepherd (1715), introduced a new figure: a harmless 'witch' who, however, was invested with supernatural powers by fearful, credulous rustics: Ramsay was, of course, the Scottish Addison. So-called witches were thus transformed from villains to victims - or rather social problems. Something like that also happened with street-walkers. Witches hardly became heroines but that could happen with fictional prostitutes, notably Fanny Hill. In John Cleland's significantly titled Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Fanny begins her career in Mrs Brown's house which is described as a private house, with a well-furnished back parlour, and bedchambers on a second floor. It is all very domestic, almost the realm of separate spheres. Fanny describes herself as a bird in a cage, "so tame to their whistle" that she would not fly away even if her cage doors were left opened; "nothing in short," she says, "was wanting to domesticate me entirely and to prevent my going out anywhere to get better advice". Later she lives in Mrs Cleo's own house, which is, in outward appearance, a millinery shop where, during the day, three beautiful young women of eighteen or nineteen sit demurely at their work. But behind the shop is a spacious drawing-room and private rooms for the girls, who at night receive their male visitors. This house of pleasure is boardingschool, convent and flock rolled into one. Mrs Cole is the governess, and the girls her "small and domestick flock". Mrs Cole presides at the head of her cluck. (Fanny is the new boarder presented to the other pupils). The girls pass through a "due noviciate" and a chapter is held "for the ceremony of my reception into the sisterhood". Mrs Cole has formed "a little family of love". The band of young men who are the chief supporters of her "secret institution" style themselves "the restorers of the liberty of the golden age" who bring simplicity and innocence to sexual pleasure, and free it from guilt and shame. Sex in the remainder of the novel occurs in safe and enclosed places. There is a picnic at the "little but agreeable house" on the Thames. After this "trip to Cythera" they return to "the old haven". Mrs Cole, the bawd, "considered pleasure of one sort or other as the universal port of destination, and every wind that blew thither a good one, provided it

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blew nobody any harm". Cleland turned that 'harlot's progress' which had been a tragedy for Hogarth into a triumph. Fanny's world is free of drunkenness, it is not associated with crime, it is run entirely by women, it all takes place in safe, indoor environments, and it is a vice, more or less, of the middle and upper ranks of a society. Fanny enjoyed and profited from her profession, while also falling in love with her very first client, whom she finally married - thus combining pleasure, gain and romance all in one implausible enlightened fiction. Fanny's world is a real world, Trumbach has commented, "but it is a world with the pain left out". It is a world where the seduced servant and milliner did not become pregnant. It is also a world where they did not contract venereal diseases. Fictions like Cleland's helped reshape public sympathies. Certainly, the fallen woman increasingly came with a hard luck story, the blame was deflected, Some became prostitutes because they were servants far from home who had become pregnant, and then had a baby to support. This was the story of Mary David from Herefordshire. Her father died, her mother remarried a man too poor to support them, and David was sent to London at a very young age to go into service. She served for two years in a fashionable household in Berkeley Square. The footman made promises of marriage and debauched her, but he was already married. She lost her place. He helped at first, and she took a place as wet nurse. She put her own child out to nurse with a woman in Tottenham Court Road. The child she nursed was weaned, her milk dried up, and she went to live in the house in Tottenham Court Road. The landlady was "very civil, however, and suffered her to go on getting in debt. Till, one night, between eleven and twelve, she went upstairs to her with manners totally changed, and swore with the grossest abuse, that she would turn her into the street, child and all, unless she brought her some pay". When Mary David asked how that was possible, she replied that "girls with worse faces than she often picked up a great deal". She now found that one of her fellow lodgers was a kept mistress, and that the house, in a quiet way, was a house for whores. Mary went out and walked the streets. But she was clearly determined to save herself. She swore her child to its father and gave it over to the parish. She found some poor friends who took her in. Then she returned to her mother in the country. But she found that she was pregnant again from her prostitution. In shame she went again to London, and it started all over again. In the context of Enlightenment values, prostitutes themselves were often represented as not inherently depraved. Liberal theology, the Lockean notions of humans as the malleable products of education, experience and environment, and the growing sentimental movement mean that traditional villains now become victims. Weighing the blameworthiness of streetwalkers, the magistrate John Fielding demanded, "what must become of the Daughters of working widows, where Poverty and Illiterateness conspire to expose them to every Temptation?" Answer: "They become Prostitutes from Necessity even before their Passions can have any Share of their Guilt". What alternative did they have? "Scant are the means of subsistence allowed to the female sex ... and those so

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much engrossed by our sex; so small the profits ... and so difficult often the power of obtaining employment". Employers were loath to hire city girls, preferring the exploitable innocence of those up from the country. Punitiveness, it was reflected, only made bad worse: Treat a woman, young in age, and not old in sin, as a felon, her sense of shame will be extinguished: she will be tempted to look on herself as an outcast of human nature: she will continue to sin without control: her heart will grow petrified: she will grow indifferent to all events, caring not how soon, or in what manner, she leaves a world, where she finds so little mercy, and such unrelenting severity against her.

Enlightened thinking thus diverted blame away from the individual harlot. Neither intrinsically virtuous nor vicious, the streetwalker was a child of society, typically pictured as a guileless girl, as illustrated by Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress, who had come up to the wicked city only to be exploited by hardened bawds and heartless clients. The enlightened framework was thus one not of personal guilt and atonement but of social problems and engineered solutions. In that case, what was to be done? Enlightened minds strategically came up with institutional answers for problem people: not punishment but rehabilitation, not whippings but reformatories. London's Magdalen Hospital was set up for just this purpose, aiming to remove harlots from risk, teach them discipline and an honest trade, and then place them in a situation. Just as children could be educated, problem people could be retrained. In the 1750s a group of reformers began to promote the cause of an asylum for prostitutes. Robert Dingley, a successful London merchant, took the lead, and he was soon joined by Jonas Hanway, his former partner and an active religious philanthropist. Saunders Welch and Sir John Fielding, the two London magistrates most active in trying to control street prostitution, also became advocates of the cause. Welch's proposals for the hospital neatly brought into focus the new attitude toward prostitution. Arresting these and sending them to the house of correction had no long-term value: "punishment only prevents for the time it operates, but hardly ever produced one reformation". A hospital, on the other hand, would educate the girls and send them out as apprentices or servants, thereby "striking at the root of the evil". The behaviour of men was therefore unlikely to change. It was the behaviour of the prostitute that had to be modified. Punishment had no long-term effect. She had to be re-educated into appropriate behaviour. The Magdalen Hospital, established in 1758, could not ever have made much of a dent on the population of street prostitutes. It never had more than 60 to 100 women in it before 1800. In its first twenty-five years, it admitted 2,415 women, when there were several thousands of prostitutes active in London at any one time. Life inside the Magdalen has been compared to the regime of the modern penitentiary, but it might as fairly be looked upon us a special kind of convent where the nuns made promises to reform their lives and stay for a while until they were prepared to rejoin the world. When the girls entered, they were re-

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minded that "it never was intended that you should pass your whole life here" or live in idleness. Instead, they were there to "be enabled to return into life with a reputation recovered", "with a habit of industry and the means to procure honestly your own bread", and with a mind "resolved through God's grace to forfeit no more the blessed hope of everlasting life". They were to attend the chapel twice on Sunday when the chaplain preached and visitors were admitted by ticket to observe them. They were to wear a "downcast look" on such occasions and to remember that a "bold and dauntless stare will give but mean ideas of reformation". They were to pray in private and read the Bible. In their conversation, they were to be meek to their superiors; and among themselves they were not to swear and never to "glory in your shame" by telling stories of their previous lives, "which should cover yöur faces with confusion". It claimed success. Sixty-five percent of its young women were supposedly either reconciled to their parents or placed as servants. The fallen woman was thus transformed, in parallel to the transformation of such other groups as witches and the mad. What had been endemic to the human, or at least the female, condition became singled out as a social dilemma of a problem population; what had once been a stigma of sin became a consequence of conditions and conditioning, ripe for reform.

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Works Cited Primary Cleland, John. Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [1748-49], ed. Peter Wagner. London: Penguin, rev. ed. 2001. Dingley, R. Proposals for Establishing a Place of Reception for Penitent Prostitutes. London: W. Faden, 1758. Fielding, John. A Plan for a Preservatory and Reformatory for the Benefit of Deserted Girls and Penitent Prostitutes. London: Francklin, 1758. Welch, Saunders. A Proposal to ... Remove the Nuisance of Common Prostitutes from the Streets. London: s. n., 1758. Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler. 7 vols. London: William Pickering, 1989.

Secondary Andrew, Donna T. Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989. Bell, Ian H. Literature and Crime in Augustan England. London: Routledge, 1989. Bender, John. Imagining the Penitentiary. Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Cohen, Sherrill. The Evolution of Women's Asylums since 1500: From Refugees for Ex-Prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Laqueur, Thomas W. Making Sex. Gender and the Body from Aristotle to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. Lloyd, Sarah. '"Pleasure's Golden Bait": Prostitution, Poverty and the Magdalen Hospital' in: History Workshop Journal, xli, (1996), 51-72. Nash, S. 'Prostitution and Charity: The Magdalen Hospital, a Case Study' in: Journal of Social History, xvii, (1984), 617-28. Ogborn, Miles. Spaces of Modernity: London's Geographies, 1680-1780. New York: The Guilford Press, 1998. Speck, W. A. 'The Harlot's Progress in Eighteenth-Century England' in: British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, iii, (1980), 126-39. Trumbach, Randolph. Sex and the Gender Revolution, vol. i: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Wagner, Peter. Eros Revived. Erotica of the Enlightenment in England and America. London: Seeker & Warburg, 1988; repr. Grafton Books, 1990.

Thomas Krämer

Masquerade as No-Man's-Land The Representation of Women in A Harlot's Progress 2

The engravings of William Hogarth have been the subject of countless interpretations, and so has A Harlot's Progress, his 1732 series of six prints depicting scenes from the life of a prostitute. My essay is concerned with the second plate of this series (fig. 1): Mary or Moll Hackabout - in fact, we are left uncertain about her name, as the prints refer to her only as Μ 1 - appears as the mistress of a rich, elderly man. Her protector has dropped in for a visit, and Μ does her very best to draw his attention away from the background while her young lover tries to escape. There seems to be little doubt among Hogarth-scholars about the various characters and their gender. The keeper, often described as a Jewish merchant, plays the cuckold, M i s the middle-class mistress aping the maimers of a courtesan, the young lover in the backdrop leaves after what we nowadays would call a one-night stand. I would like to contradict these orthodox assumptions only as far as this lover is concerned, as my ekphrasis of the print is based on the hypothesis that the person trying to sneak out of the room is a woman in man's clothes. To find evidence for this I will, in the first place, try to cover the term 'masquerade' in as many aspects as possible, and, in the second place, examine the opportunities for women in the eighteenth century to wear male disguise. Having done so, I will describe lesbian ways of life that could have taken place in eighteenthcentuiy London society.

1. Masquerade Feminist authors have dealt with the problem of female masquerade in detail. One of the basic questions is, as Judith Butler puts it, "whether masquerade conceals a femininity that might be understood as genuine or authentic, or whether masquerade is the means by which femininity and the contests over its 'authenticity' are produced".2 Masquerade is what women do, says Luce Iriga-

' 2

SeeBindman 1982, 56. Butler 1990, 159, note 18.

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ray, "in order to participate in man's desire, but at the cost of giving up their own". 3 "On the one hand", Butler states, more precisely, if the 'being' [...] is masquerade, then it would appear to reduce all being to a form of appearing, the appearance of being, with the consequence that all gender ontology is reduced to the play of appearances. On the other hand, masquerade suggests that there is a 'being' or ontological specification of femininity prior to the masquerade, a feminine desire or demand that is masked and capable of disclosure, that, indeed, might promise an eventual disruption and displacement of the phallogocentric signifying economy. 4

Recent treatments on the essence of masquerade offer a great variety of different opinions. In urban eighteenth-century England things appeared to be easier. Masquerade was considered the epitome of vice, and vice, always connected with promiscuous sexuality by Ned Ward, Tom Brown, and other "strolling authors", was the central element of their mythical London. "Moreover", writes Gerd Stratmann, "they [the authors] tended to link sexual promiscuity and social promiscuity, so that in a certain sense the one seemed to imply the other". "London", he continues, is characterized, positively speaking, by the unlimited variety of its expressions, the unmediated clash of 'contrarieties', by its speed, its sensuality, its 'amazing' (even ecstatic) impact. Negatively speaking, it appears to be a gigantic deconstructive mechanism - invalidating hierarchies and the boundaries between social ranks or between the sexes, mixing high and low promiscuously, and thereby breaking down most of the barriers and taboos of the time. 5

The mixing of different social classes within such a melting-pot, the horror of class-confident people like, e.g., Henry Fielding, found its ritualised expression in the masked balls as they were held by John Jacob Heidegger, a Swiss emigrant, at the Haymarket Opera House. "The masquerade was celebrated as a liberation from the restrictions of class and sex, as a triumph of art as well as sensuality, as a camivalesque deconstruction of rules". 6 It stood as a symptom for urban excesses; on the one hand because of the lack of social barriers, "since the Pear [s;'c] and the Apprentice, the Punk and the Duchess are, for so long a time, upon an equal Foot", on the other hand, because masquerades had become popular opportunities for sexual adventures and points of contact for prostitutes.7 The dedication of a satirical pamphlet lists a number of masks prostitutes used to gain attention: '"Paints and Washes', the 'Mask of Sanctity', the 'Mask of artificial Maidenhead', and 'a little Machine, or masking Habit' - that is, prophylactics". 8 Heidegger's reputation oscillated, accordingly, between 'Great High Priest of Pleasure', 'cuckold-maker', and 'Cock-Bawd', he was named in

3 4 5 6 7 8

Irigaray 1977 131. See Butler 1990, 47. See also Stoll and Wodtke-Wemer 1997. Butler 1990, 47. Stratmann 1997, 69. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 70. See Castle 1988, 31.

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one breath with the illustrious Mother Needham.9 In Masquerades and Operas, he can be seen at the window of Haymarket Theatre above the word 'Masquerade'; in the Masquerade Ticket his head appears near the small hand of the clock. 10 One gets an idea of the fate of less attractive whores at the fringe of such events when reading four lines from Fielding's poem The Masquerade: Below stairs hungry whores are picking The bones of wild-fowl and of chicken; And into pockets some convey Provisions for another day.' 1

Yet at the turn to the nineteenth century Charles Lamb in a letter still described the whole of London as "a pantomime and masquerade - all these things work themselves into my mind and feed me [...] and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much Life". Certainly one of the reasons for Lamb's sentimental tears was "all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden, the very women of the town [.. .]".12

2. Cross-Dressing The vehement attacks against masquerades aimed at a social control of women. By suggesting the ubiquitous presence of whores at the masked assembly, and identifying any other woman who attended such a gathering with the 'Sisterhood of Drury', anti-masquerade writers no doubt discouraged women of higher and consequently more powerful social position from experiencing the heady, liberating, and potentially disruptive pleasures of the masquerade.13

"Wer eine Maske anlegt", writes Hans Biedermann, "fühlt sich innerlich verwandelt und nimmt in dieser Zeit Eigenschaften des sie darstellenden Wesens [...] an".14 Consequently another motivation for the fight against the masquerades was the fear of their opponents that they might not only encourage women to engage in a sexually permissive behaviour within the borders of the hegemonial heterosexual discourse, but as well to change their 'identity' with the help of masks and thus surpass the barriers of their class and, in the worst case, of their gender. "The notion of an original or primary gender", says Butler, 9 10

" 12 13

14

Ibid. 22 and 31. See Paulson 1979, ill. 20 and 57. Ibid. 32, 191-94. Stratmann 1997, 66. Castle 1988, 33. See also Fielding's question in The Masquerade: '"Madam, how from another woman / Do you strumpet masqu'd distinguish?' (198-99)" (Castle 1988, 352, note 41). Biedermann 1994, 283. "Carrying a mask means to feel basically changed and to acquire characteristics of the being it represents during the masquerade". (My translation).

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"is often parodied within the cultural practices of drag, cross-dressing, and the sexual stylization of butch/femme identities".15 Feminist theory, she goes on, sees such parodist identities either as degrading for women or as an uncritical appropriation of stereotypical gender roles, especially in the case of butch/femme lesbian identities. But the relation between the 'imitation' and the 'original' is [...] more complicated than that critique generally allows. Moreover, it gives us the clue to the way in which the relationship between primary identification - that is, the original meanings accorded to gender - and subsequent gender experience might be reframed. The performance of drag plays upon the distinction between the anatomy of the performer and the gender that is being performed.' 6

'Cross-dressing', in this case the wearing of male dress in order to adopt a male identity was not rare in the eighteenth century. Henry Fielding's The Female Husband "is a reworking or fictional account of the case of Mary Hamilton, who was convicted of fraud in Taunton, Somerset, for posing as a man and subsequently marrying one Mary Price". 17 In Obszönität und Gewalt, Hans Peter Duerr describes the case of Mary Read, who went to sea as a pirate under the name of Mac Read and remained unrecognised for years.18 Terry Castle and Peter Wagner also mention several such cases.19 Why did women slip into the roles of men, and how could they succeed? "One possible interpretation", implies Butler, "is that the woman in masquerade wishes for masculinity in order to engage in public discourse with men and as a man t···]"· 20 Though by adopting male masks, she says, women reinforce the distance between the roles of men and women, and they corroborate the value of being a man through their craving for masculinity. "The effeminate man", assumes Lynn Friedli, "cannot enjoy the same status because to be female is necessarily to be despised".21 Friedli also explains why so many women passed as men: With half the population under sixteen, a large proportion of men in the community would have been beardless youths, with high pitched voices: an important factor, for women enlisting as new recruits were likely to be young. The increasing condemnation of effeminacy may thus point to an unease with such fluid boundaries in an society which was confronting the apparent erosion of many other social, political and geographical distinctions. 22

Apart from that there existed extremely refmed props to hold up the illusion of manliness. Giacomo Casanova describes in ekphrastic detail his encounter with a supposed castrate who turns out to be a woman:

Butler 1990, 137. Ibid. Friedli 1987, 238. In her article Friedli describes several cases of cross-dressing. Duerr 1993, 33-5. Wagner 1990, 33^1. Castle 1988, 157-8. See also Casanova, 1998, 85-91 and 138-77. Butler 1990, 52. Friedli 1987, 243. Ibid. 250.

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[Das] Ding ist so etwas wie ein kleiner weicher Darmschlauch, daumendick, weiß und aus geschmeidiger Haut. [...] Es ist an einer sehr feinen durchscheinenden Haut befestigt, von ovaler Form und fünf oder sechs Zoll lang und zwei Zoll breit. Man befestigt es im Schoß mit Tragantgummi und verdeckt so völlig das weibliche Geschlecht. 23

3. Travesty And Lesbianism The short-time change of gender during masquerades was also very popular, and the transvestite disguise among the most favoured. 24 The mask, assumes Castle, functioned as a protective shield. Behind it the women could do what would have been sanctioned in normal life. "The mask signified a certain physical detachment from the situation, and by implication a moral detachment also". She continues: "Transvestite costume was always symbolically charged, evoking realms of perverse and ambiguous sexual possibility". 25 "Travesty", she writes in another paper, "eroticized the world. Not only was one freed of one's inhibitions, one might also experience, hypothetically at least, a new body and its pleasures". 26 'Same-sex erotic contacts' during masquerades principally took place between gay men, at least according to their echo in contemporary literature.27 Now and then it came to misunderstandings, as John Cleland depicts one in an episode in Fanny Hill. Two young prostitutes, Louisa and Emily, go to a masked ball, the first in the habit of a shepherdess, Emily in that of a shepherd: I saw them in their dresses before they went, and nothing in nature could represent a prettier boy than this last did, being so extremely fair and well limbed. 28

Emily, "under the protection of her boy's habit, which was not much", is addressed by a man and brought to a bagnio where he, as she undresses, states horrified: "'By heavens, a woman!'" 29 He half-heartedly tries to commit sodomy and fails, as she defends herself, lets go of her and orders a carriage that brings her home. Johann Wilhelm von Archenholtz noted around 1787: Weil das englische Frauenzimmer so schön und der Hang, sich mit ihm zu vergnügen, so allgemein ist, übersteigt der Abscheu der Insulaner gegen die Päderastie alle Grenzen. 23

24 25 26 27 28 29

Casanova 1998, 88. "The thing is something like a small soft bowel tube, as thick as a thumb, white and made of smooth skin. [...] It is fastened to a very fine, diaphanous skin, of oval form and five or six digits long and two digits in width. One secures it in the lap with tragacanth and thus entirely hides the female sex". (My translation). Castle 1988,22. Ibid. 39-40. Castle 1995, 161. Castle 1988,45. Cleland 1985 190-2. Ibid.

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Thomas Krämer Nach den Gesetzen steht darauf, wenn nur ein Versuch geschehen ist, das Prangerstehen und eine Gefängnisstrafe von einigen Jahren. Die wirklich begangene Tat aber wird am Galgen gebüßt. Diese Bestrafungen sind jedoch sehr selten, weil die hiesigen Päderasten bei ihren brutalen Handlungen die größte Vorsicht walten lassen. 30

While male homosexuality was considered disgusting, lesbian relationships were attacked far less.31 It is true that Fielding (in The Masquerade) made the masked balls responsible for the rising of a new, 'Amazon Race', and for the chaos between the sexes. But, as Wagner states: While homosexual men were exposed, ridiculed, and ostracised, lesbians received occasional poetic praise. [...] To the writers at least, the behaviour of homosexual women seems to have been less objectionable, since they remained female in their manners and did not adopt features of the opposite sex, like the dreaded mollies [i. e., male transvestites]. 33

Although transvestism represented a clear violation of dressing-codes, women ignored these social rules. "[They] disguised themselves, thus, as hussars, pirates, bishops, and the like [...]". 34 Castle mentions the case of Judith Milbanke who appeared with her sister as "two smart Beaux". 35 Elizabeth Inchbald attended a masquerade in male dress in 1781 and was subsequently 'charged with having captivated the affections of sundry witless admirers of her own sex'. [,..T]he episode is [...] a self-conscious acknowledgement of the potential for female homoeroticism at the masquerade. 36

I think that the leniency towards lesbian behaviour and its representation has four reasons. The first is described by Randolph Trumbach: Gender differences were presumed [...] to be founded on an ineradicable difference of experience: men did not know what it was like to desire men, and women did not desire women, though in the minds of men, and perhaps of women, too, the latter was less so?1

In 1885 Queen Victoria still refused to sign a law that would have declared lesbian love a crime, on reasons that no British woman would ever even think of something like that.38 The second reason is that "society had not yet constructed a lesbian role". 39 While the already consolidated understanding of 'manliness' was built on the 30

See Schlüter 1991, 208. "As the English woman is so beautiful and the inclination to play with her so general, the islanders' horror of pederasty surmounts all limits. According to the laws, even the attempt leads to the pillory and to years of imprisonment. But to be caught in the act of crime means to end on the gallows. These penalties are rather rare, though, as the local pederasts use every precaution in their brutal deeds". (My translation).

31

Cleland 1985, 195, calls gay intercourse "criminal". See also Wagner 1990, esp. 34-9. See Castle 1988,47. Wagner 1990,40-1, Castle 1988, 64. Castle 1995, 163-4. Castle 1988,48. Trumbach 1985, 118 (my italics). See Valverde 1994, 99.

32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Masquerade as No-Man 's-Land

45

avoidance of sodomitical or feminine behaviour and, as a consequence of this socio-institutional dictate, the 'womanizer' became the desirable ideal, lesbian women were in no-man's-land outside patriarcho-hegemonial sanctions. 40 The third reason is that within the male heterosexual thinking intercourse without penetration was impossible. "It never became necessary to pass legislation with regard to erotic practices between women"; states Friedli, "they continued to move between the fluctuating boundaries of medical and pornographic discourse, where they flourish still".41 The 'sodomite' penetrated in an illegitimate way, as far as sodomy put into question the gender definitions of intruder and intruded, thus he was guilty. Sex between women, however, was no 'real' sex 42 Even the imagination (and representation) of one woman penetrating the other with a 'phallic object' produced a stimulating effect in the male audience rather than patriarchal indignation. 43 After all such penetration fantasies had sprung from male heads. The fourth reason is based upon this male view of female homosexuality, as even after the gradual intake of lesbian role-images and owing to the resulting hegemony of the male gaze lesbian intercourse was not regarded as a threat of manliness. The function of the representation of lesbian acts within heterosexual structures was right from the beginning that of a pornographic variant that reassured the male gaze of its superior power. 44 The representation of lesbian intercourse has been since time immemorial a standard instrument of pornography, used to arouse the beholder sexually and to give him the feeling of power and control. Additionally, as no identification with a represented male is necessary, the control may appear even more perfect through this lack of rivalry. So, to give some examples, the lesbian actions in the writings of de Sade are without any question written by a man for men. 45 Fragonard's illustration for Voltaire's Candide shows two peeping Toms; one of them even shows the beholders where to look. 46 In principle it is the same with any pornographic film of our time. Among all the predictably performed sexual practices the male gaze will reliably be allowed to observe "women at a 'lesbian 69"' with and/or without a dildo. 47 Dealing with such subversive bodily acts like cross-dressing as an expression of appropriation of manifestations of the 'other', i.e. here, the male gender, I want to come back to the woman in A Harlot's Progress, plate 2, who has never been regarded as a female character. "The hero becomes a woman", though in a com30 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47

Trumbach 1987, 75. See Akkermann 1989. Friedli 1987,250. Trumbach 1985, 112. See ill. 87 in Wagner 1995, 149. See Valverde 1994, 94-7. See also Kappeler 1988, Dworkin, 1987a and 1987b, Cornell 1995. Dworkinl987a, 114. See Wagner 1990, 40, ill. 7. Dworkin 1987a, 51.

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pletely different manner as in Ronald Paulson's declaration of the transition from aristocratic to bourgeois ethos 48 "Den Wegschleicher", Lichtenberg for once dismisses his usual curiosity, "wollen wir wegschleichen lassen".49 But at a closer look at the person who is trying to sneak out of the room I deem it impossible to decide whether here a he- or a sAe-lover takes to his or her heels. (Such androgynous looks are not unique in eighteenth-century arts and can be found, e.g., in several paintings by Fragonard.50) The secrecy of the scene and the prominent position of the fourposter bed indicate, in any case, that a sexual partner of the harlot is taking leave. Many authors refer to the high frequency of lesbian relationships among professional prostitutes.51 This topic has also fascinated many artists. I do not want to refer to Hogarth as the 'author' of A Harlot's Progress, but what could be said in favour of the assumption that we see a sAe-lover is that Hogarth never was a 'Schönheits-Maler' in his entire life and that throughout his 'oeuvre' one cannot find even one male figure with such tender features, such 'Sternenaugen', or such softly formed legs and tiny feet.52 In spite of the looming danger of being called a deconstructionist, I think there is strong evidence for my assumption that a woman is stealing out of the room, a woman the harlot has met at a masquerade and brought home in her effort to live up to her understanding of the role of a courtesan, i.e., to have illegitimate relationships besides the quasi-legitimate relationship with her protector.53 Not only the 'feminine' features, the comparatively gracious attitude of the refugee or the comb in her/his hair convince me that she is a woman. There are other indications for such a reading. The china, in Restoration comedy a synonym for sex, is just one; falling to the floor and breaking into pieces, it can be related not only to intercourse but also to sex as a category which, in this case, breaks apart. The mask, classical prop of pornographic representation, lies on a small table in the foreground.54 Michael Godby notes that it has no holes to fasten a string to it, and that Hogarth did this on purpose to emphasize its allegorical meaning as a symbol of theatre.55 I think the various possible meanings of masks represented should not be seen in such a restricted way. Providing just one of a multitude of further meanings, Terry Castle has argued that "Masks were considered notorious aphrodisiacs, associated with prostitutes (as in Hogarth's Harlot's Progress) and the perverse heightening of passion".56 It can also be read as an indication of the masks the people in the scene wear: the she48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56

Paulson 1991,285. Lichtenberg 1994, 755. "The sneaker, let him sneak" (my translation). Jean-Honore Fragonard: Die glücklichen Liebenden. Um 1770. Öl auf Leinwand. 50 χ 61 cm. Privatsammlung, Paris. See Dufour, 1995, 103-4; 123-5. See also Faderman, 1981. Lichtenberg 1994, 733. See Paulson 1991,251. See Castle 1988, 40. See Godby 1987,34. Castle 1995, 161.

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47

lover that of a man, the harlot that of a woman of the world, the keeper that of a gentleman and of a cuckold (mark the horns!).57 The left painting on the wall in the background shows the displeasure of Jonah outside Nineveh: And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.58

There is no question of who is playing the worm in A Harlot's Progress 2, who is responsible for the harlot's loss of protection from her keeper. Obviously 'to faint' and 'to wish to die' are verbs that can be easily ascribed to the harlot's behaviour when, as can be expected, the keeper despite all her efforts turns his head to discover the reason for the diversionary manoeuvre. Still Jonah's displeasure cannot be related to a lesbian liaison. But the second picture within the picture refers to the Second Book of Samuel, showing the stabbing of Uzzah during the transport of the ark of the Covenant: And David and all of the house of Israel played before the LORD on all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals. And when they came to Nachon's threshing floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.59

Ronald Paulson implies an ambiguous allusion to the harlot as an idolised woman: "The woman, herself an idol to the men (in Plate 2 she is compared to the Ark of the Covenant), idolizes everything from her own mirror to the paintings and prints on the walls of the various quarters in which she lives". 60 But representing the violation of a taboo the painting certainly does not allude to the harlot's state of a kept woman. This institution was far too common and, just like cuckoldom, by far too tolerated to fulfil the function of such a rigid ban. "[A]dultery", writes Whitney Chadwick, "was accepted as a necessary antidote to loveless, arranged marriages". 61 Thus the reference of the metalevel painting to the unspeakable same-sex relationship between the harlot and the cross-dresser is much more convincing. To support this hypothesis one should simply have a look at the maid. How else would one explain her perplexity but with the discovery that the supposed young man she has guided safely so far, even carrying 'his' boots, in fact is a woman. It looks as though 57 58 59 60 61

Person, after all, means mask. Jonah 4, 6-8. 2. Samuel 6,4-7. Paulson 1989, 151. Chadwick 1996, 142.

Thomas Krämer

48

her audible displeasure at this will cause the keeper to turn his head the next moment. There may be a controlling, male gaze in Hogarth's prints, as, e.g. the Harlot was a temptress viewed by males in the initial episodes of her progress including a male audience which would view her prints. [...] Regression and possession of women is prevalent in many scenes. 62

But, interestingly enough, in A Harlot's Progress 2 a special kind of subversion takes place 011 various levels, according to the comments of Roland Barthes on doxa and paradox. 63 The first level shows the prostitute with her rich protector and thus snubs the contemporary, official sexual morality. The second level reveals the harlot's relationship behind her keeper's back that is twice apart from legitimacy - and thus in a way legitimates the keeper. The third level of subversion undermines both preceding ones as it questions the lover's gender and finally even cancels gender oppositions. Here the lesbian relationship, although a standard of pornography with a comprehensive code of representation, is not produced according to the requirements of the male gaze, i.e., the act is not shown. Thus the male beholder is losing control, as the controllable of the scene is not represented; the representation withdraws women from the surveillance by the male gaze. Finally, as the disappointed male beholder can no longer easily identify with the virile figure of the young lover; he must content himself with the elderly keeper in his futile attempt to keep a clear head.

62 63

Haslam 1996, 8-9. Barthes 1977, 71. See also Norris 1991, 13-7.

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Works Cited Akkermann, Antke. Nirgendwo und überall - Lesben. Köln: Eigenverlag des Vereins Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis/Sozialwissensehaftliche Forschung und Praxis für Frauen e.V., 1989. Barthes, Roland. Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes. Transl. by Richard Howard. London: Macmillan, 1977. Biedermann, Hans. Knaurs Lexikon der Symbole. München: Droemer Knaur Verlag, 1994 Bindman, David. Hogarth. London: Thames and Hudson, 1982. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York & London: Routledge, 1990. Casanova, Giacomo. Geschichte meines Lebens. Band I. Transl. by Heinrich Conrad. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1998. Castle, Terry. Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction. London: Methuen, 1988. The Female Thermometer: The Culture of Travesty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. World of Art, Special Volume. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Cleland, John. Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Peter Wagner (ed.), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. Cornell, Drucilla. Die Versuchung der Pornographie. Mit einem Vorwort von Barbara Vinken. Transl. by Vincent Vogelveit. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1995. Duerr, Hans Peter. Obszönität und Gewalt: Der Mythos vom Zivilisationsprozeß. Band 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1993. Dufour, Paul. Weltgeschichte der Prostitution von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Transl. by Adolph Stille. Reprint. Frankfurt am Main: Vito von Eichbom Verlag, 1995. Dworkin, Andrea. Pornographie: Männer beherrschen Frauen. Transl. by Erica Fischer. Köln: Emma Frauenverlag, 1987a. Intercourse. London: Arrow Books, 1987b. Faderman, Lilian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendships and Love between Women. New York: Morrow, 1981. Friedli, Lynn. '"Passing Women' - A Study of Gender Boundaries in the Eighteenth Century" in: G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (eds.), Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987. Godby, Michael. "The First Steps of Hogarth's Harlot's Progress" in: Art History, 10,1, (March 1987). Haslam, Fiona. From Hogarth to Rowlandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996. Irigaray, Luce. Ce sexe qui η 'en est pas un. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977. Kappeler, Susanne. Pornographie - Die Macht der Darstellung. München: Verlag Frauenoffensive, 1988. Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph. Schriften und Briefe. Dritter Band: Aufsätze, Entwürfe, Gedichte, Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche. Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins Verlag, 1994. Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction. Theory and Practice: New Accents. London: Routledge, 1991. Paulson, Ronald. Breaking and Remaking: Aesthetic Practice in England, 1700-1820. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989. Hogarth. Vol. 1: The 'Modern Moral Subject'. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Schlüter, Henning (ed.). Ladies, Lords und Liederjane. Berlin: Eulenspiegel Verlag, 1991.

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Stoll, Andrea und Verena Wodtke-Werner (eds.). Sakkorausch und Rollentausch: Männliche Leitbilder als Freiheitsentwürfe von Frauen. Dortmund: edition ebersbach, 1997. Stratmann, Gerd. "Life, Death and the City: The Discovery of London in the Early Eighteenth Century" in: Journal for the Study of British Cultures, 4/1-2, (1997), 24-36. Trumbach, Randolph. "Sodomitical Subcultures, Sodomitical Roles, and the Gender Revolution of the Eighteenth Century: The Recent Historiography" in: Robert P. Maccubbin (ed.), Unauthorized Sexual Behaviour during the Enlightenment. Special Issue of EighteenthCentury Life, IX, n.s., (3, May 1985), 24-36. - "Modern Prostitution and Gender in Fanny Hill: Libertine and Domestic Fantasy" in: G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (eds.), Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987. Valverde, Mariana. Sex, Macht und Lust. Transl. by Michaela Huber. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994. Wagner, Peter. Eros Revived. Erotica of the Enlightenment in England and America. London: Paladin Grafton Books, 1990. - Reading Iconotexts: From Swift to the French Revolution. London: Reaktion Books, 1995.

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as No-Man 's-Land

List of Illustrations Fig. 1

William Hogarth, A Harlot 's Progress 2 (1732)

51

Angela Η. Rosenthal

The Fall and Rise of Kitty Fisher Joshua Reynolds and the Sitter's Share

Thomas Rowlandson's 1791 etching Six Stages of Mending a Face (fig. 1) shows us the cosmetic and artistic transformation of a far from ideal face into an icon of eighteenth-century European female desirability and beauty.1 Rowlandson's biting humor exposes feminine appearance as an illusion produced through cosmetic artifice. Yet from a feminist perspective we can also read this work against the grain to take into account female agency and thus empowerment: What we see then, is a woman's artistic self-creation. The woman that comes into being can be read not only as a sign of deception, but instead also be recognized as a work of art, a self-portrait produced by an artist, part painter and part actress.2 In the first scene of this filmic series in the upper left portion of the print, a bald, pale-faced and emaciated figure in profile defies our attempts to discern clear gender markers. Rowlandson's caricature seems to make the point that there is no essential 'woman' behind the final product - the beautiful woman at the lower left. The narrative of self-creation linking these two faces calls to mind Simone de Beauvoir's celebrated expression, "one is not born a woman, one becomes one".3 The rolled-up sleeves of the simple shirt of the 'pre-restoration' figure might indicate physical labor and low class status - or simply a state of undress. Neither male nor female, the figure pulls on a wig with fair, long, flowing curled hair. In the next scene we presume that we see the same person, now with exposed hanging breasts. The protagonist gradually emerges as gendered subject and improves herself with refreshed eyes. In the following scene, artificial teeth give volume to fallen cheeks. The last stage of adornment shows the application of make-up or rouge to produce, finally, the face of a youthful beauty, no longer gazing at her own self-reflection in the mirror, but coquettishly looking out to the viewer holding a mask in her left hand. The mask with which Rowlandson's beautiful young woman toys (fig. 2) complicates the reading of the narrative. At a basic level, the mask could allude to the natural, guileless status of the woman's uncovered face. Conversely, however, it might be read as a vanitas symbol, its empty eyes and vacant ex1

2

3

Thomas Rowlandson, Six Stages of Mending a Face, 1791. (The inscription on the print reads: "Dedicated with Respect to the Right Hon(ble) Lady Archer". Lady Archer was known for her 'artistic' use of cosmetics. Clearly this self-creation or style "is never fully self-styled, for living styles have a history, and that history conditions and limits possibilities". Butler 1988, 521. Beauvoir 1949/1987, 13.

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pression indicating the deathly hollowness of the woman's cosmetic trappings. As such, the mask could refer to the impossibility of halting entropy, and to the body's inability of guarding itself against the passage of time.4 However, a beautiful woman with long flowing hair and a mask also corresponds to the personification of Pictura, as related in Cesare Ripa's well-known and popular emblem book, the Iconologia. In Hertel's 1758-60 edition Pictura 's hair is described, for example, as "decorated with much taste and imagination (the quality of hair often symbolizes that of intellect), shows that the painter is always thinking about new images, new ways of representing nature and new concepts to depict". 5 It is in light of such symbolism that Benjamin West portrayed the painter Angelica Kauffman in a drawing dated to 1763 (fig. 3). In this work, West frames his famous contemporary and peer within the image of Pictura as the personification of painting. Kauffman becomes both an inspiring muse and a creative artist. A small pendant-mask dangles from her neck, which, in accordance with Cesare Ripa's stipulations, signifies the artist's ability to imitate nature, as the mask imitates the face. 6 Rowlandson's etching also suggests that the production of feminine appearance entails a theatrical moment. For in aligning the woman with the mask, Rowlandson suggests the performative potential of an actress.7 In creating her own image, Rowlandson's woman also threatens to escape the normative frames defining femininity. For whether on stage or at popular costume balls, masquerading was associated with self-display, a desire for public spectacle, and a range of sexual and social liberties, freedoms rarely accorded to women of the polite society in this period. 8 Rowlandson's etching reminds us how by 'making up' women could literally make up roles for themselves. I would like to take this analogy further in order to consider the participation of female sitters in portraiture, by looking at a series of likenesses of the famous English courtesan, Kitty Fisher (c. 1738-1767), and the popular mythologies constructed around her public and private life. 9

4

5 6

7

8

5

See for example William Hogarth's plate 5, of A Harlot's Progress, engraved 1732, where the face of the dying harlot is echoed by a mask on the floor. Maser 1971, 197. In the eighteenth century the act of painting a face was often equated with cosmetic practices of applying color. Lichtenstein 1993. See also Hyde 2000. There are numerous portrait representations of renown actresses holding a mask as symbol of their profession, as, for example, in Reynolds's portrait of Mrs. Frances Abington as the Comic Muse, c. 1768, revised 1773 (Waddesdon Manor), ill. in Penny 1986, 247. Reynolds painted a portrait of Catherine Hunter with a mask in her hand. Hunter had planned her elopement at a masquerade. See Leslie and Taylor 1865, 207ff. The genre of portraiture heightens the paradox or discrepancy between real and imaginary for it insists - like no other genre upon the representational power of an actual, recognizable individual, with a specific biography and lived presence, while at the same time renouncing this reality through its production of an illusion, a mere Image - a surface onto which is projected an idea of something that is necessarily absent. Since it is my desire to see women as participants in their image making, portraiture is of further interest since it acknowledges the agency not only of the artists, but also of the sitter. Like no other genre,

The Fall and Rise of Kitty Fisher

55

By eighteenth-century standards Kitty Fisher represented both the quintessential cultural ideal of feminine allure and sexual attractiveness, while her occupation and public notoriety simultaneously threatened the fundamental tenets of Enlightenment sensibility as embodied in the ideal female subject. Rather than "focus on the 'frames' that have shaped the representation of women", 10 1 would like to address how women like Fisher have themselves contributed to the shaping of the frames of their own representation. Instead of concentrating solely on the passively enduring woman, trapped within the enclosing frame, I would like to highlight women's decisions to adopt, to conform to, or to rebel against normative gender roles. In so doing I hope to uncover, in Griselda Pollock's words, "ways to address women as subjects not masquerading as the feminine object of masculine desire, fantasy and hatred", but as the objects of their own desires and fantasies amidst historically specific pressures defining feminijiity. 11

Kitty Fisher For over half a decade during the late 1750s and early 60s the young and notorious courtesan Kitty Fisher enthralled London, attracting keen public interest. Born into humble parentage as Catherine Maria Fisher (or Fischer), her father Johannes, is said to have been either a German silver-chaser or a stay-maker. 12 She began her career as an apprentice to a milliner,13 where she quickly attracted the attention of fashionable beaus. Soon, owing to her amorous connections with powerful men, she entered a world of wealth and fame. Among her first lovers was Anthony George Martin, nicknamed the 'Military Cupid'. Although later the probing Town and Country Magazine noted that "the celebrated Kitty Fisher first made her appearance as a courtezan [sic] upon the bon ton" under the auspices of Admiral August Keppel, and "was not above eighteen when she was taken notice of'. 1 4 As "universal conquest was her passion", Kitty Fisher, it was reported, had even been kept by a subscription of a whole club at Arthur's. 15 By 1760 a pamphlet addressed to Miss Κ F—Η—R by

10

" 12

13

14 15

portraiture depends upon the social encounter of artist and sitter. For a discussion of portraiture as intersubjective practice see Rosenthal 1996 and Wendorf 1996. Conference brochure, Representations of Women: Changing Frames from Classicism to Postmodernism, International Symposium, University Koblenz-Landau at Landau, 14-16 June 2000. Pollock 1988, 15. Stephens 1877, BM no. 3749. Bleackley 1926, 64; Town and Country Magazine September 1771: 458. Dictionary of National Biography, s. v. Catherine Fisher. Bleackley 1926, 65. However, in 1769 she is remembered in the Middlesex Journal as "salacious Catherine, the tailor's maid", quoted in Whitley 1968, 69. Town and Country Magazine September 1771, 458. Town and Country Magazine September 1771, 458; for her connection with the club at Arthur's see Town and Country Magazine April 1770, 178, and Rizzo 1994, 203.

Angela Η. Rosenthal

56

"Simon Trusty" acknowledged that "Your Lovers are the Great Ones of the Earth, and your Admirers are the Mighty; they never approach you but, like Jove, in a shower of Gold".16 Indeed, in her early twenties Fisher had already amassed a great fortune and actively pursued the artful spectacularization of her person through lavish display of her wealth and finery; according to public opinion "her splendor tended but to increase her admirers, and promote her infidelity".17 Because of her flamboyant life-style, Fisher soon became a legendary figure in London, known through ribald songs, prints and pamphlets, fueling a cult around her person that elevated her to the status of an early-modern media star. This fame was, however, double-edged. On the one hand, she was praised for her beauty, wit and daring horsemanship, and her qualities gained her entry into the best circles, including those around intellectuals like Samuel Johnson, and artists like Nathaniel Hone and Joshua Reynolds. Yet on the other hand, more often than not public responses to Fisher were vicious and biting, detailing her amorous pursuits and her failure to conform to dominant notions of virtuous femininity. Her elevated position as a glamorous public woman left Fisher thus particularly vulnerable. Her meteoric rise could at any moment be reversed, sending her falling back into the gutter. In 1759 her precarious position was sorely tested. This year was for Fisher particularly turbulent, as she witnessed vitriolic and lampooning media attention. But it was also during this year that Fisher first demonstrated her ability to fight back by re-framing her own public image.

The Fall A broadsheet published in 1759 reported how Kitty Fisher fell from her horse one day while returning from a Monday outing in Hyde Park accompanied by her 'military attendant'. The publication possessed the meandering title HORSE and AWAY to St. JAMES'S PARK OR, a Trip for the Noontide Air Who Rides Fastest, Miss KITTY FISHER, or her GAY GALLANT. It was perhaps because of her renown as a competent equestrian, that Fisher's fall was humiliating; the striking "Amazon", spectacularly dressed in a "black riding habit", was momentarily disempowered. A large crowd of on-lookers quickly gathered around her. Yet, apparently, Fisher was not seriously hurt and recovered sufficiently to make a dashing exit. A superbly decorated chair was brought and "away she flung through [the] Crowd". While one male witness to the scene was appalled by such display of splendor, asking rhetorically, "why 'tis enough to debauch

16

17

"Simon Trusty", An Odd Letter on a Most interesting Subject, to Miss Κ F—H— R. Recommended to the Perusal of the Ladies of Great Britain (London, 1760) 6. Quoted in part by Penny 1986, 193, cat. no. 31; see also Mannings 2000, cat. no. 618. Town and Country Magazine September 1771,458.

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57

half the Women in London" a short poem in the Universal Magazine (March 1759) exploited the full metaphorical potential of the 'fall'. 18 'ON Κ F 's FALLING FROM HER HORSE' Dear Kitty, had thy only fall Been that thou met'st with in the Mall, Thou had'st deserved our pity; But long before that luckless day, With equal justice might we say, Alas ! poor fallen Kitty! Then, whilst you may, dear girl, be wise, And though time now in pleasure flies Consider of hereafter; For know, the wretch that courts thee now, When age has furroed o'er thy brow, Shall change his sighs to laughter. Reform thy manners, change thy ways: For Virtue's sake, to merit praise Be all thy honest strife: So shall the world with pleasure say, 'She tasted folly for a day, And then grew wise for life.' 1 9

The tumbling from the horse is here pictured as a fall from innocence and virtue, and thus supposedly represents the 'real' Fisher, the fallen woman, who masquerades as a respectable lady. It is her slip from high to low, embodied in Fisher's fall, that was what the London public found intriguing and threatening about her, and about courtesans in general.

Prostitution in London In the eighteenth century, the courtesan caused considerable unease. She embodied a female sexuality antithetical to the new concept institutionalized as 'femininity', while aspiring, often very successfully through the accumulation of wealth, to the luxury and genteel life-style associated with respectable society. By mid-century, a new ideal of femininity had begun to emerge which placed emphasis on women's modesty, domesticity, marital fidelity, maternity and sentimental feelings, at the expense of sexual desires and love of fame. Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela (1740) captured the age's desire for a simple heroine triumphing over vice and whose "virtues" would finally be "re-

18

19

The British Museum catalogue gives the date c. 1760. See Stephens 1877, vol. 3, part 2, BM no.: 3749. This date seems to late, given the response of March 1759 to this event. Bleackley 1926, 60.

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warded" - as the novel's subtitle promises. While the distinction between respectable woman and common prostitute could perhaps be maintained by virtue of their social ranks and financial means, this difference was, nevertheless, in need of being permanently reinforced especially when it came to the figure of the courtesan. She possessed a liminal status that all too easily threatened to undo the newly established ideologies of difference. Courtesans like Kitty Fisher, therefore, troubled assumptions concerning gender and class, throwing into question the definition of 'femininity'. For many courtesans - including Fisher herself and her successful colleagues like Nelly O'Brien, Betty Careless, Lucy Cooper, and Fanny Murray - aspired to the status of 'gentlewomen', while simultaneously endangered through their sexual business the category itself. While it was quite acceptable for men to indulge their desires for sexual variety without suffering social consequences, the same freedoms were not extended to respectable women. James Boswell, for example, pronounced Belle de Zuylen to be a "frantic libertine", owing to her expectation that she could, in marriage, be as sexually adventurous as her husband. 20 The courtesan was, consequently, both desired and feared. While embodying the sexual liberation of men, her patrons also feared the influence she might exert on women of polite society. The Town and Country Magazine of 1770 referred to Fisher as the "Thai's of her time",21 who set the Temple of Chastity on fire. It was said of her that she seduced more of her own sex from the path of virtue by her display of luxury "than had been corrupted by all the rakes in town". 22 And indeed, many women preferred to be kept mistresses over a life as a low-paid servant or a wife. Kitty Fisher's "constant companion", Jane Sumner, for example, who came from good family background, had been corrupted by the buoyant Lord Sandwich.23 Obtaining an annuity, she apparently did not mourn her lost respectability but enjoyed the freedoms of 'the life'. 24

The Rise Yet Fisher's career was more spectacular than Sumner's, her climb steeper and the danger of falling more present. For Fisher came from a simple, if not necessarily 'low and mean' background and her apprenticeship with a milliner 20 21 22 23

24

Pottle 1952. Quoted in Porter 1982, 1-27, n. 32. Postle 1995,46. Bleackley 1926, 59. Jane Sumner, a woman of beauty, wit, and cultivation, the sister of Robert Carey Sumner, the master of Harrow, and of William Brightwell Sumner, and Indian nabob, the niece of John Sumner, canon of Windsor and headmaster of Eton; see Dictionary of National Biography, s.n. "Robert Carey Sumner", vol. 19, 170. Lord Ligonier frequented the company of Kitty Fisher and Jane Sumner, "and some of the merriest hours of his life he acknowledges to have passed with these two ladies of genuine pleasure" (Rizzo 1994, 271). Town and Country Magazine April 1770, 178, quoted in Rizzo 1994, 271.

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brought her into a dangerous social milieu.25 Campbell in The London Tradesman cautioned parents not to apprentice their daughters to milliners, as the low wages and the "vast Resort of young Beaus and Rakes ... exposes young Creatures to many Temptations, and insensibly debauches their Morals before they are capable of Vice".26 "Take a Survey", Campbell continues, "of the common Women of the Town, who take their Walks between Charing-Cross and Fleet Ditch, and, I am persuaded, more than one Half of them have been bred Milliners". Indeed, "the Title of Milliner" was hardly "a more polite Name for a Bawd".27 Notwithstanding the happy ending of John Cleland's Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (London 1749) - whose heroine began her career in a milliner shop - the life of a prostitute was more often than not far from glamorous or hopeful. Randolph Trumbach has pointed out that prostitutes were often orphans or "[c]hildren of the London poor who had begun their sexual lives between the ages of twelve and fourteen".28 Frequently poverty, neglect and previous betrayals drove young women into prostitution. Life around Drury Lane and Covent Garden, where the brothels and the theater district intersected, was both unstable and dangerous, with only the smallest chance for upward mobility. Periodic arrests, venereal disease, alcoholism and illegitimate offspring were among the most common if unwanted by-products of this occupation. And, despite the establishment of new institutions such as Foundling Hospitals and Lock Hospitals for treating venereal diseases earlier in the century, many prostitutes in London died impoverished and young.29 In 1758, when Kitty Fisher made her first appearance in this profession, Saunders Welch estimated in his A Proposal to ... Remove the Nuisance of Common Prostitutes from the Streets (17 5 8)30 the numbers of prostitutes at all levels from the sixpenny whore to the high-class and well-bred courtesan active in London to be more than 3,000.31 Seven years later, P. J. Grossly, expressed his astonishment at the large number of bordellos, or 'bagnios', in London: Besides the women who ply on the streets, London has many wholesale dealers who keep warehouses in which are to be found complete parcels. A warehouse for commodities of this sort goes by the name of a 'bagnio'; the prices are fixes, and all passes with as much order and decency as can be expected in a commerce of this nature. 32

25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32

Town and Country Magazine September 1771, 45 8. Campbell 1747, 208. Ibid. 209. Lloyd's Evening Post 3 - 5 May 1758; Trumbach 1989, 69-85, 77. Porter 1982, 14. If they did survived, the young women "left the life of prostitution after the age of twenty-five; this was approximately the traditional age of marriage". Trumbach 1989, 82; On prostitutes and drunkenness see ibid. 80. See Welch 1758, 13-14, reprinted in Trumbach 1985, 89-101. Porter 1982, 9, by contrast, thinks that prostitutes "numbered probably over ten thousand". P. J. Grossly, in Gladys Scott Thompson, The Russells of Bloomsbury (London, 1765), quoted in Phillips 1964, 142-45, 144.

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Most of these institutions were run by women, such as Elisabeth ('Betty') Careless whose establishment could be found on the south-east side of Covent Garden between 1734-5, and Mother Douglas, "who retired with an ample fortune and became an ardent church-goer".33 The "women of the town", according to Grossly, were hardly considered unlawful. To the contrary, their qualities were publicized: Their business is so far from being unlawful that a list of those who are eminent in any way is publicly cried about the streets, this list, which is very numerous, points out their place of abode and gives the most circumstantial and exact detail of their features, their stature and several qualifications for which they are remarkable. As a new one is published every year and sold under the Piazza of Covent Garden, with the title of 'The New Atlantis' and the name of the author, M. Harris, in the title page. 34

For Fisher it was probably less troublesome to have lost her respectability, for as a milliner she never possessed much social respect. To the contrary, it was through her occupation as a kept woman that she could afford to aspire to the status of a gentlewoman. Nonetheless, for a courtesan of her standing it was the potential fall from her 'high horse', and the peril of being regarded as a 'fallen woman' or lowly prostitute, that threatened.

After the Fall Following her metaphorical fall on the Mall, the first volume of a small, scurrilous biography entitled The Juvenile Adventures of Kitty F — r , was published on 27 March 1759 with defamatory material on the early-modern glamour star. Two days later, on 30 March, Kitty Fisher published a retort in the Public Advertiser by way of a thorough vindication, deploring the libelous 'crime' committed against her: ... Miss Fisher is forced to sue to that Jurisdiction to protect from the Business of the little Scribblers, and scurvy Malevolence; she has been abused in public papers, exposed in Print Shops, and, to wind up the Whole, some Wretches, mean, ignorant, and venal, would impose upon the public, by daring to publish her Memoirs. She hopes to prevent the success of their Endeavours by thus publickly declaring that nothing of that sort has the slightest Foundation in Truth, C. Fisher. 35

33 34

35

Phillips 1964, 143-44. The book was known by its first title: Harris' List of Covent Garden Ladies, or the "Man of Pleasure's l·Calendar for the Year", containing the histories and some curious anecdotes of the most celebrated Ladies now in Town, or in keeping, and also many of their keepers ". Leslie and Taylor 1865, vol. 1, 164, quote the advertisement and suggest that it was written by someone in the Johnsonian circle, but not by Kitty Fisher herself. See also Rizzo 1994, 271, n. 12. The advertisement begins, "To err is a blemish entailed upon mortality, and indiscretions never or seldom escape from censure". The advertisement is also quoted in

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On 3 April, the second volume of the indecent The Juvenile Adventures of Kitty F — r nevertheless appeared and, on the same day, an anonymous note was published in the Public Advertiser lampooning her complaint.36 After this series of devastating public attacks, Fisher also found herself publicly defended in the press. The Monthly called the attack by her biographer "Miserable, lying, obscene trash ... foolish, false, and preposterous", while the Critical Review called it "a wretched production, entirely destitude of invention, humour, or even knowledge of what is commonly reported of its infamous subject".37 It was also on the heels of the defaming biography and Fisher's equestrian fall, that she had her face publicly 'restored' by the leading portraitist of the country. On 9 April 1759, just six days after the second 'biographical' volume appeared and within a month of her accident, Kitty Fisher paid her first visit to the celebrated artist Joshua Reynolds at his studio in Newport Street.38 Reynolds must have been fascinated by Fisher, who plays an unparalleled role in Reynolds's early career. As Henning Bock has pointed out, it can be ascertained from the existent portraits and Reynolds's records that in the years between 1759 and 1765 no other sitter was more often depicted by the artist than Kitty Fisher.39 Indeed Reynolds painted her at least five, and possibly seven, times.40 Between April and December 1759 alone, Kitty Fisher is recorded 22 times in Reynolds's sitter-books; more sittings followed in 1760, 1762, 1764-66.41 A celebrity, with sexual charisma and personal style, Fisher was a professional image-maker - and as such she was an ideal client for a picture-maker of lofty ambitions like Reynolds. Not only could the artist, by creatively addressing Fisher's questionable morality, prove the power of his artistic skill, Reynolds could also profit from Fisher's public status.

Reynolds's Fisher: Life on the Ledge Reynolds's first known portrait of Fisher was completed in June 1759 and almost instantly engraved; the print after the painting appeared on 17 June 1759.42 Indeed, so great was the demand for the mezzotints, so curious were the crowds, that the prints were literally snapped out of the print dealers' hands, and the first mezzotint was copied briskly in four different editions. This thirst for pictures

36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Bleackley 1926, 61; quoted in part also in Postle 1995, 312, n. 3, who gives the date 29 March 1759 for the advertisement in the Public Advertiser. Quoted in Bleackley 1926, 62-63. Quoted in ibid. 63. See Penny 1986, cat. no. 31; Mannings 2000, cat. no. 611. Bock 1990. See Mannings 2000, cat. nos. 611 -619. See Bock 1990; Penny 1986, cat. no. 31; Mannings 2000, cat. nos. 611-619. Kerslake 1977,75.

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of Fisher made this print, in Nicholas Penny's words, "one of the bestsellers in the print shops of the period".4·5 In this half-length portrait (fig. 4) Fisher appears like a lady of fashion, in a "restrained English version of the rococo dress".44 The choice of pose and the sitter's wardrobe and demeanor closely resemble the type of female portrait developed by Reynolds's Scottish rival Allan Ramsay, whose renditions of fashionable ladies emphasize their sitter's domestic virtues and modesty 45 Unlike Ramsay's exemplary women, however, Kitty Fisher seems to transgress into the viewer's space. Or should we rather say that the viewer transgresses into her space? The painting also plays with notions of 'falling', yet it is not Fisher who is threatened tumbling. The stability of Fisher's frontal pose, with both arms gracefully crossed and resting on a ledge in front of her, is tantalizingly contrasted by a half-opened letter, which barely retains its balance on the very edge of the sill. Fisher's fashionable yet understated rococo dress challenges the image of extravagant splendor and abundance for which her public appearances were known, and replaces this with the elegant appurtenances of a gentlewoman. Yet while Fisher's demeanor suggests the ease and politeness of a high-bred lady, Reynolds's composition depends upon the viewer's knowledge of the sitter's identity. Recognizing this work as a portrait of Fisher, the knowledge of her notorious life informs the paintings' reception. In this light, her stylish clothing and jewellery indicate not her 'gentle' status, but rather her independent wealth, gained professionally and sexually. The four strings of thick pearls decorate her neck gain momentum as the large clasp-earrings possessively snap fast on their mistress's earlobes. Covering her shoulders and framing her daringly open decollete, the black net mantle might also remind viewers of Fisher's professional expertise gained in the milliner's shop, where according to The London Tradesman she would have been responsible for selling Cloaks, Manteels, Mantelets, Cheens and Capucheens, of Silk, Velvet, plain or brocaded, and trim them with Silver and Gold Lace, or Black Lace: They make up and sell Hats, Hoods, and Caps of all Sorts and Materials; they find them in Gloves, Muffs, ad Ribbons; they sell quilted Petticoats, and Hoops of all Size, &c. and lastly, some of them deal in Habits for Riding, and Dresses for the Masquerade: In a word, they furnish every thing to the Ladies, that can contribute to set off their Beauty, increase their Vanity, or render them ridiculous. 46

The lush lace ruffles of Kitty Fisher's sleeves spill out from underneath the net mantle as they fold in pale, gentle waves over her arms, threatening to wash the letter out of the picture and into the viewer's lap. Tilted towards the viewer, the half-unfolded letter reveals the date 2 June 1759 and the first line addressed to

43

44 45 46

As Penny points out, the engravings by Houston were priced at two shillings; see Penny 1986, cat. no. 31. Thus described by costume historian Aileen Ribeiro. See Penny 1986, cat. no. 31. Smart 1999. Campbell 1747, 207.

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"My dearest Kit". 47 The commencing lines promise a flattering content for the sitter, effectively countering the far from pleasing ink that had been spilled over Fisher during the weeks immediately preceding the production of this canvas. This familiar introit, at the threshold between word and image, pricks our curiosity about Fisher's private life; like the many texts and images that promised familiarity with this eighteenth-century luminary, the painted letter hides as much as it reveals. Given the prominence of the trompe I'ceil letter, the portrait's viewer is implicitly cast in the role of her lover, but he is also teasingly left in the dark. It is, however, not only the clothes she wears but her look, her confident and probing gaze, that distinguishes Fisher from Ramsay's often contemplative and passively receptive women. Echoing our curiosity, Kitty Fisher's head leans coyly to one side while her neck cranes slightly forward with seductive interest. Her closed mouth betrays a tension, while both eyes are fixed on the viewer with searching determinacy. Her sharpened gaze seems to measure the viewer's response to her own presence. Confident, she keeps secret the name of the lover from whom she received the note. The unstable relationship between public and private, embodied in the courtesan, and metaphorically pictured in the 'still-life' of the telling letter, is also staged, compositionally, through the narrow ledge that separates Fisher from the beholder, and the inside from the outside.48 For the ledge on which she leans covered with red fabric is reminiscent of a window or balcony balustrade. Such ledges are familiar from Dutch genre scenes, where women framed by an open window advertise their commodities, fruit or vegetables, but no less their own physical allure. There were of course also English prototypes. Indeed, although much more restrained, Kitty Fisher's pose might be regarded as the high-art counterpart of the whores in William Hogarth's popular March to Finchley (1746, Foundling Hospital, London; engraving by L. Sullivan, Dec. 1750). Here, common prostitutes lean out of the windows of an Inn over which the notorious Mother Douglas presides. An amorous meeting of cats on the roof of the Inn indicates its inhabitants' occupation - in the eighteenth century 'cat' was a slang word for prostitute - while one of the women of loose virtue in a window receives a letter from a departing soldier.49 Judging from the popularity of the prints made after Reynolds's portrait of Fisher, this pose must - at least to some extent - have been associated with the sitter. And, intriguingly, her portrait was emulated by quite a number of female sitters. In the two years immediately following the popular success of Fisher's picture, Reynolds was commissioned to portray a number of women in this unusual pose - but without the letter - leaning slightly forward over a ledge with 47

48

49

The letter in the painting and the engraving after the portrait by Edward Fisher of 17 July 1759, both provide a fairly precise dating of the painting. See Kerslake 1977, 75; Penny 1986, cat. no. 31; Shawe-Taylor 1990, 102; Mannings 2000, cat. no. 611. An interesting reading of Fisher's letter ("as a universal sign of her desirability") and women's relationship to letters in general is provided by Conway 2001, 47. Grose 1796, provides the definition of cat as "A common prostitute".

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arms crossed under a revealing decollete. 50 I am tempted to read in these commissions the magnetism Fisher possessed for women who sought to imitate her glamour and liberties. Yet while the portraits of respectable women operated in the realm of their personal family structure - they were never in danger of slipping, like Fisher, fully into the hands of the public.51 The dissemination of the high artwork into popular mass-produced prints - displayed both privately and in public venues like coffee shops and print dealers - curiously reflects the ambiguous placement of Fisher's persona as a commodity caught between high society and popular culture.52 The circumstances surrounding the commission of Reynolds's 1759 portrait of Fisher are not certain. It could surely be that the portrait was commissioned by an admirer, or, perhaps, that it was a non-commissioned work and that Reynolds asked Fisher to sit for him.53 While portraits of women traditionally confirm and contributed to their role within a family hierarchy in relation to husband, father, or brother, public women like Kitty Fisher could secure a degree of self-determinacy and financial as well as personal independence from men. This independence could lead to their commissioning portraits of themselves. Indeed, Kitty Fisher might very well have commissioned the portrait herself. Some years later, in 1781, for example, the popular publication The Earwig reported how a prostitute, Emily Warren, had hired Reynolds to paint her portrait; she "paid him seventy-five guineas for an hour's work". 54 Whether or not she was the patron, Fisher clearly agreed to the mode in which she was represented. 50

51

52

53

54

Young Woman Leaning on a Ledge, 1760, Vose Galleries, Boston (Mannings 2000, cat. no. 1991); Mrs Irwin, 1761, Huntington Art Collections, San Marino, California (ibid. cat. no. 992); Mrs. Montgomery, 1761, private collection (ibid. cat. no. 1280); Countess Waldegrave, early 1760s (ibid. cat. no. 1811). In an untraced portrait of Mrs. Thomas Pelham, 1756, predating the composition for Kitty Fisher by three years, the sitter rests her crossed arms on a pile of books (ibid. cat. no. 1418). For portrait predating Kitty Fisher's pose see Reynolds's Margaret Owen, 1758, private collection (ibid. cat. no. 1374), and Lady Caroline Adair, 1757-1759, private collection with covered decolletage (ibid. cat. no. 43). For an example of this pose predating Kitty Fisher's portrait see Reynolds's depiction of Lady Caroline Keppel, 1755-57 (private collection, discussed in Alson and Bennett 2001, cat. no. 76). The mezzotint after the portrait also bears the more generalized inscription "My dearest love", instead of "My dearest Kitty" (Penny 1986, cat. no. 31). Fisher might have also supported the production of prints. "Prints of portraits were published at the instigation of either one, or a combination of, several interested parties including the artist, the engraver, the print-seller, the sitter - or a private print-maker" (Postle 1995, 39). As Martin Postle reminds us, Reynolds did not seek financial gain from engravings after his works, although he profited in fame from prints like no other portrait painter of his age (ibid. 41). George Romney, on the other hand, not only refused to exhibit his works at the R.A. or make them widely accessible in print, to foster, as Alex Kitson has recently argued, a more private "one-to-one relationship". Penny (1986, cat. no. 46) suggests as one possible explanation as to why so many portraits of Fisher were left on the artist's hands, "that Kitty's liaisons lasted less time than it took Reynolds to paint her, and her jilted lovers did not want to be reminded of her". The Earwig: or An Old Woman's Remarks on the present Exhibition of Pictures at the Royal Academy (London, 1781) 5f.; quoted in Postle 1995, 45. The anonymous writer continues that the young woman was "being unable to pay for the other half of her portrait".

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Following so closely her trial by fire in the press, Fisher not only must have agreed to the sitting but clearly had a vested interest in the portrait production and its public relations effect on her image. For to have her portrait painted and then circulated in print form presented Fisher with an opportunity to craft a favorable image of herself in the public's mind. Alone the process of sitting for the most fashionable painter of the period meant to dissolve once again the differences between respectable and common. The ascension from being the subject of cheap satire to that of the fine arts, metaphorically echoed Kitty Fisher's own social elevation.

Falling Gold As the comment in The Earwig sarcastically suggests, in procuring commissions and getting paid by the hour, Reynolds's work aligns him with the prostitute. Portraiture was an extremely competitive profession, not unlike the life of a courtesan, and one could easily fall out of favor and find oneself out on the streets. Alison Conway has recently argued that "the structural similarity between Fisher's and Reynolds's relationship with the aristocracy - their dependency on its patronage, their hold over its imagination, and their ability to mimic, in their own acts of self-display, its ostentation - allow us to imagine Kitty Fisher as a figure of Reynolds himself and of the authority his painting - like the spectacle of the courtesan's body - commanded over its beholder".55 Yet Reynolds, for his part, was looking above all for elevation of, and in, his art. This elevation could, in his opinion, only take place if portraits aspired toward a universal ideal. "Even in portraits", Reynolds later opined, "the grace, and we may add, the likeness, consists more in taking the general air, than in observing the exact similitude of every feature".56 The real goal of the portrait painter was "to strike the imagination",57 and not the eye. "This is the ambition I wish to excite in your minds ... that one great idea, which gives to painting its true dignity, which entitles it the name of a Liberal Art, and ranks it as a sister of poetry".58 As Reynolds's most frequent sitter in these years, Fisher offered the artist the opportunity to experiment with various 'general ideas' within the parameters of the portrait. Indeed, Fisher appears in Reynolds's oeuvre in a variety of different guises. Among these works are an intimate three-quarter length portrait showing Fisher in sensual profile leaning back into what resembles Reynolds's actual sitter's studio armchair dexterously playing with parrot. Another painting shows her in a contemplative state, holding a dove in her lap and, as Leslie put

55 56 57 58

Conway 2001, 39. Reynolds 1988, Discourse IV, 59. Ibid. Reynolds 1988, Discourse III, 50.

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it, "with another above to descend to its mate from the back of the sofa on which she reclines".59 If these seem to fall somewhat short of Reynolds's stated goal of "striking the imagination", in other works the artist explored more directly the potential of raising 'face painting' to the level of history painting. One such work is a small oil sketch entitled Kitty Fisher as Danae (fig. 5), probably also painted in 1759.60 Bearing a resemblance to her other likenesses, Fisher appears here scantily clad and reclining on a sofa with legs lasciviously spread apart to receive Jupiter as metallic precipitation. Fisher looks seductively and knowingly out at the viewer, a soft smile playing around her lips, while another figure, presumably a putto, ducks down next to her soft seat in fearful astonishment. The Danae openly thematizes Fisher's enormous wealth, linking it to her sexual commerce. Even the popular press toyed with this analogy suggesting that Fisher's "Great" and "Mighty" admirers always pay; they "never approach you but, like Jove, in a shower of Gold".61 In Reynolds's lucidly executed almost liquid sketch, the sexual metaphor of the gold-rain into Kitty Fisher's welcoming lap is most apparent; this vision might have proved too daring for public consumption had he ever been fully worked out in a painting for public display. The sketch entered the collection of Caleb Whitefoord, a good friend of Reynolds and a member of the circle associated with Samuel Johnson, but no finished painting of this composition is documented.62 Fisher as Danae, nevertheless, made her appearance elsewhere. As Bock convincingly suggested it was this scene that served as the model for the relief of a Danae in gold-rain that adorns the pilaster in Reynolds's portrait of Fisher's competitor, Nelly O'Brien (fig. 6).63 If indeed this is the case, then Reynolds might have been amused to join the two rivals in one scene - the petrified Fisher and her mortal counterpart.64 In Reynolds's metamorphosis, the notorious Kitty Fisher transformed once again not into stone, but into paint. Indeed, one can safely say that Fisher's most complete

59

60 61

62

63

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Leslie (Leslie and Taylor 1865, 163) mentions that of this composition there are three repetitions. Bock 1990 has convincingly dated the sketch to the year 1759. "Simon Trusty" 6. The author continues a little later, "you have found way of melting down Youth into Treasure, and converting perishable Beauty into solid Gold" (7). See Penny 1986, 193, cat. no. 31; and Mannings 2000, cat. no. 618, who tentatively dates the sketch to "1766?", without reference to Bock's essay. The oil sketch of Kitty Fisher as Danae was sold - together with 26 other works by Reynolds as well as works by old masters from the collection of Caleb Whitefoord at the Whitefoord auction in London, 4 May 1810 (no. 2). The collection history of this sketch is detailed by Bock 1990. For the auction list see Hewins 1898, 270ff. Nelly O'Brien, oil on canvas, 125 χ 100 cm, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow (GLAHA 43826). The figure of Danae is hardly visible anymore in the painting but is clearly visible in the engraving by James Watson after Reynolds's portrait. One is even tempted to think about the "Court of Pathos" - which in England had been associated with Kneller's stony "Court Beauties", the mistresses of the Restoration court. According to Ovid's Metamorphosis the beautiful Cretan women incurred the wrath of Venus by daring to deny her divinity. "The goddess made them loose their good names by becoming prostitutes and then turned them to stone". Alexander 2001, 69.

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transformation into a work of art occurred in another painting which Reynolds executed of her, again in 1759.

Casting Pearls In 1759 Kitty Fisher also sat to Reynolds for her portrait in the character of Cleopatra, the libidinous Egyptian Queen (fig. 7).65 It is this painting of Fisher that seems, most insistently, to respond to her critics. Moreover, in the London Chronicle of July, 1759, the engraving after this portrait was advertised, mentions Kitty Fisher's as the owner of the work. In all likelihood then, Fisher functioned as sitter and patron, authorizing the production and distribution of the print.66 Her choice for an iconographic frame was apt. Born in 69 BCE, Cleopatra, the ancient Queen of Egypt and the last great monarch of the Hellenistic world, possessed tremendous political authority and enormous wealth. Her public and economic power was sustained, in legend, by her influence over men such as Mark Antony and Julius Caesar. Thus, in European popular consciousness she came to symbolize a powerful form of monarchical hedonism and female licentiousness. In Reynolds's portrait, Fisher reenacts a notoriously triumphant scene in the life of the ancient queen. According to Pliny, Cleopatra boasted to the Roman general Mark Antony that she could afford a dinner costing more than 10,000,000 sesterces.67 Entering into a 'combat', the doubtful Antony dared Cleopatra to prove the truth of her claim. Pliny continues: The next day, when the food did not exceed the customary, and when Antony was already ridiculing her promises, Cleopatra ordered her servants to bring the second course. According to the instructions they had received beforehand, they brought in only a goblet of strong vinegar. Cleopatra immediately took a pearl of great value which she wore as an ornament on one of her ears, according to the custom of Oriental women, dissolved it in the vinegar, and then drank it. 68

In Reynolds's half-length painting, Fisher as Cleopatra appears to be just about to drop the gigantic pearl into an elaborate chalice. Fisher appears to be seated, or reclining on a gilded armchair or divan, her long dark hair arranged in loose, long loops, and fixed with a regal coronet. Her delicate and pale face is turned to the side, and contrasts strongly with the dark-green background of the interior wall behind her. Indeed, Fisher is as white as the pearl and like the pearl 'cloaked' in blue; for the painted pearl softly reflects the pale-blue of Fisher's garb in its semi-translucent surface. Her small, slightly upturned nose and light 65

66 67 68

Penny 1986, cat. no. 34; Postle 1995, 3; Mannings 2000, cat. no. 612; Conway 2001, 3 5 41. Conway 2001, 39. Pliny the Elder 1991, 136-37; for Boccaccio, see Hamer 1993, 32, n. 31. Quoted after Boccaccio in Hamer 1993, 32-33.

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complexion contradicts the descriptions we have of Cleopatra's features. Extant "coin portraits of her show a countenance alive rather than beautiful, with a sensitive mouth, firm chin, liquid eyes, broad forehead, and prominent nose". 69 But Reynolds's painting is certainly not concerned with recreating Cleopatra's appearance. Instead it is her mingling of political, economic and sexual power that renders her an appropriate symbolic avatar for Kitty Fisher. Adopting the persona of Cleopatra allows Fisher to transgress conventions of traditional portraiture and to stage herself as a desirable object to be looked at, while retaining an active and powerful position within representation. Kitty Fisher's unrestrained economic behavior - she is recorded to have spent 12,000 pounds in nine months - directly resembled that of the spendthrift Queen of Egypt. 7 0 According to his own accounts, the notorious Casanova met Kitty Fisher at a reception during his visit to London in 1763-^4, "waiting for the Duke of to take her to a ball. She was magnificently dressed, and it is no exaggeration to say that she had on diamonds worth five hundred thousand francs". When she had left, Casanova was told "that Kitty" expressing her contempt for the donor of a paltry gift had once "clapped a bank-note for 20 Pounds, given to her by one of her admirers, between two slices of bread and butter and had eaten it like a sandwich".71 In the painting under examination, Fisher performs such contempt, by re-enacting Pliny's tale. With her right arm raised, Fisher suspends the narratively laden pearl between the fingers of her elegantly displayed hand. The dropshaped pearl - appearing almost liquid in substance - hangs above the golden goblet the sitter holds in her left hand. The artist has suggested the imminent descent of the pearl, by having the folds of Fisher's robe repeat the organic shape formed by the jewel and by the elegant array of fingers around it. The blue loop of fabric slipping to expose the skin of her right shoulder suggests relaxation and gravity, and the wide open and richly bejeweled neckline of her dress seems only very insubstantially secured and - as the crumpled folds of the blue-velvet sleeve suggest - ready to slide from her rounded left shoulder. Indeed, the visual metaphor of dropping gives form to the body of the sitter, which seems to slide from its seat. Fisher's languidly lowered gaze also falls, as does her lower lip. This drama of controlled falling, leads us to imagine the next moment in the stilled narrative: the destruction of the pearl.

69

70 71

Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v. "Cleopatra". Recent scholarship, in part fueled by debates regarding the possible African influences on Greek and Roman culture, has suggested that Cleopatra was - or might have been - black. The accounts of most classical scholars on Cleopatra dispute this, however. On the possibility that Cleopatra was black see: Holland 1997. Leslie and Taylor 1865, 163. The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova 1894, 339. Bleackley 1923, 144. Bleackley also mentions that "this story is told of other courtesans of this period-of both Fanny Murray and Sophia Baddely". Horace Bleackley (1926, 76) mentions this story again, but here with a 100-Pound note. It is also mentioned in a 66 part-long poem by Samuel William Henry Ireland (1777-1835), in section 22, "of Prodigal Fools".

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Pearls, which came above all from the Persian Gulf, connote purity since they are autogenerated, and created without sex.72 A popular seventeenthcentury manual or 'advice for married' emphasized that ,.. this jewel signifies spiritually that the first part that a man must have from his wife and which his wife must faithfully preserve is the ear, so that no speech or sound may enter it other than the sweet sound of chaste words, which are oriental pearls of the Gospel. 73

Fisher's/Cleopatra's bare left ear - that before had carried the pearl earring - is dramatically exposed to the viewer, its soft lobe echoed by the curl emerging from her temple and the thick swirl of her hair that loops in her neck. The ear as the locus for spiritual penetration can be read in relation to the precious jewel which itself becomes a metaphor for female genitalia that must be kept in place.74 Indeed, the painting betrays a careful, if unconscious, doubling or tripling of the jewel into a genital metaphor. The opening created by the palm of her hand and the fingertips that hold the pearl that projects directly over her heart is further echoed by the handle of the goblet which frames as the lightest part of the painting a drop-like glimpse onto Cleopatra's body. Hovering over her womb, the organic opening of the handle might suggest female genital form. There is no doubt that in composing the painting, Reynolds's carefully aligned shapes and forms; for example, the earlobe that once bore the pearl lines up with the hand that now holds it and the cup that will contain it. The longstanding analogy between vases and goblets, and the female body as vessel is evoked here for as the pearl is dissolved in the goblet, so will it be consumed by Cleopatra's body. The sensation of dropping the pearl is here turned into a sexual act, an act of seduction that is performatively taken over by the entire body. And in that the body resembles the oriental pearl - it becomes orientalized. In Diderot's famous oriental novel, Les Bijoux indiscrets (The Indiscreet Jewels), published in Holland in 1748, jewels are both a sign of purity and a sign that reveals the truth about feminine sexuality. This book, Diderot's first novel, enjoyed enormous popularity at the time of its publication, seeing six editions in only six months, followed by a translation into English in 1749.75 The novel thematizes women's self-representation as both exotic, sexually desiring and ultimately truthful. With his magical ring, the proud and arrogant sultan Mangogul is able to penetrate the secrets, the most intimate desires and sexual fantasies of the courtesans in his harem. By directing the ring upon a woman, her genitalia, that is her 'jewels', speak the unmediated 'truth' of their

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Pearls could also be a sign of the high-class prostitute. See Barzaghi 1980. Santore 1988; and Hamer 1993, 72, n. 36. See also Pointon 1997. "Advise for the married", in Francis de Sales, Introduction ä la vie devote (1608), quoted in Hamer 1993, 37. There is also "a tradition in which the eye is the symbol of female genital organs". See Pollock 1988, 134 on aggressive eye imagery. Diderot 1993, 269.

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mistress's amorous accomplishments and convey her fidelity or infidelity.76 As the literary critic Suzanne Rodin Pucci states: Contrary to the male distrust of women's traditionally judged duplicitous discourse, her speech enjoys uncontested authority here in its new place of enunciation as a certain kind of ultimate body language.77

As in The Indiscreet Jewels, Fisher's/Cleopatra's jewel coveys the 'truth'. But contrary to the novel the English courtesan as the Egyptian Queen speaks on her own volition and control. She is the agent of her enunciation. Kitty Fisher does not appear in 'actual behavior' but performs an idea of herself - to paraphrase Hazlitt, "as if she were playing a part on the stage".78 More directly, as Edgar Wind was the first to have pointed out, Kitty Fisher appears to 'fall into' a pose that clearly echoes that of 'Cleopatra' in Francesco Trevisani's painting of 1705-10 in the Palazzo Spada in Rome (fig. 8).79 While it is likely that Reynolds proposed this artistic prototype, the sitter's emulation of that pose is part of the "agreements and rehearsals" that are inscribed within a painting. The portrait painting represents what Richard Schechner has described as a '"ritual by contract': fixed behavior that everyone participating [has] agreed to do".80 As Schechner sees it, performance is "restored behavior", it means "never for the first time", but for the second to the nth time. Performance is twice-behaved behavior".81 This might be brought to bear upon the enactment of gender as theorized by Judith Butler: "To be a 'woman,'" as Judith Butler states, is to have become a woman, to compel the body to conform to an historical idea of 'woman,' to induce the body to become a cultural sign, to materialize oneself in obedience to an historically determined possibility, and to do this as a sustained and repeated corporeal project.82

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77 78

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80 81

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Although the ring allows the sultan to become invisible, Mangogul performs his trials for the most part on women at intimate court dinners or at large social gatherings where invisibility is superfluous; Pucci 1989, 156. Ibid. 172, n. 25 refers to Jane Gallop's discussion of the problem of public female discourses prevalence in Western (male) society concerning the "truth" of female sexuality (Gallop 1980, 264-83). Through the relegation to the female sexual parts women are subjected to the organizing criteria of the sultan. According to Gallop the novel thus preserves the traditional male fantasy in the peculiarly eighteenthcentury mode of the voyeur. Pucci 1989, 155. Hazlitt 1930-34, 109. For the intersubjective studio situation in relation to gender and the gaze see Wendorf 1996, chap. 4; Rosenthal 1996, chap. 4; Rosenthal 1997. Wind 1938-39, 182-185, 183 was the first to point out that Reynolds based his composition on Trevisani's painting The Banquet of Cleopatra, Galleria Spada, Rome. DiFederico 1977, cat. no. 32. Schechner 1985, Wendorf 1996, 137. 1 am paraphrasing Wendorf s succinct discussion of Richard Schechner's definition of performance (Wendorfl 996, 137). Butler 1988, 531: "When Beauvoir claims that 'woman' is a historical idea and not a natural fact, she clearly underscores the distinction between sex, as biological facility, and gender, as the cultural interpretation of signification of that facility.... To 'be a woman is

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In trying to recognize Fisher's performance of femininity, and its particular staging in Reynolds's portrait, it is useful to consider how the painting departs from its model. In Trevisani's multi-figured banquet scene Mark Antony's alarmed gesturing from the left links the protagonists across the breadth of the canvas. Reynolds had dispensed with extraneous detail, and focused on Cleopatra's gesture alone. Projected against a dark-green backdrop that suggests only a very narrow pictorial space, Fisher as Cleopatra seems contemplative, introspective, while Mark Antony's absence within the painted frame, now effectively conflates the position of the beholder with that of the scene's prime witness: the painter/viewer becomes Mark Antony. No longer a distant, and subsidiary spectator, Reynolds as artist and we as beholders who take his place enter into an immediate dialogue with the spectacle performed by Cleopatra. Her physical attractiveness is literally represented - we are pulled towards, that is 'attracted' by the seductive gesture, physical loveliness and remote looks of the powerful woman. Yet there is also a hint of self-sufficiency and indifference in Fisher's dreamy profile pose. The psychology of desire staged in Reynolds's portraits of Kitty Fisher was even read as "actual behavior". Thus at least one commentator in a letter signed "Fresnoy", published in the Middlesex Journal for 1769 hints that Reynolds had an intimate relationship with Kitty Fisher. The lines read: "Catherine has sat to you in the most graceful, the most natural, attitudes, and indeed I must do you this justice to say that you have come as near the original as possible".83 It was similarly held that actresses and courtesans would pay artists "in amorous coins".84 Staging himself - in the one instance - as the first author of a love letter, and in another, as Mark Antony, Reynolds exploited the suggestion of a double entendre in his compositions. The heterosexual studio encounter between Fisher/Cleopatra - Reynolds/Mark Anthony, and by extension the viewer, stages a dialogue that conflates, among other things, the feminine waste of colonial treasure and the erotic consumption of the exotic woman - as the metaphor for women's moral or sexual worth is held in balance like the pearl, threatening to drop. The role of Cleopatra allowed Fisher to project a visual expression of a powerful exotic female sexuality and sexual self-determinism that could be anchored within the realm of the classical tradition and a high art canon. In identifying herself with Cleopatra, Kitty Fisher promotes an image of herself as liberated from bourgeois conventions of Western femininity. Yet in participating in this staging of her 'self, Fisher also evinces humor, for the painting also possesses a

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to have become a woman, to compel the body to conform to an historical idea of 'woman', to induce the body to become a cultural sign, to materialize oneself in obedience to an historically determined possibility, and to do this as a sustained and repeated corporeal project'". Whitley 1968, 252. Reynolds apparently also began a song to "Jenny" and ended it by praising "pretty Kitty". Leslie and Taylor 1865, 430 (mentioned in Hudson 1958, 136). Morning Herald, 26 April 1786, quoted in Perry 2001, 111-125, 112.

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mock-heroic tone. While highlighting Fisher's independence and agency, the painting also comments on the social discrepancy between the ancient Queen and the contemporary courtesan (and former seamstress).

Hone's Fishing Kitty In 1765 Kitty Fisher made a last major public appearance on canvas, in a portrait by Nathaniel Hone (fig. 9), which graced the walls of the Society of Artists' exhibition. In Hone's half-length portrait the celebrated beauty sits in an interior space gazing at the viewer with a sly feline smile. She suggestively shields her low-cut decollete with an embroidered fichu, revealing some of her treasures, like the rows of white pearls gracing her left wrist, and the red coral necklace pendant, which her elegantly gesturing fingers half conceal. The right foreground, however, contains a not-so-subtle visual pun on her name and her occupation. Here Hone has painted a black kitten eagerly hunting goldfish in a bowl. This 'riddle' was quickly solved in the public press. When the painting was on view at the Society of Artists exhibition in 1765, The Public Advertiser of 10 May 1765 writes: This is a portrait of a Lady, whose charms are well known to the town. The Painter has ingeniously attempted to acquaint us with her name by a rebus upon Canvass [sic]. By her side a Kitten (Kitty) is attempting to get into a basin of Gold Fish (Kitty Fisher) - what a pity it is he did not make the Rebus complete and according to Subtle in the "Alchemist", place on the other side a Dog snarling—er—Kitty Fish—er! ' 8 5

The play on Fisher's name was already well established by 1759, when a satirical poem entitled Kitty's Stream or Noblemen turned Fishermen engrossed the public. Even her death in 1767 inspired Edward Thompson to recycle the wellworn metaphor (although he did add an apostolic touch): Of St. Peter 'twas said in the days of the Jews, In Judea no Fisher could stand in his shoes: But this I'll affirm, and I'm sure with no drift: That he, ne'er like St. Kitty, was put to the shift! Nay, I'll bett Bishop Warburton fifty to ten, He, never like her, was the Fisher of Men.

Yet the metaphor of the cat also echoes Thomas Gray's Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, composed in 1747 and published in 1748.86 'Twas on a lofty vase's side, Where China's gayest art had dyed The azure flowers, that blow; 85 86

Cited by Bleackley 1925, 204; see also Kerslake 1977, 75. I am grateful to James Heffernan for drawing my attention to this poem.

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Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima reclined, Gazed on the lake below. Her conscious tail her joy declared; The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws, Her coat that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet and emerald eyes, She saw; and purred applause. Still had she gazed; but midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, The genii of the stream: Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue t h r o u g h richest purple to the view Betrayed a golden gleam. The hapless nymph with wonder saw: A whisker first and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched in vain to reach the prize. What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish? Presumptuous maid! with looks intent Again she stretched, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between. (Malignant Fate sat by and smiled) The slippery verge her feet beguiled, She tumbled headlong in. Eight times emerging from the flood She mewed to every watery god, Some speedy aid to send. No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred: Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard. A favourite has no friend! From hence, ye beauties, undeceived, Know, one false step is ne'er retrieved, And be with caution bold. Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters gold.

The poem speaks of the cat's, and women's, vanity. Just as the "genii of the stream" beguile the cat, so wealth draws women: "What female heart can gold despise? / What cat's averse to fish?" Hone's visual analogy can be read similarly, except in the painting both cat and woman seem well aware of the dangers they face. Kitty would not have her kitten drown, and she seems cognizant of the public, watching her every move. Hone even includes an allusion to the gawking masses, caught in the reflection of the fish-bowl. Here we see a win-

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dow, through which a gaggle of goggling spectators ogle Fisher, angling for attention. Thus the painting comments on Fisher's life in a "fish-bowl", constantly under spectatorial pressure. The portrait confronts the public not only with Fisher's self-reflexive narcissism, but also with its own voyeuristic thirst. A year later, in December 1766 Kitty Fisher retired from the public stage, marrying John Norris of Hempsted Manor, Benenden, Kent. Fisher did not live in respectability for long, for a few months later she died at Bath. She did not, as the press would have it, fall again; the Town and Country Magazine reported that she "fell a martyr to the cosmetic art" (lead poisoning). Instead, Fisher succumbed to consumption.87 I have suggested that we need to read Fisher's portraits not as part of a single artist's oeuvre, but instead as the shared projects of artist and sitter. While Reynolds and Hone capitalized on Fisher's fame, thereby advancing their own careers, and Fisher, placing herself in experts' hands, engaged in a sustained attempt to frame herself visually for a public eager to see her fall. It was - 1 would argue - her feline balancing act, traversing the fine line between respectability and the gutter that defied contemporary notions of femininity.

87

Town and Country September 1771, 458; Bleackley 1926, 92.

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Fisher

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Works Cited Alexander, Julia Marciari. "Beauties, Bawds and Bravura: The Critical History of Restoration Portraits of Women" in: Catharine MacLeod and Julia Marciari Alexander (eds.), Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II. London: National Portrait Gallery; New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2001. Alson, Robyn and Shelley M. Bennett (eds.). British Paintings at the Huntington. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2001, cat. no. 76. Barzaghi, A. Donne ο cortegiane? La prostituzione a Venezia documenti di costume dal XVI al XVIII secolo, Verona: Bertani, 1980. Beauvoir, Simone de. Le deuxieme sexe. Vol. 2: L'experience vecue. Paris: Gallimard, 1987. ('1949). Bleackley, Horace (ed.). Casanova in England, being the account of the visit to London in 1763-4 of Giacomo Casanova, chevalier de Seingalt; his schemes, enterprises & amorous adventures, with a description of the nobility, gentry & fashionable courtesans whom he encountered, as told by himself. London: John Lane, 1923. Notes & Queries, 148, (21 March 1925). Ladies Fair and Frail: Sketches of the Demi-Mode during the Eighteenth Century. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1926. Bock, Henning. "Sir Joshua Reynolds 'Kitty Fisher als Danae' - ein mythologisches Porträt oder eine erotische Szene? Zugleich eine Bemerkung zur Sammlungsgeschichte der Gemäldegalerie" in: Hartmut Krohm and Christian Theuerkauff (eds.), Festschrift für Peter Bloch. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1990, 229-33. Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" in: Theatre Journal, 40, (December 1988), 519-31. Campbell, R. The London Tradesman. London, 1747. "Of the Milliner" in: The London Tradesman. London: Τ. Gardner, 1747. Casanove, Giacomo. The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova. Vol. 5. Transl. by Arthur Machen. London: n.p., 1894. Conway, Alison. Private Interests: Women, Portraiture, and the Visual Culture of the English Novel, 1709-1791. Toronto, Buffalo and London: U of Toronto P, 2001. Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen. London: Smith, Elder, 1885-. DiFederico, Frank R. Francesco Trevisani, Eighteenth-Century Painter in Rome: A Catalogue Raisonne. Washington, D. C.: Decatur, 1977. Diderot, Denis. The Indiscreet Jewels. Transl. by Sophie Hawkes. New York: Marsilio, 1993. Gallop, Jane. "Snatches of Conversation" in: Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker, and Nelly Furman (eds.), Women and Language in Literature and Society. New York: Praeger, 1980, 264-83. Grose, Francis. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. London, 3 1796. Hamer, Mary. Signs of Cleopatra: History, Politics, Representation. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Hazlitt, William. The Complete Works of William Hazlitt. Vol. 12. P.P. Howe (ed.), London and Toronto: J. M. Dent, 1930-34. Hewins, W. A. S. (ed.). The Witefoord Papers. Oxford: Clarendon, 1898. Holland, Barbara, "Cleopatra: What Kind of a Woman Was She, Anyway?" in: Smithsonian, (February 1997), 56-62. Hudson, Derek. Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Personal Study. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1958. Hyde, Melissa. "The 'Makeup' of the Marquise: Boucher's Portrait of Pompadour at her Toilette" in: The Art Bulletin, 82,3, (2000), 453-75. Kerslake, John. National Portrait Gallery: Early Georgian Portraits. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1977. Leslie, Charles Robert and Tom Taylor. The Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds with Notices of Some of his Contemporaries. Vol. 1. London: J. Murray, 1865

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Lichtenstein, Jacqueline. The Eloquence of Color: Rhetoric and Painting in the French Classical Age. Transl. by Emily McVarish. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993. Mannings, David. Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings. New Haven and London: Yale UP and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2000. Maser, Edward A. (ed.). Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery, the 1758-60 Hertel Edition ofRipa's "Iconologia". New York: Dover, 1971. Penny, Nicholas (ed.). Reynolds, exh. cat. London: Royal Academy, 1986. Perry, Gill. "The Spectacle of the Muse: Exhibiting the Actress at the Royal Academy" in: David H. Solkin (ed.), Art On The Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House, 1780-1836. New Haven and London: Yale UP, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Courtauld Institute Gallery, 2001, 111-25. "Women in Disguise: The Grand Style and the Conventions of 'Feminine' Portraiture in the Work of Sir Joshua Reynolds" in: Gill Perry and Michael Rossington (eds.), Femininity and Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture. Manchester and New York, Manchester UP; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994,18-40. Phillips, Hugh. Mid-Georgian London: A Topographical and Social Survey of Central and Western London about 1750. London: Collins, 1964. Pliny the Elder. Natural History: A Selection. Transl. by John F. Healy. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Pointon, Marcia. "Intruiging Jewellery: Royal Bodies and Luxurious Consumption" in: Textual Practice, 11,3, (1997), 493-516. Pollock, Griselda. Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art. New York and London: Routledge, 1988. Porter, Roy. "Mixed Feelings: The Enlightenment and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century Britain" in: Paul-Gabriel Bouce (ed.), Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1982. Postle, Martin. Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Subject Pictures. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 1995. Pottle, F. (ed.). Boswell in Holland 1763-1764. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952. Pueci, Suzanne Rodin. "Elegancy and Wildness: Reflections of the East in the EighteenthCentury Imagination" in: G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (eds.), Exoticism in the Enlightenment. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. Representations of Women: Changing Frames from Classicism to Postmodernism. International Symposium, University Koblenz-Landau at Landau, 14-16 June 2000. Reynolds, Joshua. Discourses on Art. Robert R. Wark (ed.), New Haven and London: Yale UP, 3 1988. Rizzo, Betty. Companions Without Vows: Relationships Among Eighteenth-Century British Women. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1994. Rosenthal, Angela. Angelika Kauffmann: Bildnismalerei im 18. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Reimer, 1996. "She's Got the Look! Eighteenth-Century Female Portrait Painters and the Psychology of a Potentially 'Dangerous Employment"' in: Joanna Woodall (ed.), Portraiture: Facing the Subject. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1997, 147-66. Santore, C. "Julia Lombardo, 'Somtuosa meretrize': A Portrait of Property" in: Renaissance Quarterly, 41,1,(1988), 44-83. Schechner, Richard. Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1985. Shawe-Taylor, Desmond. The Georgians: Eighteenth-Century Portraiture and Society. London: Berry and Jenkins, 1990. Smart, Alastair. Allan Ramsay: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings John Ingamells (ed.), London and New Haven: Yale UP and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1999. Stephens, F. G. (ed.). Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. Vol. 3, part 2. London: British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings, 1877.

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Thompson, Gladys Scott. The Russells of Bloomsbury. London, 1765. Town and Country Magazine, April 1770. Town and Country Magazine, September 1771. Trumbach, Randolph. "Modern Prostitution and Gender in Fanny Hill: Libertine and Domestic Fantasy" in: G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (eds.), Exoticism in the Enlightenment. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1989. (ed.). Prostitution Reform. New York: Academic Press, 1985. Welch, Saunders. A Proposal to ... Remove the Nuisance of Common Prostitutes from the Streets. London, 1758. Wendorf, Richard. Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1996. Whitley, William T. Artists and their Friends in England, 1700-1799. Vol. 1. London and New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968 (first published by The Medici Society, 1928). Wind Edgar. "Borrowed Attitudes in Reynolds and Hogarth" in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 3, (1938-39), 182-85.

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List of Illustrations Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9

Thomas Rowlandson, Six Stages of Mending a Face (1791) Detail of fig. 1 Benjamin West, Angelica Kauffman as Pictura (1763) Joshua Reynolds, Kitty Fisher (1759) Joshua Reynolds, Kitty Fisher as Danae (c. 1759) James Watson after Joshua Reynolds, Nelly O'Brien Joshua Reynolds, Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra (1759) Francesco Trevisani, The Banquet of Cleopatra (1705-10) Nathaniel Hone, Kitty Fisher (1765)

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Detail of fig. 1.

Benjamin West, Angelica Kauffman as Pictura (1763). Crayon, pen, and ink on paper, 15,25 χ 12 cm. Swarthmore College Art Collection, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA.

Fig. 4

Joshua Reynolds, Kitty Fisher (1759). Oil on canvas, 75 χ 62,8 cm. Petworth, Sussex, The National Trust, England.

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Fig. 6

James Watson after Joshua Reynolds, Nelly O'Brien, Mezzotint. © British Museum, London, England [after the painting of 1762/64 in the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow],

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Fig. 7

Fisher

Joshua Reynolds, Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra (1759). Oil on canvas, 76 χ 63 cm. The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London, England.

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Fig. 8

Francesco Trevisani, The Banquet of Cleopatra (1705-10). Oil on canvas, 255 χ 254 cm. Galleria Spada, Rome, Italy.

Fig. 9

Nathaniel Hone, Kitty Fisher (1765). Oil on canvas, 74,9 χ 52,2 cm. National Portrait Gallery, London, England.

Bernadette

Fort

Framing the Wife Jean-Baptiste Greuze's Sexual Contract

Numerous artists have painted their wives (Rembrandt and Rubens stand out in this regard), but we are still missing a history of this important genre and its intersection with constructions of gender. The painter's wife is a pictorial subject like no one else: she is there, at hand, available to be drawn or painted whenever the painter's inspiration strikes, sometimes cast as his muse, but also used as his cheapest model. She can be dignified with a full-length, highly individualized portrait (as were Saskia or Helene Fourment), but she can also be made to lose her identity, and become figuratively dismembered, or re-membered. She can, at will, be made to be appear younger, or older. Her face, her figure, her body or parts of it can be used by the painter/husband for sketches, portraits, allegories, history paintings or genre scenes, each time with a different purpose. This essay focuses on an early series of images of Madame Greuze, nee Anne-Gabrielle Babuti, executed by her husband, Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), one of the prominent painters of eighteenth-century France. One of its goals is to bring to the fore as a coherent and distinct visual corpus representations of Madame Greuze (approximately a dozen) that have never been assembled and looked at critically before. Between 1759 and 1769, the ten-year period when Greuze participated in the biennial exhibitions of the Royal Academy and reached the height of his fame, he invariably put his wife on display, in one visual incarnation or another, one medium or another, on the walls of the Salon. To represent her, Greuze used the full gamut at his disposal: drawings, pastels, and oil paintings. Most of these works were portraits and have, unfortunately, been lost, surviving only in descriptions by contemporary critics. Others are still not labeled with her name in museums, although they most certainly represent her. Greuze used his wife for some of his renowned tetes d'expression, and he cast her in portaits histories, such as La Philosophe endormie, as well as genre scenes, such as La Mere bien-aimee. As Anita Brookner writes, "Her appearance is familiar to us: she is the heroine of L 'Accordee de village, of La Mere Bien-aimee, of La Dame de Charite, and so many 'tetes d'etudes"'.' Tradition has it that, although she was twenty-seven years old when she married Greuze, it is her rejuvenated facial traits that he painted in his early fantasy portraits, such as La Divideuse (Frick Collection, New York), exhibited at the Salon of 1759.2 The extant images are probably only the tip of a submerged - and partly 1 2

Brookner 1972, 61. Thompson 1989-90, 18.

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melted - iceberg, as Greuze, a prolific draftsman and, for the first seven years of his married life, a husband fascinated by his wife, must have executed many more, which vanished early on, snatched up by private collectors. Highlighting this forgotten visual corpus offers an intrinsic art-historical interest. The outstanding American traveling exhibition Greuze the Draftsman (New York and Los Angeles) curated in 2002 by Edgar Munhall, who, in 197677, had curated the only other large exhibition devoted to Greuze in the twentieth century, demonstrates how important Greuze's work is, and how ready it is for reinterpretation.3 At the same time, the juxtaposition of neglected images of Greuze's wife raises a set of questions ranging from the autobiographical domain to more theoretical issues concerning gender and the structure of the spectator's gaze. These images unquestionably reveal the painter's personal visual fantasms regarding his wife. But a critical analysis of representations of Madame Greuze also opens up important insights into Greuze's vision of femininity in general and of woman's place in the family and society at a time when these issues were at the forefront of public debate. Greuze's position on them is notoriously problematic. On the one hand, art-historical and cultural accounts of ancien-regime France in the last two decades have credited him with promoting a new visual ideology of the family centered on marriage and women's reproductive roles.4 Breaking with a rococo aesthetic emblematized by Boucher, who often represented women under the guise of mythological goddesses and idealized shepherdesses, Greuze was hailed in his own time for representing real women embodying what we would call today 'family values'. On the one hand, the Greuzian woman exemplifies the central place of woman in a patriarchal economy: she is the uplifting creature who breeds, nurtures and rears children (Silence!, L 'Enfant gate, La Rdprimande), fulfills charitable tasks, visits the poor and lives piously (La Dame de Charite, La Veuve et son cure), who tries, however unsuccessfully, to ward off familial strife (La Malediction paternelle, Le Fils ingrat, Le Fils puni) , assists her dying husband in his last hour (La Piete filiale) and mourns him after his death (Le Tendre Ressouvenir). A vast commerce in engravings commissioned by Greuze after his drawings and oil paintings disseminated this vision of ancillary and virtuous femininity to all comers of Europe in Greuze's lifetime, thus framing women in a purely domestic role and giving visual consistency to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ideal of femininity discussed in his Entile (1762) and incarnated in the heroine of his novel, Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloise (1761). On the other hand, Greuze's work is traversed by a moral ambiguity that is particularly pronounced in his representations of nubile girls, such as Les CEufs cassis, Le Miroir brise, L Oiseau mort, and La Cruche cassee. It is not just these pictures that, as Diderot famously explained, offer, under the guise of innocuous genre scenes, endless allegorizations and variations on the prurient 3

4

Munhall 1976-77 and 2002. See also Ledbury's (2003) expert review of the 2002 exhibition. See, among others, Brookner (1972), Rand (1996 and 1997), and Barker (1997).

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theme of lost virginity.5 Greuze often imbues his female figures, even those of women whose portraits he executed, such as "Sophie Arnould", Madame Dubarry, or anonymous ones such as Le Chapeau blanc, with a suave yet provocative sensuality that has struck viewers as somewhat perverse. According to Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, L'impression qu'tl donne est complexe, trouble, melangee. C'est que cette peinture de Greuze a plus qu'un defaut, eile a un vice: elle recele une certaine corruption, elle est essentiellement sensuelle, sensuelle par le fond et par la forme, par la composition, le dessin, la touche meme. 6

This evaluation has hardly changed in the twentieth century. From John Rivers, who devoted the first chapter of his 1912 monograph to "The Greuze Girl" - a female type with swimming eyes, backward-tilted head, and half-unveiled breasts, painted with seductive glazes, that became Greuze's trademark with an aristocratic clientele in England - to Anita Brookner, author of what is still the only scholarly monograph on Greuze, who judges some of his virginal incarnations "decently pornographic",7 to Norman Bryson, who provides an illuminating analysis of such ambivalence,8 and lately Edgar Munhall, who invokes the Kinsey Report to account for a set of images entitled Volupti,9 the Goncourts' judgment on Greuze's erotic and subtly depraved brand of femininity has been upheld. I will argue that the instability of these two visions in which Greuze frames his images of women has, if not its roots, at least its early visual manifestations, in his portraits of his wife. His antithetical visions of woman, the domestic and the sexual, coalesce in representations of Madame Greuze. Already, in 1763, Diderot had noted the difference between the warm touch used by the painter for the portraits of his wife, and the "grey", "hard", or "cold and graceless" portraits of mere sitters: "Ah, Monsieur Greuze, que vous etes different de vousmeme, lorsque c'est la tendresse ou l'interet qui guide votre pinceau".10 Greuze's images of his wife, which carry a distinct aura of sexuality, offer a privileged vantage point on concepts of virginity, matrimony, and motherhood that are directly addressed in his best-known and most-admired genre paintings. Conversely, some of the genre scenes inspired by her, such as L 'Accordee de village and La Mere bien-aimee, illuminate the specific framing strategy that controls the reception of the more private images. Greuze, I will argue, 'frames' his wife by Subjecting her representations to a spectatorial economy of exchange that corresponds to the patriarchal ideology thematized in his first acclaimed genre painting, L 'Accordee. 5

6 7 8 9

'0

For example, in his commentary on Une Jeune fille quipleure lon de 176 5, 1984b, 179-184). Goncourt 1880, 57. Brookner 1972,64. Bryson 1981, 131-33. Munhall 2002, 145-7. Diderot Salon de 1763, 1984a, 240.

son oiseau mort (Diderot Sa-

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Greuze married Anne-Gabrielle Babuti on 31 January 1759; by his own later admission, the marriage disintegrated about seven years later. In a deposition of 1785 to a commissaire de police in view of a separation, and then in a longer Memoire seeking divorce when it was legalized during the Revolution, Greuze provided hair-raising narratives of his marital woes. He accused his wife of manipulating him into marriage to avoid spinsterhood and to reap social and financial benefits from his membership in the Royal Academy. He also accused her of committing adultery in his own household with his students, patrons, friends, and lowly folk and, perhaps worst of all, of embezzling large sums of money through the highly lucrative commerce in engravings that he had early on relinquished to her." These biographical details are, to a large extent, irrelevant to the present study, which concerns the representations executed during the first seven years of the Greuzes' married life, but they cast an unexpected light on the imagery of the 'happy' phase in the painter's marriage. As Michael Fried's classic study12 on the beholder in the age of Diderot shows, any art-historical study that engages issues of spectatorship must be carefully historicized and its arguments made to rest on the aesthetic and emotional response of contemporary viewers. In Greuze's case, we are very fortunate to have the eloquent testimony of the foremost critic of the time, Denis Diderot. No other critic comes close in breadth and depth to Diderot's sensitive and expert exploration of Greuze's work: his review of Greuze's artistic output in 1765, for example, spans no fewer than 37 pages in the modern critical edition. Diderot's testimony on Greuze and his wife's portraits is immensely valuable, precisely because he was not a disinterested spectator. His friendship for Greuze dates to the late 1750s and lasted until 1769.13 He was in the eighteenth century the painter's earliest and staunchest admirer, declaring in 1763: "C'est vraiment lä mon homme que ce Greuze".14 He praised Greuze for saving French painting from the lightweight and artificial confections of rococo painting, for introducing 'morals' into French art, and for representing family dramas with the pathos he aimed at in his own drame bourgeois, such as Le Pere de famille and Le Fils naturel.15 Interestingly, Diderot was no stranger to Anne-Gabrielle.

"

12 13

14

15

E. and J. de Goncourt reprint the Memoire after Greuze's 1785 deposition to the commissaire de police Gilles-Pierre Chenu (36-38). I have explored these autobiographical documents in relation to images of the dysphoric phase of Greuze's marriage in papers delivered in Montreal and Paris. Fried 1980. Diderot turned against Greuze in 1769. But already in his correspondence of 1767, there are signs of stress (see a letter to Falconet, "C'est un excellent artiste, mais une bien mauvaise tete. II faut avoir ses dessins et ses tableaux, et laisser la I'homme" Diderot Correspondance, 1955-70, vol. 7, 98). In 1769, Diderot recanted on his dithyrambic 1765 review of Greuze's Le Baiser envoye and wrote a scathing critique of the artist's failed attempt at history painting in his Septimius Severus. Diderot Salon de 1763, 1984a, 233. Also "Quoiqu'on en dise, Greuze est mon peintre" (ibid. 239). See the famous statement prefacing his discussion of Greuze's La Piete filiate: "D'abord le genre me plait. C'est la peinture morale. Quoi done, le pinceau n'a-t-il pas ete assez et trop

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He had, as he wrote, "loved her himself before she met Greuze, when she was working as a salesgirl in her father's bookstore. His literary evocation of her, in one of the reviews of her portrait by the artist in 1765, itself has all the fresh and pert liveliness of a rococo portrait: Ce peintre est certainement amoureux de sa femme, et il n ' a pas tort; je Tai bien aimee, moi, quand j'etais jeune et qu'elle s'appelait mademoiselle Babuti. Elle occupait une petite boutique de libraire sur le quai des Augustins; poupine, blanche et droite comme un lys, vermeille comme la rose. J'entrais avec cet air vif, ardent et fou que j'avais, et je lui disais: Mademoiselle, les Conies de la Fontaine, un Petrone, s'il vous plait. —Monsieur, les voilä. Ne vous faut-il point d'autres livres? —Pardonnez-moi, Mademoiselle, mais... — Dites toujours. —La Religieuse en chemise. —Fi done, Monsieur! est-ce qu'on a, est-ce qu'on lit ces vilenies-lä? —Ah, ah, ce sont de vilenies; Mademoiselle, moi, j e n'en savais rien... —Et puis, un autre jour, quand je repassais eile souriait et moi aussi. 16

Although Diderot was later to agree with Greuze that Anne-Gabrielle had turned into a shrew,17 for the period under consideration, his testimony is uniquely valuable: his vivid ekphrases of the lost portraits of her exhibited in the Salons of 1761, 1763, and 1765 represent the only detailed commentary we possess today of works that vanished early because of the combined biographical and erotic lure of their subject. Furthermore, because he responds to Greuze's painting both emotionally and aesthetically, Diderot's astute criticism can help us recover the specific structure of the spectatorial negotiation that Greuze put in play with images of his wife.

L Accordee de village Commissioned by Mme de Pompadour's brother, the marquis de Marigny, who was Directeur des Bätiments under Louis XV, acclaimed at the Salon of 1761, where so many people thronged around it that Diderot had difficulty approaching it, L 'Accordee de village consecrated Greuze's fame early on and is still to-

16

17

longtemps consacre ä la debauche et au vice? ne devons-nous pas etre satisfaits de le voir concourir enfin avec la poesie dramatique ä nous toucher, nous instruire, ä nous corriger et ä nous inviter ä la vertu?" (Diderot Salon de 1763, 1984a, 234). Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 190. Compare with Greuze's narrative of his own first encounter with Anne-Gabrielle in his Memoire·, "je fus frappe d'admiration, car eile avait une tres belle figure; je demandai ä acheter des livres pour avoir le temps de Γ examiner; sa physionomie etait sans caractere et meme moutonniere; je lui fis des compliments tant qu'elle en voulut; elle me connaissait; ma reputation etait dejä commencee, j'etais refu de l'Academie" (Greuze 1852-53, 39). For example, Diderot wrote to his friend Etienne Falconet in Russia on 15 August 1767: "sa femme est, d'un consentement unanime (et quand je dis unanime, je n'en excepte ni le sien ni celui de son mari), une des plus dangereuses creatures qu'il y ait au monde" (Diderot Correspondance, 1955-70, vol. 7, 98). Also, "J'aime ä l'entendre causer avec sa femme. C'est une parade oü Polichinelle rabat les coups avec un art qui rend le compere plus mechant. Je prens quelquefois la liberte de leur en dire mon avis, avec le leste que vous sfavez" (ibid., 104).

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day the most written-about and the most frequently reproduced painting by Greuze (fig. 1). A strong critical consensus has, despite some variations, developed around its interpretation. Modern critics have tended to read the painting in historically and even geographically specific terms. Early on, Munhall suggested that it "depicts the ceremony of promesses de mariage , the registration of a civil contract before a notary",18 considered by Protestants in Greuze's native Mäconnais in the mid-eighteenth century as a complete marriage, as opposed to Catholics, for whom marriage was a sacrament sanctioned in a religious ceremony by a priest.19 More recently, Emma Barker and Richard Rand emphasized its embracing of a new, reformist, conception of marriage in step with Enlightenment thinking. Barker views the drawing-up of the marriage contract featured in the painting as embodying the rejection of traditional patriarchal thought by the Encyclopedists, who denied that political authority derived from that of the father, arguing instead that civil society had been initiated by a contract, which provided a consensual model for all exchanges between individuals. 20

Citing contemporary philosophers and theorists of civil law, Rand stressed that the painting promotes a view of marriage as a droit naturel, "a contract with nature entered into for the purpose of establishing a family, that is, to legitimate procreation".21 In general, critics agree that this strongly didactic painting, with its frontal and theatrical composition, epitomizes an ideal of marriage based on the elevation of family ties, which struck chords at the time both with the urban middle-class public and with the aristocracy. However, casting Greuze as a painter with a politically and socially progressive agenda in step with the most advanced thinkers of his time has obscured the profoundly gendered dimension of the contract and hence, the very ambiguous positioning of the bride in the painting's strongly gendered visual and ideological economy. The striking division of the canvas between a female zone on the left and a male one on the right was first observed by Thomas Crow, who, in a brilliant analysis, showed how all visual elements, including warm/cold tonality, soft/ angular shapes, were subordinated to a gendered vision stressing the opposition of nature and culture.22 Indeed, while in the female zone, the mother and younger sister, surrounded by children and servants, are consumed by emotion and mourn the bride's imminent departure, the sole action of the drama is being performed on the right by men. However, the full implications of this action for the asymmetrical gendering of the painting have not been fully discussed. As Greuze took pains to emphasize in his unusual title, marriage is depicted in this painting as residing in an exchange of money between the father and his son-inlaw: Un Mariage, et l'instant oü le pere de l'Accordie delivre la dot ä son 18 19 20 21 22

Munhall 1976-77, 84 Also Munhall 1964. Barker 1997, 45. Rand 1997, 226. Crow 1985, 147-50.

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gendre. Barker relates this emphasis to contemporary philosophical debates on property, in particular, to Physiocratic thought, which located the wealth of a country in its agriculture.23 But, from the point of view of a gendered economy, the conception of marriage emblematized in L 'Accordee transcends a specific, historically anchored practice and accords fully with a much broader, transhistorical conception of marriage as the exchange of women between men, a view first theorized by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in his Elementary Structures of Kinship·. The total relationship of exchange which constitutes marriage is not established between a man and a woman, but between two groups of men, and the woman figures only as one of the objects in the exchange, not as one of the partners ... This remains true even when the girl's feelings are taken into consideration.24

In more recent times, Carol Pateman, in her influential The Sexual Contract, has argued: Women are not party to the original contract through which men transform their natural freedom into the security of civil freedom. Women are the subject of the contract. The (sexual) contract is the vehicle through which men transform their natural right over women into the security of civil patriarchal right.25

Greuze's title, in its very grammar, makes clear that the two acting subjects are the giver (father) and the recipient (son-in-law). The bride (I'Accordee) in this title is only a genitive, that is, an object descended from and possessed by the first subject and traded over to the second. In the painting's visual economy, the financial transaction between father and husband eclipses any other interest, including the amorous interest the new husband might have in his young bride. Indeed, as critics noticed, his arm hangs limp on his side, as opposed to the bride's arm, which touches it lightly. The transfer of the dowry absorbs the men's attention entirely and makes them equal partners in a deal from which she is excluded. What is more, Greuze, with acute understanding of the sexual basis of this contract, used an eloquent visual/sexual emblem to stress the essentially and exclusively male character of the transaction. The painting's visual fulcrum is the dowry, suspended between three male hands and materialized in a money bag called in French une bourse, also the word for scrotum. As if the sexual metaphor of male power weren't visible enough, Greuze underlines it by placing the father's extended thumb exactly under the bourse?6 The bride's transfer from father to husband is thus sealed in a homosocial act that reduces her to the status of a commodified object, a marchandise traded between men.

23

24 25 26

"The household depicted by Greuze is undoubtedly integrated into a market economy; the transfer of the dowry is a financial transaction, showing that the father has access to cash" (Barker 1997, 46); "the prosperity of the family in L 'Accordee should be seen as the consequence of the enactment of reforms demanded by the Physiocrats" (ibid. 48). Levi-Strauss 1969, 115. Pateman, 1988, 6. Crow notes this detail, but stops short of interpreting its sexual meaning.

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Revisiting Levi-Strauss from a feminist angle, Luce Irigaray has shown how women in a patriarchal economy are always handled as mere signs and exchanged like goods, without participation in the exchange.27 Her perspective can be extended to analyze the visual negotiation implied by Greuze between the bride and the spectator. While the two main male characters are transacting their business, the bride stands, mute, passive, her eyes demurely lowered, leaning lightly toward her mother and sister, her reproductive and nurturing destiny inscribed metaphorically in the hen and chicks eating grain at her feet. Her passive state and the men's complete absorption in their negotiation, however, have the effect of making her vulnerable to the gaze of other men, a fact amply documented in the response of contemporary critics, who concentrate their appreciative comments on her sensual though modest figure. The painter, they say, managed to imbue her at the same time with volupte and with pudeur precisely the combination that made a woman enticing to contemporary male sensibility (in that same year, Jean-Jacques Rousseau offered a fictional parallel in his equally voluptuous yet virtuous Julie). Friedrich Melchior Grimm praised the mastery with which Greuze had managed the representation of mixed emotions in the young woman at this moment of passage from the father's to the husband's house: La tendresse pour son fiance, le regret de quitter la maison paternelle, les mouvements de 1'amour combattus par la modestie et par la pudeur dans une fille bien nee; mille sentiments confus de tendresse, de volupte, de crainte qui s'elevent dans une äme innocente au moment de ce changement d'etat, vous lisez tout eela dans le visage et l'attitude de cette charmante creature.28

Abbe Bridard de la Garde was even more specific, drawing attention, among other particulars, to the restrained but electrifying sensuality with which the bride entwines her arm around her fiance's: La jeune accordee a un bras enlace dans celui du jeune homme. On s'apperpoit que la pudeur et la presence des parens retiennent la main, prete ä se poser sur celle du futur, qu'elle desire, mais qu'elle n'ose pas toucher.... Rien n'est si piquant que la figure de cette accordee.... On y distingue jusqu'a une petite hypocrisie, douce et honnete, qui couvre le veritable interet dont elle est preoccupee dans ce moment.29

The bride, by definition, is no longer just a daughter and not yet a wife. She is still a virgin, but her female sensuality has been awakened. The very undefined, intermediate, liminal state in which she hovers is a powerful element in the sexual appeal that emanates from her. As Diderot put it,

27

28 29

"Femmes, signes, merchandises, sont toujours renvoyes pour leur production ä l'homme (quand un homme achete une fille, c'est le pere ou le frere qu'il 'paie', et non la mere...) et ils passent toujours d'un homme ä un autre homme, d'un groupe d'hommes ä un autre groupe d'hommes" (Irigaray 1977, 168). Diderot Salons, 1957-1967, vol.1, 145. Ibid. 43.

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Plus ä son fiance, et eile n'eüt pas ete assez decente; plus ä sa mere ou ä son pere, et eile eüt ete fausse. Elle a le bras ä demi passe sous celui de son futur epoux, et le bout de ses doigts tombe et appuie doucement sur sa main; c'est la seule marque de tendresse qu'elle lui donne, et peut-etre sans le savoir elle-meme. C'est une idee delicate du peintre. 30

Greuze cues his male viewers to the bride's erotic charms by means of an embedded spectator whose significance has hardly been noted in that respect, the notary. His function in the depicted scene is to register the marriage contract, as the papers strewn on his table attest. He is also, as Diderot pointed out, listening to the father's homily to his son-in-law. But with one ear only. The only figure in this tableau who is turned toward the main actors, the tabellion is the only figure turned toward the bride (the groom, by contrast, listening with rapt attention to the father, turns his back to her).31 The notary is seen in angular profile, lips clenched. The most prominent feature in his face is his eye, which he rivets on the bride with a fascinated, almost predatory gaze. The sexual nature of this gaze is indexed symbolically by the horn of his tricorn hat that protrudes in the bride's direction. The only character in the scene who is an outsider, the notary is the vicarious male spectator to whom Greuze first offers the spectacle of his sensual bride. How effective this strategy of sexualization of the male spectator's gaze was for contemporary viewers is indicated by Diderot, here as always Greuze's most responsive spectator, whose connoisseur's gaze joins the notary's precisely on the bride's breast: "Une gorge faite au tour qu'on ne voit point du tout. Mais je gage qu'il n'y a rien lä qui la releve, et que cela se soutient tout seul".32 A preliminary drawing of a full-scale figure for the bride stressed this sexual marker of femininity by displaying a full view of the model's breasts barely contained by a low-cut, tight bodice.33 The bride's bust was modestly veiled in the finished picture, but, as Diderot's comment indicates, Greuze allowed the tantalizing shape to be acutely sensed under the bodice. Modern critics have downplayed the autobiographical dimension of L'Accordee de village, signalled early on by Munhall.34 However, given the stress on the financial transaction in the title and in the painted scene, it is difficult to consider as merely coincidental the fact that Greuze had just received, as attested in his marriage contract, a very generous dowry of 10,000 livres from his father-in-law.35 The main characters in L 'Accordee have surprisingly close visual affinities with real actors in Greuze's own wedding, as depicted by him at the time. The bride's traits have long been believed to be those of a trois-cray-

30 31

32 33

34 35

Diderot Salon de 1761, 1984a, 167-8. Crow notes that the gaze of the notary "is also on the daughter, but", he adds, "he remains physically at a distance, linked to her only by the intervening transaction that explains his presence" (Crow 1985, 148). Diderot Salon de 1761, 1984a 167. See PI. 16 in Munhall 2002 for an illustration of this drawing in the Musee Vivant-Denon, Chalon-sur-Saone. In Diderot et I 'art, 1984, 225. Wildenstein 1960,227.

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oris drawing of Anne-Gabrielle Babuti in the Albertina.36 Diderot's description of the Portrait de Frangois Babuti, Gabrielle's father, exhibited at the same Salon ("ces yeux erailles et larmoyants, et cette chevelure, et ces chairs; et cette vie, et ces details de vieillesse qui sont infinis au bas du visage et autour du col"37) fits the father's distinctive head in L'Accordee,38 Significantly, Greuze gave the groom his own curly ashblond hair, his broad forehead, long nose, and finely traced lips, as well as the naive and guileless countenance of his early c. 1755 Self-portrait preserved in Tournus.39 More importantly yet, the framing of the bride between father and husband as an object of desire for a third, which subtended the visual/sexual economy in L'Accordee, was repeated by Greuze at the same Salon in a set of three portraits evoking his own recent marriage. These three - identically sized, oval - portraits were of himself, his wife, and her father.40 Not only was the young Madame Greuze thus literally framed at the Salon between her father and husband, but, despite her now married status, Greuze had represented her, curiously, en vestale. The theme of the vestal virgin was a popular one in French painting of the time. It was illustrated in the eighteenth century by Lagrenee, Lemoyne, Nattier, Raoux, Vien, and other painters. Greuze gave this pictorial topos both a more personal and a more ambiguous inflection by embodying it in his own wife, thus asking viewers to imagine her in her virginal, premarital state and thereby inciting them to appropriate her in a way similar to the inscribed viewer in L'Accordie. For Diderot, however, who had known Mile Babuti as a great flirt and an avid reader of libertine novels, Madame Greuze en vestale was a ridiculous visual (and sexual) oxymoron. He laughed at the inappropriateness of the long virginal veil covering the head of this married woman with a dubious past: "Cela, une vestale! Greuse, mon eher, vous vous moquez de nous".41 The prominence and permanence of the theme of the virgin in Greuze's visual imaginary is attested throughout his work, from his early drawing La Reveuse to a later, lugubrious drawing, Presentation of a Vestal Virgin.*2 In the latter, an androgynous emaciated death-like figure lifts with crooked hands the young woman's veil, exposing her voluptuous naked body while her eyes are modestly lowered, thereby recalling both the bride's and Madame Greuze en vestale's demure gazes. In the Presentation, the visual/sexual structure or frame that, in 1761, already informs the representation of the woman both in fictional form in the Accordee and in autobiographical form in Madame Greuze en

36 37 38

39 40

41 42

The Albertina drawing is reproduced in Munhall 2002, PI. 32. Diderot Sa/on de 1761, 1984a, 156. See also Greuze's spectacular study in red and black chalks for the bride's father (Munhall 2002, PI. 18), of which Munhall writes that it is "surely no coincidence" if it resembles the portrait of Greuze's own father-in-law (Munhall 2002, 80). See Rochette 2000, fig. 4. Greuze's 1761 self-portrait and that of his wife are lost. Babuti's portrait is in a private collection (see Munhall 2002, fig. 65). Diderot Salon de 1761, 1984a, 156-7. Private collection. See Munhall 2002, PI. 85.

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vestale, namely the ostensible proffering of the virgin's sexual charms to the outside viewer - a voyeuristic framing structure or device that I will call here 'visual pandering' - is shamelessly acknowledged. This structure is also the one that informs the cluster of images of Greuze's wife I will now discuss. They fall into three categories: the sleeping woman, the woman in sexual ecstasy, and the mother.

Woman Asleep Nearly all extant identifiable drawings of Madame Greuze share a peculiarity: they represent her recumbent or asleep. Three red-chalk drawings, one of a Head of a Sleeping Woman (Anne-Gabrielle Babuti) in Karlsruhe (Staatliche Kunsthalle, fig. 2), one (rarely shown) of the same head, inclined to the left, in Caen (Musee des Beaux-Arts), and a third, badly damaged, counterproof in Tournus (Musee Greuze, fig. 3), appear to be preparatory studies of heads of Madame Greuze for a drawing of a full-length female figure, La Philosophe endormie, attested in the collection Hatvany by Seznec in 1969. This drawing was engraved by Jean-Michel Moreau under the direction of Jacques Aliamet in 1777, and accompanied by a dedication to Madame Greuze (fig. 4).43 Significantly, in all these images, Anne-Gabrielle's head is seen from a slight di sotto perspective that emphasizes the sexual effect of the neck and contributes to the overall sensual suggestiveness of the pose. The handling of the chalk is sensuous, insistent on the folds of the neck and the loose hair that escapes from under the bonnet. The focus on the neck will become an obsessive fixation of the painter's, his mark, or signature, written iconically on the body of the woman who is his wife. It is a sign that powerfully elicits the beholder's sexual response, as Diderot would attest in his review of a pastel head depicting Madame

43

The drawing is reproduced by Seznec in Diderot's Salons, 1957-67, vol. 2, fig. 53. Its authenticity is still under debate. Munhall (2002, 126 and fig. 100) attributes it to Jean-Michel Moreau on the ground that it is too finished and polished a drawing for Greuze and more in Moreau's precise manner. However, Munhall himself points out that Greuze, leaving no freedom of interpretation to his engravers, made very careful drawings of the works he wanted to have engraved (Munhall 2002, 200). Could the drawing of La Philosophe endormie not be one of these? Another open question is that of the satiric import of La Philosophe endormie, which is an ironic reprise of Maurice Quentin de La Tour's large-scale pastel of Madame de Pompadour (Louvre). Munhall (2002, 126) writes that The Philosophe "seems to mock specifically the aspirations and person of Madame de Pompadour" in that pastel. I believe, rather, that it mocks the intellectual pretensions of the former bookstore salesgirl who was Greuze's wife. By the time the drawing was engraved, in 1777 (as "Dediee ä Madame Greuze/ Par son Serviteur et Ami, Aliamet"), this satiric message would have been perfectly consonant with the growing hostility that Greuze, by his own admission, started harboring in 1766-67 against her.

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Greuze in 1765: "II faut voir les details de ce cou gonfle et n'en pas parier" (see % 8). 44 A fifth drawing that survived represents Madame Greuze on a Chaise Longue, asleep, again with her favorite spaniel on her lap (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, fig. 5). This time, the angle is different, as the draftsman embraced his subject from above, which contributes to the impression of the woman's imperviousness to his presence. Here as in the Philosophe endormie, all accessories connote retreat, nonchalance, abandon. The deep armchair in the Philosophe and the equally deep day bed in the Amsterdam drawing, their hard backs softened by plump pillows, provide support for the woman's languid body. The members are relaxed, intimating the female body's return to a passive state. This impression is enhanced by the immobile presence of the lapdog, which communicates its animal warmth to the body of its mistress 45 Often used as an emblem of faithfulness in Renaissance art, here the sleeping lapdog becomes an emblem of sensuality, if not of sloth, and no longer watches over its mistress. In the Philosophe endormie, the implements of broderie, the tools of female cultural artifacts, have fallen to the ground, and the disseminators of culture, the heavy tomes recalling man's cultural achievements, lie, unread, on the table. These drawings of a recumbent Madame Greuze can all be interpreted realistically, as snapshots caught sur le vif by the expert draftsman during his wife's sleep. Yet, the recurrence of this pose to represent his wife points to a specific fantasm. The 'woman asleep' fulfills a male dream of total control, over her body, her consciousness, her will, her actions, which are all in abeyance during sleep: this is the state deprived of consciousness, the passive state par excellence. Like the mute Accordie with her lowered eyes, the woman asleep is a particularly potent icon of male desire, which can weave around her relaxed, unguarded, body unrestrained scenarios of possession.46 She corresponds to a classic male fantasm, one that, as Helene Cixous pointed out, is emblematized in the fairy tale of 'Sleeping Beauty': Woman, if you look for her, has a strong chance of always being found in one position: in bed. In bed and asleep - 'laid (out)'. [.,.] She is lifted up by the man who will lay her in her next bed so that she may be confined to bed ever after, just as the fairy tales say.47

44 45

46

47

Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 189. Another drawing (Stockholm, National Museum) shows the dog spread out lengthwise between the woman's legs (Munhall 2002, fig. 97). How receptive the Goncourts are to the erotic quality of this pose shows in their imagined fantasy about the Philosophe·. "Les etoffes sont cornme affaissees, la toilette est entr'ouverte, la pose est morte, les paupieres sont closes, la bouche est chatouillee, l'haleine palpite... Et ne semble-t-il pas qu'un songe de plaisir baise cette femme sur les yeux?" (Goncourt 1880, 35). Cixous 1990, 346.

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Volupti Sleep is the state closest to death, and so is also sexual pleasure, in French la petite mort. Greuze's visual topos of the 'woman asleep' morphs easily into the 'woman in sexual ecstasy'. It is only one step from the red-chalk drawing of Anne-Gabrielle Babuti in Karlsruhe (fig. 2) to La Volupte (St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, fig. 6), an oil painting of which at least two versions and a spectacular red-chalk preparatory drawing are known.48 In these images, Greuze repeats the backward tilt of the wife's head on a suggested pillow exposing a throat swollen by pleasure, the oval face and perfectly arched brows, the delicately shaped nose and the dimpled chin. But the 'wife' images show her decently asleep, lips closed and with bonnet on, whereas in La Volupte, Greuze shows a woman with dishevelled hair, half-open lips, and swimming eyes lost in post-coital daze. He also emphasizes the woman's carnal appeal by twisting a lock of hair fetchingly in the cleavage. Significantly, an earlier red-chalk drawing of a Head of a Woman Leaning Back to the Left done by Greuze during his Italian sojourn49 reveals the artistic origin of this visual topos. While in Rome with Abbe Gougenot, his patron, Greuze had carefully studied the expression of female ecstasy in Bernini's notorious sculpture of The Ecstasy of St. Teresa and superbly emulated it, emphasizing the low angle of vision.50 But whereas Bernini's Teresa is swooning, her eyes rolled back marking the loss of selfawareness appropriate to a saint, in La Volupte and the red-chalk study, Greuze turns the eyes of his voluptuous woman longingly to the viewer. (The press that published the 2002 exhibition catalogue fully understood the provocative appeal of this drawing to potential viewers and readers as it printed it on its back cover.51 Here is the prurient Greuze, the painter of lasciviousness no longer disguised as lost virginity. Here, he casts away the thin alibi of the metaphoric broken eggs, broken mirror, and broken jug. The fallen virgin has fully become Woman, and Woman is, for Greuze, entirely subsumed by sexuality, as drawn sur le vif in the moment of jouissance. 48

See Munhall 2002, figs. 114 and 115 and PI. 47. Whereas Munhall dates Volupte to 1765, Nemilova (1988) dates it to the late 1770s or early 1780s "on the basis of its very smooth finish ... and of a certain classicizing tendency". She thinks that "Having invented the gesture of the tilted-back head, the strained neck, and an exceedingly sensual facial expression for The Well-Beloved Mother, Greuze later repeated them in the Hermitage version" of Volupte, "changing the model's facial features and costume, and so created an independent work related to his tetes d'expression" (1986, 113, fig. 61). In my view, this gestalt dates back to the much earlier drawings of Greuze's wife asleep (Karlsruhe, Caen, Tournus and Amsterdam).

49

Munhall 2002, PI. 9. A note in Gougenot's unpublished Album de voyage shows how receptive even an ecclesiastical viewer was to the sexual charge of Bernini's sculpture: "Quand la figure de Sainte Therese seroit nüe, eile ne seroit pas plus licentieuse. Le sculpteur y a mis une expression que le Papier ne peut soufrir" (Guicharnaud 1999, 34). It is, remarkably, with this erotically charged drawing turned into a poster that the J. Paul Getty Museum advertised its exhibition Greuze the Draftsman all over Los Angeles in 2002.

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Given the titillating nature of these images and Greuze's access to cabinets of rich amateurs where sexually suggestive images were highly prized and generously rewarded,52 Greuze must have executed many more works of this kind, now dispersed or still jealously guarded in private collectors' cabinets. One such oil painting, entitled Apres I'extase, and showing a woman with Madame Greuze's unmistakable features resting her head on the left in utter sexual exhaustion, but with her eyes turned away, resurfaced at a sale in the Hotel Drouot in May 1985.53 A rarely shown (and earlier) drawing by Greuze, Etude de jeune fille (Paris, Ecole nationale superieure des beaux-arts, fig. 7) integrates the expression of female jouissance in an erotic genre scene. Indeed, the subject seems to be an early version of a lascivious visual theme plied by Baudouin and others, the young girl masturbating in solitude. Slumped in a deep armchair, her hands on her lap and her corsage open, Greuze's young woman languidly gazes at the viewer, her lips half-parted in a languorous expression. Next to her on a table, within easy reach, two doves are seen copulating - a view which may have produced her current state.54 The youthful head and half-parted lips in turn accord strikingly with an oil portrait of the young Madame Greuze dated 1760 in the Collection Rau, Zurich.55 The recurrence of these images of female ecstacy linked to his wife reveals not only the persistence of exacerbated desire in Greuze's psychosexual makeup and its projection in art, but it highlights the male visual pact that subtends Greuze's representations of his wife. While the initial beholder of Madame Greuze's ecstatic expression is the husband, the artist, by capturing it on paper sur le vif (the rapid style of his drawings underlines that aspect), and then fixing it in oil or preparing it later for an engraving, passes on the spectacle of his voluptuous wife to the viewer, constructing him as male and anticipating the series of male viewers that will follow in time. Significantly, the fact that the Volupte image, in both its drawn and painted forms, became a model for a tete d'expression typifying female jouissance56 insured Madame Greuze's orgasmic expression a broad circulation among male artists and amateurs - especially in Russia, where a huge collection of Greuze's drawings was assembled by Catherine II for Russian students at the Fine Arts Academy.57 In this way, not only did Greuze share with his male public a most private moment in the couple's sexual life, he robbed his wife of her intimate jouissance by making it an object of visual display to other men. He tendered his representation of her as an object 52 53 54 55

56

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Among them, La Live de Jully, the marquis de Veri, Randon de Boisset. See Bailey 2000. Drouot 1985, fig. 33. Emmanuelle Brugerolles first drew attention to this drawing in 1981, 244. See De Fra Angelico a Bonnard 2000-01, no. 40. The painting labeled Portrait of a Young Woman is identified as Madame Greuze by Munhall 2002 and reproduced in small format (fig. 96). Munhall notes that the face in the Amsterdam drawing of Madame Greuze (our fig. 5) "corresponds in its delicate features and the coiffure bound tightly with ribbons to an oil portrait of his wife Greuze dated 1760", which is the Rau painting (124). See, for example, the engraving done by C.-F. Letellier for his Cahier de tetes de differents caracteres (c. 1770), reproduced in Munhall 2002 (fig. 117). See Novosselskaya 2002, 29.

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of purchase and consumption, thereby sealing between him and his spectators/clients a homosocial bond that relied on the shared enjoyment, both erotic and aesthetic, of the voluptuous represented wife. In such a transaction, the painter's male ego is doubly gratified, both as a husband whose wife's ecstatic expression reflects flatteringly on his sexual prowess, and as an artist able to translate such a fleeting and intimate moment into a lasting image. Anonymous and generic, although bearing the features of the wife, the represented woman, deprived of subjecthood, is a visual/sexual object of exchange circulating between the painter and his spectators, just as the bride in the Accordee. Greuze would extend this strategy to the paintings of his wife he exhibited at the Salons of 1763, 1765, and 1769 with her name, but he would attempt to veil the exhibition of her sexuality under the legitimating, indeed sanctifying, alibi of motherhood.

The Mother Having failed to make a successful exhibition of his wife as a vestal virgin in 1761, Greuze chose in 1763 and 1765 to show portraits of her that accorded better with her real sexual and familial status. A first child had been born to the couple in November 1759, but died. A second daughter, Anne-Genevieve Greuze (called Caroline), was bom in April 1762, and a third, Louise-Gabrielle, in May 1764. The cult of motherhood, which flourished in literature and treatises addressed to women in the 1770s and 1780s,58 was largely inaugurated in visual art by Greuze in such works as Silence!, L 'Heureux menage, and many genre scenes teeming with young people of all ages, from the infant in the cradle to the toddler and the pubescent girl. However, rather than cast his wife with her babies in one of these domestic settings, as he and many painters who contributed to the popularity of the 'Happy Mother' motif in French painting would, Greuze chose again a sexualized representation, depicting her as a pregnant woman in 1763 and, in 1765, in a domestic allegory of voluptuous motherhood. At the Salon of 1763, Greuze exhibited six portraits. Diderot, in his review, despatches five of them in a few lines, but waxes ecstatic about the Portrait of Madame Greuze, calling it "un chef d'oeuvre qui un jour ä venir n'aura point de prix".59 According to Diderot's description, this painting drew on the pictorial topos of the 'woman at her toilette', and Greuze had emphasized the the subject's sexual appeal through seductive paint handling:

58 59

See Duncan 1973. Diderot Salon de 1763, 1984a, 240. According to the livret, where it was listed as no. 133, it was an oval portrait, therefore probably a bust or a three-quarter length. Diderot also wrote "Ce portrait tue tous ceux qui Fenvironnent" (ibid.).

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Que cette longue tresse qu'elle releve d'une main sur ses epaules, et qui tourne plusieurs fois autour de son bras, est belle! voilä des cheveux, pour le coup! II faut voir le soin et la verite dont le dedans de cette main et les plis de ses doigts sont peints! Quelle finesse et quelle variete de teintes sur ce front. 60

Because his gaze is so inquisitive and precise, because it ferrets out the smallest details in the painting's technique, but also because he responds so fully to Greuze's pictorial strategy, Diderot's commentary brings out here what fascinated Greuze in the depiction of the gravid woman: the physical symptoms of a mysterious phase in woman's reproductive function: "ce teint qui jaunit sur les tempes et vers le front; cette gorge qui s'appesantit; ces membres qui s'affaissent et ce ventre qui commence ä se relever".61 Just as Greuze was interested in capturing the transition from virgin to woman and daughter to wife in L 'Accordee de village, or in arresting the fleeting symptoms of jouissance in Volupti, here the painter aimed to capture the transformation of the wife into the mother, to chart the elusive visual signs of gestation in the female body. It might be one thing for an artist to paint his pregnant wife, but it was quite another to exhibit her in that state to the gazes of a motley Salon crowd for a whole month. Greuze skirted the issue of bienseances by not declaring Madame Greuze's state in the title of his painting in the livret. The fact that most critics preferred not to allude to it either indicates how strong the sense was that Greuze was treading on morally problematic territory. As Luce Irigaray underlines, "la mere, instrument reproducteur marque du nom du pere et enferme dans sa maison, sera propriete privee, interdite aux echanges".62 Indeed, Greuze was playing here with a double taboo, the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of motherhood. Yet it is precisely the transgression of this taboo to which Diderot responded in his review. Despite the hallowed subject, whether through the sensual paint handling or because of the intimacy of the pose and moment depicted, Diderot registered the unavowable erotic appeal emanating from this portrait of the pregnant Madame Greuze - an appeal that, typically for him, translated into a desire to touch the subject: "On serait tente de passer la main sous ce menton, si l'austerite de la personne n'arretait et l'eloge et la main".63 The second clause professes to erase the transgressive desire expressed in the first: Diderot's conflicted syntax matches the equivocal sexual and moral tonality of Greuze's portrait of his pregnant wife. In 1765, Madame Greuze could be seen on the walls of the Salon in no fewer than three different guises and media: an oil portrait where she was shown with

60

61 62 63

Ibid. Diderot's description indicates that Greuze's portrait again showed his wife in her domestic space, this time, in the privacy of her bedroom, in simple morning clothes: "L'ajustement est simple. C'est celui d'une femme le matin, dans sa chambre ä coucher; un petit tablier de taffetas noir sur une robe de satin blanc" (ibid.). Ibid. Irigaray 1977, 180. Diderot Salon de 1763, \ 984a, 240.

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her pet dog, smiling (now lost);64 a pastel head, anonymously labeled Une Tete en pastel (Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, fig. 8); and as the mother in a sketch (now lost) entitled La Mere bien-aimee (here shown in the later, highly finished drawing made by the artist after the 1769 painting: Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, fig. 9).65 All three representations set in play, though differently, the 'pandering' device, and hence re-inscribe the male compact of symbolic 'visual adultery' at work in previous images of Madame Grenze. Diderot's detailed verbal ekphrases of these three works offer a paradigmatic example of how Greuze's provocative strategy of 'visual adultery' was both internalized and exposed by an engaged male viewer. The 1765 oil portrait cast Madame Greuze, as in the Amsterdam drawing and the Philosophe endormie, in domestic idleness, with her spaniel, but this time deriving pleasure and entertainment from her pet. According to the critic Mathon de la Cour, "Ce petit animal s'elance avec fxireur en montrant les dents. Sa Maitresse le retient par un ruban, & eile sourit".66 Diderot praised the liveliness of the dog, as well as the refined and illusionistic handling of the lace on Madame Greuze's hair: "La blonde qui coiffe la tete est ä faire demander l'ouvrier; j'en dis autant du reste du vetement".67 He was enthralled by Greuze's command of the technical challenges of his art in this painting, especially in regard to the tiny facial details of the painter's wife.68 However, he balked at the ungainly naturalism with which Greuze had handled the unflattering blemishes of his wife's skin, thereby accentuating the vestiges of pregnancy: Les passages du front sont trop jaunes; on sait bien qu'il reste aux femmes qui ont eu des enfants de ces taches-la, mais si Ton pousse Γ imitation de la nature jusqu'ä vouloir les rendre, il faut les affaiblir, c'est le cas d'embellir un peu, puisqu'on le peut, sans que la ressemblance en souffre. 69

Slightly embellishing nature without betraying it would have displayed both conjugal love and human kindness, he implies. Such beautification would have been legitimated by a gendered theory of portraiture going back to the seventeenth-century art theorist Roger de Piles, who authorized portraitists to flatter women's looks as long as they did not stray too far away from truth.70 Greuze,

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δ

'

10

There is no livret number, as the painting was exhibited after the Salon's opening. See L'Avant-Coureur, 30 September 1765, 602-603. According to Munhall, the drawing now in Sydney "must be the drawing Greuze executed after his painting The Beloved Mother to serve as a model for the engraver Carlo Antonio Porporati" (2002, 200). Mathon added: "II y a beaucoup de finesse & de sentiment dans sa tete; son attitude est souple & elegante; le tableau est eclaire avec art, & la transparence de la chair y est rendue superieurement" (Lettre III 1765, 10). Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 190-1. "le tour de la bouche, les yeux, tous les autres details sont ä ravir; des finesses de couleur sans fin; le cou soutient la tete ä merveille, il est beau de dessin et de couleur, et va comme il doit s'attacher aux epaules" (Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 191). Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 1. De Piles 1708, 132.

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however, according to Diderot, preferred showing off his painterly skills at the expense of his wife's beauty: "comme ces accidents du visage donnent lieu [a l'artiste] par leurs difficultes de deployer son talent, il est rare qu'il s'y refuse." The result was "un ceil rougeätre qui est vrai, mais deplaisant", lips too thin, and "cet air pince de la bouche [qui] lui donne un petit air sucre; cela est tout maniere. Si ce maniere est dans la personne, tant pis pour la personne, le peintre et le tableau".71 These defects, however, pale against Diderot's main criticism, which focuses on Madame Greuze's breast. If there is any female attribute that Greuze was fond of, to the point of fetishistic fixation, it was the breast. In Silence!, Le Chapeau blanc, and many portraits, Greuze endowed the female breast with a sexual appeal far beyond the pictorial capacity of such a specialist of voluptuous subjects as Boucher. Diderot, however, was incensed by what he took to be the painter's blatant, nearly obscene exhibitionism of his wife's breast, motivated by no specific action or gesture in the painting: "Mais pour cette gorge, je ne saurais la regarder, et si, meme a cinquante ans je ne hais pas les gorges". The reason he gave for his distaste was an interesting one: le peintre a penche sa figure en devant, et par cette attitude il semble dire au spectateur: Voyez la gorge de ma femme. Je la vois, Monsieur Greuze; eh bien, votre femme a la gorge molle et jaune; si elle ressemble, tant pis encore pour vous, pour eile et pour le tableau. 72

Aesthetically, Diderot's comment is grounded on a law of spectatorship that he emphasized frequently in his art theory and art criticism: the spectator must never be addressed directly through any detectable pictorial strategy.73 To paraphrase Michael Fried's classic formulation, the illusion of the spectator's absence before the work must be at all times preserved for the painting to work its dramatic effect of spectatorial engagement. Madame Greuze's prominently displayed breast ruptured Diderot's absorption in the aesthetic enjoyment of the painting. But more than anything, Diderot's indignation was due to the powerful mechanism of censorship which Greuze's painting, with its blatant transgression of the joint taboos on adultery and motherhood, had triggered. Here, for once, Diderot identified Greuze's visual ploy for what it was, an invitation to the male beholder to share in his conjugal intimacy, and he squarely refused to partake in this visual adultery. Significantly, Diderot took his revenge on the painter and his promiscuous wife by framing his own review of this portrait betwen two risque anecdotes. The first is the evocation of his flirtation with Madame Greuze when she was still Mile Babuti (cited above, 93). Here Diderot turns the tables on Greuze by showing that he knew her first, and knew her when she was in her sexual prime, 71 11 73

Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 191. Ibid. 191-2. Speaking, for example, of Lagrenee's La Charite romaine, he wrote: "Je ne veux absolument pas que ce malheureux vieillard ni cette femme charitable soupfonnent qu'on les observe; ce soup?on arrete Taction et detruit le sujet" (Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 90).

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and thus has no need for the husband's belated intermediation through sexualized portraiture. The second is a racy anecdote about a cuckolded husband, M. de la Marteliere, which bears an explicit analogy to Greuze's marital situation. Seeing one of his wife's lovers go upstairs with her, and knowing her to possess "the most beautiful face" but very poor thighs, he murmured to himself: "Oui, Oui, Mais je l'attends a la cuisse..." "Made. Grenze", Diderot continues mischievously (and ominously), "a la tete aussi fort belle, et rien n'empechera M. Greuze de dire aussi quelque jour entre ses dents: Oui, oui, mais je l'attends a la gorge...". 74 Diderot's imagined satiric scenario shortcircuits Greuze's strategy of visual pandering. When read along Greuze's later deposition and Memoire, this anecdote seems quite premonitory. One wonders whether Diderot is not intimating that Madame Greuze is already betraying her husband in 1765, a suspicion reinforced by his too emphatic denial: "Cela n'arrivera pas, car sa femme est sage".75 However, in a final mischievous statement, he manages to depreciate both Madame Greuze's breast and her husband's art: "la couleur jaune et la mollesse sont de Madame, mais le defaut de transparence et le mat sont de Monsieur".76 He thus sets himself free from the painter's 'vice' by professing his critical control both over Madame Greuze's sexual appeal and her devious sexualized representation by her husband.

La Mere bien-aimee and Une Tete en pastel The other two works representing Madame Greuze at the Salon of 1765 were not labeled with her name, and Greuze's pandering strategy in them was more complex and veiled. These were smaller works executed in lesser mediums, a pastel and a sketch, and thus less conspicuous than an oil portrait. But they nevertheless constituted an intriguing pair, depending on each other to work their full erotic effect on the viewer. Greuze's canny involvement of his spectator necessitated a visual and critical back-and-forth between the two, as Mathon de la Cour correctly observed: "M. Greuze s'est plü ä placer dans cette mere bien aimee le Portrait de Madame Greuze, & il en a fait l'esquisse en pastel".77 The sketch of La Mere bien-aimee was greeted enthusiastically by critics and the public alike.78 The theme played to the contemporary exaltation of fam-

74 75 76 77 78

Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 192. Ibid. Ibid. Mathon 1765,26-7. Mathon writes about the esquisse for the Mere bien aimee: "C'est une jeune femme entouree de cinq ou six enfans qui l'accablent de caresses. Les uns se disputent ses mains pour les baiser, les autres l'embrassent; il y en a un qui s'avise de grimper derriere elle pour lui baiser le front. La grand'mere est touchee jusqu'aux larmes de cette scene tendre; &

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ily bonding and effusive feeling disseminated a few years earlier by Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloi'se. But whereas fatherhood was represented in that novel by the stern M. de Wolmar and motherhood largely contained to the gynecee, Greuze displayed a couple rejoicing together in their offspring. In his scene, set in the country, a father returning from the hunt beholds his young wife surrounded by no fewer than six children, who hang around her neck, nearly suffocating her with their kisses and caresses. The glorification of motherhood, of the couple's conjugal harmony, and the pronatalist ideology it implied were obvious to all viewers. Diderot, again, captured it best, extending to his male readers the familial and, as he believed, monogamous conjugal message subtending Greuze's pictorial scene: Cela est excellent pour le talent et pour les moeurs; cela pr6clie la population, et peint tres pathetiquement le bonheur et le prix inestimable de la paix domestique; cela dit ä tout homme qui a de l'äme et du sens: Entretiens ta famille dans l'aisance, fais des enfants ä ta femme, fais-lui en tant que tu en pourras, n'en fais qu'ä eile, et sois sür d'etre bien chez toi. 79

He described at length the 'natural' composition of this domestic tableau,80 the truthful and compelling expressions of all characters, and dwelt emphatically on the mother's puzzling expression: "La mere de ces enfants a la joie et la tendresse peintes sur son visage avec un peu de ce malaise inseparable du mouvement et du poids de tant d'enfants qui l'accablent et dont les caresses violentes ne tarderaient pas ä l'exceder si elles duraient". "[C']est cette sensation," he continued, "qui touche a la peine, fondue avec la tendresse et la joie, avec cette position renversee et de lassitude, et cette bouche entrouverte qui donnent ä cette tete separee de la composition un caractere si singulier".81 The "separate head" referred to by Diderot was the Tete en pastel (fig. 8) which he knew represented Madame Greuze. The critic Le Paon did the reverse move, trying to interpret the expression of the Tete en pastel by linking it to the Mere hien-aimee. He came close to identifying the singular nature of its enigmatic expression, but inhibition stopped him from diagnosing it correctly in the end: "Plusieurs personnes on [sic] parues inquietes de savoir dans quel etat eile est representee. On la voit la tete panchee [sic], les yeux ä demi fermes & languissants, la bouche ouverte & les dents serrees". Whether naively or chastely, Le Paon ascribed this indecisive expression to the mother's being overwhelmed by her children's caresses, as shown a few steps away: "Cette tete est d'etude pour l'esquisse de la bonne mere. L'expression designe assez un etat d'atten-

79 80

81

dans ce moment le pere arrive de la chasse, & il recule d'un air qui peint ä la fois la surprise & le plaisir" (Lettre III, 1765, 11-12). Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 196. "La composition de la Mere bien-aimee est si naturelle, si simple, qu'elle fait croire ä ceux qui reflechissent peu, qu'ils l'auraient irnaginee et qu'elle n'exigeait pas un grand effort d'esprit" (Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 194). Ibid. 195.

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drissement d'une mere qui jouit des caresses de sa famille".82 Diderot, however, made no such mistake. A connoisseur in female jouissance, as attested by several prurient scenes of lesbian caresses in La Religieuse, he pointed out that, to identify the specific nature of the mother's expression in La Mere bienaimie, the spectator had to turn to the Tete en pastel representing Madame Greuze, where the sexual nature of that expression was in plain view: Vous voyez bien cette belle poissarde avec son gros embonpoint, qui a la tete renversee en arriere, dont la couleur bleme, le linge de tete etale, en desordre, l'expression melee de peine et de plaisir montrent un paroxysme plus doux ä eprouver qu'honnete a peindre; eh bien, c'est l'esquisse, Γ etude de la Mere bien-aimee,83

By injecting the 'paroxystic' expression displayed in the Tete representing his wife into the expression of the Mere bien-aimee, Greuze had managed to sexualize maternity, a state of female being that, since Rousseau had offered his heroine Julie as the paragon of virtuous mothers, was viewed as hallowed. Many writers, however, including Diderot, were attempting to make motherhood more palatable to aristocratic and middle-class women by emphasizing its pleasurable benefits. In the dedicatory letter of his own drama, Le Pere de famille, to the Princess of Nassau-Saarbrücken (partly reprinted in the article "Jouissance" in the Encyclopedie), Diderot vaunted the importance of sexual pleasure ("ce charme inexprimable" that Nature attached to a couple's "embrassements") for reproductive ends: "C'est le plaisir qui vous a tire du neant." Nursing, in particular, was already being promoted in some quarters as rewarding women with an orgasm-like sensation.84 Greuze capitalized on this trend by insinuating the link between motherhood and sexual gratification on the mother's facial expression. Compositionally, the mother's orgasmic expression and open breast rhyme with the husband's curiously open breeches and his gun, thus emphasizing the carnal dimension of domestic felicity. The public reaction to these two works, and to their daring juxtaposition at the Salon in relation to his wife's portrait, showed how far Greuze had gone in transgressing well-entrenched taboos. According to Diderot, who noted the public's strongly (and unusually) gendered response, women spectators were deeply embarrassed by the Tete en pastel·. "Cette bouche entrouverte, ces yeux nageants, cette attitude renversee, ce cou gonfle, ce melange voluptueux de peine et de plaisir," he wrote, underlining Greuze 's sexual semantics by deictic reinforcement, "font baisser les yeux et rougir toutes les honnetes femmes dans cet endroit. Tout ä cöte, c'est la meme attitude, les memes yeux, le meme cou, le meme melange de passions, et aucune d'elles ne s'en aperijoit."85 Greuze had rendered the orgasmic expression of La Mere bien-aimee invisible as such by contextualizing it within an edifying and touching family scene. The 'equivocal' expression of the "beautiful fishwife" ("belle poissarde") had been neutralized 82 83 84 85

Le Paon, 26-7. Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 188. Duncan 1973, 572. Diderot Sahn de 1765, 1984b, 188.

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by the presence in the painting of legitimating "accessories and circumstances" - a doting husband, an approving mother-in-law, and a garland of loving children.86 However, in the pastel head of Greuze's wife, the undisguised symptoms ofjouissance, stripped of the sacralizing signs of motherhood, leaped out.87 The male spectators' entranced response, however, attests to the success of Greuze's visual pandering: "Au reste, si les femm.es passent vite devant ce morceau", Diderot commented, "les hommes s'y arretent longtemps, j'entends ceux qui s'y connaissent, et ceux qui sous pretexte de s'y connaitre viennent jouir d'un spectacle de volupte forte, et ceux qui, comme moi reunissent les deux motifs".88 As a sophisticated observer of the mores of his society, Greuze was keenly attuned to the social conventions that authorized and regulated the beholding of sexual subjects among genders in his culture. Consequently, we may assume that he conceived the exhibition of his wife's 'paroxystic' portrait as excluding modest female viewers and embodying an implicit sexual invitation to male spectators. By doing so, however, he was undercutting the very message of monogamous marriage and patrilineal descent that was explicitly promoted in La Mere bien-aimee. This subtle destabilization of the ideal of blissful conjugal union was even more pronounced when he turned the sketch into a painting in 1769. Although the painting of La Mere bien-aimee was finished by 1769 and announced in the livret, it was not exhibited.89 Like other amateurs who were attacked that year by critics for refusing to exhibit works in their possession, its owner, the marquis de Laborde, according to Grimm, kept this one jealously for himself: "il a ete fait pour Sultan de la Borde qui n'a pas voulu qu'il fut souille par les regards profanes du public".90 Although Munhall reaffirmed in 2002 his earlier belief that "the painting, for all its pseudo-genre trappings, is in fact a commissioned portrait of the family of the marquis Jean-Joseph de Laborde, a wealthy financier",91 there is no good evidence to support this. Munhall himself states that three of the six children Laborde had by his wife, nee Rosalie Nettine, were born only after 1769. The painting follows the pictorial codes of a genre scene and not those of a family portrait, where a rich financier would likely have insisted on more elegant surroundings and a more decent deportment

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88 89

90 91

"Comment se fait-il", he wrote, "qu'ici un caractere soit decent, et que lä, il cesse de I'etre? Les accessoires, les circonstances nous sont-elles necessaires pour prononcer juste des physionomies? Sans ce secours restent-elles indecises? II faut bien qu'il en soit quelque chose" (Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 188). What is more, Diderot's comparison of the mother's ambiguous expression of bliss combined with pain with the famous expression of "mixed passions" that characterized Marie de Medicis in Rubens's Birth of Louis XIII in the Luxembourg Palace, although meant as laudatory, underlines the sexual twist Greuze had given this paradigmatic expression by reemploying it for his wife. Diderot Salon de 1765, 1984b, 188. Diderot wrote: "ce morceau dont j'ai entendu dire monts et merveilles n ' a point ete expose" (Salon de 1769, 1995, 91). Diderot Salon de 1769, 1995, 116, η. 246. Munhall 1967-77, 108. See Munhall 2002, 203.

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for his family.92 Grimm's addendum to Diderot's Salon of 1769, however, sheds important light on the casting of the painting and may even offer a clue as to why it was not exhibited: M. de la Borde voulait que Greuze fit son portrait et celui de sa famille ä la place des deux principals figures de ce tableau; l'artiste fit semblant de se preter k cette fantaisie, mais il n'eut garde de gäter ses deux figures en leur otant leur poesie.93

Greuze may have partially fulfilled his patron's wishes as far as the latter's portrait was concerned. A red-chalk Portrait of Jean-Joseph de Laborde by Greuze (dated 1768 by Munhall), still in the possession of the family,94 shows not only that Greuze did indeed change the head of the husband after the 1765 sketch, but that his features in this study resemble those of the father in the painting of La Mere bien-aimie, as well as in the drawing (fig. 9) that he carefully prepared for subsequent engraving. Grimm is correct, however, in that Greuze kept his wife's rejuvenated features for the mother in both the painting and the finished drawing. However, this confusion of wives in the painting had serious symbolic implications for the familial and social order that it was the painting's very message to uphold. By keeping his own wife in the family portrait commissioned by Laborde, Greuze, consciously or not, was pushing the strategy of the male compact with his beholder to unacceptable limits. He was no longer appealing to an anonymous male viewer to join him in the enjoyment of his wife, he was actually co-opting his own patron (against the latter's will) and making him a party to his project by inscribing him as an enthused beholder of his, the painter's, wife. This strategy was also socially transgressive. Not only was Greuze pairing a nobleman with a femme du peuple (who appeared to Diderot as "a fishwife"), he was, in paint at least, giving the marquis a progeny of figurative bastards. One understands why the marquis, alive to the potential impropriety and subversiveness of the finished 'family portrait' showing him gazing amorously at Madame Greuze, might have preferred to keep his painting to himself - a decision that his heirs have faithfully kept to this day, as the painting never leaves the collection of its owner in Madrid. From this foray into neglected images of the artist's wife, framed by two of Greuze's best-known works celebrating marriage, a few considerations emerge. First, under the trappings of the cult of sensibility and motherhood, Greuze projects a vision of woman that is not only consistently informed by male desire but that reduces her to sexual desire and offers her to the beholder as a sexual object. In his two fleshed-out marriage celebrations, of civil marriage in L 'Accordee, and of the nuclear family in La Mere bien-aimee, he sustains a patriarchal ideology that explicitly in one and implicitly in the other asserts the ex92

93 94

See, as a point of contrast, the family portrait commissioned by Jean-Jacques Julien, cornte Devin, a president of the Paris Parlement, from Louis-Michel Van Loo (reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition Intimate Encounters, Rand 1997, PI. 33, 165). Diderot Salon de 1769, 1995, 116, η. 246. Reproduced in Munhall 2002, fig. 172.

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change of women between men as a fundamental principle of society. Even if one were to accept L Άccordee as representing the eighteenth-century 'progressive' view of the marriage contract as based on natural law, one would have to admit that, as Carol Pateman makes clear in The Sexual Contract, all contractual theories of civil society and of civil marriage entail the sexual contract, although they often paper it over: The original pact is a sexual as well as a social contract: it is sexual in the sense of patriarchal - that is, the contract establishes men's political right over women - and also sexual in the sense of establishing orderly access by men to women's bodies. 95

The juxtaposition of Greuze's fantasized images of marriage and of his eroticized images of his wife reveals the artist's deep intuition of this hidden dynamic as well as his full participation in it. At the same time as he represents the epiphany of patriarchal ideology in his art, however, he destablizes it by rattling the very taboos on which this ideology is founded: the untouchability of virgins, wives, and mothers, as well as the implicit taboo against the public exhibition of one's own sexual life. He brings sexuality to the heart of the family, in other words. He thus situates himself on the cusp of a cultural paradigm shift in regard to the articulation of sexual relationships in the family and society. According to Foucault, the "dispositif de Γ alliance" (which Foucault sees as a system regulating all matters of kinship), gives way in the eighteenth century to the "dispositif de la sexualite", the signal locus of which is, in his view, the family.96 If any artistic representations make this paradigm shift visible in the eighteenth century, it is the highly polarized, highly sexualized, and already disintegrating patriarchal world, the tristes tropiques of Greuze's conjugal Utopias.

55

56

"Contract is far from being opposed to patriarchy; contract is the means though which modern patriarchy is constituted" (Pateman 1988, 2). "La cellule familiale, telle qu'elle a ete valorisee au cours du XVIIIe siecle, a permis que sur ses deux dimensions principales - l'axe mari-femme et l'axe parents-enfants - se developpent les elements principaux du dispositif de sexualite" (Foucault 1976, 142-43).

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Works Cited Bailey, Colin B. Jean Baptiste Grenze: "The Laundress ". Los Angeles: Getty Museum Studies in Art, 2000. Barker, Emma. "Painting and Reform in Eighteenth-Century France: Greuze's L 'Accordee de village" in: Oxford Art Journal, 20,2, (1997), 42-52. Brookner, Anita. Grenze: The Rise and Fall of an Eighteenth-Century Phenomenon. London: Elek, 1972. Brugerolles, Emmannuelle. De Michel-Ange ä Gericault, Dessins de la donation ArmandValton. Exhibition Catalogue. Paris: Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts, 1981. Bryson, Norman. Word and Image. French Painting of the Ancien Regime. Cambridge: CambrigdeUP, 1981. Cixous, Helene. "Castration ou decapitation?" in: R. Ferguson et al. (eds.), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. New York and Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990, 345-56. Crow, Thomas E. Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris. New Haven: Yale UP, 1985. De Fra Angelico a Bonnard, Chefs d'oeuvre de la Collection Rau. Exhibition Catalogue. Paris: Musee du Luxembourg, 2000-01. De Piles, Roger. Cours de peinture parprincipes. Paris, 1708. Diderot, Denis. Salons (1759-81). Jean Seznec and Jean Adhemar (eds.), 4 vols. O x f o r d : Clarendon Press, 1957-67; rev. 1983. Essais sur la peinture. Salons de 1759, 1761, 1763. Gita May and Jacques Chouillet (eds.), Paris: Hermann, 1984a. Salon de 1765. Else Marie Bukdahl and Annette Lorenceau (eds.), Paris: Hermann, 1984b. Salon de 1767 (Ruines et paysages). Else Marie Bukdahl, Michel Delon, Annette Lorenceau (eds.), Paris: Hermann, 1995a. Salons de 1769, 1771, 1775, 1781 (Heros et martyrs). Else Marie Bukdahl, Michel Delon, Didier Kahn and Annette Lorenceau (eds.), Paris: Hermann, 1995b. Correspondance, 1741-84. Georges Roth (ed.), 16 vols. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 19551970. Diderot et I'art de Boucher a David. Les Salons: 1759-81. Exhibition Catalogue. Paris: Editions de la Reunion des Musees nationaux, 1984. [Drouot] Catalogue de Vente. Importanls tableaux anciens. Paris: Hotel Drouot, May 1985. Duncan, Carol. "Happy Mothers and Other New Ideas in French Art" in: The Art Bulletin, 55, (December 1973), 570-83. Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la sexualite. Vol. 1: La Volonte de savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. Fried, Michael. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Goncourt, Jules and Edmund. L Art du XVIIIe siecle. Vol. 1. Paris: 1880. Greuze, Jean-Baptiste. "Memoire de Greuze contre sa femme" in: Archives de 1'art frangais. Vol. 2.(1852-53), 153-72. Guicharnaud, Helene. "Un Collectionneur parisien, ami de Greuze et de Pigalle, 1'abbe Louis Gougenot (1724-1767)" in: Gazette des Beaux-arts, (July/August 1999), 1-74. Gutwirth, Madelyn. The Twilight of the Goddesses: Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992. Irigaray, Luce. Ce Sexe qui η 'en est pas un. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1977. Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. Ledbury, Mark. "Review of Greuze the Draftsman" in: Eighteenth-Century Studies, 36,2, (2003), 249-254. [Le Paon]. Critique despeintures et sculptures de l'Academie royalel'an 1765, in-12, 34p. Mathon de la Cour, C.-J. Lettres ä Μ.*** sur les Peintures, les Sculptures, et les Gravures, exposees au Sallon du Louvre en 1765. Paris, 1765.

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Munhall, Edgar. "Greuze and the Protestant Spirit" in: Art Quarterly, (spring 1964), 1-21. Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1725-1805. Exhibition Catalogue. Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1976-77. Greuze the Draftsman. Exhibition Catalogue. London: Merrell, in association with the Frick Collection, New York, 2002. Nemilova, Irina S. The Hermitage Catalogue of Western European Paintings. Vol. 10: French Painting, Eighteenth Centur)>. Florence: Giunti, 1988. Novosselskaya, Irina. "The Collection of Drawings by Jean-Baptiste Greuze in St Petersburg" in: Edgar Munhall, Greuze the Draftsman. Exhibition Catalogue. London: Merrell, in association with the Frick Collection, New York, 2002, 28-36. Pateman, Carol. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988. Rand, Richard. "Civil and Natural Contract in Greuze's L 'Accordee de Village" in: Gazette des Beaux-arts, (May/June 1996), 221-34. Intimate Encounters: Love and Domesticity in Eighteenth-Century France. Exhibition Catalogue, Hood Museum of Art, Darmouth College. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997. Rivers, John. Greuze and His Models. London: Hutchinson, 1912. Rochette, Christelle. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) et les collections du musee Greuze du Tournus. Tournus Hötel-Dieu - Musee Greuze, 2000. Thompson, James. "Jean-Baptiste Greuze" in: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, (Winter 1989-1990), 4-52. Wildenstein, Georges. "Quelques documents sur Greuze" in: Gazette des Beaux-arts, (October 1960), 227-34.

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List of Illustrations Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste Jean-Baptiste

Greuze, L 'Accordee de village. Greuze, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Anne-Gabrielle Babuti). Greuze, Madame Greuze endormie. Greuze, La Philosophe endormie. Greuze, Madame Greuze on a Chaise Longue with Dog. Greuze, La Volupte. Greuze, Etude de jeune fille. Greuze, Une Tete en pastel (The Well-Loved Mother) (1765). Greuze, La Mere bien-aimee (circa 1770).

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Fig. 2

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Anne-Gabrielle on white paper. Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunstshalle.

Babuti), Red chalk

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Fig. 3

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Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Madame Grenze endormie. Red chalk (counter-proof). Tournus, Hötel-Dieu - Musee Greuze. Photo: Gonzalves.

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Jean-Baptiste Greuze, La Philosophe endormie. Etching and engraving by JeanMichel Moreau and Jacques Aliamet. Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago.

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Fig. 6

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, La Volupte. Oil on panel. St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Courtesy of the Hermitage.

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Fig. 7

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Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Etude de jeune fille. Brash with brown and black inks. Paris, Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts.

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Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Une Tete en pastel (The Well-Loved Mother) (1765). Pastel with red, black, and white chalks on light brown paper. New Century Gift Committee. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art. Photo © 2002 Board of Trustees.

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Werner Wolf

Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and its Ambivalent Position in the 'Herstory' of Gender Roles1 Gibber, The Careless Husband; Lillo, Silvia; Richardson, Pamela

1. Introduction: the eighteenth century as a particularly deplorable phase in the feminist 'herstory' of repressive and marginalizing feminine gender roles? In George Lillo's sentimental ballad opera Silvia, or the Country Burial (1730) a midwife sings the following song: A Maid, tho' beautiful and chaste, Like a Cypher stands aione; Man, like a Figure, by her plac'd, Makes her Worth and Value known. 2

This text fits very well into the frame of a feminist (her-)story, as represented, for instance, by Ina Schabert's recent history of English Literature written 'from the point of view of gender research' (Englische Literaturgeschichte. Eine neue Darstellung aus der Sicht der Geschlechterforschung). In this book the eighteenth century is referred to as a period characterized by 'the increasing influence of a new gender model that discriminates against women' ("den zunehmenden Einfluss eines neuen, frauendiskrimierenden Geschlechtermodells"3). The gender model mentioned is the "two-sex model" as described by Thomas Laqueur.4 Its effects are well-known: the marginalization of women as mere "Cypherfs]" to which only men can give "Value", and the rigid restriction of female activities to the domestic sphere, for which women, due to their supposed essential difference from men, are said to be naturally predestined. In the eighteenth century the role of women seems to reach an especially problematic stage, owing to the rise of the repressive patriarchal norms of a mercantile middle class, whose very vocabulary informs the metaphors used by Lillo's midwife. To regard the eighteenth century merely as a particularly misogynist phase in a history of Western culture which is made to appear as a continuous story of patriarchal oppression that preceded and indeed necessitated twentieth-century feminism may be politically desirable for some. Historically, it would, however, 1 2 3 4

Manuscript completed in 2000. Lillo Silvia, 90. Schabert 1997, 39. See Schabert 1997,40; Laqueur 1990.

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be unacceptably one-sided. This is not only true in view of the emancipatory tendencies of the Enlightenment and of contemporary political radicalism, tendencies which also extended to the role of women, as Schabert and Vera Nünning have shown.5 It also, and perhaps primarily, applies to the historical frame which shapes Lillo's Silvia and which Schabert, as Ansgar Nünning has rightly criticized in a review of her book, does not duly take into account, namely sensibility,6 Thus, the song sung by Lillo's midwife does not merely consist of the 'misogynist' first stanza just quoted but has a quite different second stanza: this stanza deals with the wife's position in marriage, that is, in the social institution which is most central in the context of sensibility and in which, allegedly, the oppression of women was most efficiently cemented by the new role of female domesticity: The Tyrant, Man, fast bound for Life, To rule she takes upon her; Whene'er a Maid is made a Wife, She becomes a Dame of Honour.7

One might say that this domestic "rule" of the wife over her husband is in turn a one-sided and discriminating view of the gender roles. Yet together the two stanzas highlight an essential trait of eighteenth-century representations of women: the position of women with respect to men and masculine roles is much more complex and more ambivalent than we are often made to believe. Thanks to research carried out by Eva Figes, G. J. Barker-Benfield, Vera Nünning, and others, it is by now a well-established fact that eighteenth-century cultural history, especially as far as sensibility is concerned, is characterized by a noteworthy 'feminization' * In most cases this fact has been established with regard to general trends in cultural and social history or with reference to the rise of a female reading and writing culture and 'feminocentric' 9 novels by female authors.10 As a complement to this research I want to show in the following that this tendency towards feminization can, to a certain extent, also be observed in both sentimental drama and sentimental fiction written by male authors. Among these Samuel Richardson has found some attention in research," but, as we will see, he is not the only author in the field. 'Feminization' in this context means that female characters and what has traditionally 5

See Schabert 1997, chaps. 2.2,4.1, and 4.2, and V. Nünning 1998. See A. Nünning 1998b, 531. For the international culture of eighteenth-century sensibility, sensibilite or Empfindsamkeit see, among numerous publications, Wolf 1984, chaps. 1 and 2, Todd 1986, Mullan 1988, or Barker-Benfield 1992. 7 Lillo Silvia, 91. 8 See Figes 1982, esp. 15; Spencer 1986, esp. xi; F. H. Ellis 1991, esp. 12; Barker-Benfield 1992; Göbel 1996, esp. 100-101; and, as best investigation in the field to date, Vera Nünning's research (1994, 1996a and 1996b; 1998, esp. chap. 7.4). 9 For this term see Miller 1980, 149, and Mullan 1988, 67. 10 A noteworthy exception, emphasizing the representation of feminized 'men of feeling', is Göbel 1998, esp. 157-159, and Göbel 1999. " See Rogers 1976/77, Eagleton 1982, esp. 13-17, Göbel 1998, esp. 150-151, 153. 6

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been conceived of as mainly feminine norms and patterns of behaviour - even if they are represented by male characters - are attributed a central, not to say dominant role. One should, however, only speak about a 'tendency towards feminization', in order to account for the fact that in the formation of female gender roles sensibility is an ambivalent frame: as is revealed most clearly in Richardson's Pamela, this frame includes elements that both exalt and marginalize women.12 Yet, in the interest of a balanced view of the 'new eighteenth century", which has recently found so much attention,13 it is worthwhile emphasizing an aspect of the sentimental representation, or rather 'construction' 14 , of women and femininity which in certain (her-)stories is often suppressed: namely that one part of this ambivalence implies a redefinition of female gender roles which cannot simply be subsumed under the notion of patriarchal marginalization or oppression of women. In the following, this ambivalence shall be exemplified by three 'feminocentric' texts from the period in which sensibility emerged: Colley Cibber's The Careless Husband (1704), which counts among the earliest sentimental comedies in English literature,15 George Lillo's ballad opera Silvia (1730), and Richardson's inaugural sentimental novel Pamela (1740/41), which in some respects can be considered to have been anticipated by Lillo's Silvia,16

2. The defeat of male Restoration libertinism and the victory of feminine sensibility in Cibber's The Careless Husband One general problem in any genderized cultural history is caused by the fact that both in life and in its fictional representations the gender opposition is hardly ever the only relevant category. In sentimental literature, the opposition 'male vs. female' is in some cases complemented by a national(ist) difference 'prone

12

Another facet that highlights the complexity of eighteenth-century gender formation is a fact that has recently been stressed by Göbel (1998 and 1999): the feminized 'man of feeling', who is perhaps the best symptom of the impact of (originally) feminine patterns of behaviour, is complemented, towards the end of the eighteenth century and already tendentially beyond the limits of sensibility, by the 'woman of sense'. Göbel (1999) also has pointed out that while feminization becomes something positive in moral terms, 'effeminacy', in early sensibility, remains negative, if used as an argument in the social struggle against aristocratic luxury.

13

Cf. Nussbaum/Braun, eds. 1987; Stratmann/Buschmeier, eds. 1992; Fludernik/Nestvold, eds. 1998. For the term 'construction', which would more adequately convey what happens in cultural history, and particularly in sensibility, than 'representation' with its implication of mimetic 'mirroring' of real life, see below, my concluding remarks. See Foltinek 1976, 34. The influence of Lillo's play on Richardson's novel has repeatedly been remarked upon, see Bernbaum, 1915/58, 165, Burgess 1968, 8, and Schabert 1997, 271f.

14

15 10

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to French influence' vs. 'genuinely English',17 and in most cases by a difference in terms of historical norm systems and of class.18 In this latter respect the system of sensibility with its typical stress on middle class virtue and values, its celebration of refined emotions and their sincere and 'natural' expression, is frequently opposed to the 'immorality' of aristocratic libertinism, to the culture of cynic wit, emotional control and polite insincerity, and to the aestheticized, power- and pleasure-oriented social behaviour of the Restoration upper class, as epitomized by the main characters in Restoration comedy. The importance of this latter opposition, as far as the evaluation of marriage and sexual norms is concerned, can be seen once again in Lillo's midwife. She defends herself against the reproach that her "praise of marriage" is done "for [her] own Ends" as follows: [...] an honest Woman, in my way of Business, can hardly get Bread; and I never expect to see it otherwise, while Matrimony is so much despised as it is; why, the Men are grown so horrible cunning, that few of them will marry at all; and the Women are grown so forward, that they won't stay till they are married. 19

This complaint about the devaluation of marriage and the libertinism of both sexes ("cunning" men and sexually "forward" women) clearly points to Restoration norms as the negative normative background to Lillo's Silvia. This same background is also conspicuously present in Cibber's The Careless Husband. Restoration wit and 'immorality' still play an important role here, but again mainly as a foil to the positive sentimental norms, so that this play may even be called an inverted Restoration comedy.20 There are three main representatives of libertinism, among which, interestingly, there is one woman: the coquettish and, as her telling name indicates, fashionable Lady Betty Modish. According to this sexually "forward" character, "the greatest Value of a Woman is her Beauty" (107), which, together with an 'estate', confers "Power Pontifical" (110). As is characteristic of Restoration heroines such as Harriet in George Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676), Lady Betty is "ill-natur'd" (111) and "love[s] dearly to hurt People" (138).21 Love to her is a game of power in which one must not lay bare one's feelings (in her view, "Sincerity in Love" is therefore "out of Fashion" [134]). Since her conduct is crudely power- and pleasure-oriented, she belittles the blessings of marriage, and this is what most 17

18

19 20

21

See, e.g., the epilogue to Cibber's The Careless Husband, 172, or the Prologue to Lillo's Silvia, 33. The importance of social roles superseding gender roles has recently been emphasized by Göbel 1998, 157 and 160. Lillo Silvia, 91. F. H. Ellis calls it, perhaps with too much emphasis on its indebtedness to the Restoration comedy of manners, "a Restoration Comedy in the process of becoming sentimental" (1991, 39). The hostility towards Restoration "Plays so full / Of Madmen, Coxcombs, and the driveling Fool; / Of Citts, of Sharpers, Rakes and roaring Bullies, / Of Cheats, of Cuckolds, Aldermen and Cullies" already becomes clear in the Prologue (89). This even includes physical violence, as is shown in her hitting Sir Charles with her fan (see 138).

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obviously ranges her among the representatives of the implied anti-norms of the play. 22 She has two male counterparts, a doubling of tendentially negative men which indicates that, as is often the case in sentimental literature, 'immorality' and especially active sexual licentiousness, is, in terms of gender, predominantly conceived of as masculine, even though, in terms of sex, 'unnatural' women can participate in these norms. The first of these 'rakes' is Sir Charles Easy, the eponymous "careless husband", who entertains two adulterous relationships: first with Lady Graveairs,23 and then with his wife's waiting woman Mrs Edging. 24 He 'needs' such vents, although he admires his wife as "extreamly handsom" and "certainly the best Woman in the World" (97), since in true Restoration fashion he thinks love and sex to be incompatible with marriage. This is also Lord Foppington's opinion. He, too, despises marital fidelity and cannot understand how "the Women of Virtue" can "expect of a Man, just as they do of a Coach-Horse, that one's Appetite, like t'other's Flesh, should increase by Feeding" (116). He has married only in order to "pay [his] Debts at Play, and disinherit [his] younger Brother" (115), but his wife "is positively of no manner of Use in [his] Amours" (114). He and Sir Charles frequently use typically male metaphors and comparisons in talking of extra-marital lovemaking, expressions that are taken from the fields of war, hunting, business or game.25 The sexual licentiousness of these male rakes is informed by a misogy22

23

24

25

See 151, where she ironically talks about the "comfortable Advantages in Marriage, that our old Aunts and Grandmothers would persuade us o f ' . At first glance, Lady Graveairs, owing to her participation in adultery, seems to be a partner of Lady Betty's in terms of immorality and thus would create a balance of two 'immoral' women as against two equally problematic men. Yet, as a discarded mistress of Sir Charles's, she appears more as a victim of male 'immorality' than as an active representative of libertinism herself. Mrs. Edging's role appears to be more problematic than Lady Graveairs's, since her jealous intrigue against her rival Lady Graveairs and her contempt and jealousy of Lady Easy in act I as well as her being revealed in a clearly sexual situation with Sir Charles in act V render her more actively 'immoral'. However, like Lady Graveairs, she is also represented as another victim of Sir Charles's. For war, see Lord Foppington: "Courage is the whole Mystery of making Love, and of more Use than Conduct is in War" (119); for hunting, see Sir Charles: "[...] I cannot see why a Man that can ride fifty Miles after a poor Stag, should be asham'd of running twenty in chase of a fine Woman, that, in all Probability, will make him so much the better Sport too" (103); for business, see Sir Charles [to Lady Graveairs]: "Look you, Madam - I have lov'd you very well a great while; now you would have me love you better and longer, which is not in my Power to do; and I don't think there's any Plague upon Earth like a Dun that comes for more Money than one's ever likely to be able to pay" (125); and for game, see Lord Foppington: "[...] I fancy I know enough of the Game, to make it but an even Bet I get her [a certain Fille de Joye] for nothing [...]" (113). - For the general indebtedness of The Careless Husband to the discourse of Restoration comedy as a negative foil see also David G a l e f s brilliant analysis of the imagery used in the comedy: the traditional Restoration equation of love-making with war, hunting or gaming (including "bills and payment" [Galef 1990, 83]) is here superseded by a "moral language that eventually transcends" (82) these metaphors and the attitudes expressed by them.

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nist tendency, which does not have a counterpart on the female side and confirms the impression that sexually aggressive 'immorality' is in this play predominantly masculine. This misogyny is perhaps most conspicuous in Lord Foppington's couplet concluding act II: - Women, Born to be Controll'd Stoop to the Forward, and the Bold. (119)

As opposed to these remnants of Restoration attitudes there are two major characters who already hold sentimental positions. Like the representatives of Restoration norms, the adherents of the new norm are sexually mixed, though in terms of gender a connotation of femininity is attributed to both. Thus, the unmarried Lord Morelove, who loves Lady Betty with a kind of love that is 'more' than a mere hunt for amusement, is not 'manly' enough to conduct an intrigue in order to win her and is forced to rely on the advice of his more virile friend Sir Charles. Yet even then Lord Morelove only imperfectly succeeds in the little dissimulations and the roles which Sir Charles has advised him to adopt, since, in true sentimental fashion, the language of his heart - and this also means his body language 26 - too often betrays his deep and sincere emotional involvement. Instead of male 'forwardness' he - to Sir Charles's dismay - displays "Humility" in a decisive encounter with Lady Betty (126) and infracts the rules of Restoration courtship by betraying unmistakable signs of love (see 126 and 148). Unlike Lord Foppington he also endorses the sentimental view of marriage as an unviolable bond and looks forward to always enjoying the company of his future wife, 27 an enjoyment which characteristically does not bear sexual 28

connotations. The other main sentimental character is Lady Easy. She is the opposite of the typical Restoration coquette in her deep respect for marriage: she does not regard marriage as a business-like or merely conventional, but as an emotional relation, which is sanctified by the mutual love and constancy of the partners.29 She also departs from 'modish' norms in her religious feelings and her regard for virtue, that is, for "the Beauty of the Mind" (107) rather than for outer beauty. In some respects the sentimental norms to which she subscribes place her in a dependent and inferior position as a woman and wife. Thus, she defines her "best Happiness" in relation to "a deserving Husband" (111), whose company she prefers to that of all other people (see 99). What - from a modern per26 27

28

29

See his trembling hand mentioned on pages 126 and 148. See 115: "Lord Fop. Now I think deferring a Dun, and getting rid of one's Wife, are two of the most agreeable Sweets in the Liberties of an English Subject. - Lord Mo. If I were married, I would as soon part from my Estate, as from my Wife". To a certain extent Lord Morelove can thus be regarded as an early 'man of feeling'; for another early representative of this new 'feminized' sentimental male, who epitomizes the convergence of gender roles in the culture of sensibility, the positive character Altamont in Nicholas Rowes The Fair Penitent (1703) has been mentioned, see Göbel 1998, 157. See 109: "[...] now-a-days one hardly ever hears of such a thing as a Man of Quality in Love with the Woman he wou'd marry: To be in Love now, is only having a Design upon a Woman, a modish way of declaring War against her Virtue [...]".

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spective30 - most makes her appear to be an unemancipated woman is her excessive patience with her adulterous husband, a patience which seems to prefigure the repressive female gender role as propagated by the Victorian author of the notorious poem "The Angel in the House", Coventry Patmore. 31 The climax of Lady Easy's patience is reached in the pathetic 'Steinkirk-scene', in which she discovers her husband sleeping and without due vestments in the telltale company of Mrs Edgings: rather than giving vent to her jealousy, Lady Easy first thinks of preventing him from catching a cold (!) and kindly covers him with a scarf, a so-called Steinkirk. Significantly, this almost unbelievable excess of humility triggers Lady Easy's greatest success: her virtue shames her husband, makes him repent and become a rake reformed, a change which draws tears of happy emotion from her (see 160). It would, however, be misleading to regard her behaviour in the Steinkirk-scene merely as another symptom of traditional female passivity, as one may be tempted to do. There is in fact evidence that Lady Easy's forgiving virtue is an attitude in which power does play a conscious role as early as in the play's opening monologue, where Lady Easy discovers her "plan of reformation through inducing shame" 32 : "My Eyes and Tongue shall yet be blind and silent to my Wrongs; nor would I have him think my Virtue cou'd suspect him, till by some gross, apparent Proof of his Misdoing, he forces me to see, - and to forgive it" (95). 33 Thus, Cibber's representation of Lady Easy's behaviour is not 30 31

32 33

See the sarcastic critique of the play's norms by Stein (1988/96, 1001). Coventry Patmore, "The Wife's Tragedy", from: The Angel in the House (1854-62), 74: Man must be pleased; but him to please Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf Of his condoled necessities She casts her best, she flings herself. How often flings for nought, and yokes Her heart to an icicle or whim, Whose each impatient word provokes Another, not from her, from him; While she, too gentle even to force His penitence by kind replies, Waits by, expecting his remorse, With pardon in her pitying eyes; [...] And when, ah woe, she loves alone, Through passionate duty love springs higher, As grass grows taller round a stone. Galef 1990, 86. John A. Vance (1983), and, following him, David Galef (1990) have emphasized this aspect of power relations in The Careless Husband, and both have shown to what extent Lady Easy's self-control and forgiveness ultimately assure her a powerful position in her marriage (Vance, however, in this only sees a "continuing" of Restoration comedy [74] and fails to appreciate the new, sentimental quality of this power). Both also have drawn attention to the fact that the famous 'Steinkirk scene' has a symbolic value in the use of the scarf and its name, "recalling the French victory over the English in 1692 at Steenkerke, from which the scarf derived its name" (Galef 1990, 87; cf. also Vance 1983, 74, note 13). If this symbol of victorious power functions on the level of the authorial discourse, of

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simply one of "those absurdities" originating in a "system of contradictions" of which the eighteenth-century author Mary Hays "accuse[s] men" and their view of women: 34 Lady Easy does not "set aside in a moment, love, jealousy and pride", taking recourse to helpless feminine "patience", 35 as Hays says in her ironic remarks (which could be read as a devastating critique of the Steinkirk scene), but follows a powerful stratagem of reform. This stratagem is eventually successful, as her seeming female submissiveness brings about the most decisive event in terms of plot: it re-establishes the matrimonial harmony in the main plot and substantially contributes to the happy ending of the comedy. This ending consists in the confirmation of what Lawrence Stone has described as a 'companionate marriage', a union which is based on mutual esteem and emotional ties. This emotional basis has in fact never been altogether absent among the Easies, as is indicated in the new form of address "my dear", which both partners use throughout the play instead of the traditional 'Sir' and 'Madam'. 36 As a rake reformed, Sir Charles also has a beneficient effect on the sub-plot: he criticizes Lady Betty for her cruelty towards Morelove and even reduces her to tears. This triggers the second reformation in the play: the transformation of Lady Betty from a Restoration coquette to a woman who professes an "utter Detestation of any past, or future Gallantry" (168) and, like Sir Charles, repents of her sins. With this double reformation of male and female rakes the play ends not only with the general victory of sentimental over Restoration norms, the ending also gives normative centrality to Lady Easy and the female elements of gentle, modest and virtuous behaviour as embodied by herself and Lord Morelove. Lord Foppington's 'macho' creed, according to which women are "Born to be Controll'd" and "Stoop to the Forward, and the Bold" (119), is pointedly rejected, and both Sir Charles and Lady Betty are humiliated, while Lady Easy's tender power of virtue triumphs. Thus, within the frame of sensibility, the old opposition between male 'forwardness' and female 'modesty' gives way to a generalization of the traditionally female norm for both sexes. The special value attributed to the positive feminine norm can also be seen in another instance: in the fact that Lady Easy's virtue is not just an unreflected fulfilment of a feminine stereotype but a conscious affirmation of her dignity as a woman. This allows her to enjoy the only kind of pride which has positive connotations in the play, the pride of virtue:

34 35 36

which Lady Easy cannot be aware, Lady Easy herself here implies a consciousness of power. Quoted in Jones, ed. 1990, 232. Ibid. See 99-102, 137, 158, 162, 171. Sir Charles and Lady Easy are the only characters using these forms of endearment in the play in cross-gender addresses. For this change in address as a possible evidence of a tendency towards a 'companionate marriage' see Stone 1977, 329-330, and on the cultural history of the emergence of this ideal of marriage see his entire chap. 8.

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A secret Pride, to tell my Heart my Conduct has been just - How low are vicious Minds that offer Injuries! how much superior Innocence that bears 'em! [...] there's a Pleasure ev'n in the Melancholy of a quiet Conscience - . (158)37

On the fictional level, this pride is "secret", but on the external level of theatrical communication, it publicly defines her behaviour as exemplary and dignified. She thus represents a woman who, at the outset of the eighteenth century, has already achieved what the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft propagated at its conclusion as one of the "great end[s]" of female "exertions": "to [...] acquire the dignity of conscious virtue".38 Even Lady Easy's husband must eventually acknowledge that she is his "Superior eveiy way" (161). To modern eyes her sentimental virtue may utterly condemn her as a deplorably unemancipated and weak wife; yet, in the historical frame of sensibility, it confers on her a remarkable power which quite resembles what Lillo's midwife says about "The Tyrant Man, fast boundfor Life" who is "rule[d] " by his honourable wife.39

3. A prelude to Pamela: the reformation of the male rake and the reward of female virtue in Lillo's Silvia Gender constructions of a similar type can be found in Lillo's Silvia. Although, in the humorous subplot, which is centred on a mock burial, this ballad opera40 departs somewhat from the sentimental standard, in the main plot sensibility is even more conspicuous than in The Careless Husband,4' especially with regard to the display of emotions. Like Cibber's comedy, Lillo's work, which is based 37

38

35

40

41

Pride is interestingly also mentioned by Lady Betty as one of Lady Easy's motivations to tolerate her husband's infidelities without complaining about them: "[...] her Pride indeed makes her carry it off without taking any Notice of it to me [...]". (110) For a discussion of Lady Easy's pride see F. H. Ellis 1991, 40-41. Wollstonecraft 1792/1982, 108f. Similar testimonies of "conscious virtue" abound in sentimental literature, including the sentimental heroines Silvia and Pamela discussed below. It is thus reductive to describe the typical construction of female roles in sentimental drama as restricted to that of a passive 'wife, victim or object of enraptured admiration' ("Ehefrau, Opfer, oder Objekt von Schwärmerei"), as Ansgar Nünning (1998a, 144) has claimed in his otherwise highly valuable overview of eighteenth-century English drama. In conformity with my subject I here only deal with the normative aspects of the play and in particular disregard its musical dimension; for this aspect see the brief discussion in Noble 1993, 11-12. C. F. Burgess (1968, 7-10), opposing Ernest Bernbaum's view of Silvia as being "in all important respects [...] a sentimental comedy" (1915/58, 144), insists in an exaggerated way on allegedly "antisentimental" elements of the play (7), but his arguments, where they have some weight, are centred only on the subplot; as regards the main plot, his remark that Welford "is not the conventional autocrat who insists that his child comply with his wishes. Rather, he is tolerant and understanding" (8) is curious as an argument against the sentimental character of Silvia, since the sentimentalization of hierarchical power relationships is one of the hallmarks of sensibility. For a short and more recent discussion of the 'sentimentality' of Silvia, which is ultimately confirmed in spite of the low-comedy subplot (as indicated in the subtitle), cf. also Noble 1993, 6-9.

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on a story previously published in one of the earliest organs of sensibility, Addison's and Steele's The Spectator,42 follows the pattern of the reformation of a rake in its main plot. The underlying norm system is again informed by the opposition between negative Restoration libertinism and positive sensibility, an opposition which is even more clearly genderized than in The Careless Husband. In contrast to Cibber's comedy, which is set in a rather homogeneous aristocratic society assembled at Windsor, Silvia is, however, set in the country, far away from court and town, Moreover, the difference in norms is doubled by a class difference: the Restoration libertinism is mainly represented by a (seeming) aristocrat, Sir John, while sensibility is embodied by apparently lower-class characters. Sir John, like his normative ancestors, the rakes of Restoration comedy, does not appreciate marriage and thinks it incompatible with love (see 97), which for him is a "free-born Passion" (41). This is why he has "resolv'd never to marry" (43) and seeks non-marital favours of his childhood acquaintance Silvia by bribing her with half his estate (see 41). Yet Silvia rejects him as long as he sticks to what she regards as an immoral attitude. Sir John consoles himself with Lettice, a tailor's daughter, who, like his servant Betty, proves to be "a less scrupulous Female" (43) and even "is as much a Libertine in the Affairs of Love as [him]self' (72). In fact, Lettice looks favourably on Sir John's seduction, since she does not want to be married to the farmer whom her mother has selected for her. As it used to be for Restoration heroines (and heroes), love for her is a factor in a game of power, "Interest" and "Artifice" (74): she does "[n]ot [...] care for" Sir John, yet wants to be "a Mistress" (73) and thereby adopts the following policy: "since I find what my Favours are worth, I'll be cunning and get as much for 'em as I can, that I may never work, nor be poor again". (71) Among the male characters of the play, the sentimental position is represented by Silvia's apparent father, farmer Welford, who, in contrast to the behaviour of Lettice's mother towards her daughter, "does not force [Silvia's] Will" (39) and loves the girl as much as he hates "Lewdness" (78). Sensibility is also, and predominantly, embodied by the eponymous heroine herself. Silvia is not only a model daughter but also (like Cibber's Lady Easy) a religious believer (see 108) and (in contrast to Lettice) an advocate of typically sentimental sexual ethic, which she eloquently defends.43 Although she in fact loves Sir John, her "Modesty and Prudence" (39) make her hate his dubious proposals, which she does not even dare to repeat before Welford (65): for her, love is not a matter of interest which can by-pass marriage, but is intimately linked with this sacred institution, which is of central value in the play.44 42

43 44

See Noble 1993, 2, who identifies a story about 'virtue in distress' in The Spectator no. 375, as the main source, and no. 402 as an additional possible source. Cf. the self-reflexive justification of her "musty, moral Speeches" in the Epilogue, p. 112. Lillo is 'realistic' enough to indicate that marriage is not always a happy institution, though; Welford himself was unhappily married, and the marriage of the subplot characters Timothy Stitch and his drunkard wife Dorothy does not seem to be too positive either (at least not before their eventual reconciliation after Dorothy's live burial and 'resurrection').

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The ambivalence of sensibility with regard to female gender roles which could be seen in The Careless Husband is also present in Silvia. Here, however, the problematic side is not excessive feminine humility, but a factor linked with one of the roots of sensibility: the norms of a mercantile, capitalist middle class. They are revealed by the metaphors used in the play for the propagation of sentimental norms: marriage is called an institution which renders the wife a "just Possession" of the husband (105),45 after having been the "Property]" of the father (76),46 and female 'modesty' or virginity is referred to in terms of a commodity that has a market value "like other Fruit", which, if once "pluckt [...] Lose their Relish, and grow mellow", as is expressed in one of the songs (69).47 If "pluckt" under the wrong circumstances, even the men responsible, such as Sir John, must "despisfe]" the fallen woman (103),48 thereby displaying an alarming instance of a misogynist double standard. All this seems to justify those critics who discredit sensibility and especially the sentimental celebration of domesticity and marriage as a misogynist frame based on the essential 'zero value' of women, who are only valued if the "Figure " of a man stands by, as expressed in the aforementioned first stanza sung by Lillo's midwife (90). Yet this is at best a half-truth, and it would be unfair, to say the least, not to take the other half of the truth into consideration as well. As in The Careless Husband, the female position in Silvia ultimately emerges as the dominant one: the play culminates in the reformed rake Sir John adopting the very norms which are represented by the heroine Silvia. As in Cibber's comedy, it is only the respect for sentimental virtue which confers true 'value' to individuals. When viewed against the background of class difference, this value-conferring quality of sensibility and the pride of virtue are even particularly emphasized by Lillo. This can be seen in farmer Welford's at times incredibly self-assured insistence on the righteousness of his and Silvia's position in contrast to Sir John's. Welford calls him a "mighty Man, who, by a vile Abuse of his Power, has dared to wrong" him by attacking Silvia's virtue (66). The supremacy of sensibility, as epitomized by Silvia, is also expressed in Welford's praise of her "inflexible Virtue, that sets her as much above Temptation from Flattery, Wealth, or Power, as they are beneath her true Value" (77). Silvia herself, "notwithstanding [her alleged] humble Birth, and Fortune" (41), feels em-

45 46 47

48

Yet Welford, who here seems to be the spokesman of the implied norms, nevertheless maintains the central value of marriage by pointing out that marriage troubles "are not essential to a married State, but might have been prevented by a more prudent Choice" (78). This is Sir John's formulation after his reform. " Welford: Are not our Children the best and dearest Part of our Properties?" (76). This is part of a warning by Betty which is addressed to fellow-women, who ought not to believe - as she herself had done - in men's "Flatt 'ries " (69). Cf. also Silvia's conviction that "she who parts with her Virtue, parts with the only Charm, that makes a Woman truly lovely; and she may well expect, for she deserves, to be despis'd" (83). "Sir John·. [...] the Easiness with which she [Lettice] gave up her Honour, makes her, tho' pitied, yet despis'd, even by me, the Author of her Ruin" (103).

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powered by her conscious virtue to resist Sir John and to confront him with her "Indignation" (41).49 She is convinced that The lowest, in Virtue, may rise, 'Tis Virtue alone makes us great. (67)

The text of this song appears to be almost prophetic for her: in this play, feminine sensibility not only allows its main representative to enjoy the consciousness of her own worth, and sensibility does not only emerge as structurally dominant on the levels of plot and of the implied norms, but sentimental virtue also receives a substantial reward on the level of the characters: this happens in the terminal revelation of Silvia's noble birth. When Welford discloses that she is really the daughter and true heiress of the late Sir John Senior and that her lover, 'Sir' John Junior, is really his, Welford's, son, the superiority of Silvia's sensibility receives, as it were, its social stamp of approval. At the same time this discovery, which socially upgrades the virtuous woman while downgrading the rakish man, perpetuates the old aristocratic myth of the intrinsic harmony of nobility of birth and nobility of heart. This is symptomatic of the integrative tendency of sensibility, many of whose norms derive from middle class values and appeal to the bourgeoisie, while the aristocracy is not excluded in the redefinition of true nobility. In Silvia, sensibility thus triumphs in several respects in and through a woman, while leaving the way open for reformed aristocrats to join her female moral superiority by adopting the new system of norms. In order to emphasize the exemplary quality of sensibility, Lillo sets great store by the fact that the heroine's "Love and Virtue" appear to be totally "[disinterested [...]", as she herself claims (108): before her noble birth is revealed, he has Silvia refuse 'Sir' John's love, even though 'Sir' John has already given up his libertinism and now does want to marry her. The reason for her refusal is clearly formulated by Silvia herself: it is to prevent the "just [...] suspicion] that [her] former Resentment was not from the Love of Virtue, and Contempt of Riches, but Artifice, to make the better Terms" (105). This reads like an anticipation of a reproach addressed to the way in which Richardson, in Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, tried to show that sentimental virtue 'pays'. In a striking number of respects Pamela is in fact similar to Lillo's play, which thus seems to be a - somewhat less successful50 - prelude to Richardson's enormously popular novel. Yet Richardson deviates from Lillo's model not only in that he does not conclude his text in comedy fashion, once the happy marriage is ensured, and rather dedicates a substantial part of his two-volume work to his heroine's married life, but also in his treatment of class difference. In rewarding his humble heroine by a social rise through marriage, Richardson unwittingly casts some doubt on the disinterestedness of sentimental virtue (a problem re-

49

50

In view of this virtuous self-consciousness it is misleading to call Silvia's refusal "instinctive" (Noble 1993, 3). For the history of the play's reception and possible reasons for its moderate popularity see Noble 1993, 12-15.

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lentlessly highlighted by Henry Fielding in his parody Shamela [1741]). Yet by avoiding the hackneyed romance conventions of infants exchanged in their cradles and belated discovery of noble birth, which Lillo still had used, Richardson achieves both a gain in probability and in the lustre of his heroine's triumph over the aristocratic rake reformed. 51

4. The ambivalence of Pamela as to the construction of feminine gender roles: sensibility as domestication of women and triumph of femininity As in the texts discussed so far, sensibility appears in Pamela, too, as a markedly ambivalent frame for the construction of female gender roles. The aspects of sensibility which marginalize women here consist primarily in "the glorification of female domesticity" 52 and in Pamela's role as housewife, to which more than half of Richardson's novel is dedicated. This emphatic 'domestication' of women is, for instance, detailed in the 48 marriage conditions to which Pamela is made to subscribe (see I, 406-409). 53 These differ substantially from what is at issue in the famous 'proviso scene' of Congreve's late Restoration Comedy The Way of the World (1700): a definition of the (future) husband's role but also a guarantee of the (future) wife's independence. 54 In contrast to this, the conditions which serve as the basis of Pamela's and Mr B.'s marriage and which she - surprisingly from today's point of view - calls "kind rules" (I, 405) are remarkable in their one-sidedness: while they contain hardly any restrictions of the husband's role,55 they circumscribe the wife's in a detailed way and are almost exclusively centred on her inferior position.56 This inferiority also appears in Pamela's intention to continue addressing Mr B. as her 'master' even when

51

52 53 54

55

56

Pamela thus exemplifies what Richardson has said about himself: "[...] the Tendency of all I have written is to exalt the Sex" (letter to Lady Bradshaigh of Dec. 15, i 748), see Richardson 1964, 112; cf. also Eagleton 1982, 13. Anderson/Zinsser 1988, 117. Cf. also the "sweet injunctions" (I, 331) detailed in I, 330-335. This shows that in the aristocratic context of Restoration comedy the female gender roles had an emancipatory element which either does not appear in the critical mirror of sentimental literature at all (as too dangerous) or is reflected, as in the character of Millwood in Lillo's The London Merchant, only in distorted form as an attribute of a negative character. Thus, something of female independence is in fact lost in the transition from the frames of the Restoration to sensibility, yet this is compensated by the new feminization of the positive norms which I am investigating here. The imbalance is, for instance, to be seen in Mr B.'s following 'injunction', for which Pamela thanks him (!): '"Upon the whole, I may expect, that you will bear with me, and study my temper, till, and only till, you see I am capable of returning insult for obligation; and till you think, that I shall be of a gentler deportment, if I am roughly used, than otherwise. [ . . . ] " ' (I, 405). Cf. also the metaphor used for the female role as a 'moon' "exult[ing] in the mild benignity of those rays by which her beloved Mr B. endeavours to make her look up to his own sunny sphere" (II, 416).

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married to him. 57 A similar genderized inequality can moreover be seen in the "patience" (II, 313) with which Pamela, as a typical femme fragile,58 bears like Lady Easy her husband's (supposed) infidelity in part II. These doubtlessly nonemancipatory traits of Richardson's construction of femininity are fairly wellknown 59 and need not be repeated in detail here. They certainly relativize other, less conservative aspects of sensibility in Pamela, yet these aspects, on which I want to concentrate in the following, deserve attention, too. A few pages before the end of part II Pamela reports pieces of advice she has given to her niece, among which the following again seems to confirm the novel's entirely 'reactionary' ideology: '"In your married state, which is a kind of state of humiliation for a lady, you must think yourself subordinate to your husband, for so it has pleased God to make the wife.'" (II, 467) Yet this opinion is preceded by another, contrary description of the female role: 'In your maiden state, think yourself above the gentlemen, and they'll think you so too, and address you with reverence and respect, if they see there be neither pride nor arrogance in your behaviour, but a consciousness of merit, a true dignity, such as becomes virgin modesty, and untainted purity of mind and manners, like that of an angel among men [...]' (ibid.)

The thematization of this polarity of female inferiority as wife and superiority as maiden is a mise en abyme of an ambivalence informing the sentimental gender roles staged in Pamela as a whole. True, the superiority mentioned in this advice is reminiscent of the patriarchal polarity according to which women are viewed either as angels60 or whores, but what is equally important here and in general in this novel is that the 'angel' Pamela, with all her Christian meekness and submissiveness, is also shown as a quite powerful agent, who is very much aware of her dignity. Part of this can even be seen in Pamela's comments on the aforementioned "sweet rules" of her husband, namely when she ventures a certain resistance towards excessive male prerogatives. This is, for instance, the case in her comment to rule 30: That if the husband be set upon a wrong thing, she must not dispute with him, but do it, and expostulate afterwards. - Good Sirs, I don't know what to say to this! It looks a little hard, methinksl This would bear a small debate, Ifancy, in a parliament of women. (1,407f.) 61

57

58 59

60 61

See I, 323; cf. also the "condescension" Pamela sees in Mr B.'s intending to marry her (I, 235) and the almost religious "reverence" she feels for him (I, 237). Pamela, perhaps as a reflection of her inferior class origins, is clearly more conservative in her address than Lady Easy. For this "Literary Topos" see Korte 1987, cf. also Göbel 1998, 150-157. See, e.g., Mai 1986, who emphasizes the pro-patriarchal aspects of the construction of Pamela, white also pointing out some counter-indications; furthermore Mullan 1988, chap. 2, and Beasley 1996. Cf. also Mr B.'s apostrophe of Pamela: '"My dear angel [ . . . ] " ' (I, 335). Cf. also her applauding "very good" as a comment to one of the rare injunctions directed at the husband: "That the words COMMAND and OBEY shall be blotted out of his vocabulary" (I, 407).

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Characteristically, what is at issue here is "a wrong thing", that is, an at least implicitly moral issue. And this is where Pamela, in her conduct as "a maiden", shows her strongest resistance indeed, namely in her absolute refusal to be bribed by Mr B. into becoming his mistress: "I am", she proudly says, "above making an exchange of my honesty for all the riches of the Indies" (I, 168). This resistance expresses itself not only in the well-known passive terms of tears and swoons in situations of sexual harassment, but also in what Thomas Keymer has aptly called "discursive rebellion".62 In fact, Pamela's moral firmness empowers her to feel an "indignation" (I, 163) and a discursive "Assurance" (I, 19) which Mr B. frequently criticizes as "pert" and "saucy" (I, 45 and passim) and in which Mr B.'s accomplice, Mrs Jewkes, once even sees "downright rebellion" (I, 108). This latter qualification refers to a questioning of Mr B.'s authority (who is, after all, a justice of the peace) which Keymer has justly compared to a facet of Mary Astell's Reflections upon Marriage (1700).63 The same insistence on the Lockean ideal of individual self-determination of one's body that appears in the treatise of this early feminist in fact informs Pamela's criticism of Mr B. as well. It occurs after her confinement to his Lincolnshire Estate: "[...] how came I to be his property? What right has he in me, but such as a thief may plead to stolen goods?" (I, 108) In contrast to male power, which in Richardson's novel appears in physical, financial and legal terms, Pamela's power, like Lady Easy's and Silvia's, appears here and in other places as the knowledge of her own rights and as the - ultimately superior - power of conscious virtue. She is thus the chief representative of a new kind of "Moral Femininity",64 in which women define themselves as morally autonomous beings65 and courageously defend this autonomy by strictly adhering to ethic norms, even in opposition to socially more powerful males, and in particular in opposition to the libertine devaluation of women as "sexual prey".66 The result is what Terry Eagleton has aptly called the "domestication of heroism":67 a noteworthy transvaluation of a norm that originally applied to male aristocrats. The impact of this new female power should not be underrated. Its greatest triumph is achieved when Pamela manages to reform the rake Mr B., in spite of his Restoration hostility towards marriage:68 as does Silvia with respect to Sir John, Pamela thereby makes Mr B. adopt her views of the inextricable unity of marriage, love and sexuality. As a result of this reform, Mr B. repents of his role as "lib-

62 63 64 65 66

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Keymer 2001, vii. See ibid. viii. Weisser 1997,40. See, with reference to Richardson, Rogers 1976/77, 118. Rogers 1976/77, 119; for Pamela's moral strength pointing towards later ideals of female self-determination cf. also Göbel 1998, 151. Eagleton 1982, 15, who here quotes Hagstrum 1980, 214. In view of this normative element and of the general description of Mr B. it is misleading to claim, as Mullan does, that "Mr B. [...] erects no alternative system of values" (1988, 71). In fact, the entire norm system of Pamela rests, like so many other specimens of sentimental literature, on the opposition between aristocratic libertinism, reminiscent of Restoration comedy, and sentimental virtue.

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ertine" (I, 306) and of his "culpable passion" (I, 305). He consents to marry Pamela and even calls himself "the victim of [her] [...] virtue" (ibid.)· Thus, the roles of 'victim' and 'victimizer' are redefined under the auspices of sentimental morality: Mr B., the original victimizer, falls 'victim' to Pamela, who has advanced from being the victim of Mr B.'s sexual harassment to becoming his moral victor. This moral triumph of Pamela's is doubled, and her virtue justly rewarded, by her social rise from a servant girl to a fine lady. This marriage, for Pamela, is an 'invasion' of a territory that in the novel appears as both socially and normatively male. Due to the circumstances that have led to this event, this subjugation of a former male rake is perhaps the point at which femininity appears most powerfully in the novel. Interestingly, Mr B.'s reform is triggered to a considerable extent by a mise en abyme of an important element of the feminization of eighteenth-century culture: Pamela's achievement as a story-teller and a writer. Before her most severe 'trial', the near-rape by Mr B., she has occasion to tell her "history in brief' (I, 177) to the accomplice of her would-be rapist, Mrs Jewkes, while Mr B. himself, disguised as the snoring Nan, is listening. This "history", as Mr B. himself confesses later on, "half disarmed [his] resolution" (I, 188). Pamela achieves an even more powerful effect by means of her diary, which Mr B. requests of her and then reads in her presence. A large part of this effect is certainly due to the first-person form of writing, which - similar to the bulk of Pamela - gives voice to her subjective views and feelings and thus not only dominates over opposing positions but also appeals to the emotions and the sensibility of the reader. Mirroring in a covertly self-reflexive way the intended reader response to Pamela as a whole, Mr B. is "moved" by this diary, especially by Pamela's "reasonings about throwing [herself] into the water" and confesses: "you have touched me sensibly with your mournful relation [...]" (I, 213)69 He thereby shows that he has succeeded in the examination of his morality, which Pamela expressly has put to the test through her writings: "[...] if you can read my reflections and observations [...], and not be moved", she says, "it is a sign of a very cruel and determined heart" (I, 212). As an outer sign of the truthfulness of his being "touched", Mr B. "turn[s] his face from [Pamela]" (I, 213),70 and one will not go amiss in supposing that he sheds some tears. Female moral and writerly power71 are here coupled with what traditionally has been viewed as 'womanish' weakness in men, namely tears. 69

70

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Interestingly, a similar motif - a male rake being moved to virtue by a reading process (as a mise en abyme of the intended reader reaction) and ultimately to marrying his victim - already occurs in the same no. 375 of Addison's and Steele's The Spectator, which has been mentioned as a source of Lillo's Silvia. In both cases the reading refers to a pathetic and highly virtuous text written by a woman (in the case of The Spectator it is, however, the letter of the mother of the virtuous Amanda, while in the case of Pamela the writing is by the central figure o f ' v i r t u e in distress', Pamela herself). For the optimistic belief in the transparency of body language, and especially of tears, in the classic phase of sensibility see Wolf 1992. In part II this power is taken up again and shown to have a civilizing effect on Lady Davers's family (see II, 34).

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Tears as the hallmark of sensibility are of particular interest for a discussion of historical frames of gender roles: in the culture of sensibility both women and men weep frequently and even ought to shed tears, since these are symptoms of moral sensitivity and goodness (the best example being perhaps Harley, the "man of feeling" of Mackenzie's novel of this title72). The fact that this behaviour, in pre-sentimental times (and afterwards),73 was considered to be a more or less typically female way of expressing emotions, is a further important sign of the tendency towards feminization in the culture of sensibility. Generally, within the frame of sensibility, feminine 'tenderness' is constructed as a mode for both genders, although men are sometimes considered to have more difficulties in achieving this ideal.74 Even after her wedding Pamela does not always appear in the inferior role which her own advice to her niece mentioned above would make one expect her to play. Propagating the sentimental ideal of the companionate marriage already present in The Careless Husband, she, for instance, argues in favour of an improvement of female education75 and betrays egalitarian Enlightenment tenden72

73

In Pamela, the exemplary eponymous heroine is the character shedding most tears, but (positive) male characters, including, in part I, Mr Williams (see 1, 274), Mr Longman (see I, 417) and her father, whose "honest heart springs thus to [his] eyes" (I, 275; cf. also I, 280), are also reported to weep. See, as a general (though not always reliable) discussion of a widely recognized "masculine stereotype" in our days, a stereotype characterized by the repression of emotions and particularly of tears, Carmichael 1991, chap. 3, esp. 52 (quotation on p. 53). The relative scarcity of male tears in medieval literature has been documented for German literature by Weinand (1958, see esp. 68), though he states that male tears were much more frequent than in the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is also interesting to consult the Concordance [of the] Dramatic Works of Shakespeare for collocations with "tear" for frequent evidence of the dominant connotation 'womanish' (see Bartlett 1913). According to Bayne's study on French culture, the increasing acceptance of tears generally started in the seventeenth century (see Bayne 1981); according to Vincent-Buffault (1986), in eighteenth century France, a state was reached in which the shedding of male and female tears in public was relatively equally distributed. In England, Steele, in the Preface to his sentimental comedy The Conscious Lovers (1722), appreciates male tears shed by the audience as a sign of "Reason and Good Sense" and emphasizes that "Men ought not to be laugh'd at for weeping" (83): this shows the partial tensions existing between gender roles in the reality of English culture and as conceived of by authors of sentimental literature.

74

Mai (1986, 187), in a monodimensional reading of Pamela as a conservative, patriarchal novel, quotes a passage which he considers the only one where 'the spirit of sensibility' in this novel achieves some emancipatory (albeit, as he says, only Utopian) quality and which deserves to be mentioned in this context: in a letter to her friend Miss Darnford, Pamela asks her to pay a visit to Mrs Jewkes, who is on her deathbed and whom, Pamela fears, the male comfort of Mr Peters will not sufficiently console, "for there is a tenderness, a sympathy, in the good persons of our sex to one another that (while the best of the other seem but to act as in office, saying those things, which [...] one is not certain proceeds [sic] not rather from the fortitude of their minds, than the tenderness of their natures) mingles with one's very spirits [...]" (II, 210.). Men, even when they strive after the sentimental ideal of "tenderness", appear here clearly inferior to women.

75

See II, 413 f.; as Pamela herself indicates, this attitude - though still butted by an androcentric argument referring to men, who find educated women "better and more suitable companions and assistants to them" (II, 413; cf. also her remarks on her reading, I, 235) - runs

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cies in her conviction that there is "parity in the genius of the sexes" (II, 416). Pamela is herself a good case in point, as she is not only defined by her emotions: sensibility in Richardson appears in a remarkable harmony with rationality. Pamela, the epitome of sensibility, is also a model in terms of her autonomous reason, her ability to discourse on theoretical subjects, such as morality, the contemporary theatre or Locke's view on education,76 and by becoming an educated woman, who even studies Latin, which for her contemporaries was still a typically male subject.77 What is also interesting is the fact that Pamela, as a wife, preserves her moral power, and in spite of her apparent humility and her aforementioned advice to her niece, she shows that in matters moral the sentimental wife is not "subordinate" to her husband. When, in the second part of the novel, Mr B. becomes interested in a fair Countess and is suspected by Pamela of adultery, Pamela prepares a trial. In continuation of what she had to experience in part I this at first seems to be her trial. However, it turns out to be a trial for Mr B., in which Pamela dictates the rales of discourse, firmly refuses to accept her husband's ideas of polygamy and finally urges him to accept, as she says, "my notions of virtue and honour" - to which Mr B. once again subscribes (II, 313). As Pamela inflexibly acts according to her conviction, already voiced in part I, namely that "[n]o husband in the world [...] shall make me do an unjust or base thing" (I, 170),78 he has to submit to her, promises to "give up [himjself to all [her] dictates" (II, 314) and considers her his "guide" (II, 423). This reveals an important element of sensibility: instead of propagating a double standard, be it on the basis of differences of class or gender, the norms of sensibility tend towards a unified morality, at least in the central field of sexual ethic, and this ethic is represented in Pamela, as in the other texts discussed above, by a morally powerful female character. Critics have for a long time quarrelled about the position of the sentimental key-text Pamela and about sensibility in general in the 'herstory' of gender roles: while for one group the novel was, as Susan Weisser recently put it, "a revolutionary cry, a sense of the living presence of possibilities for women",79

76 77 78

79

counter to prevailing attitudes towards women, which favour their remaining in a state of relative ignorance: female education notably exceeds the list of 'female accomplishments' which Pamela enumerates as the fruit of her time as the servant of Mr B.'s mother in part I (cf. I, 175: "she put me to sing, to dance, to play on the spinnet [...] and also taught me all manner of fine needle-work"). See Pamela II, letters 53-54 and 90-97. See Rogers 1976/77, 130. What Rogers (see 1976/77, 120) has pointed out with respect to Clarissa is thus already valid for Pamela, namely that Richardson emphasizes the limits of the husband's patriarchal power in the interest of defining female moral autonomy. Weisser 1997, 42; see also Rogers (1976/77, 119), who claims that "Richardson was a radical feminist"; Benedict (1994, 4), and, with respect to sensibility in general, Sühnel (1983, 61) and Barker-Benfield (1992, xviii: "If feminism was in part born in women's 'awareness of their mistreatment by men', of 'felt oppression' and victimization, it was born in the culture of sensibility").

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for others, such as Jerry Beasley, the novel is quite non-revolutionary in its "promot[ing] the traditional ideals of male authority".80 What tends to be lost from sight in these critical polarities is the fact that Pamela, like the entire culture of sensibility, is ambivalent in terms of female gender roles.81 There are undoubtedly traditional, patriarchal elements in the novel, and female chastity, which is so conspicuously in the centre of sentimental virtue, may in itself harmonize with patriarchal views.82 Yet it is also true that sentimental chastity is markedly directed against male views of a double sexual standard and generally that, in the period between the Restoration and the end of Victorianism, it is the culture of sensibility in which the role of women and feminine norms was most powerful.

5. Conclusion: the feminization of eighteenth-century sensibility and its ambivalent effects The sentimental texts which I have discussed are not all masterworks in aesthetic terms and enjoyed different degrees of popularity among contemporaries,83 but they are historically significant for the emerging eighteenth-century culture of sensibility and the position of women in this frame.84 This significance resides perhaps less in the fact that these texts are feminocentric85 than in their illustration of the genderized nature of sensibility. Typically, in this frame, women are given a powerful centrality, and female patterns of behaviour appear privileged to a remarkable extent. This was already felt by eighteenth-century contemporaries, whether approvingly86 or disapprovingly.87 Yet 'privileging' 80

81 82 83

84

85

86

Beasley 1996, 37; see also the recent Routledge History of Literature (Carter/McRae 1997, 175); furthermore Andersson/Zinsser (1988, 118f.), and Mullan (1988, 67), for whom Richardson's novels "should not be mistaken for any kind of proto-feminism"; Mullan, however, concedes that Richardson's "politics of [...] representations is wholly ambiguous" (ibid.), yet, from an obviously normative point of view, in which "social criticism" (68) and an "actual analysis of the condition of women in eighteenth-century society" (67) are requirements of the 'politically correct novel', this ambiguity is cleary meant as a negative term. A good, balanced discussion of this ambivalence is to be found in V. Nünning 1996a. See Beasley 1996,39. Thus, Lillo's Silvia apparently only saw three performances in the eighteenth century (see Seth 1991, 116f.), whereas The Careless Husband, according to Maureen Sullivan, "was performed more than two hundred times during Cibber's life" (1973, xiv) and Pamela counted among the best-known novels of the period. This culture of sensibility continued well into the last third of the century; Monika Fludernik's (see 1998, 9) recent plea for a new periodization of literary and cultural history so that the period of 1650-1750 is separated from the following period 1750-1850 thus does not make sense with respect to sensibility. Sentimental literature, such as Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison (1754) or Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771), can also be androcentric without substantially departing from the construction of gender roles which is typical of sensibility as a whole. See the sources reported by M. Ellis 1996, 23f.

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women here only means that sensibility as a positive theoretical norm is intimately linked to feminine gender roles but not necessarily that women automatically benefitted from a superior statuts in the practice of their eighteenth-century social lives. The culture of sensibility turns out to be very much a culture of compromise with highly ambivalent effects. This is true of its position with respect to the rise of the middle class (where sensibility, while based to a large extent on bourgeois norms, always leaves open the possibility for reformed aristocrats to join the new trend88), and a similar ambivalence also informs the role of women inside the frame of sensibility.89 On a very basic level, this ambivalence can be seen in the complicated and in part contradictory position which the frame 'sensibility' occupies with reference to the emerging two-sex model. The two-sex model with its emphasis on woman as man's 'Other' is as much open to discrimination against women (if this 'Other' is seen as negative in opposition to male positivity) as the one-sex model, in which women originally are conceived of as 'lesser men'. However, both models theoretically also permit an inversion of the poles of negativity and positivity with respect to the two sexes. This potential of inversion is realized by the pro-emancipatory aspects of sensibility - concerning both models, and this creates a noteworthy contradiction: by implying, as Catharine Macaulay put it, that "a perfect man is a woman formed after a coarser mold"90 and by thus propagating an inverted one-virtue-model based on feminine norms, sensibility, in the field of domestic virtues, seems to resist the two-sex model. Yet sensibility also partially supports this model (or rather its pro-feminine inversion): as has been shown by Barker-Benfield, sensibility is rooted in the belief in a naturally higher sensitivity of female nerves91 as opposed to the male constitution, which was thought to be substantially different in this field. The new appreciation of this sensitivity can in itself appear to have ambivalent consequences. On the one hand it could be exploited for establishing a female supremacy in the field of morality and in everything concerning the domestic sphere as the domain of private emotions. This brought about a downright revolution in the evaluation of 'the Sex', which redeemed it from a cen87

88

89

90 91

An outstanding critic of the generalization of domesticity under the auspices of female patterns of behaviour is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who paradoxically has his male hero SaintPreux complain in his sentimental novel La Nouvelle Heloi'se (1761) about the emerging, effeminacy in France ("oil les homines se sont soumis ä vi vre ä la maniere des femmes [...] [et] sentent [...] l'ennui de cette indolence effeminee et casaniere [...]" [IV/10, 432f.]). For this remarkable integrative potential inherent in sensibility, which can, e.g., be seen in the partial taking over and transvaluating of originally aristocratic norms such as 'honour' or 'generosity', see Wolf 1984 (with an emphasis on French sensibilite); furthermore, Janik 1987 and Seth 1991. See already Eagleton (1982, 15f.), who, in his critical evaluation of sensibility, points out that the "'exaltation' of women" in the culture of sensibility is both "a partial advance in itself', but "also serves to shore up the very system which oppresses" women. Macaulay 1790/1974, 204, quoted from V. Nünning 1996a, 200. See Barker-Benfield 1992, chap. 1.

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tury-old depreciation as particularly passionate, corrupt and as the source of wordly evil92 and pointed towards a tendentially androgyne construction of gender roles.93 On the other hand it can be argued that the restriction of feminine supremacy to morality also implies that there were other, and perhaps socially, economically and politically more important fields in which different qualities were requisite, and this still left ample room for male predominance. Generally speaking, sensibility did not abolish patriarchal authority,94 a norm which remains basically intact in all the texts discussed above. Yet it implied a new basis of this authority, especially in the family, and thus mitigated the exertion of male power and improved the position of women. This new basis consisted in the moral and emotional standard which sensibility promoted for the relations between master and servant, parents and children,95 and, most importantly in our context, husband and wife. This standard, similar to the ideal of sentimental expressivity, privileged attitudes originally linked with feminine gender roles and, in spite of the emergence of the two-sex model, generalized them for both genders, especially in the field of sexual ethic. Critics have objected that the construction of sensibility as a "feminine attribute"96 remains caught within traditional views. However, to generalize originally feminine norms is - at least theoretically - a first step towards undermining both traditional patriarchal supremacy and the ideology of separate norms for the sexes. Sensibility, moreover, tended to create an evaluative imbalance in the opposition between the male-dominated public and the female-dominated private spheres. If, in some parts of The Spectator, the notion of genuinely masculine and feminine virtues could still be maintained according to different spheres,97 sensibility managed to make its major field of influence, the private sphere, appear to be the more desirable one. In this process private norms also became models of the public sphere, so that, as Eagleton put it, "'feminine' values relegated by the sexual division of labour to the private realm [...] return[ed] to transvaluate the ruling ideologies themselves".98 This is what permitted sensibility not only to aim at "the reform of men on women's terms"99 in the private sphere but also to invade the 'masculine' public sphere by 'feminine' values, as is, for instance, illustrated in the opening of Lillo's The London Merchant, in the first scene of this sentimental domestic tragedy, which is set in the period of Elizabeth I, the model merchant Thorowgood praises the queen as "more than in 92

93 94

For the sentimental departure from these negative connotations, which were attributed to women in parts of the Christian tradition, see V. Nünning 1998, 356. For the latent androgyny of (early) sentimental gender roles cf. also Göbel 1998, 156. According to Todd, it only created "a sentimental version of the partriarchal order" (1986, 20).

95 96 97

98 99

See the positive and negative examples of child-parent relations in Silvia and Pamela. M. Ellis 1996, 23. See The Spectator no. 57, and Todd 1986, 20f.; in other respects, The Spectator, as has already been said, is, of course, a precursor, or even an early organ of sensibility. Eagleton 1982, 13. Barker-Benfield 1992, xxvii.

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Name the Mother of her People [...] whose richest Exchequer is her Peoples Love, as their Happiness her greatest Glory"100 and thereby explicitly transfers family relationships and their sentimental emotionality (mother - children; generous contribution to happiness - grateful love) to the public relation of sovereign and subjects. As we have seen, it would neither do justice to the complications of the history of gender formation in the eighteenth century as a whole nor to the gender roles as propagated by the frame of sentimental literature to concentrate on the fact that these constructions contained an ideal of feminine domesticity which developed into the limiting Victorian role of the 'Angel in the House'. 101 If there were 'reactionary' elements in sensibility which gained the upper hand in subsequent cultural history, this fact should not eclipse the other fact that there was also a substantial innovative element: namely a feminization of major parts of norms and patterns of behaviour. This feminization not only affected male roles but, as we could see, was also promoted by male authors. It may well be that this innovative feminization was, to a large extent, restricted to sentimental fictions as sketches of a possible world which did not conform to contemporary reality and in which they were not met with universal approval.102 The frequent 'representation' of sentimental positions as eccentric, unworldly and causing suffering, as revealed by John Mullan,103 indeed point in this direction, so that one should - as in so many cases of cultural history rather speak of Utopian 'constructions' than of mimetic 'representations'.104 Yet one has to acknowledge that the culture of sensibility, even if it had only a limited impact on social reality, was not simply a further stage in the sad 100 101 102

103 104

Lillo The London Merchant, 158. See, for a similar caveat, V. Nünning 1996a, 214. See, e.g., David Hume's remark about "[a]n effeminate behaviour in a man" and "a rough manner in a woman" as being "ugly because unsuitable to each character" (1751/1975, 266) and Barker-Benfield's comments on eighteenth-century criticism of male effeminacy (1992, chap. 3). See Mullan 1988. For this non-sentimental reality see V. Nünning 1998, chap. 7.1; Andersson/Zinsser 1988, esp. vol. 2, chap. 7, and Stone 1977, esp. his remarks on female "Property Rights and Status", 330-334 and the persistence of the double standard in sexual ethic, 501-503. Cf. also Eagleton 1982, 16, for whom sensibility was "tragically at odds with a grimly impersonal power structure". On the other hand, Stone and V. Nünning also give evidence that foreign commenters were amazed about the degree of power and influence attributed to English women in the eighteenth century (see Stone 1977, 328f.; V. Nünning 1998, 354f.). This seems to be confirmed by a remark by Mr Spectator in Steele's The Spectator no. 4 (a remark which, however, may be tinged by an intention of captatio benevolentiae directed at the female readership): "[...] the fair Sex [...] are by the just Complaisance and Gallantry of our Nation the more powerful Part of our People [...]" (Addison/Steele, 11). These diverging pieces of evidence concerning the status of women show once again, what caution is necessary in forming judgments in this field of cultural and gender studies. At any rate, in view of the general function of literature not only to mirror but also to construct reality, it is generally unsatisfactory to consider the texts under discussion as merely "reflect[ing] contemporary attitudes and realities", as Vance does with respect to The Careless Husband (see 1983, 70).

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'herstory' of female oppression by patriarchal culture: Barker-Benfield's claim that "feminism was [...] born in the culture of sensibility" 105 may be exaggerated, but in this historical frame at least attempts were made to reform manners in a way which should give the formerly deprecated 'daughters of Eve' a better position than was allowed them in the centuries before as well as in the century that followed.

105

Barker-Benfield 1992, xviii.

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Ii. From Victorian ism to Postmodernism

James A. W.

Heffernan

Love, Death, and Grotesquerie Beardsley's Illustrations in Wilde and Pope 1

"If I am not grotesque I am nothing" Aubrey Beardsley

Aubrey Beardsley came of age some seventy years after English publishers had started producing illustrated books. According to Martin Meisel, they originated largely in the 1820s, when technological innovation made it possible to print a book with pictures that illustrated the text. 2 Meisel usefully distinguishes the nineteenth-century meanings of 'illustration' and 'realization'. Realization was the faithful re-creation of a verbal description or a painting on the stage - "a translation into a more real, that is more vivid, visual, physically present medium" in three dimensions; illustration meant "enrichment and embellishment" on the page, with the artist's imagination freely at work in two dimensions. 3 Yet for all the freedom of the illustration, the distinguishing feature of the nineteenth-century illustrated novel is collaboration: artist and writer working together to tell a story. While Dickens early on established the primacy of the text as both conceptually and chronologically prior to illustrations, artists did not simply offer arrested moments of stopped time to punctuate the moving line of a narrative. They found ways to tell what Meisel calls "a moment's story", and conversely, novelists drew word-pictures of their own to complement the movement of their narratives. 4 The illustrated novel thus presented itself as something to be experienced both visually and sequentially as a series of actions and scenes. In the illustrated books of the eighteen-nineties, however, the artist took full command of the pictures. Instead of producing a book by means of continuing collaboration, the illustrator - writes Lorraine Kooistra - "typically [...] received the completed manuscript of poetry, drama, or fiction direct from the publisher and produced the illustrations with little or no connection to the to the writer, who was sometimes surprised by the final product". 5 In a sense, therefore, the artist stood outside the text as its "first public reader", its first inter-

1

2 3 4 5

In slightly different form, this essay first appeared in Catherine J. Golden (ed.), Book Illustrated: Text, Image, and Culture. New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2000, 195-240. Meisel 1983,30. Ibid. Ibid.17,56. Kooistra 1995,3.

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preter and critic.6 Aubrey Beardsley exemplifies this kind of independence. In his illustrations for Wilde's Salome and Pope's Rape of the Lock, as we shall see, he reads not only the text but the life of its author: something unprecedented, so far as I know, in illustrated books before the nineties. Beardsley's illustrations for the first English edition of Oscar Wilde's Salome, which appeared in 1894, also radically revised the conventions of 'realization'. Salome was a play, something written to be realized on a stage. But in February 1893, some three years before it was first staged, the play was published in French, and its publication instantly prompted the 21-year-old Beardsley to produce a sensational picture depicting a moment in the play that could never be visually 'realized' on stage because it is too grotesque to be seen; the stage directions call for total darkness. In spite of or perhaps because of its grotesquerie, the picture led Wilde to commission Beardsley to illustrate the English edition of Salome - with pictures that Wilde found hardly suitable for his play.7 Beardsley's illustrations to Wilde's play, then, are clearly not the work of a collaborator but of a precociously gifted artist with a style uniquely his own; a style that seems not so much to serve the text as to appropriate it for its own idiosyncratic ends. Yet Beardsley's illustrations to Salome are considerably more than an exercise in graphic self-indulgence; they constitute a provocative reading of the play. Furthermore, when studied along with Beardsley's illustrations for Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock, which appeared two years after Salome, they allow us to see the threads of grotesquerie that permeate both of these works. Beardsley views the Rape from an unmistakeably fin-de-siecle perspective; Pope's figures play out their parts in an Art Nouveau world of riotous ornamentation. Ultimately, however, this ornamentation manages to reach the very core of Pope's poem. Pope's poem seems at first no kin to Salomi. What can the pampered, delicate, decorous Belinda share with the savagely sensual dancer who not only takes the head of a prophet but also kisses the very lips that have denounced her? What could link the sparkling, sprightly wit of Pope's Augustan mock-epic to the ghastly decadence of Wilde's late nineteenth-century play? Beardsley's art points the way to an answer. The simple fact that he illustrated both the play and the poem may lead us to see what common ground underlies their obvious differences. If Salome's frustrated lust for John leads her to demand his head so that she may fetishize it, the Baron's lust for Belinda drives him to cut a lock of her hair so that he may fetishize that. If Salome's necrophilia is grotesque, so is the Cave of Spleen to which a distraught Belinda flies when she loses her lock. If Belinda's hair entrances the Baron, John's hair entrances Salome, and various kinds of extravagant coiffeurs permeate Beardsley's illustrations for both works. To view them side by side through Beardsley's eyes is to see not only what

6 7

Ibid. 3-4. Ellmann 1988, 376.

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specific features they share but also how each of them represents the ambivalence of its heroine and the kinds of destruction generated by desire. To fully understand what Beardsley contributed to the first English edition of Wilde's play, we must begin with Beardsley's sensational debut. In April 1893, the inaugural issue of a London magazine called The Studio featured his work and formally introduced him in an article by Joseph Pennell, "A New Illustrator: Aubrey Beardsley".8 The nine drawings Beardsley furnished for this issue included one which, according to Kenneth Clark, "aroused more horror and indignation than any graphic work hitherto produced in England".9 This was Beardsley's illustration of the moment just after Salome kisses the severed and bleeding head of John the Baptist at the end of Oscar Wilde's Salome (fig. 1). In slightly altered form, the picture would re-appear one year later in the first English edition of Wilde's play (fig. 2). But since the play had just been published and would not be staged for another three years, as noted above, Beardsley's Salome with St. John's Head set before the eyes of the public for the very first time what Wilde had simply suggested by the words that he wrote for his necrophiliac heroine - the very last words she speaks in the play: ' T a i baise ta bouche, Iokanaan, j'ai baise ta bouche" ("I have kissed your mouth, Jokannan, I have kissed your mouth") (Salome 1067-68).10 The stage directions tell us that Salome speaks these words on a set first darkened by the passing of a great cloud across the moon and then suddenly lit by a shaft of moonlight that exposes her to Herod, who promptly orders her killed (1063-65, 1069-70). It is this moment of ghastly revelation that Beardsley depicts. At upper left, a thick cluster of white rimmed disks in various sizes suggest moons - or possibly suns - in eclipse. At upper right, Salome gazes entranced at the face of the severed and dripping head of John the Baptist, which she holds in both her hands immediately before her face. With the edge of a quarter-segment of moon behind them cutting directly under their chins like the blade of a rounded axe, she kneels humpbacked as if in adoration of the man whose head she has demanded on a platter. Their two heads nearly meet and in some ways match. While her open eyes and grinning lips confront John's closed lids and downturned mouth, both display Medusan hair. Her thick black locks writhe up and down like snakes; his snaky locks fall whitely over her hands, and beneath his neck a slender, broken stream of white widens to the shape of a cobra at the bottom of the picture, where a white lily stands in black water. At left are blocked the words J'AI BAISE TA BOUCHE IOKANNEN J'AI BAISE TA BOUCHE. Because these words appear just above a snakelike white tendril rising sinuously from a narrow, white-rimmed, vaginal oval of black, they seem almost to be spoken by a snake. 8 9 10

Lasner 1995,.12. Clark 1978, 70. I cite line numbers from the English translation of the play (Wilde 1995, 65-91) made by Lord Alfred Douglas with considerable help from Wilde and possibly others (Lasner 1995, 32).

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The serpentine form of the tendril as well of John's hair and blood reflect Beardsley's careful reading of Wilde's play, which fascinated him.11 Having tried in vain the fortress of his virtue, having sought in vain to kiss him when alive, Wilde's Salome imputes to John the serpentine nature traditionally used to signify the treacherous charm of women, beginning with Eve. 12 Shortly after the fall in Milton's Paradise Lost, for instance, Adam explicitly denounces Eve as a serpent. Calling her just as "false" as Satan, he says she needs only his serpentine shape and color to "show / [Her] inward fraud" and thus to warn all other creatures away from her (10.867-71). Salome herself is traditionally snakelike; Ewa Kuryluk notes that on the eleventh-century bronze door of Verona's San Zeno the sinuous line of the dancing princess is distinctly serpentine.13 But Wilde's Salome sees herself quite differently. Knowing full well that John thought her a harlot like her mother Herodias (1022), she nonetheless charges him with taking her virginity (1046^47) and casts him as a serpentine tempter. He captivates her first with his body, which she ambivalently calls both lily white and repulsively leprous (304-317), and then with his hair, which she finds both lustrously black and horrible, "like a crown of thorns" and "like a knot of serpents coiled around thy neck" (334-35), evoking both Christ and Medusa. Finally she longs for his superlatively red mouth, which for her is "like a pomegranate cut in twain with a knife of ivory" (336-337) and which she finally determines not only to kiss but to bite "as one bites ripe fruit" (1010-11). Thus John's very lips become for her the apple of temptation. His lips excite her precisely because they are forbidden fruit. By the mere act of speaking to the living John, she defies the command of Herod, who forbade anyone to speak with him (181-83), and in kissing the lips of the dead John, she does what the living John would "never" allow (353-54). In life, as Kuryluk observes,14 the lips of Wilde's John the Baptist echo the curses of John the Revelationist, for just as the Revelationist denounces the whore of Babylon and predicts the apocalyptic destruction of the world (Rev. 6:12-13), Wilde's John de-

"

12

13 14

Snodgrass 1995, 52. As D.J. Gordon notes, most of Beardsley's drawings originate from works of literature (1966, 14). He read voraciously, thought of himself as a man of letters even after making his name as an artist, wrote an unfinished novel (Under the Hill), and planned to write a good deal more, including - at the time of his death - a critical introduction to Ben Jonson's Volpone (Snodgrass 1995, 105). In Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), published just the year before Wilde wrote his play, the Satanically seductive Alec d'Urberville likewise accuses the guileless Tess of having tempted him away from his life as a preacher: "And why then have you tempted me? I was firm as a man could be till I saw those eyes and that mouth again surely there never was such maddening mouth since Eve's. [...] You temptress, Tess; you damned witch of Babylon." (254). Even the would-be virtuous Angel finds Tess serpentine - before their fateful wedding night. Though he takes her to be a virgin during their courtship at Talbothays, he sees at one point "the red interior of her [yawning] mouth as if it had been a snake's" (133). Kuryluk 1987, 196. Ibid. 220.

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nounces Salome as a daughter of Sodom and Babylon (291, 621) and predicts in the very words of the Revelationist - that the sun shall become black like sackcloth of hair, and the moon shall become like blood, and the stars of the heaven shall fall upon the earth like unripe figs that fall from the fig-tree, and the kings of the earth shall be afraid. (652-55)

Salome's murderous passion for John is mirrored, as Kuryluk suggests, by the ruthlessness of the curses he hurls at her.' 5 John foretells the destruction of a corrupt world, and he most especially seeks the annihilation of Salome. To exemplify his banishment of "all wickedness from the earth", he prays that she be stoned, pierced, and crushed: "Let the people take stones and stone her. [...] Let the captains of the hosts pierce her with their swords, let them crush her beneath their shields" (623-26). The last part of John's wish is precisely fulfilled at the end of the play by Herod's soldiers, who "rush forward and crush [Salome] beneath their shields". Commanding them in the very last words of the play to "Kill that woman!" (1069), Herod unwittingly does the murderous bidding of John just as he had reluctantly done to John the murderous bidding of Salome. What enrages Herod is precisely what Beardsley's inaugural drawing depicts: the spectacle of Salome infatuated with a bleeding head. To grasp the full impact of this picture, we should consider the precedents for it in literature and visual art as well as its immediate source in Wilde's play. The scriptural versions of the Salome story say nothing of her passion for John and identify her only as the daughter of Herodias, who tells her to ask for John's head after her dancing has moved Herod to offer her anything she wants (Matthew 14:3-12, Mark 6:17-28). Later versions of the story eroticize the motives of Herodias. While Mark clearly indicates that she sought to punish John for criticizing the unlawfulness of her marriage to her husband's brother (Mark 6:18-19), nineteenth-century versions of the story - before Wilde - made her John's rejected lover. In Heinrich Heme's satirical poem Atta Troll (1847), a phantom Herodias riding a horse in a pageant of the dead on the night of St. John's Day holds the prophet's head and fervently kisses it.16 Whether or not Wilde knew Heine's poem directly, he certainly knew another work which took this striking episode one step further. In 1888, four years before writing his play about Salome, Wilde reviewed J.C. Heywood's Salome, a dramatic poem in which a live Herodias kisses the prophet's head. 17 According to Ellmann, Wilde saw this striking detail - which apparently originated with Heine and Heywood - as the potential climax of his own work.18 But so far as I know, Wilde was the first to make Salome rather than Herodias the lover of John. This is what distinguishes his play not only from the 15 16 17 18

Ibid. Ibid. 200. Ellmann 1988, 340. Ibid.

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work of Heine and Heywood but also from the treatment of Salome in Joris Huysman's A Rebours (1884), which Ellman calls the "principal engenderer" of Wilde's play. 19 In Huysman's description of a painting by Gustave Moreau we might indeed see the genesis of Wilde's Salome: "the symbolic incarnation of undying lust, [...] the monstrous Beast, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning, like the Helen of ancient myth, everything that she touches". 20 But Huysman's words describe Moreau's painting of Salome dancing for Herod. In Moreau's painting of Salome presented with the Baptist's head, she manifests not lust but horror 21 - the antithesis of what Wilde's Salome displays. For Salome's infatuation with the head of John, therefore, we might consider two other precedents in nineteenth-century literature and art. One is Keats's Isabella, whose "passionate humanity" Wilde had come to admire by the age of twenty.22 Near the end of this Gothic romance in verse, the heroine unearths the head of her lover, who has been murdered by her brothers, and kisses it. Putting it into a garden pot and covering it with soil, she then plants basil over it. Isabella's lugubrious tending of her basil plant, "ever fed [...] with [her] thin tears" (1. 425), is depicted by William Holman Hunt in Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1867), (fig. 3), a painting that both Wilde and Beardsley could have known. 23 This is a study in genteel necrophilia. Dressed in a thin white chemise with a geometrically patterned blue shawl falling about her waist, Isabella stands leaning over a large painted majolica pot that sprouts a thick clump of basil and rests on a richly embroidered cloth adorning a prie-dieu inlaid with ivory and precious stones. With her left leg bent and her left foot perched on the ledge of the prie-dieu, she seems half kneeling at the shrine of the pot, which she holds in both her hands while gazing intently upon it and letting her long black hair flow over it - as if it were the hair of Lorenzo himself. The only sign of the head within the pot is the little bald skull on the handle nearly touched by the ends of Isabella's tresses. From the Isabella of Keats and Hunt to the Salome of Wilde and Beardsley is not so wild a leap as may at first appear. For all its domestic decor and decorum, the mingling of the sacred and the erotic in this painting along with its accent on plant life and long wavy hair - a traditional sign of promiscuity - all subtly anticipate, however unwittingly, the climactic scene that Wilde drama-

19 20 21 22

23

Ibid. Qtd. ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 42. In addition, Beardsley's voracious reading must have included the poetry of Keats, since he attended the unveiling of a bust of the poet at Hampstead in the summer of 1894 (MacFall 1928, 17). Like Keats, Beardsley died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, living just two months longer than the poet. From his student days at Oxford Wilde admired the Pre-Raphaelites (Ellmann 1988, 31) and staunchly defended them in his very first American lecture of 9 January, 1881 (ibid. 164-65). On Beardsley's admiration for the Pre-Raphaelites, especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, see Fletcher 1987, 5, 30-31.

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tizes and Beardsley draws.24 In Hunt's painting, a young, half-kneeling woman dressed in white and crowned with long black wavy hair gazes on and holds in both her hands a pot containing the buried head of her lover, and a leafy plant springs from the soil around his buried head just as flowers rise "like incarnations of the stars" from the buried corpse of Keats himself in Shelley's Adonais (1. 174). In Beardsley's drawing, a kneeling, white-robed young woman crowned with long black wavy hair gazes on and holds in both her hands a head from which blood drips into a pool that begets a lily - the talisman of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood and Wilde's iconic signature.25 Wilde and Beardsley thus expose the grotesque eroticism latent in Hunt's sentimental tableau. The other precedent for the climactic scene of Wilde's play appears in a book that Wilde read on his honeymoon in Paris in June of 1884: Stendhal's Red and Black?6 Like Wilde's play, Stendhal's novel ends with a woman kissing the severed head of the man whom she has loved but who has finally rejected her.27 Mathilde-Marguerite de la Mole, Stendhal's anti-heroine, has long adored the audacity of her sixteenth-century namesake, Queen Marguerite of Navarre, who buried with her own hands the head of her executed lover, Boniface de la Mole. 28 Theatrically passionate as well as proudly aristocratic, Mathilde despises conventional squeamishness. "What woman alive today", she asks, "would not be too horrified to touch the head of her decapitated lover?". 29 On the very last page of the novel Mathilde dramatically answers this rhetorical question. Finding the severed head and body of the newly executed Julien Sorel on the floor of the room occupied by his friend Fouquet, who has managed to buy Julien's corpse, she picks up the head, sets it on a little marble table, and kisses its forehead; then she carries it to the cave where Julien asks to be buried and puts it in the ground with her own hands.30 To these precedents for the dramatization and depiction of a Salome infatuated with the bleeding head of John may be added a small cluster of etchings that date from an earlier fin-de-siecle - the 1790s. In 1793, a French artist named Villeneuve published two etchings of heads severed by the guillotine and dripping blood from the neck: Louis XVI and the Comte de Custine, a general of the revolutionary Army who had been executed for conspiring with the Brit-

24

25 26 27

28 29 30

On wavy hair, note Milton's account of Eve's "disheveled" tresses "in wanton ringlets waved / As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied / Subjection, but required with gentle sway" (Paradise Lost 1965, 4.305-308). On the morning after Eve is tempted by Satan in a dream, Adam awakens to find her "With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek / As through unquiet rest" (ibid. 5.9-10). Ellmann 1988,45, 87, 115, 117, 206. Ibid. 250. But while John rejects both sensual love and Salome consistently, Julien rejects Mathilde only after having an affair with her and then emotionally returning to his original mistress, Mme de Renal. Stendhal 1969, 243-44. Ibid. 246. Ibid. 408.

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ish against the new Republic.31 Each held aloft by the hand of an unseen executioner, these severed heads are meant to show the triumph of liberty over tyranny and treachery ('sang impure', the impure blood). But they also signify acts of desecration, for as Ronald Paulson notes, the severing of powerful heads above all that of the king himself - subjected living persons to "the iconoclastic treatment dealt out to religious images in churches".32 Salome's desecration of John's severed head thus recalls the iconoclastic implications of beheading. It likewise recalls the way Thomas Rowlandson represents French Liberty in an etching entitled The Contrast (1792), where a Medusa-headed woman brandishes the head of a man on the central prong of a trident and thus usurps - as Neil Hertz notes - the pose of Cellini's Perseus holding the severed head of Medusa.33 Beardsley not only shows a Medusa-headed woman holding the severed head of a man; he also puts serpentine locks on the man, as we have seen, thus implying that Salome has the power to tum John's head into the image and likeness of her own.34 If anything, her set lips and lantern jaw make her face more masculine than that of John, whose drooping mouth and delicate chin suggest effeminacy. Latent or overt in all of these images is the assault of the secular and erotic upon the sacred. When we read the final lines of Wilde's play and view Beardsley's illustration of them in light of what earlier writers and artists had done with severed heads, we can see that desecration and fetishism paradoxically go hand in hand. As Ewa Kuryluk shows, Beardsley consummates a tradition of the grotesque that began with the Renaissance discoveiy of monstrous frescoes in ancient Roman 'grottoes' and became a subculture bent on subverting "official Christian culture with inappropriate forms and shocking iconography".35 The shocking iconography of Beardsley's illustrations for the English edition of Salome, which first appeared in 1894, begin with its title page. In the original (and later bowdlerized) version, a horned, garlanded, armless, nude, and flagrantly hermaphroditic Pan herm gazes grinningly down on a winged nude boy kneeling with his half-raised phallus on display.36 The figures suggest 31 32 33 34

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Cuno 1988, 194 and plates 89-90. Paulson 1988, 58. Hertz 1985, 162. In The Dancer's Reward, which shows Salome receiving John's head on a platter and gripping his forelock, his hair is wavy and black - just like that of Salome herself in Salome with with St. John's Head. Kuryluk 1987, 3, 7. She also suggests that the gradual ossification of Christianity in the twentieth century makes the end of the nineteenth century "the last period in European history when the sacrosanct mattered enough to provoke sacrilegious attacks" (6). In light of the stir generated by recent works such as Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (a crucifix immersed in what the artist claims to be his own urine) Kuryluk overstates her point. After deleting the genitalia at the request of his publisher, Beardsley composed a bit of verse: Because one figure was undressed This little drawing was suppressed. It was unkind, but never mind, Perhaps it was for the best. (qtd. Lasner 1995, 32)

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a parody of the crucifixion, with Christ supplanted by a demonically grinning Pan set between would-be sacred candles and the mourner at the foot of the cross replaced by a pseudo-angel who looks not worshipfully up at the god but leeringly out at us.37 Beardsley's design not only mocks Christian iconography. In featuring a monumental hermaphrodite, it also flaunts what Snodgrass calls a sign of self-enclosed sterility, an emblem of solipsistic, unfulfilled desire - particularly homosexuality, onanism, and that vice supreme cerebral lechery, all of which characterized to Victorians decadent disillusionment and withdrawal from practical life. 38

The title page thus begins to show how far Beardsley's illustrations for Salome swerve from Wilde. While Beardsley's hermaphrodite may be tenuously linked to Salome's unfulfilled desire for John, the double-sexed figure points less to Wilde's play than to the bisexual life of its author. Several of Beardsley's other illustrations allude to that life, for Wilde's own features appear in the feminized moon watched by the Young Syrian and the Page of Herodias (The Woman in the Moon), in the face of Herod (Eyes of Herod), and also in the face of the owlcapped jester presenting the queen in Enter Herodias. Whatever he thought of these particular caricatures, Wilde found Beardsley's illustrations for Salome generally unpalatable. Though Salome with St. John's Head had instantly won his admiration, he reportedly complained that the "Japanese" style of Beardsley's illustrations did not fit his "Byzantine" play and that they resembled the "naughty scribbles" of a "precocious schoolboy".39 This verdict has by turns been confirmed and contested. Up to the 1970s, critics generally agreed that Beardsley had simply made his own way, ignoring Wilde's text and spawning irrelevant images.40 On the other hand, recent critics give both collaborators high marks. Elliott Gilbert, calls the 1894 Salome "one of the most successful collaborations of poet and illustrator in history";41 Linda Zatlin finds playwright and artist each revealing the triumph of male authority over the rebelliousness of female power;42 and Ian Fletcher rightly notes that "the principal images of the play certainly appear in the drawings".43 But no one theme binds text and image in this so-called collaboration. As Robert Schweik

37 38 35

40

41 42 43

See Snodgrass 1995, 57-58, Beckson 1989,214, and Heyd 1986, 160-61. Snodgrass 1995,60 Rothenstein 1931, 183-84. On the other hand, Beardsley's picture of Salome with the head of John had prompted Wilde to commission from him the illustrations for the English edition of the play (Ellmann 1988, 376) and to send him (in March 1893, even before the picture was published) a copy of the Paris edition inscribed, "For Aubrey: for the only artist who, besides myself, knows what the dance of the seven veils is, and can see that invisible dance. Oscar". From the copy in the Sterling Library, University of London, qtd. Hart-Davis 1962, 348n. See the review of criticism ranging from Arthur Symons' Aubrey Beardsley (1898) to Malcolm Easton's Aubrey and the Dying Lady (1972) in Fletcher 1987, 57-59. Gilbert 1983, 159. Zatlin 1990, 94-95. Fletcher 1987, 64.

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has recently shown, the illustrations and the play both conjoin "strikingly incongruous elements".44 Wilde's Salome, for instance, is first virginal and withdrawn, then suddenly filled with lust for John; Beardsley's Salome is aggressively Medusan in The Climax and erotically feminine in the Tail Piece (fig. 4) which shows a masked Pierrot and satyr gently lowering her slender nude body into a box designed to hold the large powder puff poised beside it.45 When it appeared with Wilde's Salome, Beardsley's drawing of Salome kissing John's severed head (fig. 2) could be called The Climax (rather than Salome with St. John's Head) because the text of the play itself made further words unnecessary. Beardsley also cut the words that had appeared in the Studio picture (J'AI BAISE TA BOUCHE [...]) and several other elements: the spidery, filigreed figures just above Salome's ankle and behind her head; the long black lock hanging down below Salome's arms; the slender pair of wings just above the lily; the black bar running just under the two heads at upper right; and the fringes adorning the edges of John's locks as well as of Medusa locks and of her feet. The result is a simpler, starker, more concentrated depiction of Salome's necrophilia. At the same time, Salome herself is made more feminine. Her nose, chin, and feet are all smaller, and her hair is ornamented with stippled swirls. For all its Medusan menace, then, The Climax subtly prefigures the powder puff eroticism of The Tail Piece, where Salome's tightly curled hair in turn recalls the eclipsed moons of The Climax. The salience of a powder puff in the very last illustration for Salome not only exemplifies Beardsley's way of re-creating the incongruity of Wilde's play. It also links Salome - or more precisely Beardsley's illustrations for Salomi - to his illustrations for The Rape of the Lock, which first appeared with them in 1896. As Beardsley helps us to see, both works incongruously mingle the social and domestic rituals of civilized life - applying make-up, formal dining, dancing, card-playing, tea-drinking, gossipping, flirting - with acts of brutal barbarity: rape and decapitation. While the 'rape' of Pope's poem is ostensibly just a metaphor for the cutting of a lock of hair, the act of cutting hair is an assault on the head - a form of decapitation - and a pair of scissors may be used as a weapon of assault, a kind of sword. Well before he started work on his designs for The Rape, Beardsley subtly drew this connection in his revised version of The Toilette of Salome (fig. 5). Both versions of this picture, which depict an episode that cannot be found in the play, show Salome seated in her dressing room and attended by a masked Pierrot; both versions also include one or more domestic objects that will re-appear in the illustrations for The Rape: books, vases, teacups, and a powder puff conspicuously waved by the Pierrot.46 But while the second version removes 44 45

46

Schweik 1994, 9-26. As Chris Snodgrass notes, the perfectly unmarked body of Salome in this picture shows no sign of having been crushed to death by the shields of Herod's soldiers, which is what is said to happen at the end of the play (Snodgrass 1995,147, Wilde 1995, 1070-71). Snodgrass finds in the original (expurgated) version of The Toilet a surfeit of cunningly disguised sexual 'perversions'; four of its five figures, he says, are covertly masturbating

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three of the figures and many of the props (such as the double bass and the vase of flowers to be found in the first), it adds two pairs of scissors - one tucked into the pocket of Pierrot's apron and the other on the top tier of the etagere at right. The context makes the scissors ominous. With her previously seminude figure now anachronistically sheathed in a sleek and sweeping costume of the 1890s, Salome wears a great oval black Ascot concourse hat that covers her head nowhere else in these illustrations and that serves a purely symbolic purpose in this one. Though wholly impractical (it can only impede the dressing of her hair), the black hat prefigures the great oval platter on which John's head will be served to her in The Dancer's Reward as well as the black moons (or black suns) that fill the background to Salome's necrophilic kiss in The Climax. But if the hat prefigures the platter on which Salome gets the head she has demanded, the masked clown's scissors may well convey - as Heyd says - "a hinted threat to the heroine's head, insinuating that revenge is soon to follow". 47 Superficially innocent and domestic but also potentially sinister and even deadly, scissors play a major part in Pope's Rape of the Lock. On the front cover of the edition he illustrated, Beardsley presents them as the central icon of the poem (fig. 6). Holding in all twenty unlit candles, two rococo candelabra support between them an oval frame enclosing a pair of richly ornamented open scissors whose points in turn enclose a floating lock of hair. The oval frame prefigures the mirror described in the passage on Belinda at her dressing table - a mirror shown as oval in Beardsley's The Toilet (fig. 7), where a pair of plain black scissors appears on the dressing table. Furthermore, the candles depicted on the binding cover stand on what looks like an altar, which is what Belinda's dressing table is called in Pope's poem (1.127). Outlined in white against a black background, the thin vertical lines of the candles as well as the other white verticals suggest what Pope calls "Slight Lines of Hair" (2.26). But in any case, the framing of the scissors and the lock reveals the ambiguity of both. Consider first the scissors. As an instrument of beautification, they may look light, beautiful, richly ornamented, and even adorable, which is how they appear in Beardsley's cover; on the other hand, they may look plain, black, and functional, which is the way they appear in Beardsley's Toilet, where they rest unobtrusively on the altar of her dressing table between the ornamented candlestand and the fancy bow tied at the corner. Though scissors are surely crucial to the art of hairdressing, they are not mentioned among the beauty aids that Pope identifies on Belinda's dressing table in the poem (gems, combs, pins, puffs, powders, and patches), and in Beardsley's illustration as in Pope's poem, Belinda is too busy adoring (or admiring) her own heavenly reflection to notice anything so trivial as a pair of scissors. In the poem, furthermore, the sylphs re-

47

(1995, 65). While only two of the five could actually be masturbating (the hands of the other three are all otherwise engaged), the picture does mingle domestic implements with signs of lust and potential castration: the phallic spout of the teapot pointing at Salome, the bladelike shelf pointing directly to the naked genitals of the boy at right (Snodgrass 1995, 65). Heyd 1986, 133.

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sponsible for her hair seem to be charged with everything but cutting it: setting and separating ("dividing]") its strands (1.146), curling them (2.97), and tending Belinda's favorite lock (2.115). Yet in telling us that some of the busy sylphs attending Belinda "divide the Hair" (1.146), Pope may ambiguously refer to either separating or cutting it. In any case, Beardsley's hieratic elevation of the scissors and the lock on his cover makes strikingly visible what may well rise up before the mind's eye of the Baron in Canto 2. Hours before dawn and Belinda's awakening, he builds an Altar of "vast French Romances" to love, lights the Pyre with Billet-doux, "and begs with ardent Eyes / Soon to obtain, and long possess the Prize" (2.43-44).48 While Belinda ignores the scissors on her dressing table, the Baron could be adoring the means to his prize as well as the lock itself. Beardsley's cover likewise exploits the erotic ambiguities of the lock and its taking. If the sinuous shape hovering between the scissors' ends on Beardsley's cover hovers between signifying a lock of hair and a spermatozoon, as Robert Halsband suggests, it furnishes something like an objective correlative for the ambiguity of Pope's titular trope.49 In Pope's title, a word that literally means the forcible abduction or sexual invasion of a woman is figuratively used to mean the cutting and taking of a woman's hair - a trivial prank. Yet throughout the poem, literal and figurative meanings change places with disarming frequency, and in so doing, they radically destabilize the opposition between the trivial and the grave. Mighty contests rise from trivial things in this poem because trivial things can turn momentous just as harmlessly figurative meanings can turn dangerously literal. The gossip at Hampton Court is said to be killing - figuratively, of course: "At ev'ry Word a Reputation dies" (3.15). But half a dozen lines later, hungry judges sign a sentence of real death, "And Wretches hang that Jury-men may dine" (3.21). In the mock-battle of the final canto, mock death fells beau and witling alike: "One dy'd in Metaphor, and one in Song" (5.59). But when the Baron - menaced by the "fierce Belinda" - seeks "no more than on his Foe to die" (78), we are slyly reminded that from at least the time of Donne in the early seventeenth century, "die" could mean 'ejaculate'. Ridiculous as this battle may be, it is driven by real passion and real desire. If Belinda can demand her lock more loudly than Othello roared for his handkerchief (5.103-106), the line between comedy and tragedy seems hardly thicker than a hair, which is what "Beauty draws us with" (2.27). The spermatozoic lock of Beardsley's cover thus originates - or leaps up, one might say - from the passion that animates Pope's poem and from. the sexual innuendoes of his language. The sexual innuendoes of The Rape, I suspect, did just as much as its wouldbe triviality to sink the poem in the estimate of later Victorian critics. According to one anthologist, it was "pretty" but also "trivial" (like Belinda herself, one

48 49

Unless otherwise noted, the italics in lines quoted from The Rape are in the original. Halsband 1980,91.

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might say), and Matthew Arnold found it lacking in "high seriousness". 50 But Edmund Gosse called it a "little masterpiece in Dresden china", and ironically enough, he urged Beardsley to illustrate it precisely because he thought this precocious young artist had been "doing so much illustrating work of a trivial kind". 51 Fortunately, however, Gosse also urged Beardsley to treat this masterpiece "in his own spirit", which is fully alive to the rich combination of playfulness, artificiality, irony, and deep seriousness (as distinct from high seriousness) that drives the poem. In its own way, the poem seriously dramatizes the sexual magnetism of hair even as it derides the idolatry that hair excites. To see more clearly why Victorian critics found the poem trivial, we must realize that it mock-heroically trivialized precisely what Victorian culture had glorified. In Canto 4, Thalestris fans the rage of the luckless - and now lockless - Belinda by imagining what the Baron will make of her precious ringlet: And shall this Prize, th'inestimable Prize, Expos'd thro' Crystal to the gazing Eyes, And heighten'd by the Diamond's circling Rays, On that Rapacious Hand forever blaze? (4.113-16)

Victorian readers might well find this passage sacrilegious. For in the 1840s and 50s, jewelry made from plaited hair became an obsession. "Hair was powerful", writes Elizabeth Gitter, and the ubiquitous Victorian lock of hair, encased in a locket or ring or framed on the wall, became, through a Midas touch of imagination, something treasured, a totem, a token of attachment, intrinsically valuable, as precious as gold.52

Or as virginity. For to read Elizabeth Barrett's response to Robert Browning's request for a lock of her hair is - as Gitter notes - to see that she considers such a request second only to asking for her sexual surrender: I never gave away what you ask me to give you, to a human being, except my nearest relatives & once or twice or thrice to female friends, [,..]never, though reproached for it, and it is just three weeks since 1 said last to an asker that I was "too great a prude for such a thing"! [ . . . ] - and prude or not, I could not - 1 never could - something would not let me.53

Belinda would readily understand. For her too a lock of hair is an intimate possession as well as a mark of beauty and a sign of sexual magnetism. From its title onwards, the poem repeatedly identifies the taking of the hair with sexual conquest even as it pretends to separate the two. Ostensibly it mocks the practice of confusing appearance with reality, social gaffes with moral lapses. To be equally frightened, as Ariel is, that a nymph may "stain her Honour, or her new Brocade" (1.107) is to show oneself fundamentally - and ridiculously - lacking 50 51 52 53

Qtd. Halsband 1980, 86; Super 1971, 180. Qtd. Halsband 1980, 87n. Gitter 1984, 942-43. Kintner 1969, 288-89, qtd. Gitter 1984, 943.

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in a sense of moral proportion. But just what does "Honour" mean in this poem? Foreseeing that the Baron might publically display Belinda's lock in a diamond ring, Thalestris cries, "Honour forbid! at whose unrival'd Shrine / Ease, Pleasure, Virtue, All, our Sex resign" (4.105-6). If Honor demands the sacrifice of virtue as well as of pleasure and ease, can Honor be anything more than reputation, which is of course based on the appearance of virtue, so that figuratively staining one's Honour is morally indistinguishable from literally staining one's brocade?54 Falstaff famously calls honor nothing but "Air" (1 Henry IV 5.1.1), but this poem makes it inhere in precisely what is visible, above all in whatever hair is visible. Hence the supreme irony of Belinda's cry after the Baron takes her lock: "O hadst thou, Cruel! been content to sieze / Hairs less in sight, or any Hairs but these!" (4.175-76). To save the hairs of her head, the hairs which publically signify her Honour, she would presumably have been willing to sacrifice the hairs of her maidenhead. Thus would Virtue have knelt at Honor's shrine.55 To be sure, it is the Baron who genuflects to the Goddess of Love as he prays for her blessing on his quest (2.35-46). But in his illustrations of Belinda at her toilet (fig. 7) and the Baron at his altar (fig. 8), Beardsley shows each in profile and wearing a dressing gown, with the kneeling form and praying hands of the Baron figuratively mirroring the seated form and slightly extended right hand of Belinda as she literally gazes into her own mirror. Placed in elegantly furnished boudoirs, both figures appear against a trompe I 'ail backdrop of nature at its most artificial. What seems at first a set of windows overlooking foliage behind Belinda proves instead to be a three-panelled screen stippled with the orderly trees and round temple of a formal garden, and in the Baron's room, the would-be window is a large tapestry stippled with twin clumps of trees flanking a distant house. Stippled on the wall beneath the Baron's tapestry are bouquets linked by hanging garlands, just as garlands hang over the tops of the panels of Belinda's screen and decorate her elaborate coif. Finally, both rooms are conspicuously occupied by what Pope's account of them never mentions: candles. Two slim candles rise above Belinda's head from the sculpted candlesticks on either side of her table; a three-branched candelabra stands on a table just behind the Baron; and before him, standing up over the curving flames of the Billet-doux he has just lighted atop his pyre of books, a burning candle rising from a filigreed floor-based candlestick looms well above his head. If the Baron's burning candle may be taken to signify his priapic excitement, as Zatlin suggests, the unlit candles on Belinda's dressing table may likewise suggest her latent desire to be ravished, which is revealed both by the language of Pope's first canto and the puff-skirted courtier peering through the garlanded

54

55

In fact, since a trace of semen on a dress played a leading part in the 1998 impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton, the staining of a brocade might itself signify dishonor. Linda Zatlin construes Belinda's final cry as evidence that she finds the Baron impotent because of his "inability to cut her pubic hairs" (1990, 51, 189). But in my view, we may far more plausibly infer that Belinda unwittingly refers to being quite literally raped or ravished, sexually "sieze[d]'\

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curtains of Belinda's bed in The Dream, Beardsley's frontispiece to the poem.56 Beardsley's courtier has all the ambiguity of Pope's. With his long black curls, his skirt garlanded in flowers, and his delicate profile almost identical to that of Belinda in The Toilet, this androgynous figure personifies what Pope's Belinda conjures in her dream: "A Youth more glittering than a Birth-night Beau" (1.23). But his long, thin, star-topped baton prefigures the burning candle of the Baron's boudoir and likewise implies a priapic excitement that is explicitly represented by another drawing Beardsley made a few months after The Dream. Drawn to illustrate a passage in Juvenal's sixth satire, The Impatient Adulterer shows a man bending forward to peer through a set of bedcurtains just like the courtier - except that he is naked from the waist down and fiddling with the foreskin of his half-erect penis.57 To see how closely his long black curls and his leaning, peering stance resemble those of the well-padded courtier, to see the link between the adulterer's hand on his naked phallus and the courtier's pointing forefinger, is to see how well Beardsley captures the fundamental ambiguity of the youth's moral posture in Pope's poem. This sylph, who calls himself Ariel and who claims to be Belinda's protector, actually behaves very much like Milton's Satan. Satan first tempts Eve with a dream whispered to her ear as she sleeps {Paradise Lost 5.35-37), and he begins by telling her that all Nature is ravished by her beauty (1.43^46). Summoned by Belinda's unnamed guardian sylph, Ariel likewise whispers to the ear of the sleeping Belinda, calls her "Fairest of mortals", and urges her to know her "own Importance" (1. 27, 35). Ariel is just as seductive as the men he is supposedly guarding Belinda's purity against. Even while warning her against "the whisper in the dark", he is whispering to her in the early morning light.58 Even while later commanding his troops to guard Belinda closely from male advances, he also reminds them of their duty to keep her as lovely and fragrant as possible (2.91-100) - in other words, to keep her supremely desirable. And even while urging Belinda herself to beware of man, he tells her that any woman who rejects mankind is "embrac'd" by a sylph, by one of those who easily "Assume what Sexes and what Shapes they please" (1.68-70). Pope thus writes the recipe for Beardsley's androgynous courtier, an exquisitely equivocal amalgam of delicacy, would-be solicitude, and lust. In Beardsley's illustrations as in Pope's poem, Belinda subtly reveals a lust of her own. The 'Billet Doux' shows her sitting up in bed propped against a huge pillow, backed by a rococo headboard and flowered wallpaper. Wearing a bonnet tied around her chin and an elaborately frilled bedjacket, she seems at first glance fully protected. But the angle at which she holds the Baron's note 56

57 58

Overstating her point, however, Zatlin sees the whole configuration of candle and altar in Beardsley's illustration as a giant phallus, with the books forming a scrotum and the flames pubic hair (1990, 51). Repr. Halsband 1980, fig. 46. Even apart from the allusions to Milton's Satan in this passage, any portrayal of a "sleepwatching" man - a man gazing on a sleeping woman - implies the possibility of rape. See Steinberg 1972, 99 and Steiner 1982, 47, 76-77.

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makes it lead the viewer's eye directly to her exposed left breast. Beardsley thus depicts the sudden impact of the Baron's fervent words upon a newly awakened Belinda. Though Ariel in her dream has just been warning her to beware of "some dread Event" and above all to "beware of Man!" (1.109, 113), the billet doux makes her instantly forget these warnings: "Wounds, Charms, and Ardors, were no sooner read / But all the Vision vanish'd from thy Head" (1.119-20). Combining as it does the pampered innocence of a children's book heroine with the sensuality of a courtesan, Beardsley's drawing aptly expresses the sexual ambiguity of Pope's Belinda.59 When "awful Beauty puts on all its Arms" in the dressing table scene, Belinda is not arming herself against sexual overtures but doing everything possible to attract them. The "purer Blush" she paints on her cheeks with rouge (1.143) is cosmetically more delicate than the natural reddening of embarrassment would be. But while the latter suggests virginal spontaneity, the cosmetically purer blush is morally tainted, the work of artifice, the sign of the courtesan. A comparable ambiguity marks the scissors, the "little Engine" of Belinda's downfall (3.132). By showing a pair of scissors on Belinda's dressing table, Beardsley reminds us - as I have noted - that scissors are often used to trim and beautify a woman's hair. In the drawing called Rape of the Lock (fig. 9), Beardsley's picture of the moment just before the lock is cut, the sumptuously frilled and bountifully bewigged figure holding a pair of open scissors by the frozen cascade of Belinda's coiffeur (which is all we see of her head) could be a hairdresser giving her a final trim. But the wink of the dwarf in the foreground tells us that the Baron is bent on amorous theft even as the dwarf himself - who typically signifies lust in Beardsley's iconography - slyly pilfers a cup of coffee.60 As a sardonic observer of the action rather than a would-be guardian angel of the heroine, the dwarf is Beardsley's antithetical answer to Pope's sylphs, whom he does not depict at all.61 The dwarfs full skirted coat and highheeled shoes make him a miniature parody of the Baron, and the sheer intricacy of pattern in the men's embroidered coats, the women's figured dresses, and the 59

60

61

In Beardsley's frontispiece for Aristophanes' Lysistrata (1896), which appeared just a few months after the illustrated Rape, an openly sensual Lysistrata stands fingering her crotch (she is ostensibly "Shielding Her Coynte") and tickling a huge erect phallus with a leafy branch. Like Belinda in The Billet Doux, she wears a heavily ruffled dressing gown and bares one breast. On the lasciviousness of Beardsley's dwarves, see Zaitlin 1990, 188-89. Since Beardsley does not show Clarissa handing the scissors to the Baron, as she does in the poem (3.127— 30), the dwarf is something like the Baron's co-conspirator. "The dwarfs smile is a knowing one", writes Milly Heyd; he is aware of what is about to happen, since the illustration does not show the actual cutting off of the lock. The dwarf is conscious of the danger lurking in this seemingly idyllic situation, but he stands aside and does not take an active part in the action" (Heyd 1986, 812). Noting the similarities between Beardsley's illustrations for The Rake and Hogarth's Marriage a la Mode (such as the use of screens, coffee drinkers, and overturned chairs), Heyd reads Beardsley's dwarf as a variant of the black boy in plate 4 of Hogarth's Marriage, where the black boy kneeling at lower right grins and points to the horns of his toy Actaeon as a sign that his lady (in line with his pointing finger) will soon be cuckolding her lord (Heyd 1986, 81).

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extravagantly curled wigs may well suggest the "mystick Mazes" (1.92) into which Belinda's conflicting desires lead her. In the poem, her response to the Baron's advances is anything but straightforward. At the very moment when Ariel tries to warn her of the scissors, he is balked by her own passion for the Baron: As on the Nosegay in her Breast reclin'd He watch'd th' Ideas rising in her Mind; Sudden he view'd in spite of all her Art An Earthly Lover lurking at her Heart. Amaz'd, confus'd, he found his Pow'r expir'd, Resign'd to Fate, and with a Sigh retir'd. (3.141-46)

In the text these lines are immediately followed by the passage on the cutting of the lock, where the scissors' blades "the sacred Hair dissever / From the fair Head, for ever and for ever!" (3.153-54). Subliminally implying the severance of the head itself, Pope constructs a mock-heroic version of decapitation. Molly Heyd even suggests that the dwarfs knowing wink at the scissors in Beardsley's illustration intimates the artist's own "passionate desire to cut off a woman's head". 62 In Beardsley's second version of The Toilette for Salome, as we have seen, the princess' would-be hairdresser is a masked Pierrot - a demonic clown - who encircles her head with his right arm and waves a powder puff before her eyes while pointing with his sharp left elbow to a pair of black scissors stuck in the pocket of his white apron. If scissors can signify the revenge finally taken on the heroine's head in Salome, they may help to explain Belinda's alarm at the assault on her hair. The cutting of the lock in The Rape, however, is followed not by any literal decapitation but by Umbriel's descent to the Cave of Spleen in a passage that led Beardsley to the most intricate, grotesque, and claustral of his illustrations for the poem. To this point, Beardsley has given us ornately furnished interiors. His picture of Belinda on the barge in The Barge includes not even a glimpse of Pope's "Silver Thames" (2.4), and the glorious sun of Pope's passage appears on the lavishly decorated side of the boat only as a set of little round sunbursting faces with "phallic and testicular forms"63 hanging from their mouths. The outdoor world appears just once, in the background of the picture of the Baron wielding his scissors (The Rape of the Lock), where a large window frames a double row of trees so nicely that this 'natural' scene could be yet another picture - like the tapestry on the wall of the Baron's boudoir. In The Cave of Spleen (fig. 10), Beardsley takes this interiority to its claustral extreme. Illustrating the line that "Men prove with Child, as pow'rful Fancy works" (4.53), stippled embryos nestle in the swollen belly of a man at lower left and the thigh of the man beside him. Images of enclosure and entrapment abound. At lower right one woman sits in a closed jar, and just above the peacock-winged female nude appears the bust of a man in a cage of diagonal 62 63

Heyd 1986, 82. Halsband 1980, 100.

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crosses. Directly above him a tiny bare-breasted woman with the round face of a mop-haired child peers out at us through a veil. Since she perches over the reclining figure of Spleen, she may be Affectation, one of Spleen's two handmaids, for the frowning old frump just above clutching a set of books and scrolls to her chest is clearly Pope's "Ill-nature like an ancient Maid" (4.27). But just as Beardsley puts spectacles on this ancient maid, he adds a veil to the face of Affectation. In what Halsband aptly calls this "grotto of hair",64 virtually all the figures are caught up in hair or hair-like forms, in a swirling profusion of curls, netting, plumes, peacock feathers, and wigs. In the midst of this bizarre world sits the half-profiled figure of Pope himself in a pose borrowed from Godfrey Kneller's portrait of him.65 With sunken cheek and narrowed eyes under his turban-like morning cap, he gazes out at us warily, holding 011 his lap what seems an embryo made of curled hair - an emblem of the poem he has begotten. Beardsley likewise works his own variations on Pope's theme of metamorphosis, of "Bodies chang'd to various forms by Spleen" (4.48). Taking his cue from Pope's lines on anthropomorphic teapots and impregnated men (4.4953), Beardsley presents not only a bird-woman and several teapot-shaped men but also - looming large on the left - a conspicuously feminized Umbriel, who is male in Pope's text but here displays the hourglass figure of a tightly corseted woman with stupendously plumed turban, richly ornamented sleeves, and thighs draped in what appear to be stippled pearls. Subtly recalling the hermaphroditic nude on the suppressed title page for Salome, Umbriel epitomizes the gendercrossing that permeates Pope's poem from the first canto, where the glittering youth displays an effeminacy that is plainly caught - as we have already noted in Beardsley's illustration of Belinda's dream. At the same time, this effeminate figure assumes the boldly erect stance and assertive manner of a man about to fight. Holding up sceptre and spleenwort with his left hand as he points with his right, he seems precisely the kind of warrior that Belinda aimed to be when she set out to challenge and conquer at Ombre "two adventurous Knights" (3.26). For if men can look and act like women in this poem, women can behave like men. Belinda does so plainly in the last of Beardsley's full-scale illustrations for the poem, Battle of the Beaux and Belles (fig. 11). Superficially, this picture replaces dark confusion with the appearance of decorum and light. Misshapen hybrids give way to well-dressed men and women gathered in a drawing room; the windowless wall of the cave is supplanted by a pair of windows; and in place of Umbriel's tight black bodysuit, Belinda wears a billowing, delicately stippled dress that forms a triangle of light with the decolletage of the white-plumed woman just behind her (presumably Thalestris). But the overturned chair and the kneeling Baron and the cast-down walking stick signal confusion, and for all its light, the picture is framed and freighted by darkness: by the dark curtains at

04 65

Ibid. 103. Ibid. 106.

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the top, by the broad strip of nearly black carpet below, and by thick dark wigs quite as large as any of those to be found in the cave - especially on the head of Belinda herself. Just as importantly, her frowning face and the forward thrust of her upper body repeat the bellicose stance of Umbriel, and the single curly lock resting on her right shoulder repeats the lock dangling from the headdress of the Goddess of Spleen. Belinda thus combines the grace of a lavishly dressed young woman with the aggressiveness of a warrior. To compare this picture with the earliest illustration of the battle scene, however, is to see that Beardsley stops well short of turning Belinda into the "fierce Virago" that Thalestris becomes when she issues the call to arms (5.37). In a 1714 engraving of Canto 5 of The Rape, Louis Du Guernier shows a simply clothed Belinda leaning over the almost supine figure of the Baron and thrusting the point of a bodkin into his chest while he tries with his right hand to push her forearm away. 66 The foreground of this illustration may have led Beardsley to put an overturned chair in his picture of the battle, as Halsband notes. 67 But Beardsley treats the confrontation between Belinda and the Baron altogether differently than Du Guernier does. Resplendent in towering wig and elaborately ruffled dress, Belinda faces down the Baron without touching him, sternly clutching her fan at her side rather than striking him with it.68 Equally self-possessed, the Baron kneels erectly before her in thickly curled wig, finely stippled ruff, and richly embroidered coat. With his hand on his chest and his head held firmly up, he strikes a pose somewhere between abashment and defiance. He could well be signifying, in fact, what he says when Sir Plume demands the return of the lock in Canto 4: [...] by this Lock, this sacred Lock I swear, [•··]

That while my Nostrils draw the vital Air, This Hand, which won it, shall for ever wear. (4.137-38)

Besides composing a balance of antithetical elements - abjection and self-assertion, grace and fury, confusion and decorum, light and dark - Beardsley puts in the very center of this picture a figure who has by now come to serve as a detached, amused observer: the page-boy dwarf. Milly Heyd identifies this figure with Beardsley himself. Through him, she says, Beardsley expresses "the little man's fear of the large woman" even as he plays the clever fool, sharing with us his amusement at the antics of the others.69 But if the dwarf signifies Beardsley

66 67

68

69

Repr. ibid. 15. Ibid. 106. As Milly Heyd notes (1986, 81), there is also ample precedent for Beardsley's overturned chair in Hogarth - in pictures such as plate 2 of Marriage a la Mode (1745) and plate 6 of The Rake's Progress (1735); the latter shows not only a downed chair but a kneeling T o m Rakewell on the floor beside it, anticipating the kneeling Baron. While far less violently aggressive than Du Guernier's Belinda, she is decidedly more hostile than in Thomas Stothard watercolor of 1798, where Belinda looks down sweetly on the Baron as he kneels ardently before her. Heyd 1986, 80-81.

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himself, he also signifies Beardsley's alliance with Pope, for his position in the center of Battle corresponds precisely to that of the poet in the center of The Cave. Their expressions and posture are different, of course; while Pope sits pensively staring out at us, the dwarf stands between the two chief antagonists Belinda and the Baron - with a look of complacence if not amusement. But the dwarfs turban resembles Pope's soft round hat, and the dwarfs head is cocked to the right just as Pope's is cocked to the left. Beardsley's implicit linking of the two reminds us that Pope was only four and a half feet tall and sometimes called himself a dwarf, as Halsband notes.70 All three figures are at once outside the action and yet central to the creation of its meaning for the observer whether reader, viewer, or both. Beardsley's tailpiece for The Rape (The New Star) includes neither a dwarf nor anything like the satyr and Pierrot figures interring the princess in the tailpiece for Salomi. After the flagrant grotesquerie of the Cave of Spleen and the embroidered confusion of the battle in the drawing room, the tailpiece offers a compact vision of sweetness and light. Plumed, wigged, and sashed, a man in the carnival costume of the court of Louis XIV holds delicately in his thumb and forefinger the "sudden Star" that Belinda's stolen lock becomes as it finally shoots into the sky and thereby prompts the star-gazing John Partridge to predict the fall of Louis (5.127-28, 139-40). Yet the tidy symmetry of the star is offset by the Baroque extravagance of the courtier's plume and wig, which evokes all the riotous profusion of hair and plumage that we have seen throughout these illustrations, especially in the Cave of Spleen. Grotesquerie is an eruption of buried energies. True to its etymological roots in the grotta (cave), the grotesque evinces - in the words of Snodgrass not only something playful and carelessly fantastic but also something ominous and sinister, the discovery of a totally different 'underground' world in which the realms of the animate and the inanimate are no longer separate and the 'normal' laws of symmetry and proportion are no longer valid. 71

Yet in his illustrations for both Salome and The Rape of the Lock, Beardsley's elegantly grotesque art does more than expose the ominous powers of an underground world typically buried by the rituals of the civilized life. It also continually shows the interplay between these two worlds. If the openly lustful and bloodthirsty Salome can don a modish dress and hat, accept the ministrations of a hairdresser, and offer her cheek to a powder puff, the delicate and vir-

70

Halsband 1980, 109. Pope's consciousness of his physical deformity was likewise matched by Beardsley's. Though Beardsley's height (approximately 5 Ί 0 " ) placed him well above the stature of a dwarf, he was extremely thin, with a "hatchet face" fringed by tortoiseshellcolored hair hanging to the eyebrows (Cecil 1964, 95). "Beardsley", writes Heyd, "lived with the conviction that a physical deformation clung to him like a black silhouette and his self-image underwent parallel reductive transformations. The flight from physical limitations and the capacity to rise above them is expressed in his art, which is drawn to metamorphosis" (1986, 83).

71

Snodgrass 1995, 163, citing Kayser 1957, 21 and Harpham 1982, 51.

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ginal Belinda can just as readily feel the stirrings of desire, the lust to conquer, and the deforming effects of rage. Beardsley's fm-de-siecle illustrations for 1894 edition of Wilde's play and the 1896 edition of Pope's poem enable us to see that we can never escape the grotesque. "Not merely the human personality", writes Snodgrass, but the very nature of the world is grotesque, in the sense that we can at any point and without provocation be the targets of malicious forces, the most familiar elements of everyday life suddenly becoming strange and evil.72 *

*

*

In the monograph from which I quoted at the beginning of this study, Lorraine Kooistra argues that illustrated books are always "books of conversations". 73 Through pictures, she contends, the artist enters by various means into dialogue with the writer. 74 For the most part, however, the author answers the artist and his reading of the text only insofar as the text itself talks back, confirming or contesting what the artist graphically says of it. Beadsley's illustrations of Wilde and Pope generate a series of conversations. Responding at first to the text of Salome with a drawing that prompted Wilde to commission a suite of illustrations for it, Beardsley then draws a set of pictures that relentlessly explore and expose what the play dramatizes: the conversation between the grotesque and the beautiful. When these graphic 'readings' of Wilde's play are themselves read in conjunction with his illustrations of Pope's poem, they generate a further conversation between the play and the poem, between the savagery of the one and the delicacy of the other. The pictures reveal the grotesquerie of both.

72 73 74

Snodgrass 1995, 164 and Hugo 1909. Kooistra 1995, 247. She examines "five dialogic relations" that I have space only to enumerate here: quotation, impression, parody, answering, and cross-dressing (ibid. 249).

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Works Cited Beckson, Karl. "The Artist as Transcendental Phallus: Aubrey Beardsley and the Ritual of Defense" in: Robert Langenfeld (ed.), Reconsidering Aubrey Beardsley, Ann Arbor, UM1 Research Press: 1989, 207-26. Cecil, Lord Edward C. D.G. Max: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964. Clark, Kenneth. The Best of Aubrey Beardsley. New York: Doubleday, 1978. Cuno, James (ed.). French Caricature and the French Revolution. Los Angeles: Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Wight Art Gallery University of California, 1988. Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Fletcher, Ian. Aubrey Beardsley. Boston: Twayne, 1987. Gilbert, Elliot L. "'Tumult of Images': Wilde, Beardsley, and Salome" in: Victorian Studies, 26,Winter (1983), 133-59. Gitter, Elizabeth G. "The Power of Women's Hair in the Victorian Imagination" in: PMLA, 99 (1984), 936-54. Gordon, D.J. "Aubrey Beardsley at the V.& A", in: Encounter, 27,4, (1966), 11-15. Halsband, Robert. The Rape of the Lock and its Illustrations 1714-1896. Oxford: Clarendon, 1980. Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, ed. Scott Elledge. New York: Norton, 3 1991. Harpham, Geoffrey Gait. On the Grotesque: Startegies of Contradiction in Art and Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982 Hart-Davis, Rupert (ed.). The Letters of Oscar Wilde. London, 1962. Hertz, Neil. "Medusa's Head" in: The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, 148-73. Heyd, Milly. Aubrey Beardsley: Symbol, Mask, and Self Irony. New York: Peter Lang, 1986. Hugo, Victor. "Preface to Cromwell" in: The Works of Victor Hugo. Vol. 3: Dramas. Boston: Little Brown, 1909, 8-23. Kayser, Wolfgang. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Transl. by Ulrich Weisstein. New York: Columbia UP, 1957. Keats, John. "Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil" in: Jack Stillinger (ed.), John Keats: Complete Poems, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982, 184-98. Kintner, Elvan (ed.). The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 184546. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Kooistra, Lorraine Janzen. The Artist as Critic: Bitextuality in Fin-de-Siecle Illustrated Books. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995. Kuryluk, Ewa. Salome and Judas in the Cave of Sex. The Grotesque: Origins, Iconography, Techniques. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1987. Lasner, Mark Samuels. A Selective Checklist of the Published Work of Aubrey Beardsley. Boston: Thomas G. Boss, 1995. MacFall, Haldane. Aubrey Beardsley: The Man and His Work. London: John Lane, Bodley Head, 1928. Meisel, Martin. Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Milton, John. Complete Poetical Works. Douglas Bush (ed.), Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. Paulson, Ronald. "The Severed Head: The Impact of French Revolutionary Caricatures on England" in: James Cuno (ed.), French Caricature and the French Revolution. Los Angeles: Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Wight Art Gallery University of California, 1988, 55-65. Pope, Alexander. The Rape of the Lock . . . Embroidered with Nine Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley. London: Leonard Smithers, 1896. Rothenstein, William. Men and Manners. London: Faberand Faber, 1931. Schweik, Robert. "Congruous Incongruities: The Wilde-Beardsley 'Collaboration'" in: English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 37, (1994), 9-26.

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Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Adonais" in: Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (eds.), Shelley's Poetry and Prose, New York: Norton, 1977, 390-406. Snodgrass, Chris. Aubrey Beardsley: Dandy of the Grotesque. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Steinberg, Leo. Other Criteria. London: Oxford University Press, 1972. Steiner, Wendy. Pictures of Romance: Form Against Context in Painting and Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982. Stendhal [Henri Marie Beyle]. Red and Black. Transl. by Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton, 1969. Super, R.H. (ed.). English Literature and Irish Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1971. Wilde, Oscar. Salome in: Peter Raby (ed.), Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, 65-91. Zatlin, Linda. Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian Sexual Politics. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.

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List of Illustrations Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Aubrey Beardsley, Salome with St. John's Head (1893) Aubrey Beardsley, The Climax (1894) William Holman Hunt, Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1867) Aubrey Beardsley, Tail Piece (1894). Aubrey Beardsley, The Toilette of Salome (1894) Aubrey Beardsley, front cover from Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1896) Aubrey Beardsley, The Toilet, from Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1896) Aubrey Beardsley, The Baron's Prayer, from Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1896) Fig. 9 Aubrey Beardsley, The Rape of the Lock (1896) Fig. 10 Aubrey Beardsley, The Cave of Spleen (1896) Fig. 11 Aubrey Beardsley, Battle of the Beaux and Belles (1896)

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Aubrey Beardsley, Salome with St. John's Head. From The Studio 1.1, April 1893. Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

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Aubrey Beardsley, The Climax. From Oscar Wilde, Salome (London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane, 1894). Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

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William Holman Hunt, Isabella and the Pot of Basil (1867) Tyne and Wear Museums, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, photograph from Jan Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Women (London: Weidenfelt & Nicolson, 1987), plate 121.

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Aubrey Beardsley, The Toilette of Salome. From Oscar Wilde, Salome (1894). Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

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Aubrey Beardsley, front cover from Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (London: L. Smithers, 1896) Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

Fig. 7

Aubrey Beardsley, The Toilet, from Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1896) Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

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Fig. 9

Aubrey Beardsley, The Rape of the Lock, from Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1896). Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

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Fig. 10 Aubrey Beardsley, The Cave of Spleen, from Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1896). Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

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Fig. 11 Aubrey Beardsley, Battle of the Beaux and Belles, from Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1896). Courtesy of Dartmouth College Library.

Brigitte Glaser

Female Scientists / Women and Science New Characters and Themes in British Drama

At the centre of an eighteenth-century painting by Joseph Wright of Derby called Experiment on a Bird in the Airpump (ca. 1767-68) (fig. 1) we see a man who wears a red coat with a golden pattern and long grey hair, which give him the appearance of a magician. He demonstrates an experiment in which air is withdrawn from a glass object with the help of an airpump. Inside the glass container a bird is shown at the moment between life and death. It will survive the experiment, as is indicated by the lowering of the bird cage on the upper right hand side. In this painting Wright captured a transitional moment in the ethical and philosophical thinking of the eighteenth century when he depicted man's newly discovered possibility of creating a temporary state of nothingness, by withdrawing life-giving air from the glass and by then inducing the breath of life into it again. The artist thus suggested that man, too, could now take on a function hitherto associated only with God. It is important to note, though, that a man, not a woman, is carrying out the experiment and is endowed with a life-giving or death-carrying role. In contrast to the male figures in the painting, who stand out for their attentiveness to, or involvement in, the experiment, the female figures are marginalised and assigned roles of spectators. Furthermore, the sympathy with and fear for the life of the bird on the faces of the watching girls allude to the emotional side of women and thus establish their position as being opposite to reason. The individuals on the canvas may in fact be divided according to gender-related conduct, the male characters representing activity, scientific curiosity, rationality, and involvement, while the female ones display passivity, disinterest and incomprehension of the experiment, and exhibit in general an affective response to the masculine endeavour.1 Shelagh Stephenson's 1998 play An Experiment with an Air Pump opens with a visual reproduction of Joseph Wright's work. The painting is shown in four large projections above the stage and is furthermore copied in a tableau which the actors form in front of the audience. One of them who will later play the part of Ellen, a twentieth-century molecular biologist, addresses the spectators in a kind of prologue: I've loved this painting since I was thirteen years old. I've loved it because it has a scientist at the heart of it, a scientist where you usually find God. Here, centre stage, is not a saint or an archangel, but a man. Look at his face, bathed in celestial light, here is a man beatified by his

1

For an interesting analysis of the gendered viewing depicted in Derby's Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, see Wagner 1999.

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search for truth. As a child enraptured by the possibilities of science, this painting set my heart racing, it made the blood tingle in my veins: I wanted to be this scientist; I wanted to be up there in the thick of it, all eyes drawn to me, frontiers tumbling before my merciless deconstruction. I was thirteen. Other girls wanted to marry Marc Bolan. I had smaller ambitions. I wanted to be God. (3)

Ellen's comments about the excitement of scientific discovery set the tone for a play which is situated on two time levels, the late eighteenth century and our own time, that is, periods which are, to a differing degree, characterized by political and epistemological uncertainty, a fervent interest in experimentation, and the sense that frontiers have been reached, the crossing of which may be accompanied by unforeseen consequences. Ellen's express desire to take up a central role in the pursuit of knowledge furthermore points to the dramatically changed situation women find themselves in in contemporary society, where those god-like positions are no longer occupied by men only. Now individuals of both sexes are jointly placed in a world devoid of stability and guidance and forced to take on responsibilities possibly beyond their powers. As the example shows, both forms of art engage in a representation of scientists but the play uses its reference to the earlier, well-known painting to make a gender-related comment. Through her particular choice of characters, Stephenson appears to draw attention to the male-dominated representation of science in art and offers her own, more balanced effort. She is one of several playwrights who question and subvert the existing frames2 by introducing female characters who participate in professional fields hitherto restricted to men. Artistic responses in English literature to scientific developments can be traced back to the late sixteenth century. While a serious interest in alchemy and the occult is already expressed in such plays as Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare's Tempest, and Jonson's The Alchemist, satire was the dominant mode of writing about science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, probably induced by the Royal Society's frequently dilettante attempts at experimentation. Perhaps the best-known example of this kind of a reaction is to be found in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Nineteenth-century literary responses to progress in science include such diverse texts as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a gothic novel influenced by contemporary medical and scientific discourses, then prototypical works of the genre 'science fiction', as well as the poetry of Tennyson and Arnold, who used their work to express their deep concern about the religious crisis which befell many Victorians after the publication of Darwin's theories on the evolution of species. It was only in the early twentieth century, however, that plays were written which seriously dealt with natural sciences and thus differed from the genre of 'science fiction'. 3 While science fiction usually treats subjects to some extent re2

3

The list of female scientists compiled by Margaret Alic (1986) consists mainly of exceptional women who had acquired and practised their particular scientific skills owing to unusual circumstances and who therefore never challenged the male dominance of science from classical antiquity to the twentieth century. According to a prevalent definition, science fiction represents a form of fantasy in which scientific facts, assumptions, or hypotheses form the basis, by logical extrapolation, ofadven-

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moved from reality as we know it, these plays are based on the lives and actions of historically verifiable individuals or on generally identifiable social constellations and are therefore similar to the German tradition of Brecht, Kipphardt or Dürrenmatt. Until the late eighties, these plays predominantly dealt with themes related to the cold war, as the examples of Robert Bolt's The Tiger and the Horse (1960), Howard Brenton's The Genius (1983) and Tom Stoppard's Hapgood (1988) indicate. More recent works, however, display an interest in a wide variety of questions and themes, the common denominator of which is the importance of responsible conduct on the part of the scientific community. Female scientists rarely appear as characters in literary texts before the twentieth century. Although Mary Shelley offers in Frankenstein a critique of a male scientific project which is centred on the usurpation of the powers of Nature and the elimination of the biological need for women4 and therefore advocates, by implication, ethical considerations and the kind of all-encompassing care which would later be demanded by proponents of a feminist epistemology in science, female characters in this novel are still relegated to the domestic sphere of life and granted only the traditional social positions of mothers, sisters, and wives. The independent working woman scientist makes her first appearance on stage in the works of George Bernard Shaw, for instance in the figure of Vivie Warren, mathematician, accountant and New Woman in Mrs Warren's Profession (1902). While Vivie and her sisters may still be exceptional characters in British drama in the early part of the century, they become more common in later decades, thus reflecting the changing historical situation. The history of women in science is also a history of exclusion, discrimination, and emphasis on difference. The exclusion has been largely justified on the basis of biological difference, in the twentieth century in particular hormonal research, the aspect ofbrain lateralization, and factors of sociobiology. Forms of discrimination have included limited access to education, unequal payment and promotion, and distorted collegial relationships.5 Although the achievements of female scientists have eventually been acknowledged - I'm thinking here of Evelyn Fox Keller, Barbara McClintock, Lise Meitner and Emmy Noether, just to mention a few many women have over the years reported that, in a typical reaction towards them by men, their work has been regarded with incredulity, that is, with insinuations that they may have been helped by male colleagues or suspicions that they appropriated their results in an unlawful manner. Since fighting these accusations has

11

5

tures in the future, on other planets, in other dimensions in time or space, or under new variants of scientific law. (Holman 1980, 405). In Romanticism & Gender, Mellor briefly discusses Frankenstein as an example of "feminine romanticism", thereby emphasizing Shelley's invocation of "domestic affections" (1993,65— 66) in contrast to the male scientifc project. Other examples of literary criticism concentrating on the represenation of science in this novel are offered by Bewell (1988) and O'Flinn (1983). Schiebinger has pointed out that "men and women scientists often fail to establish the collegial relationships that have characterized relationships among men scientists and fall instead into the traditional male and female relationships - those of romance, father and daughter, brother and sister" (1987, 24).

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often proved to be too emotionally draining, these women have tended to withdraw or, as one scholar put it, "become essentially honorary men, denying that being a woman creates any problems at all".6 Researchers in the field of Feminist and Gender Studies have furthermore drawn attention to the consequences of men's control over science and technology, by arguing that the latter's unholy alliance with the capitalist and patriarchal systems as well as the introduction of institutionalized science may have increased the danger of repression and genocide.7 In reaction to the persistent privileging of so-called "masculinist values"8 like reason and objectivity, arrived at through a gender-related division along binary lines into reason versus feeling, fact versus value, culture versus nature, science versus belief, and the public versus the private, feminists have recommended a revisionary approach to science which would "integrate all aspects of human experience into [the] understanding of the natural world" 9 and thus make it, through the inclusion of feeling and subjectivity, a more responsible social science. In the following exploration of British plays of the 1990s I will concentrate on the representation of female scientists of the past and the present, the depiction of the difficulties they have encountered and the progress they have made, and the evaluation of possible contributions to the nature of science by the growing presence of women in scientific research. The portrayal of female scientists or of women's positions on science is closely connected to the structural methods contemporary playwrights employ in their works. In chronologically organized plays like Brenton's The Genius, Harrison's Square Rounds and Poliakoff s Blinded by the Sun, their depiction assists in the development of specific ideas and the building up of suspense and tension towards a particularly poignant outcome; in a cyclically arranged play like Frayn's Copenhagen a female character contributes greatly to bringing out thematically the structural aspects of repetition and indeterminacy; and in dual-time frame plays like Stoppard's Arcadia, Stephenson's Experiment with an Air Pump and Wertenbaker' s After Darwin female characters are made extensive use of in relation to the idea of contrast. The latter type of play allows for the juxtaposition of different periods as well as historical and fictional characters, it makes possible a comparison of scientists at different times and raises questions of a likely progress, both in science and the people conducting scientific research. All the above-mentioned works are not only engaged in the popularization of science but also draw special attention to ethical considerations which are or ought to be an important part of the scientific endeavour. Women's roles in recent plays dealing with science have been those of commentators, catalysts and, in a few cases, protagonists. Owing to their particular his-

6 7

8 9

Rose 1987,278. Rose points out the potential dangers of institutionalized science which, in contrast to science as a craft, is often "directed toward the domination of nature or of humanity as part of nature" (1987, 273). Schiebinger 1987,32. Ibid. 34.

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tory of exclusion, female scientists are rarely to be found in historical plays.10 If they are, they take on minor roles but their brief appearances are of great significance and have a reverberating effect. Often they raise our awareness of the implications of scientific research. In Tony Harrison's Square Rounds, a play in verse depicting a period in the history of chemistry which yielded both the development of fertilizers and that of particularly gruesome weapons, the historical figure of Clara Immerwahr is such a minor, yet important character. Herself a reputed scientist, Clara Immerwahr was the wife of the German chemist Fritz Haber, who discovered the Nobel-Prize-winning synthesis of ammonia, thus contributing to the solution of world hunger problems. But Haber also developed chlorine gas used in the First World War, for which he was later considered a war criminal by the allies. Clara's early awareness of the destructive potential of her husband's research is clearly expressed in sensuous, onomatopoetically phrased lines describing the conflicting sides of scientific inventions, here the chemistry used in textile engineering versus the chemistry employed in the form of deadly weapons: The shades you adore to see us women wear are converted into cankers that corrupt the living air, the green of undergarments, the green of a chemise born as deadly poison on the April breeze. Into the top hat vats the coloured silks went in and out came something most unfeminine. Black tar from the gasworks gave the garment trade glorious colours with the chemist's subtle aid. Now the courtesan's costume, the gentleman's cravat come out caustic from the Kaiser's chemist's vat. Those materials that lovers' hands would stroke wafted as miasma and making young men choke. A scary scarf, a shawl that's death to wear an enveloping miasma choking off the air. The sheen of those Chinese silk shantungs choking boys and shattering men's lungs. A rustling undergarment, a silken Chinese shawl hovering above the earth as a poisonous pall. (47)

The playwright's contrast of the creative and destructive potential of scientific invention emerges in the form of Clara's juxtaposition of images relating to seductive love and violent death. In a similar linking of positive and negative characteristics, now praise and preferment versus indifference, Clara furthermore voices her fears with regard to Haber's exploitation by the Germans. Although they flatter him and heap honours on him, she argues, his work will merely be made use of; as a Jewish scientist, he himself will never be respected. Haber's persistence in his research leads directly to her suicide, conveyed by gun shots heard in the back-

10

An interesting example of the representation of a female scientist in recent British fiction is, however, the protagonist of Patricia Duncker's James Miranda Barry (2000). The novel draws on the life of a historical nineteenth-century woman who, disguised as a man, enrolled in medical school in Edinburgh and later practised her profession as a medical physician.

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ground, and the subsequent appearance of her voice pointing to the ultimate irony of his life: "He'll never live to see his fellow Germans use / his form of killing on his fellow Jews" (52). Although generally a static, minor character, whom Harrison endows with only a few lines, Clara Immerwahr represents through her words and her desperate action the play's conscience and its most emphatic voice of warning. Margrethe Bohr in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, by contrast, is given a much more prominent role than Clara Immerwahr, although she is no scientist. The wife of the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, an intelligent companion and experienced typist, Margrethe is one of three historical characters who have gathered in a sphere beyond time or space, in a world of the spirits, in order to review and explain past events. Although it is the proclaimed objective of the three ghosts to arrive at a logical explanation for Werner Heisenberg's visit in Copenhagen in 1941, they return in their conversations also to other points in the past and thus evoke images of their changing relationship. While the two men remember in particular their outstanding professional achievements, the so-called 'Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics', it is Margrethe who again and again forces them to make the transition from theoretical physics to actual life. Her provoking questions bring out Heisenberg's complex nature and his divided loyalties: he is shown to have faced a conflict of conscience when he had to choose between contributing to the German nuclear programme or leaving the country like so many of his fellow scientists; his friendly relations with the Bohrs emerge as having been increasingly undermined by his seeming co-operation with the Nazi regime and by his emotional ties to his homeland; and his failure to communicate with Bohr concerning their professional intentions points to his inability to know himself and his wishes. All of these aspects raise the question of his personal culpability and imply the classic fateful situation in which one person may have the lives of millions of people in his hands. In Copenhagen, Michael Frayn appropriately uses central ideas of quantum mechanics to illustrate the difficult situation his characters were in. Margrethe Bohr is instrumental in this application of theory to life, as she is the one to whom the two men are trying to explain their complicated ideas in simple ways and she is the only one perceptive of the ironies emerging in the process of this transference. In order to explain the failure of communication between the two physicists as well as Heisenberg's dilemma of divided loyalties, the playwright draws on particle/wave theory which holds that the position of an electron inside an atom can never be exactly determined and that all we can ever observe is the effect of either its position or its movement but never the thing itself. Likewise, we can never know a person's intentions and motivations but only their eventual outcome. Heisenberg's statement, for instance, on uncertainty, "All we can see are the effects the electrons produce, on the light that they reflect" (65), is aptly and ironically countered by Margrethe with "All we can see are the effects your thoughts produce, on the world around us" (64). A subsequent reference to the notion of relativity leads simultaneously to a further insight into Heisenberg's conduct and Margrethe's ability to elicit revealing reactions. Pointing out the significance of the post-Einsteinian approach to science in the twentieth century, that is, the idea of measurement being a human and subjective act depending on a person's point in

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space and time, Bohr concludes that after a long phase of development from Protagoras's assertion of man as the measure of all things to the Renaissance confirmation of the individual and the Enlightenment discovery of the laws of classical mechanics, he and his colleagues "put man back at the centre of the universe" (73). Yet Bohr's celebration of the achievements of contemporary science is suddenly undermined by his wife's observation of the questionable difference man's new position may in fact make: "If it is Heisenberg at the centre of the universe, then the one bit of the universe that he can't see is Heisenberg" (72). Man's central position marked by subjectivity may not always entail progress and triumph, but may also be responsible for a lack of self-knowledge and, in Heisenberg's case, a "natural affinity for uncertainty" (80), as Margrethe Bohr sarcastically suggests. Characterized by intelligence, firmness and skepticism, the figure of Margrethe Bohr takes on various functions in Frayn's play. She is firstly a commentator when she analyses and interprets past situations and present explanations and justifications. Although she occasionally comes across as biassed in favour of her husband and influenced by her emotions as a Danish national, she is also portrayed as a woman whose common sense and persistence subvert the two men's evasiveness. Margrethe is secondly a catalyst who, through her probing and sarcastic questions, induces Bohr and Heisenberg to look at themselves and consider their own motivations. She confronts them once, for example, with an emotional outburst: Really it is ridiculous. You reasoned your way, both of you, with such astonishing delicacy and precision into the tiny world of the atom. Now it turns out that everything depends upon these really large objects on your shoulders. And what's going on in there is ... (78).

Margrethe's open-ended angry statement is correctly completed by Heisenberg with a reference to "Elsinore" and "the darkness inside the human soul" (31, 60, 90), the play's central metaphor pointing to the inescapable connection of science, politics and private life, of self and other, and raising Heisenberg's dilemma onto the level of Shakespearean tragedy. If by the end of this circular play, whose questions and reconstructions of the past could go on forever, some degree of selfknowledge has been reached, then it is owing to the interference of a woman eventually capable of looking beyond herself, her family and her country. While Michael Frayn is able to make use of the story's imaginative potential by setting the action in a dimension beyond the deaths of the historical characters, other playwrights opt for the employment of fictitious individuals and thus gain a greater scope for the latter's development. This method proves to be of special advantage to the creation of female characters, particularly scientists. These may be depicted optimistically as members of an advanced social system marked by justice and equal opportunities, but they may also be shown within the historical context of the restrictions and suspicions extended to them. The typical disbelief in female scientific achievements finds an expression in Howard Brenton's The Genius and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. In both plays the outstanding mathematical skills of young women are initially attributed to the help and influence of men before they are somewhat grudgingly acknowledged. Furthermore, some of the pressures

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women may be subjected to become evident. While Brenton's Gillian Brown early on admits that she does "bad work deliberately" (18) in order to hide her gifts and thus escape ostracizing comments, Stoppard's equally talented Thomasina Coverly, by the end of the play a cheerful and outspoken sixteen-year-old, is threatened by her mother with the abrupt end of her scientific pursuits: "We must have you married before you are educated beyond eligibility" (84). Her subsequent accidental death by fire seems to be, aside from an ingenious illustration of the second thermodynamic law, the playwright's convenient means of avoiding further explanations with regard to her wasted potential. Stephen Poliakoff s Blinded by the Sun, by contrast, takes up the stereotype of the spinster scientist whose stunted life is indicative of possible disadvantages of her professional choice. While the chemist Elinor leads a withdrawn life and diligently pursues her work in her laboratory but never publishes anything, her ambitious male colleagues display unethical methods by announcing groundbreaking research results without having obtained them and by taking science onto the showbiz level. Needless to say that the men are successful, while Elinor is eventually forced to give her office space up to representatives of more profitable fields of research. In order to evaluate by comparison the ways in which science was conducted in different periods, several playwrights juxtapose historical, quasi-historical, and contemporary figures. Stoppard's Arcadia, Stephenson's An Experiment with an Air Pump, and Wertenbaker's After Darwin are set both in a historically remote period and in our own time. They all furthermore comment on gender-related differences in the approach to science and in the opportunities people have had in their search for knowledge. The result of this contrast of two periods is not the portrayal of ethically more advanced contemporary scientists who have learned from the past but rather of individuals who are still predominantly in the dark with regard to knowledge and commendable moral conduct. The comment on gender-related progress is an equally bleak one. Stephenson's play constitutes a particularly interesting example of this method of contrasting and comparing scientists, as it presents pairs on both time levels. The 1799 physician Joseph Fenwick, an enlightened man and a supporter of radicalism, who believes that "science is inextricably linked with democracy" (44), is set against his ruthless fellow physician Thomas Armstrong, whose urge to be on the cutting edge of contemporary science induces him not only to attend regularly dissections of stolen corpses but also to feign affection for Fenwick's servant Isobel in order to obtain a close look at her severely deformed spine. Fenwick's circumspection is mirrored on the 1999 plot level by the ethical crisis of the molecular biologist Ellen who is hesitant about accepting the offer of an advanced position in a research company interested in marketing a new technique she developed for foetal diagnosis. In contrast, Armstrong's callousness is reflected in the attitude of Ellen's friend Kate, a young research biologist, who wholeheartedly believes in the advance of science for its own sake and who is described as "unscrupulous [and] ambitious" (88). In this play there is no moral dichotomization along gender lines. There are selfish as well as considerate individuals on each side of the gender divide. Both Armstrong and Kate represent the kind of scientist who is devoid of

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moral considerations: "Discovery is neutral", Armstrong says, "Ethics should be left to philosophers and priests. I've never had a moral qualm in my life, and it would be death to science if I did" (71). Fenwick and Ellen express the diametrically opposed position. Fenwick holds that "good science requires us to utilise every aspect of ourselves in pursuit of truth [and] sometimes the heart comes into it" (47), while Ellen makes a strong statement in favour of an ethical approach in this matter: "The bottom line is: I don't think science is value free, I don't think it's morally neutral" (88). The two twentieth-century women are eventually offered the possibility of participating in the Human Genome Project, a joint international effort to map the entire spectrum of genetic material that can be found in all human beings, and they evoke, by their respective hesitation or eager acceptance of the offer, the play's extensive debate about the possibility of genome-related discrimination and genetic engineering. Although partially set in the eighteenth century, An Experiment with an Air Pump reveals by its representation of women that it is mentally and ideologically situated in our own time. In fact, it indicates that the position of women has changed considerably in literary works dealing with science since the time of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, for example, which still preferred to see them in the role of admiring and supportive wife. Contemporary British drama has largely revised the old gender-related division of work and presents at least its twentieth-century women in positions of power and on equal terms with men. Even women of earlier periods are at times depicted in a favourable manner, as for instance Stoppard's mathematical prodigy Thomasina Coverly in Arcadia, who in 1813 is about to discover fractal geometry and already has an understanding of the physical concept of entropy. Shelagh Stephenson goes one step further in the position and importance she assigns to women in her work An Experiment with an Air Pump. In addition to juxtaposing and comparing scientists, she employs the method of contrast in her exploration of gender roles. Stephenson correctly renders the eighteenth-century restrictions of women concerning their education and their place both within the family and in public life. All her scientists ofthat period, Fenwick, Armstrong, and Roget, are male, whereas the Fenwick daughters are at best allowed to express their creative and intellectual potential in writing poetry, here ironically a "hymn to progress" (15). Harriet's wish to become a physician like her father is met with shocked astonishment and her little scientific invention of a bonnet giving off steam is smiled at. In fact, she and her sister Maria are being prepared for their roles as wife and mother, in the play chillingly depicted in the figure of Susannah Fenwick, one of many eighteenth-century women deliberately kept in ignorance to make them attractive for men but in fact disqualifying them as suitable partners for their intellectual husbands. Despite his politically progressive views, Fenwick, the pater familias, comes across as patronising towards his female servant, his wife, and his daughters, thus indicating that his advanced notions are still limited to the masculine sphere of life. In the twentieth-century sections of the play, however, the positions of power are reversed, the male characters being represented by the figures of an esoterically inclined workman and an English lecturer who lost his

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job and has become unemployable. In contrast, the two women hold prominent positions in what used to be a typically male professional field and are portrayed as highly capable and successful in their work. Stephenson here describes a world in which there are equal opportunities and in which professional achievement alone counts. Yet there is no suggestion that opening up the professional field to women has led to a better science. The figure of the ambitious biologist Kate would contradict such a claim. Stephenson instead indicates that important and far-reaching decisions will have to be made in the future, decisions which will require that individuals of both sexes are able and willing to consider the ethical implications of their research. Timberlake Wertenbaker's After Darwin, however, presents a more radical position on the subject. Although there are no female scientists in this dual-time frame play, the feminist playwright's views on women's approaches to science become nevertheless evident. In this work, Wertenbaker dramatizes rehearsals of a play on the origins of Darwin's evolutionary theories. During these rehearsals the actors become increasingly aware of the applicability of the historical plot and sentiments to their own situation. On both time levels Wertenbaker juxtaposes discordant and contrasting world views in the form of characters who represent traditional versus progressive positions. Darwin, here the modern scientist whose discoveries lead him to propose his ideas on the evolution and the origins of new species, comes to project a world from which God is absent and which is the outcome of chance events as well as adaptive efforts. FitzRoy, by contrast, an adherent of traditional beliefs, holds that "Science may uncover the immutable laws of nature, but man alone has the freedom to change and perfect himself' (31). His notion is ultimately untenable, because people are subject to such powerful forces as the marketplace, public reputation, professional competition, and financial considerations. As the play progresses, the twentieth-century characters are induced to transfer the fictional situation and the scientific concepts discussed in it onto their own lives. All of them, whether it is Millie, the Bulgarian director, or Lawrence, the African-American playwright, or lan and Tom, the two actors struggling in a highly competitive environment, recognize their own difficulties and come to understand themselves within the framework of evolutionary theories. With the help of Darwinian ideas and vocabulary, they analyse their situation and their conduct. All of them see themselves as oppressed by their immediate surroundings, subject to a struggle for survival, and threatened, metaphorically speaking, by extinction. The only woman in this play, the dissident director Millie, an economic migrant and expert on evolutionary theories, takes on the role of mediator between the historical level and contemporary life. Probably voicing Wertenbaker's own notions, she points out that despite the genetically built-in struggle for survival, there are factors which may enable humans to move beyond cruelty towards each other. "It is thought that tenderness gave mammals an evolutionary advantage" (9), she says, encouraging the actors to display more affection when they perform their roles and to show loyalty and companionship in real life. While the males on both play and acting level become increasingly competitive and hostile towards each other, the

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female director's interruptions and explanations serve as gestures of mediation and appeasement, even though they are at times ridden with despair. Despite the loss of stability and despite growing pressures in modern society, the play ultimately recommends humility and human kindness, arrived at through a good knowledge of the biological mechanisms which have determined the origins of our nature, combined with an awareness and inclusion of one's feelings. By linking objective results, that is, the outcome of long-standing scientific research, with subjective deliberations, here the careful consideration of both one's personal wishes and the well-being of others, Wertenbaker advocates the kind of integrated approach to science and to life in general which feminist scholars have also demanded over the last few decades. A decidedly feminist position emerges also in April de Angelis's Breathless, a play that is firmly set in the late eighteenth century but is articulating present-day concerns about women's exploitation and objectification as well as recommending a balanced, holistic approach to science. The play juxtaposes two young women: Minna, the daughter of a middle-class amateur scientist and Magda, their initially exploited, later surprisingly empowered servant. Both women have been shaped by the currently absent patriarch: while the daughter's gender-related confinement and restrictions have rendered her semi-imbecile, clinging to Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho as a text which gives meaning to her life, the servant has liberated herself during the time of assisting her master in his experiments, and later strikes back at the oppressor in a gothic fashion. The play ends on a note of complicity between the two women, it alludes to their joint murder of the father, and it points to the prospect of empowerment and freedom for the two. Similar to Stephenson's Experiment with an Airpump, de Angelis's Breathless projects a female servant who is used not only as handmaid but also as experimental object. The play presents the maid-servant Magda as an equally important, if not superior, character in relation to her master and mistress. In the manner typical of contemporary women, Magda begins her career as an assistant in her master's scientific pursuits, but then uses this opportunity to learn and acquire practical and theoretical knowledge. Caroline Herschel, who is mentioned by Magda, seems to function as a role model for her. Generally described as "almost pathological in her selflessness",11 Herschel in the 1770s trained to be an assistant astronomer, after her brother William had turned his interest from music to astronomy. She taught herself science and mathematics, and shared in every success and failure of her brother. Gradually emancipating herself, Herschel became in 1786 the first woman to be recognized for discovering a comet. Fanny Burney, who was present when William Herschel, summoned to the King, pointed out his sister's comet to the Royal family, wrote later in her Diary: "The comet was very small, and had nothing grand or striking in its appearance; but it is the first lady's comet, and I was very desirous to see it".12 A few years later an annual salary of £50 was settled on Caroline and she gradually gained in fame throughout Europe. De 11

Osen 1974,79.

12

Alic 1986, 129.

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Angelis's servant Magda, however, fares less well. Punished when her transgression of self-education is detected and made an example of by her master when he lectures on the sick female to his colleagues, she can only arrive at a state of contentment after she has opted for the role of murderous, revengeful and mad gothic woman. The playwright's feminist background and agenda gradually emerge in the play, especially in the author's attempts of recuperating a place for women in the world and history of science. Unlike Stephenson who displaces women's success in science onto the twentieth-century layer of her play where we encounter two prominent female molecular biologists among the protagonists, de Angelis confines herself to the social world of the eighteenth century in which a woman's pursuit of a scientific career becomes only possible when undertaken in resistance to patriarchal society, either by way of clandestine actions or through an open act of rebellion. Dreaming of a place where women may pursue their scientific interests, the self-educated servant Magda initially has recourse to a particular form of self-representation when she submits a scholarly paper with her experimental results under the pretense of being one George Bell Esquire, an amateur scientist. Her eventual admission of the truth results in her paper's rejection on the basis of the old gender-related stereotypes. She cites from the letter: "a certain delicacy of the constitution ... absence of the capacity for abstract reasoning ... in woman ... no alternative but to reject your request" (80). Although forced back into her old role of "traditional housekeeper" (80), Magda comes across as a woman who has gained in self-confidence, is able to see through the patriarchal structures set up to inhibit individuals like herself, and is willing to work toward her liberation. In an attempt to draw energy from her predecessors, she therefore constructs a history of science in which women figure prominently: After all ... women were the first scientists! We discovered the chemistry of pot-making and the physics of spinning. Fashioned the first tools with which we sharpened, planted and dug. We cultivated hundreds of species of plant. In Africa our foremothers domesticated barley, flax, millet and wheat, in China rice, in North America potatoes and maize. We selected, developed and fed the world. We learnt that plants can heal. Through our tireless observation and imaginative experimentation we discovered which herbs have what effects. How the juice of one plant, when smeared onto our skins, could freeze our pain or when smeared under the tongue could make us weightless, make us fly ... We learnt that plants can heal. We learnt that plants can destroy. Like the careful scientists we were, we wasted nothing. More secretly we had our own rituals from which we gained inspiration and support. (70/71)

While the slightly sinister tone of the last few sentences reinforces the sense that continued oppression of women may lead to retaliation, the overall impression of the passage is one of the need for solidarity. In fact, through her reminiscence of women's traditional and long-standing roles in the practical realm of science and through her encouragement of an awareness of the shared past de Angelis offers to her audience, too, the possibility of self-empowerment. While acknowledging the growing presence of women in scientific professions, British drama of the 1990s remains essentially ambivalent about their role in and contributions to the natural sciences. There are playwrights who draw retrospective

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attention to the historical restrictions and discriminations women had to face; others present works which are reflective of changes with regard to professional opportunities for women or they offer images of women who have adapted to the male-dominated system and have become ambitious and ruthless in their pursuit of a career. Only in a few works the advantages of a specifically female approach to science are addressed, as for instance in Copenhagen's emphasis on the connections between science, politics, and private life or in After Darwin's juxtaposition of science and belief on the play level and reason and feeling on the actors' level. In general, a gender-related evaluation is subordinate to other concerns: that of the ethical implications of research and that of the scientists' responsibilities to their contemporaries and to future generations. Almost all of the characters in Harrison's Square Rounds, for example, are played by women, among them the arms-assembling 'munitionettes' and all the male scientists. Harrison thus somewhat undermines the male-female conflict presented in the Haber-Immerwahr argument and subtly suggests that women are indeed implicated in the potentially destructive side of scientific endeavour. The attention therefore shifts to other concerns, in this play as in the others. These concerns include, for example, the awareness of the unprecedented nature of our scientific possibilities and the need to move beyond national boundaries and consider the fate of mankind as a whole. These kinds of considerations probably explain the bleakness noticeable in some plays. In^ln Experiment with an Air Pump, Stephenson deliberately, I think, refrains from mentioning the advantages which may arise from the successful completion of the Human Genome Project, that is, the possible prevention of severe illnesses on the basis of an exact knowledge of their genetic location. Instead, she opts for a sombre and menacing ending, illustrated by a repetition of the initial tableau, in which the bird in the airpump is now replaced by the corpse of Isobel. She chooses this ending in order to point out that our future is largely precarious and uncertain. The play closes with a reference to the 1799 New Year's celebrations and with Joseph Fenwick's words meant to herald the new century - "I thought it would be a golden night, full of hope and anticipation, and instead, this. Groping blindly over the border in a fog of bewilderment" (96). These words are also applicable to those who, on New Year's Eve of 1999, are greeting the new millennium. In the course of the play, it has become clear that the issues at stake are fundamentally the same in both periods. Democracy, so hard fought for in the eighteenth century and explicitly linked by Fenwick with the progress of science, is in danger of being undermined by new scientific discoveries which will make it possible to distinguish people on the basis of their genetic makeup and thus introduce ways of discrimination never known before. In Frayn's Copenhagen Heisenberg is in the end confronted with his memories of a Germany destroyed by Allied bombs and recalls his journey through his "ruined and dishonoured and beloved homeland" (95). His words are immediately taken up by Margrethe Bohr and rephrased into an expression of an even greater, global concern:

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And sooner or later there will come a time when all our children are laid to dust, and all our children's children. [...] And when all our eyes are closed, when even the ghosts have gone, what will be left of our beloved world? Our ruined and dishonoured and beloved world? (96)

While our own world was, as Heisenberg says, "preserved, just possibly, by that one short moment in Copenhagen. By some event that will never quite be located or defined. By that final core of uncertainty at the heart of things" (96), the future remains open, an uncharted territory, to be walked by men and women who have the potential of bringing either destruction or salvation onto future generations. The above-mentioned plays indicate that women's active participation in scientific pursuits will soon be taken for granted and that a particularly female approach to science may be beneficial. But given the seriousness of the problems which natural sciences will soon have to confront or which may in fact be created through the application of future scientific knowledge, the question of gender may ultimately become negligible.

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Works Cited Primary Brenton, Howard. The Genius. London: Methuen, 1983. De Angelis, April. Breathless. Second Wave Plays: Women at the Albany Empire. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990, 69-83. Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen. London: Methuen, 1998. Harrison, Tony. Square Rounds. London: Faber and Faber, 1992. Poliakoff, Stephen. Blinded by the Sun. London, 1996. Stephenson, Shelagh. An Experiment with an Air Pump. London: Methuen, 1998. Stoppard, Tom. Arcadia. London: Faber and Faber, 1993. Wertenbaker, Timberlake. After Darwin. London: Faber and Faber, 1998.

Secondary Alic, Margaret. Hypatia's Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. Arditti, Rita. "Feminism and Science" in: Rita Arditti, Pat Brennan, and Steve Cavrak (eds.), Science and Liberation. Boston: South End Press, 1980, 350-368. Beer, Gillian. "Square Rounds and other Awkward Fits: Chemistry as Theatre" in: Gillian Beer (ed.), Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter. Oxford, 1996, 321-331. Benjamin, Marina. "Introduction" in: Marina Benjamin (ed.), Science and Sensibility: Gender and Scientific Enquiry, 1780-1945. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, 1-23. Bewell, Alan. "An Issue of Monstrous Desire: Frankenstein and Obstetrics" in: Yale Journal of Criticism, 2.1, (1988), 105-128. Bleier, Ruth. "Introduction" in: Ruth Bleier (ed.), Feminist Approaches to Science. New York: Pergamon Press, 1986, 1-17 Busch, Werner. Joseph Wright of Derby, "Das Experiment mit der Luftpumpe ". Eine Heilige Allianz zwischen Wissenschaft und Religion. Frankfurt, 1986. Carmosino, Penni. "From Darwin to the Human Genome Project". Http://www.csuchico.edu/anth/CASP/Carmosino_P.html Chaillet, Ned. "Timberlake Wertenbaker" in: D.L. Kirkpatrick (ed.), Contemporary Dramatists. Chicago and London, 1988, 553-555. Dominiczak, Marek. "Science, Alchemy and Light: Paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby" in: Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, 40.1, (2002), 74-77. Duncker, Patricia. James Miranda Barry. London: Picador, 2000. ('1999). Fraser, David. "'Fields of Radiance': The Scientific and Industrial Scenes of Joseph Wright" in: Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds.), The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge, 1988,119-141. Frayn, Michael. "Ich gab Heisenberg die Chance, sich zu verteidigen" in: Franltfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 18. Feb. 2002. (Trans. Julika Griem). Gill, Michael. "Inadequate Scientific Perspectives: An Experiment with an Air Pump. Http ://www. worldsocialism.org/spgb/dec98/theatdec.htm. Harding, Sandra. The Feminist Question in Science. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. Helmers, Marguerite. "Painting as Rhetorical Performance: Joseph Wright's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump" in: AC: A Journal of Composition Theory, 21.1, (Winter 2001), 71-95. C.Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 4 1980. Jackson, Allyn. "Love and the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Tom Stoppard's Arcadia". Http://www.ams.org/notices/199511/arcadia.html. Klein, Abraham. "A Miscellany: Prejudices about Holding a Group Discussion. Did Frayn get the Physics Right? Personal Recollections of Bohr and Heisenberg". Http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~prp/Klein.html (13. Jan. 2000).

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Körte, Barbara. "Ethik und Genetik: Shelagh Stephensons Drama An Experiment with an Air Pump·. Ein facherübergreifender Unterrichtsvorschlag für den Englischunterricht auf der gymnasialen Oberstufe" in: Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 33.4, (2000), 369-383. Leitner, Gerit von. Der Fall Clara Immerwahr. Leben für eine humane Wissenschaft. München: Beck, 1993. Magner, Lois Ν. "Women and the Scientific Idiom: Textual Episodes from Wollstonecraft, Fuller, Gilman, and Firestone" in: Signs, 4.1, (Autumn 1978), 61-80. Mellor, Anne A. Romanticism & Gender. New York and London: Routledge, 1993. O'Flinn, Paul. "Production and Reproduction: The Case of Frankenstein" in: Literature and History, 9.2, (1983), 194-213. Osen, Lynn M. Women in Mathematics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1974. Patrinos, Ari, and Daniel W. Drell. "Introducing the Human Genome Project: Its Relevance, Triumphs, and Challenges" Http://infosrvl.ctd.oml.gov/TechResources/Human_Genome/publicat/judges/drell.html Rose, Hilary. "Hand, Brain, and Heart: A Feminist Epistemology for the Natural Sciences" in: Sandra Harding and Jean O'Barr (eds.), Sex and Scientific Inquiry. Chicago, 1987,265-282. Rosser, Sue V. "A Call for Feminist Science" in: International Journal of Women's Studies, 7, (1984), 3 - 9 . Sayers, Janet. "Feminism and Science - Reason and Passion" in: Women's Studies International Forum, 10,(1987), 171-179. Schenkel, Elmar. "'The Attraction that Newton Left Out': Science in Contemporary British Drama" in: Jürgen Kamm (ed.), Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama in English. Festschrift for Heinz Kosok on the Occasion of his 65"' Birthday. Trier: WVT, 1999, 325-340. Schiebinger, Londa. "The History and Philosophy of Women in Science: A Review Essay" in: Sandra Harding and Jean O'Barr (eds.), Sex and Scientific Inquiry. Chicago, 1987, 7-34. Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, 1993 ('1959). Solkin, David. "ReWrighting Shaftesbury: The Air Pump and the Limits of Commercial Humanism" in: John Barreil (ed.), Painting and the Politics of Culture: New Essays on British Art 1700-1850. Oxford and New York, 1992, 73-99. Wagner, Peter. "Penser la science en termes de differences sexuelles: Une experience sur un oiseau dans une pompe ά air de Joseph Wright of Derby" in: Dix-Huitieme Siecle, 31, (1999), 283-301. Weimar, Karl S. "The Scientist and Society: A Study of Three Modern Plays" in: Modern Language Quarterly, 27, (1966), 4 3 1 ^ 4 8 .

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List of Illustrations Fig. 1

Joseph Wright of Derby, Experiment on a Bird in the Airpump (ca. 1767-68)

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«5 α κ ο c 8· ο •β 00 •π

Sandra Carroll

Natural Born Quilter Framing Grace Marks in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace

In Alias GraceMargaret Atwood takes us back in time and into the life and mind of Grace Marks, one of the most enigmatic women of the nineteenth century. Since she was a child, Atwood has been fascinated by the mysteries, halflies, and fictionalized accounts surrounding the true story of Grace Marks,2 the major narrator and the heroine of her novel. The historical facts inspiring Atwood's marvellously crafted book, as far as they can be established from hindsight, are the following. In 1843, Grace Marks, a 16-year-old Canadian housemaid of Irish origin, and James McDermott were arrested for the brutal murder of their employer Thomas Kinnear and his pregnant mistress/housekeeper Nancy Montgomery. The sensationalistic trial made headlines throughout the world, and the jury delivered a guilty verdict. While McDermott was hanged, some doubts persuaded the judges to commute Marks's sentence to life imprisonment. She spent the next thirty years of her life in an assortment of jails and asylums, where - like a circus animal - she was often exhibited as a star attraction. Marks was eventually pardoned and released. For decades after the trial, opinion remained fiercely divided about Grace Marks, a fact that is reflected in the discourse growing about and around the case. Some commentators took her to be a spurned woman who had taken out her rage on two innocent victims, others thought she was an unwilling victim herself, caught up in a crime she was too young to understand, while others again considered Grace Marks a female fiend, a bloodthirsty femme fatale. Apart from the intriguing story itself with its unsolved mysteries and contradictions, what persuaded Atwood to make a novel out of a true nineteenth-century Canadian murder incident, was precisely the myth of Grace engendered by various forms of discourse - legal, popular, journalistic and literary. For what Atwood found when she began digging was so warped, so mired in nineteenthcentury misogyny that she decided to tell her own version of the story. Justifying her approach, she argued that "we have to write out of who and where and when we are, whether we like it or not, and disguise it how we may".3 Weaving together mid-nineteenth-century Canadian reports - both genuine and invented - about sex and violence, fictional biography and letters, and the burgeoning 1

1 3

References to the novel in this article are to the edition published by Doubleday, New York, in 1996. See Atwood's account in In Search of Alias Grace (1996b). Ibid.

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science of psychiatry, Atwood's Alias Grace combines genuine research with fictional supposition. As she quilts Grace's enduringly enigmatic tale in a prose as elegant as George Eliot's or Edith Wharton's, Atwood also gleefully exposes all the hypocrisy, sexism, ignorance and fear embedded in Victorian culture. The novel starts in 1851, as Grace writes a first biographical report after eight years of being "shut up in here since the age of sixteen".4 That report already refers to the traumatic scene of the killing in a scene Grace imagines and thus reinvents for herself, for the young Dr Jordan, and the reader; she is revealed as an unreliable narrator by the very last sentence of the first chapter when she confesses, "This is what I told Dr Jordan, when we came to that part of the story".5 The plot of the novel confronts Grace with this proto-psychiatrist, an up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness. Engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace Marks, he listens to her story, as she provides a modulated version of her family's difficult passage out of Ireland into Canada, her time as a maid in a bourgeois family in Toronto, the few weeks she spent in Thomas Kinnear's household near Toronto, and the events leading to the killings. As the American doctor brings Grace closer and closer to the day of which she claims to have no memory, he investigates her sanity and attempts to jog her mind. Hypnotism, that great para-medical rage of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, finally restores her memory - or does it? The results are, in any case, both shocking and ambiguous, for the young pioneering doctor must face not only Grace's suppression and displacement of horrible events in her life, both psychological and sexual, but also his own as he is drawn towards his patient while grappling with his personal problems revealed in his correspondence with his mother and friends. In a kind of mock-Victorian happy ending, Grace is rescued by a man who was once her young admirer; she marries him and hints at pregnancy at the age of 45. Simon Jordan, however, escapes one woman only to get engaged to another who is his mother's choice rather than his own. A great variety of narrative frames6 mirror the dominating quilting or patchwork metaphor7 of the novel. Thus we find Grace's reports, Jordan's allegedly more factual medical statements, letters, poems, and newspaper accounts from the time as well as the published confessions of the accused. These create a literary patchwork quilt that serves as a fitting metaphor for the multiplicity of truths exemplified by Grace.8 With her pastiche of Victorian styles of writing and thinking cast in an elegant prose and a clever mix of narrative techniques,9

4 5 6

7

8 9

Atwood 1996a, 5. Atwood 1996a, 6. A sophisticated variety in narrative design has always been a hallmark of Atwood's fiction; see Brooks Bouson 1993. On the importance of quilting and patchworks for the structure and meaning of the novel, see DeLord 1999, Magali-Cornier 2001, and Rogerson 1998. Magali-Cornier 2001. For a detailed study of the sophisticated literary craftsmanship of Atwood's fiction preceding Alias Grace, see Ljungberg 1999.

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Atwood has pieced together an eerie, unsettling tale of murder, obsession, and psychological displacement and research. It is also a stunning portrait of the lives of women at a time when their choice in life amounted to being either servant or wife. In what follows, I shall focus on the representation of Grace Marks in the context of the quilting metaphor of Alias Grace. Constrictions of space force me to leave aside a number of aspects in what turns out to be a novel enormously rich in themes and motifs (e.g., mirroring, the splitting of personality, the function and interpretation of dreams, the psycho-analytic functions of narrative, and trauma and lying, to name just a few). I shall be concerned first with the piecing together as it were, with the representation of a female character that draws attention to its own fabrication (in the double sense of the term), to the fact that the establishment of identity depends both on language and the frame in which it is engendered and allowed to exist.10 In order to demonstrate this aspect of the novel, I shall have a closer look at the paratextual thresholds at the opening of the book and at some of the narrative frames of Alias Grace (I) and at the function of intertextuality (II). In the third part of my article I will turn to the depiction of mental health (III) to analyze how the portrayals of madness influenced the way people thought about it and dealt with it.

I. What the narrative frames employed in the novel make quite clear, apart from underlining the unreliability of written discourse and its dependence on contemporary codes and conventions is the fact that language is anything but a carrier of truth. It represents a particular version of what may be the truth, but in doing so it is distorted, deceiving and, in the case of Grace, partly used for dissembling and lying. By representing in a sort of literary patchwork what might be called forms of speech or communication, Atwood's novel draws attention not only to the make-up of the nineteenth-century mind but also to the power of ideologies working at the level of speech. As such the narrative frames are a perfect demonstration of what Foucault has tried to describe as "foyers locaux de pouvoir-savoir", i.e., local centres of power and knowledge. 11 It is interesting, for instance, that the editorializing of Grace's case was based on rumour and speculation that itself mirrored political factions taking different points of view. Canada's West was still reeling from the effects of the Rebellion of 1837, and this influenced both Grace's life before the murders and her treatment at the hands of the press. Two distinct points of view emerged: the conservative one vilified Grace for she had, after all, been involved in the murder of her Tory employer, an act of grave insubordination, while the reformers were more in-

10

For a detailed study of this aspect see Loveday 1999.

π Foucault 1976,130 and passim.

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clined to clemency towards her - in their eyes she was a victim. Representing Grace objectively was thus, from the very beginning, impossible or, to put it differently, verbal representation in discourse depended on the situating of that discourse (journalism) in the larger frame of power-knowledge structures as identified by Foucault. Atwood has chosen very carefully her examples of narrative frames. Indeed, the patchwork metaphor is apposite in this case since the various pieces draw attention to two aspects. On the one hand, they point to themselves as alleged carriers of truth at the very moment when they misrepresent and, on the other hand, they demonstrate the construction/fabrication of Grace's female identity, Grace's, within the overall pattern established with the help of what are ultimately unreliable documents. Two examples from the beginning of the novel will suffice to illustrate this point. The first chapter of the novel, entitled 'Jagged Edge' (thus importing the notion of the edge of a quilt) begins with a quotation from one of Atwood's sources, Susanna Moodie's Life in the Clearings (1853). Visiting the penitentiary where Grace was kept prisoner, Moodie remarks that she saw "only forty women" and immediately concludes that this fact "speaks much for the superior moral training of the feebler sex". She carries on, My chief object in visiting their department was to look at the celebrated murderess, Grace Marks, of whom I had heard a great deal, not only from the public papers, but from the gentleman who defended her upon her trial, and whose able pleading saved her from the gallows [...]. 1 2

Even before Grace is allowed to seize the word on her own behalf, the reader becomes aware of the extent to which narration and verbal representation are subject to convention, framing - and distortion. For the quotation lifted from Life in the Clearings and quilted into Alias Grace tells us next to nothing about Grace's case but rather more about Mrs. Moodie's own Victorian beliefs (concerning women) and her dependence on journalism and chit-chat. What seems to be a factual source from the time - a woman who visited Grace Marks - is revealed as partisan discourse, as a text that is itself shot through with prejudices and unreliable opinions. Similarly, Chapter II ('Rocky Road'), starts off with a passage lifted from the issue of the Toronto Mirror of 23 November 1843. Reporting about the execution "at the new Gaol in this City" of James McDermott, the paper mentions "an immense concourse of men, women and children anxiously waiting to witness the last struggle of a sinful fellow-being" - but only to reflect on the nature of women in the very next sentence: What kinds of feelings those women can possess who flocked from far and near through mud and rain to be present at the horrid spectacle, we cannot divine. We venture to say that they were not very delicate or refined."

12 13

Atwood 1996a, 3. Ibid. 9.

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Like Moodie's reflections about women, this alleged factual text voices particular Victorian opinions about women; if it does so almost en passant, it is all the more important to notice how much ingrained the attitude behind them must have been. Hence what Grace Marks was up against in her time was precisely what is said in between the lines in this journalistic text - that women are (normally) by nature delicate and refined, that they are different from men, less brutal and less brutish, in short, the mysterious other. In his detailed study of so-called paratexts (i.e., texts surrounding or relating to a main text) aptly entitled Seuils,14 French narratologist Gerard Genette has demonstrated most persuasively how literary texts rarely appear by themselves. In order to reach the text of a novel, for example, the reader must cross a variety of thresholds (the French word is 'seuils') whose importance has been rather underestimated. Such thresholds may be constituted by the title, the preface, a motto, afterwords, and by the dust jacket of a book. It speaks for the literary art of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace that her novel contains thresholds galore that, as Genette has argued, influence to a decisive degree our understanding and evaluation of what we take to be the major text. Working one's way into the novel, one finds six such thresholds before reading Grace's first confessional report and what most readers would consider the text of the novel proper. It is important to have a closer look at these paratexts - inserted at the beginning of each major chapter - not least because they are prime examples of the supplement embodying the logic of writing and, through writing, the establishment of identity. If Grace's identity is slippery and illusory it is precisely because Atwood's novel makes it dependent on the so-called supplements, on allusions that apparently import new, stable, meaning even while destabilizing the very notion of identity. Jacques Derrida, we remember, defines the supplement ('le supplement') as both an addition and a substitute. Addition and substitution are not exactly contradictory, but neither can they be combined in the traditional logic of identity.15 In order to see how this works, let us have a closer look at the thresholds we are supposed to cross as readers and the meanings we are faced with as we deal with the supplements. The first threshold appears on the jacket of Alias Grace: a woman's face behind the bars of what is no doubt a prison window. The face is that of Elizabeth Siddal (1829-62), borrowed from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting Head of a Girl in a Green Dress (1850-65).16 Siddal was the favourite model of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, sitting for Hunt, Millais, and her lover, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. If her head was chosen for the jacket of Atwood's novel, it is precisely because as a first supplement the image imports a great variety of meanings that both establish and destabilize an identity for Grace Marks, Atwood's suffering heroine. The second daughter in a family of eight 14

15 16

Genette 1987. The title provides one of the numerous puns, in this case on his French publisher, in a ludic and entertaining book. Derrida 1967. In the following passage I have drawn on the discussion of Elizabeth Siddal in Craig Faxon 1989, 74-83, 144, and passim.

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children,17 Siddal was discovered by Rossetti in 1849. The extent to which Victorian culture exploited women and the female body is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Millais, when he painted Ophelia (1851-52), had Siddal pose fully clothed in a bathtub of water heated by lamps. Siddal contracted a severe cold as the lamps went out during the course of the sitting. Also a selftaught artist who produced over one hundred paintings and drawings, she married Rossetti in 1861, was delivered of a stillborn baby in that year and, pregnant again in 1862, died under mysterious circumstances while sedated with laudanum on which she had become dependent. The allegedly heartbroken Rossetti buried his poems in Siddal's coffin; significantly, however, the casket and the poems were exhumed in 1869, when Rossetti wanted to publish a collection of his poems. With this knowledge in mind, the reader can establish many parallels with Grace Marks, whose body and whose story were also exploited by those around her. More significantly, the story of Elizabeth Siddal, and her image painted by Rossetti (who needed her as a model in order to establish his own reputation as a poet-painter), provide some identity for Grace Marks as the jacket cover urges us to compare and to draw our own conclusions. The next thresholds at the opening of the novel are made up of texts. Underneath the illustration, and again on the first page we encounter the title, Alias Grace. Short and punchy, it is nevertheless ambiguous, drawing our attention to the issue of female identity, one of the central motifs of the book. As a noun, alias signifies a false or different name, especially one that is used by a criminal; and as an adverb it is used when a person, especially a criminal or an actor (both senses apply to Grace) is known by two names. While researching the background of the murder case, Margaret Atwood discovered that Mary Whitney was the name that appears as Grace's alias in the picture that accompanies her confession. Grace adopted the name Mary Whitney when she fled to the United States with James McDermott and stopped at a hotel in Lewiston. In Chapter VI, 'Secret Drawer', she reports to Simon Jordan about her friendship with a girl called Mary Whitney while serving in the house of the Parkinson family in Toronto. Grace's confession shows that she admired her cheeky, lively, and friendly companion, that she would have liked to be like the Canadian-born Mary who had no respect for social hierarchy. Grace suffers a shock when she becomes a witness to Mary's fate, quite a common one at the time she dies from an illegal abortion. This part of the novel provides a marvellous example of female companionship in the face of hardship and oppression - it is one of the social cameos of Alias Grace. Grace's picture (together with McDermott's), eerily resembling the young Elizabeth Siddal, is reproduced as another paratext at the beginning of Chapter II, bearing the caption, "Grace Marks alias Mary Whitney". The title thus re-enforces the idea of ambiguity and 17

Cf. Chapter V of Alias Grace ('Broken Dishes'), 95, where in the opening section containing a passage from Voluntary Confession of Grace Marks (reprinted from the Toronto Star and Transcript, 17 November 1843), Grace reports, "we came to this country from the North of Ireland about three years ago; I have four sisters and four brothers, one sister and one brother older than I am [...]"

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unstable identity as related to Grace Marks, who literally borrows Mary Whitney's personality to fill the void in her own miserable life. Further supplements are then provided by the motti before the table of contents. The first is taken from William Morris's The Defense of Guenevere (1858): "Whatever may have happened through these years,/ God knows I speak truth, saying that you lie". This associates Grace and/or the novel with the adulterous wife of King Arthur; it is the story, told in a variety of different versions, of an alleged femme fatale whose love for Lancelot has disastrous consequences, for Lancelot fails to achieve the Grail and the queen becomes a nun. In other versions Guenevere is depicted as unfaithful and vengeful - but what is most important about the motto is the linking of the issues of illicit love, sex and finding out the truth. The other two motti on this page are from Emily Dickinson's letters ("I have no Tribunal") and from Eugene Marais's The Soul of the White Ant ("I cannot tell you what the light is, but I can tell you what it is not.... What is the motive of the light? What is the light?"), both suggesting ideas of judgment and recognition. Turning the page, we come to the table of contents, yet another textual threshold, with the chapter titles providing numerous allusions to both the names of quilt patterns and other texts which the reader may or may not use as supplements at this stage (e.g., 'Puss in the Corner'; 'Lady of the Lake'; 'Solomon's Temple', 'Pandora's Box', and 'The Tree of Paradise').18 Like all the other chapters, Chapter I is introduced by an icon representing a particular patchwork quilt pattern. It can be connected with Grace's own activity (she quilts with needles and words) as well as the narrative framework of the novel itself. Finally, on the last page of the introductory paratexts of Chapter I, there is Susanna Moodie's characterization of Grace Marks, from her Life in the Clearings (1853), quoted above, which appears together with a poem by Basho: Come, see real flowers of this painful world.

The latter is more difficult to explicate; it is yet another piece in the patchwork to be quilted, and it could be interpreted as an allusion to the events, both wonderful and terrible, awaiting the reader in the novel proper that starts with Grace's first report on the next page. What I have identified above as narrative frames works in a similar manner. The novel as such is patterned as it were according to the patchwork idea - each chapter is named after a different quilt and it is introduced by a visually represented quilt icon often used in the nineteenth century. This is, however, merely a mirroring of the narrative strategy that aims at an undermining of the reliability of spoken and even written language. In this respect, Atwood's fiction works like some of the works of Tom Stoppard (e.g., Indian Ink and Arcadia) in which the playwright holds up to ridicule biographical research and the reliance of the 18

See DeLord 1999.

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scholarly world on the written word of the past. If Stoppard derives a great deal of theatrical laughter by showing the difference between what actually was (or may have been) and what has been recorded (often lies and misrepresentations), Atwood similarly stages the theatricality of narrative frames by foregrounding their unreliability. I argued above that Mrs Moodie's Life in the Clearings (1853) and the article from the Toronto Mirror (1843), reprinted at the openings of chapters I and II of the novel, have something in common: by virtue of their narrative frame, they should be expected to be factual, to proffer reliable evidence about the mysterious Grace Marks. But as we saw, they misrepresent and are, ultimately, more fascinating as evidence of the distorting contemporary mentalities that shaped the thinking about women. Atwood has taken great pains to make sure that all the narrative frames she employs - Grace's and Jordan's reports, letters, poems, newspaper accounts, published confessions - work towards establishing not a particular truth but a multiplicity of truths about Grace. Eventually, when we have consulted all the documents as in a criminal case, Grace Marks emerges as more enigmatic than ever - and this is of course one of the great achievements of Atwood's superb fiction which handles narrative frames in a manner that is both post-modem (i.e., subversive) and entertaining. To summarize then, even before we read the first words of the major characters, Alias Grace is studded with allusions, with images and texts serving as supplements that, at least at first glance, seem to bolster Grace Marks's female identity. But as supplements go, they open up additional alleys of meaning, complicating rather than clarifying the picture we are beginning to establish of the protagonist. Associated with Elizabeth Siddal and, more generally, women in Victorian culture, and with Queen Guenevere and Emily Dickinson, Grace has already become a multifaceted personality by the time we read her first words. This play of ambiguity and indeterminacy is kept up by the narrative patterns and in the main text of the book. As we shall see, this part of the quilted novel works in a similar way as the supplements in the opening section, contributing to the fabrication of a woman's identity that ultimately cannot be grasped.

II. I will restrict my discussion of the supplements de/stabilizing feminine identities in the main body of the novel to one example that involves pictures19 and, in a longer chain of signifying, texts too. A particular form of intertextuality,20 my example may be considered as intermediality, i.e., the quotation as it were of

19

20

Integrating paintings or photographs into her fiction by way of allusion and ekphrasis is a strategy Atwood also applies in some other novels: see Cooke 1996. On the importance of intertextual allusions in Alias Grace: see Steals 2000.

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visual material in a text, of visual representation in a verbal representation. 21 In Chapter VII ('Snake Fence'), Grace tells Simon Jordan about her arrival at the Kinnear household. During her tour of the house she also visits her employer's private rooms: [...] and on the second floor there was Mr. Kinnear's bedchamber with a large bedstead, and his dressing room adjoining, and a dressing table with an oval mirror, and a carved wardrobe, and in the bedchamber, a picture of a woman without any clothes on, on a sofa, seen from the back and looking over her shoulder, with a sort of turban on her head and holding a peacock-feather fan. Peacock feathers inside the house are bad luck, as everyone knows. These were only in a picture, but I would never have allowed them in any house of mine. There was another picture, also of a naked woman taking a bath, but I did not have the chance to examine it. I was a little taken aback at Mr. Kinnear having two naked women in his bedchamber, as at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson's it was mostly landscapes or flowers. 22

In this case, Atwood provides us with an ekphrasis that is both marvellously ironic and multifunctional in its meaning, a reading by a badly educated servant girl of two classics of Western painting. Grace is faced with reproductions of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's La Grande Odalisque (1814; fig. 1), which embodies to some extent important notions of Victorian eroticism, and with an engraving representing Susannah and the Elders that remains unspecified at this point. Grace's reaction to Ingres's nude is not, as one might expect, one of shock at the daring exposure of female flesh - she admits, almost as an afterthought and as if to comply with (Victorian) readerly expectation that she was "a little taken aback". It is interesting - and this is part of the irony produced by her ekphrasis 23 - that she takes offence at the peacock feathers in the right hand of the nude. Even with this detail, she does not see (or at least does not comment on) the phallic symbolism (the handle of the fan). More important, however, is Grace's transition from the bad luck such feathers apparently signify for her to the idea of proprietorship. Revealing her most private feelings (that she would like to be in Nancy Montgomery's place and be Mr. Kinnear's wife or lover), she confesses, "I would never have allowed them in any house of mine". Alluding to sexuality (and its suppression), Ingres's erotic painting thus provokes an ekphrasis that tells us perhaps more about Grace's longing than she would want to admit to Dr. Jordan (and the reader). Towards the end of the chapter, the narrative returns to the second picture, as Grace is about to have her first fall-out with Nancy Montgomery, her rival in the household. The entire scene is full of subtle allusions that could explain the later killing of Nancy out of jealousy - but Grace is always very careful with her observations to Jordan and never really betrays herself. In this context of

21

22 23

On intermediality, see the entry, "Intermedialität" in Nünning 2001, the introduction in Wagner 1996, and Mosthaf 2000. Atwood 1996a, 213. On the changing meaning of this term, which today refers to the verbal representation of a visual representation see Wagner's article in Nünning 2001, 134-35, and Klarer 2000.

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dissimulation, lying, and pretending, the painting plays an important part in the quilting of Grace's character. Trying to pacify Nancy Montgomery, Grace asked her about the picture on the wall; not the one with the peacock-feather fan, but the one, of a young lady taking a bath, in a garden, which was an odd place for it, with her hair tied up, and a maid holding a large towel ready for her, and several old men with beards peering at her fi-om behind the bushes. I could tell by the clothing that it was in ancient times. Nancy said it was an engraving, and that the colouring was done by hand, and it was a copy of a famous painting about Susannah and the Elders, which was a Bible subject. 24

What is at stake here is not "the famous painting" as such (fig. 2)25 but the issues foregrounded in it: sexuality, transgression, sinning, and - once again lying or dissimulation. Since Grace knows her Bible backwards, she disagrees with Nancy and as they are about to have an argument, Mr Kinnear steps into the room. Clarifying the matter by explaining that the scene is based on the Apocrypha, he settles the point but only fans the growing hate between the women: He asked if I knew the story of Susannah, and I said no; and he said she was a young lady who had been falsely accused of sinning with a young man, by some old men, because she refused to commit the very same sin with them; and she would have been executed by being stoned to death; but luckily she had a clever lawyer, who was able to prove that the old men had been lying, by inducing them to give contradictory evidence. Then he said what did I think the moral of it was? And I said the moral was, that you should not take baths outside in the garden; and he laughed, and said he thought the moral was that you needed a clever lawyer. And he said to Nancy, This girl is no simpleton after all; by which I guessed she had been telling him I was one. And Nancy looked daggers at me. 26

24 25

26

Ibid. 222. While there can be no doubt about the Ingres reproduction, Grace's description of the Susannah scene, despite the discussion that takes place about it, is too vague to allow a particular identification of a painting or a painter. Susannah in the bath or Susannah and the elders, concerns an episode described in the apocryphal addenda to the Old Testament Book of Daniel. The protagonist, Susannah, a Jewess in Babylon, is accused by two elders of adultery and condemned to death by stoning. But a new trial conducted by the young Daniel proves her innocent. The motif of Susannah in the bath became an extremely popular subject in art during the Renaissance and into the eighteenth century, with works by Albrecht Altdorfer, Annibale Carraci, Jan van Neck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Artemisia Gentilesci and Tintoretto being the best known. See, for instance, Rubens's Susannah in the Bath (1636-39) and Rembrandt's paintings or etchings (see his Susanna at the Bath, 1634; and Susanna Surprised by the Elders, 1645). For discussions, see Hinterding et al. 2000, and Mieke Bal's detailed study of the subject in Reading 'Rembrandt' (1991, 138-76). The picture that comes closest to Grace's description, but still does not contain all the details of her ekphrasis, is Leandro Bassano's Susanna and the Two Elders (1590-1600), which is derived from a similar painting by his father, Jacopo Bassano. I am grateful to Thomas Krämer for the clarification of the art historical background in this case. Atwood 1996a, 222-23. The text of the biblical story, "The History of Susanna", can be found in Apocrypha: see The Bible. Authorized King James Version 1997, 174-76 and 394. Significantly, the editors of the edition published by Oxford University Press, Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett, add in the notes that "the scene [...] has given European painters (most famously Rembrandt) many opportunities for exercising their voyeuristic art in depicting the voyeurism of the elders and the nakedness of Susanna" (394).

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There are of course interesting parallels between the story of Susannah, accused of sexual transgression, and Grace, later accused of the murder of her employer and her rival, perhaps also conditioned to some extent by sexual motives. But what seems more important is that the engraving engenders subconscious reactions from the on-lookers, ekphrases of sorts that tell us something about the states of mind and the secret thoughts of the novel's characters, Grace's Irish humour makes Mr. Kinnear laugh, but he also realizes - and so do we as readers - that she hides her intelligence (and perhaps her viciousness) behind a screen of politeness. The scene concludes with Grace remarking ominously that if she had believed at first that her relationship with Nancy "would be like sisters or at least good friends, the two of us working together side by side, as I had done with Mary Whitney [...] Now I knew that this was not the way things were going to be".27 With this scene, a sequel to the first introduction of the pictures as supplements,28 Atwood shows not only how visual representation depends on words (the Apocrypha of the Bible); she also increases the already rich ambiguity of Grace's character by aligning her with another woman who had suffered from false testimony. Like Susannah, Grace was eventually to be saved not because she was innocent, but, as Mr. Kinnear correctly predicts, because she had a clever lawyer. Unlike Susannah, however, Grace may have been guilty to some extent; we cannot tell because the novel deliberately leaves this a moot point. In any case, Atwood makes excellent use of the supplementary power of images. Showing how pictures always need words to acquire meaning (for the expression of their subjects as well as for the expression of the new meaning created by the visual treatment of a verbal source), she makes her characters respond to images demonstrating the double-edged nature of supplements. In their capacity as addition, they enrich the tale and the ambiguity of the heroine even while complicating the picture by providing a substitute for what in essence is never really there. As Alias Grace introduces one supplement after another (by way of allusions to paintings and novels), we begin to realize that Grace's female identity, like the narrative pattern of the novel, also resembles a quilt: the Irish servant girl, one of many children in a family, is shown to be in search of a female identity. She is given many examples to choose from (characters from novels and fairy tales, figures from paintings and the Bible), and while she tries to borrow some patterns to make up her own quilt, her choice is ultimately limited by two sorts of constrictions - those imposed upon women in Canada's Victorian society and those of the social hierarchy which made it almost impossible for a servant girl to rise beyond her status.

27 28

Ibid. 223. Ibid. 213.

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III. While these aspects are certainly of great importance in connection with the issue of female identity as portrayed in Alias Grace, there is another dimension that tends to be overlooked. This is the representation of women in the context of mental health and madness. Atwood's introduction of the fictional Dr. Simon Jordan as a key figure in the novel serves several purposes that all relate to mental health - he is an excellent satirical target in the sense that Grace plays with him as proto-psychiatrist and never really gives away the whole truth; his reports reveal the shaky foundations during the pioneering stage of what was to develop into an officially recognized science; and last but not least he is shown to grapple with (and to be unable to solve) his own psychological and sexual problems. Even though this literary satire occasionally comes close to a layman's view of psychiatry as charlatanerie, Atwood nevertheless puts her novelistic finger on some very serious problems of psychiatric practice. These involve the fact that - even after the post-Freudian changes introduced by Lacan and others - therapy is supposed to be based on language, on the patient talking to her/his therapist, with the underlying assumption that the truth will be revealed in language. If Alias Grace shows on the level of narration and narrative patterns (the quilt motif) that language is unreliable because it depends on circumstance, character, and intention - i.e., on its performative dimension - the novel also problematizes language (as a form of human communication) in the context of the burgeoning science of psychiatry. Grace Marks was not only convicted in connection with a double murder, she was also thought, for a couple of years at least, to be mad and she was sent to asylums. Atwood places her character in the field of mental illness which, from the very outset, has always been debatable ground. The novel indirectly raises such questions as, who is mad, who isn't, and who qualifies to judge? Standards, as we now know, have fluctuated widely and abuses have been numerous. In the nineteenth century, in the United States, a wife could be committed to an asylum on the say-so of her husband and two easily paid-off doctors alone. The Victorians may have cleaned up the straw and the chains of the old Bedlam-like institutions of the eighteenth century, but they didn't always clean up the practices. Patients were drugged, starved, drained of vast quantities of blood, beaten up, swung from ropes, immersed in cold water and whirled around in the air upside-down, all in the belief that it would improve their mental health. Into the nineteenth century, patients also remained objects of Sunday entertainment for the well-to-do middle classes - what Hogarth shows us in plate 8 of his series A Rake's Progress (1735), a well-dressed lady and her maid looking for dissipation and amusement in bedlam (fig. 3), was still common practice by the time Grace Marks was sent to such an institution.29 Simultaneously, Atwood sets Grace Marks in the much wider social context of debates about so-called madness affecting women. One such debate cona

On the history and treatment of madness see Porter 1989, 1990 and 1998.

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cerned hysterics. As an opening text to Chapter VI, another threshold we must cross while becoming aware of its importance vis-ä-vis the quilting of Grace's character, Atwood selected a passage from Isabella Beeton's Beeton's Book of Household Management (1859-61). Beeton's remarks about young women's hysterics are extremely important because they reflect what was commonly thought on the subject at the time Grace was judged: These fits take place, for the most part, in young, nervous, unmarried women [...] The fits themselves are mostly preceded by great depression of spirits, shedding of tears, sickness, palpitation of the heart, &c [...] The patient now generally becomes insensible, and faints; the body is thrown about in all directions, froth issues from the mouth, incoherent expressions are uttered, and fits of laughter, crying, or screaming, take place. When the fit is going off, the patient mostly cries bitterly, sometimes knowing all, and at other times nothing, of what has taken place. 30

Madness in women, then, was at that time thought to be partly a biologically gendered form of mental disease that could occur temporarily. But there were other forms too. "The lunatic, the lover and the poet", Shakespeare wrote, "are of imagination all composed", but what causes this excess of imagination? Does it come from the outside? From God or gods as a judgment of sin, from the Devil as a temptation, from a knock on the head or a sudden shock, from thwarted love, riotous living, too much meat, the influence of the moon, too much drink or religion, a poverty-stricken upbringing, an indulgence in masturbation, a trauma in childhood? Or does it come from the inside - from heredity, from bad blood, from being a poet, from diseases such as syphilis, from a physical deficiency, a wandering womb, too much black humour, female orgasm, problems of the liver, the nerves or the brain? All have had their proponents. For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it is usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs, stories, plays and books. Sometime between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Lady Macbeth31 and Ophelia32 got together and exchanged genetic material, giving rise to a hybrid that is the type of the nineteenth-century literary and dramatic madwoman. In the perfect vision of this hybrid, you get innocence and guilt, both blood guilt and that very best Victorian thing, sexual guilt, which is not prominent in Shakespearean mad scenes. Millais's Ophelia (1851-52; fig. 4) perfectly and horribly embodies that nineteenth-century view of women. The comprehensive Victorian madwoman was thus an innocent maiden who is seduced and abandoned, going mad. It speaks for the adoption of that male view by women themselves if Queen Victoria's favourite poem was Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake (1810). Visual representations can tell us a lot

30 31 32

Atwood 1996a, 137. On the background of Shakespeare's treatment of madness, see Braunmuller 1997. On Ophelia and the tradition created by this character in Shakespeare's Hamlet see Showalter 1992. Showalter argues persuasively that portrayals of Ophelia in word and image have embodied male attitudes to female sexuality and madness.

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about what the late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has termed that enormous foundation in common thinking of the unsaid, the generally accepted - in short, prejudices shared by social groups at any given time. As far as ideas about women are concerned, it is interesting, for instance, to look at the representation of hair, a hybrid sign signifying sexiness/danger, madness and even death, the three by Victorian times having become virtually synonymous. Thus Susanna Moodie, who saw the real Grace Marks in the Toronto Lunatic Asylum during her visit there in 1851, was looking at her through tinted glasses. Madness, for a nineteenth-century woman like Moodie had something of the unfathomable miracles of religion. In a letter to Richard Bentley written in 1858 and partly quoted as an opening text to Chapter XIII ('Pandora's Box') of Alias Grace, Moodie confesses to her belief in spiritualism: My husband had contrived a very ingenious sort of Spiritoscope [...] being alone, I placed my hands upon the board, and asked, 'Was it a spirit that lifted my hand?' and the board rolled forward and spelt out 'Yes' [...] You will perhaps think, as I too, have often thought, that the whole is an operation of my own mind, but my mind must be far cleverer than I [...] Now, do not think me mad or possessed by evil spirits. 1 could wish you altogether possessed by such glorious madness.33

By inserting this passage from Moodie's confessional letter, Atwood makes clear that the belief in the supernatural and madness as something that is both evil and supernatural went hand in hand. Moodie saw the kind of madwoman she had been conditioned to see, and presented her accordingly. Since Grace had been involved in a murder, Moodie leans towards the Lady Macbeth version of female madness. Atwood's handling of Moodie's distorted view of Grace is superb again as she places her statements at strategically important points at the beginning of Chapters III and IV. In 'Puss in the Corner' (Chapter III), we get a first view of Grace through Moodie's eyes; and this is important because the novel thus argues that all representations of women are time-bound, depending on the socially dominant ideas concerning female behaviour: There is an air of hopeless melancholy in her face which is very painful to contemplate. Her complexion is fair, and must, before the touch of hopeless sorrow paled it, have been very brilliant [...] her face would be rather handsome were it not for the long curved chin, which gives, as it always does to most persons who have this facial defect, a cunning, cruel expression. Grace Marks glances at you with a sidelong, stealthy look; her eye never meets yours, and after a furtive regard, it invariably bends its gaze upon the ground. She looks like a person rather above her humble station [.. .].34

For Moodie, Grace Marks simply had to have the physiognomic features of the criminal and the madwoman. The latter emerges at the opening of Chapter IV ('Young Man's Fancy'), where Moodie describes her visit to the asylum:

33 34

Atwood 1996a, 393. Ibid. 19.

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Among these raving maniacs I recognised the singular face of Grace Marks - no longer sad and despairing, but lighted up with the fire of insanity, and glowing with a hideous and fiend-like merriment. On perceiving that strangers were observing her, she fled shrieking away like a phantom into one of the side rooms. It appears that even in the wildest bursts of her terrible malady, she is continually haunted by a memory of the past. Unhappy girl! When will she sit at the feet of Jesus, clothed with the unsullied garments of his righteousness, the stain of blood washed from her hand, and her soul redeemed, and pardoned, and in her right mind? [...]. Let us hope that all her previous guilt may be attributed to the incipient workings of this frightful malady. 35

Grace is seen as an ill person, suffering from a "frightful malady" that might, some day, ameliorate itself. What is most interesting in this passage is the confluence in Moodie's Victorian mind of ideas about women concerning witchcraft and the devil ("fiend-like"; "phantom"), madness as a disease ("insanity"), and spiritualism ("haunted by a memory"). Moodie also contrasts Grace Marks with the perfect, innocent, woman - another Victorian idea that found its apogee with Edgar A. Poe's aesthetic ideal of beauty in the dead female body. As Moodie saw it in Life in the Clearings, Grace's motive in taking part in, or even planning, the double murder was her obsessive passion for her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and her demented jealousy of Nancy Montgomery, Kinnear's mistress and housekeeper and thus, according to Moodie, Grace's rival. Moodie portrays Grace as the driving engine in the affair, a scowling, sullen, teenage temptress with the co-murderer, the manservant James McDermott, shown as a mere dupe, driven by his own lust for Grace as well as by her taunts and blandishments. In Moodie's interpretation, Grace offers sexual favours in exchange for the death of Nancy; but when McDermott realizes he has been fooled, he kills Kinnear too, and threatens to kill Grace along the way if she interferes. As far as the real events can be established, one only knows that Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery were found dead in the cellar, and that Grace and McDermott made it across Lake Ontario to the United States with a wagonful of stolen goods. They were arrested during their first night at a hotel in Lewiston and brought back. Interestingly, both were tried not for the two killings but for the murder of Thomas Kinnear alone. Since the murder of Nancy Montgomery was never tried, the evidence about it was not thoroughly examined. On the scaffold, McDermott declared that Grace Marks had helped him to strangle Nancy, and had been the instigator of everything. Although he was a known liar, his is the version that Moodie chose to believe. One of the reasons must have been that this version with a possibly mad and strong, fascinating, female character made a better case for her book. Moodie's construction of Grace as a mad murderess (a pattern in the quilt then recreated by Atwood) is most obvious in a passage relating an anecdote which she claims to have received from Grace's lawyer. Apparently, Grace told her lawyer,

35

Ibid. 45.

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Since I helped Macdermot to strangle Hannah [sic] Montgomery, her terrible face and those bloodshot eyes have never left me for a moment. They glare upon me by night and day, and when I close my eyes in despair, I see them looking at my soul, it is impossible to shut them out. If I am at work, in a few minutes that dreadful hand is in my lap. If I look up to get rid of it, I can see it at the far corner of the room. At dinner, it is in my plate, or grinning between the persons who sit opposite me at table. Every object that meets my sight takes the same dreadful form; and at night, at night, in the silence and loneliness of my cell, those blazing eyes make my prison light as day. No, not as day, they have a terribly hot glare, that has not the appearance of anything in the world [.,.]. Oh! This is hell, Sir, these are the punishments of the damned! 36

This is so artificially literary in tone, metaphor, and expression that one is immediately reminded of the discourse - from Shakespeare to Dickens and the Pre-Raphaelites - shaping the Victorian imagination about female madness. To begin with, this is the world of Macbeth indeed, complete with visual hallucinations. It is also reminiscent of Charles Dickinson's fiction, who was much influenced by the melodramatic theatre of his day. The glaring, haunting eyes are ominously close to those of the murdered Nancy in Oliver Twist (it is hardly a surprise to learn that Dickens was one of Moodie's favourite authors). Moodie visited Grace Marks again in the newly built Lunatic Asylum in Toronto where she observed Grace slightly changed (see the passage from Atwood 1996a, 45, quoted above). Moodie felt that Grace Marks was doomed to remain in the asylum until her death. But immediately after the publication of Life in the Clearings, Grace was sent back to the Penitentiary, with a letter from the superintendent that described her as a kind and helpful inmate, who was certainly too sane to stay at the institution any longer. Why was Grace Marks sent to the Asylum in the first place? The official records do not tell us. When she was sent back, was she cured? Or perhaps, as later commentators claim, she was faking madness all along, as many did, since the food and treatment in the mental institution were better than those at the Penitentiary. It is this lacuna in the records that must have persuaded Atwood to invent the figure of Simon Jordan, a clever means to excavate Grace's mind even while showing that this is an impossible task. For like the records, Alias Grace leaves an important question open: Was the resemblance between Grace's alleged madness and the popular, theatrical image of insanity that would have been familiar to Victorians due to Susanna Moodie's own conditioning, or was Grace putting on a kind of performance that she knew would convince and intrigue her observers? Or, more fascinating even, was Grace feigning madness and was she also (not because she was doing it), from the very start, seen as an insane woman because of the enormity of the crime? Atwood's craft as a novelist emerges in her new quilting of Grace in the triple role as a potential murderer (many hints and allusions in the novel would seem to confirm such a view), a clueless ingenue and, on a third level, a mysterious female ego (composed of her various roles as an immigrant Irish servant, a dutiful sister and daughter, a teenager with sexual and emotional longings, and a 36

From Susanna Moodie, Life in the Clearings, 1853, partly quoted in Atwood 1996a, 347.

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schemer). Atwood's interpretation is multifaceted enough to see Grace in several roles: as a demon instigator, as a Bonnie playing to her Clyde, as an innocent bystander only involved peripherally, and as a victim fleeing out of terror of her own life. If she created such a mysterious female protagonist it was not only to have a fascinating major character but also to shed some ironical light on the infancy of psychiatry and the popular ideas about mad and criminal37 women circulating in nineteenth-century society. This was an age when women were thought of as mysterious and unfathomable. We should remember that as late as the end of the Victorian period, Freud described women in terms of "the dark continent" meaning that they were capable of the darkest thoughts and deeds too. Two things worked against Grace Marks in her case. Firstly, she was found in an inn with a man, a virtual condemnation for Victorians {The Mill on the Floss, for instance, suggests that only to be found with a man signals a fallen woman). If you are in a structure together, overnight, even if it was separate bedrooms, which was the case here, your reputation is severely damaged. Secondly, Grace Marks wore Nancy Montgomery's dress and bonnet to the trial. There were gasps of shock and horror in the courtroom when this testimony came out. What was not considered - but the novel gives us ample opportunity to make amends in hindsight by taking Grace's side - was Grace's psyche and way of thinking. She would not have had a middle-class, genteel imagination, which would have suggested that one cannot wear the dress of a dead person. Lacking that sensibility, as the novel shows, she saw a shawl as a shawl (she wore her mother's after her death), a dress as a dress. It was a good serviceable dress. You wouldn't leave something like that behind or throw it away. This form of conditioning shows in the idea of patchwork quilting (you don't throw things away, you make them into something else) and was rooted in Grace's Irish psyche, in the "famine mentality". Simultaneously, Grace's borrowing of Mary Whitney's clothes is a symbolical act, a substitute for her secret longing for a stable, different identity, for as Grace confesses herself at one point, she feels that Mary Whitney inhabits her.38 To explore the multiple personae of her elusive protagonist, Atwood introduces Dr. Simon Jordan in the fray. He represents the other side of Victorian attitudes towards madness, the body of medical and scientific opinion on the subject. An upstart in the nascent field of mental health, he becomes interested in Grace's case, and he visits her in the hope of drawing out the real Grace. Despite Jordan's amiable incompetence, he partly succeeds, but only partly for Grace tells him as much about her life as she thinks he can handle. The character of Simon Jordan is intriguing. Some of the most interesting parts of Alias Grace describe how the idea of the grateful woman or the wilting, helpless woman is powerfully eroticized for him. Since Atwood writes much of the

37

38

For a study of the popular nineteenth-century view of the murderess in broadsides, newspapers and books, see Knelman 1998. Ljungberg 1999,62.

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novel from Grace's viewpoint in her private voice, 39 the reader gets to see the parts of Grace's past (and her present state of mind) that Jordan cannot access. Grace tells her story in her coy, perfunctory manner, and he scribbles notes, occasionally pulling out objects - a fresh apple, a candlestick - which might trigger a memory or reveal the truth. "What he wants", Grace understands very quickly, "is certainty." But Grace claims partial memory loss. Her story runs into and out of the shadows, but never straight into what satisfies the doctor as truth. "It's as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks," Grace says [...] "And that way I cannot be followed, it is almost the same as being innocent." What both Simon Jordan and Grace Marks do not fully realize is that they are dealing with an example of what Sigmund Freud described as the uncanny, "das Unheimliche" 40 The reader, then, and not Simon Jordan, discovers Grace Marks's story. As in so many of Atwood's novels, the story is complicated, partly hidden in the dark, and vastly astonishing. Atwood imagines a Grace so full of humanity, so rich in life, and in contradiction, that even as she opens up to the reader, she still recedes. It is precisely when she tells you point-blank what happened to her that she just becomes more of a puzzle. If the seventeenth century revolved around faith, that is, what you believed and the eighteenth around knowledge, that is, what you could prove - then the Victorian age could be said to have revolved around memory. The Victorian novel would be unimaginable without a belief in the integrity of memory, for what is the self without a more or less continuous memory of itself? As for the twentieth century, at least in Europe, it has been on the whole more interested in forgetting, forgetting as an organic process, and sometimes as a willed act. The twentieth century's most prominent theories of the psyche - those that evolved from Freud (and even the Lacanian approach with its insistence on the linguistic structuring of the unconscious) - taught us that we are not so much the sum of what we could remember, as the sum of what we had forgotten. We are, it seems, controlled by the Unconscious, where unsavoury repressed memories are stored like rotten apples in a barrel. It is the very things that are not mentioned that inspire in us the most curiosity. It speaks for the literary quality, and the cultural value of Alias Grace that these ideas all emerge as we listen to the several voices telling us Grace's story. Grace, whatever else she may be, is a storyteller, with strong motives to narrate, but also strong motives to withhold details. The only power left to her as a convicted and imprisoned criminal and alleged madwoman - the power she has over Jordan - comes from a blend of these two categories of motives, a blend that also inspired Atwood's marvellous narrative quilting. Grace's listener and, to some extent, confessor, is Simon Jordan, who is not only a more educated person than she is, but a man, which gave him an automatic edge in the nineteenth century. What she tells this man with the potential to be of help to her is 35 40

Loveday 1999. Freud 1970.

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selective. It is dependent on what she remembers and on what she thinks she can disclose to a male psychiatrist. Her telling may be conditioned to some extent by the need to rid herself of the trauma connected with the murders (in that sense she resembles Coleridge's Ancient Mariner),41 but Grace, we must remember, is also literally talking for her life. For like the mythical Sheherazade,42 Grace must tell stories to a powerful man to be released and to have a future, hence her crafty mixture of fact and fiction, truth and veiling of truth. What gradually becomes clear is that no one will ever know Grace Marks. Writers, doctors and lawyers can take aspects of her and exploit them to support their theories, as Dr. Simon Jordan does for a while. But Atwood's ingenious quilting (on the level of narrative, characterization, and exploitation of nineteenth-century source material) challenges the reader not to take sides, not to work towards a verdict of guilty or not guilty. If Margaret Atwood leaves Grace's story as muddy as history itself it is because Alias Grace pleads for a Grace Marks who cannot be totally recovered and thus remains contradictory and mysterious, innocent and guilty - in short, one of the most fascinating female characters to have been created in fiction in the final decade of the last century.

41 42

Ljungberg 1999, 132. Scheherazade, or Shahrazad, provides the framework in the collection of stories and fairy tales entitled Arabian Nights Entertainment or The Thousand and One Nights. The daughter of the vizier of King Shahriyar, she married the king and escaped the death that was the usual fate of his wives by telling him the tales which make up the book. Scheherazade interrupts each story at an interesting point, postponing the continuation till the next night. First written in Arabic, the work was made known in Europe through the French translation of Antoine Galland between 1704—1717. An English version appeared as early as 1708. Atwood is one of several novelists who adopted the Scheherazade framework.

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Works Cited Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. New York: Doubleday, 1996a. - In Search of Alias Grace. Ottawa: U of Ottawa P, 1996b. Bai, Mieke. Reading 'Rembrandt'. Beyond the Word-Image Opposition. Cambridge: CUP, 1991. The Bible. Authorized King James Version. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Braunmuller, A.R. "Prospects of Belief: Witches, Women, and Mediated Knowledge" in: William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. A.R. Braunmuller. Cambridge: CUP, 1997, 29-43. Brooks Bouson, J. Brutal Choreographies: Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of Margaret Atwood. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1993. Cooke, John. The Influence of Painting on Five Canadian Writers: Alice Munro, Hugh Hood, Timothy Findley, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1996 (Canadian Studies Series 10). Craig Faxon, Alicia. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Phaidon, 1989. DeLord, Marie. "A Textual Quilt: Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace" in: Etudes Canadiennes Canadian Studies: Revue interdisciplinaire des Etudes Canadiennes en France, 46, (1999), 111-21.

Derrida, Jacques. L 'icriture et la differance. Paris: Seuil, 1967 (engl. Writing and Difference, transl. by Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978). Foucault, Michel. Histoire de la sexualite. Vol. 1: La volonte de savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. Freud, Sigmund. "Das Unheimliche" in: Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, James Strachey (eds.), Psychologische Schriften. Studienausgabe. Zürich: Ex Libris, 1970, 24174. Genette, Gerard. Seuils. Paris: Seuil, 1987. Hinterding, Erik et al. Rembrandt the Printmaker. London: British Museum Press, 2000. Klarer, Mario. Ekphrasis. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000. Knelman, Judith. Twisting in the Wind: The Murderess and the English Press. Toronto: Toronto UP, 1998. Ljungberg, Christina. To Join, to Fit, and to Make: The Creative Craft of Margaret Atwood's Fiction. Frankfurt: Lang, 1999. Loveday, Stephanie. "I Am Telling This to No One But You: Private Voice, Passing, and the Private Sphere in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace" in: Studies in Canadian Literature / Etudes en Littirature Canadienne, 24,2, (1999), 35-63. Magali-Cornier, Michael. "Rethinking History as Patchwork: The Case of Atwood's Alias Grace" in: Modem Fiction Studies, 47,2, (2001), 421-47. Mosthaf, F. Metaphorische Intermedialität: Formen und Funktionen der Verarbeitung von Malerei im Roman. Trier: WVT, 2000. Nünning, Ansgar (ed.). Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie. Stuttgart: Metzler, 22001. Porter, Roy. Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1650-1850. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1989. - Mind Forg'd Manacles: Madness and Psychiatry in England from Restoration to Regency. London: Penguin, 1990. "Madness and the Family Before Freud: the Views of the Mad Doctors" in: Journal of Family History, 23, (1998), 159-72. Rogerson, Margaret. "Reading the Patchworks in Alias Grace" in: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 33,1, (1998), 5-22. Showalter, Elaine. "Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism" in: Martin Coyle (ed.), New Casebooks: Hamlet. London: Macmillan, 1992. Steals, Hilde. "Interexts of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace" in: Modern Fiction Studies, 46,2, (2000), 427-50. Wagner, Peter (ed.). Icons - Text - Iconotexts. Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996.

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1 2 3 4

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque (1814) Leandro Bassano, Susanna in the Bath (after 1592) William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress 8 (1735) John Everett Millais, Ophelia (1851-52)

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Peter Wagner

Cormac McCarthy's Joycean Woman or Epiphany Revisited

Cormac McCarthy (born 1933) appears to be as elusive as his fiction. Some critics have compared his work to Faulkner's and the entire Southern tradition in American writing, including the gothic novels of Flannery O'Connor. 1 But this 'most Southern of writers' was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Cormac was initially named Charles, after his father, an attorney, but his parents "soon rechristened him in honor of the fifteenth-century Irish king who built Blarney Castle".2 In 1937, the family moved to Tennessee, which provides the setting of McCarthy's early fiction, and the six McCarthy children grew up in a large home, experiencing a Roman Catholic childhood in the Protestant South. Cormac then spent a year at the University of Tennessee as a liberal arts major (1951-52) but dropped out. After a year of wandering he joined the US Air Force (1953), serving a four-year period, some of it in Alaska. Returning to the University of Tennessee, he left his alma mater in 1960 without taking a degree. However, he won an award for creative writing during his final year of studies. In 1965, he published The Orchard Keeper, winning the William Faulkner Foundation Award for the most distinguished novel of the year. In that year, en route to Ireland on a ship with a travel fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in his pocket, McCarthy met his wife, Anne DeLisle, a young dancer and musician from England. They married in England and subsequently toured Europe for two years. Returning to Tennessee in 1973, McCarthy tried to live the reclusive life on the edge of society that one associates with many of his characters (e.g., Suttree). The couple lived on farms in Tennessee and Kentucky, with Cormac refusing to take out insurance and building their homes with his own hands. Since 1976, when the novelist and DeLisle separated, Cormac McCarthy has continued to move and to write, working mainly in motels and living austerely. For the past decade, he has stayed mainly in El Paso, Texas. The setting of his recent novels in the borderland between Texas and Mexico as well as his cowboy heroes have led some critics to describe McCarthy as a Western writer and

1

2

See, for instance, Simpson 1979; Mills 1993; and Phillips 1996, 434-35. Phillips points out that "Southern readers have tended to see McCarthy as the heir of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor" but then discusses McCarthy's Blood Meridian as a 'Western'. For a more balanced view of McCarthy's debt to Faulkner see Bell's essay in Wallach 2000, 1-12. Mills 1993,286.

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his fiction as cowboy novels.3 Even after the phenomenal success in 1992 ofAll the Pretty Horses, his first installment of the 'Border Trilogy', which continued with The Crossing (1994) and concluded with Cities of the Plain (1998), Cormac McCarthy continues to be a rather reclusive writer; he does not grant interviews; and does not appear publicly to discuss his books. For most of his career as a writer, which started in the 1960s, McCarthy has worked and published in obscurity. Although he has always "enjoyed a kind of cult status among academics, who have found in his work plenty of difficulty to explicate",4 for many years his readership was limited to a "small group of admirers mostly from the South".5 Even though some change occurred with his winning of the National Book Award for fiction in 1992, when All the Pretty Horses appeared on the best-seller list, his novels still puzzle the critics. They have been discussed as examples of either the modernist or postmodernist paradigm, they have been analyzed as 'Southern' or 'postmodern Southern Gothic', and more recently, as 'Western' fiction because his trilogy of the 1990s takes the heroes from Texas and New Mexico to Mexico and back again. However, the problem is that his prose does not fit in any of these drawers. "The ugly fact is", McCarthy said in one of his rare interviews, "that books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written".6 McCarthy's antecedents are not only the great American writers of the classic academic canon, such as Melville, Faulker, O'Connor, and Hemingway (to whom he is indebted in style and ideology), but also European and Russian writers such as Conrad (especially Heart of Darkness) and Dostoevski. The existentialism and the nihilistic world view in McCarthy's fiction have been attributed to his reliance on Nietzsche and Heidegger7, though I would argue that Beckett has been left out in the discussion of his philosophical heritage.8 In addition, his prose reflects and, to some extent, remakes patterns of representation that are vastly interesting both structurally and ideologically.9 If McCarthy says that his novels are based on other novels, he points to the intertextual aspect of his fiction10 while hiding half of the truth (as writers often do). As we shall see, there is not only an intertextual aspect that needs more attention - for example, his borrowing of Joycean scenes and ideas - but also an intermedial one in the sense that visual art is implied too. I would argue that an approach inquiring into the intermedial nature of his prose is more promising for 3

4 5 6 7 8

9 10

See, for instance, the review of McCarthy's Cities of the Plain (volume 3 of the 'Border Trilogy') by Mösle 1998. Mösle 1998, 16. Phillips 1996, 433. Woodward 1992,31. See Phillips 1996, 435. Mösle, in her review of Cities of the Plain, points out, however, that McCarthy's novels are "occasionally leavened by an absurd, Beckettian sense of humor" (17). See Holloway 2000, 185-200. For recent studies of this aspect see Edwin T. Arnold's contribution in Hall and Wallach 2002, 179-187.

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analysis than the critical reading of his works in terms of genre. By intermedial" I mean the use of pictures and paintings in literary texts, either by a direct or a hidden allusion. Verbal representation relies on visual representation, and what we find, ultimately, in such examples are traces of important absences, allusions that lead us from McCarthy's allegedly original text to Joyce, and from there on to the Impressionistic art that inspired both writers, and then to the endless horizons of intertextuality and intermediality. For the difference we discover always creates differance and hence dissemination. My focus of inquiry, then, is not the text and pictures that influenced The Crossing but merely some aspects of differance, i.e., the way the McCarthy text foregrounds the supplements12 it requires to make sense. In what follows I want to discuss one particular scene in McCarthy's The Crossing (1994), a scene which I believe to be modelled on a similar one in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). In a first step, I shall explore the intertextual relations between the two scenes and the two novels while showing along the way that texts always need the supplement (imported through allusions) to achieve meaning. I shall then tum to McCarthy's strategic borrowing of the Joycean concept of epiphany which is closely linked with Impressionistic art, and I shall conclude with some remarks about the representation of women that informs McCarthy's fiction. Like the first 'Border' novel, The Crossing features a young cowboy hero, Billy Parham, who seems to be a postmodern version of Huck Finn. In a tragic and naturalistic novel that portrays a boy's initiation into life as a journey of shocking violence McCarthy makes death the mother of beauty. Traveling on horseback from Hidalgo County, New Mexico, into northern Mexico and back, Billy Parham loses all - his parents, his younger brother Boyd, and the love of his life. Set in the years before the Second World War, The Crossing captures "that brief moment between a culture's existence and extinction", 13 the vanishing world of the cowboys, in a soaring rhetoric that is often gorgeous, drawing as it does on the Bible and myths, such as Perceval's search for the grail, and countless literary antecedents. McCarthy has also developed a style of his own - long hypotactical sentences in a series of polysyndetons, no quotation marks for the speeches of his characters, and occasional conversations or remarks in Spanish that remain untranslated. 14

11

12

13 14

See my 'case studies' of intermediality: "Learning to Read the Female Body: On the Function of Manet's Olympia in John Braine's Room at the Top, 1994; "Oscar Wilde's 'Impression du Matin': An Intertextual / Intermedial Reading", 1995; "Reading Hawkes Reading Stubbs: Intermedial Representation in John Hawkes's Whistiejacket", 1995. For a persuasive recent discussion of intermediality, see Rajewski 2002. On the idea of the supplement in word and image and its function in the process described as 'differance', see Derrida 1989, 229-49; and 1978, transl. 1987. Mösle 1998, 16. See Jim Campbell's translations of these passages.

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Among the extraordinary panoply of fiestas and circuses, of animals and people Billy Parham encounters in The Crossing there is a group of "men and women in robes and kimonos who appeared to belong to a circus" (215). 15 As so often in McCarthy's fiction the true identities of these people remain unclear; we do not learn whether they are roving actors or gypsies or both. Billy watches a tragic opera performed by this group; but he understands little of it, wondering however why "in the end the man in the buffoon's motley slew the [primadonna] and [...] another man [... ] with a dagger" (219). The following morning, Billy Parham gets his own private view of the primadonna. Whereas in the opera he saw the actress move "in lascivious silhouette behind a wagonsheet" (219), his view in the morning is clear and unimpeded and turns into an epiphany: In the morning before it was quite light he walked out of the compound and down to the river. He walked out over the plank bridge on its stone piers and stood looking down at the clear cold waters of the Casas Grandes running out of the mountains to the south. He turned and looked downstream. A hundred feet away in water to her thighs stood the primadonna naked. Her hair was down and it was wet and clinging to her back and it reached to the water, He stood frozen. She turned and swung her hair before her and bent and lowered it into the river. Her breasts swung above the water. He took off his hat and stood with his heart laboring under his shirt. She raised up and gathered her hair and twisted out the water. Her skin so white. The dark hair under her belly almost an indelicacy. She bent once more and trailed her hair in the water with a swaying motion sideways and then stood and swung it about her in a great hoop of spray and stood with her head back and her eyes closed. The sun rising over the gray ranges to the east lit the upper air. She held one hand up. She moved her body, she swept both hands before her. She bent and caught her falling hair in her arms and held it and she passed one hand over the surface of the water as if to bless it and he watched and as he watched he saw that the world which had always been before him everywhere had been veiled from his sight. Then she turned and he thought she might sing to the sun. She opened her eyes and saw him there on the bridge and she turned her back and walked slowly up out of the river and was lost to his view among the pale standing trunks of the cottonwoods and the sun rose and the river ran as before but nothing was the same nor did he think it ever would be (219-220).

Any reader familiar with Joyce will immediately recognize the verbal and visual echoes of this scene in an episode at the end of Chapter IV in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man6, as Stephen Daedalus watches a girl in the river: A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and softhued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips where the white fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down. Her slateblue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some darkplumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and

15 16

I quote from the Picador edition (London, 1994). See Joyce 1992, 185-86.

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bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither: and a faint flame trembled on her cheek. Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy [...] Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call (185-186).

As Stephen recognizes and accepts "mortal youth and beauty" and the "fair courts of life" while rejecting a religious life of celibacy and seclusion, Joyce creates for us one of his remarkable epiphanies. 17 For Joyce, an epiphany was supposed to express what he termed the 'whatness' of a thing or person, the recognition of true identity after a proper analysis. 18 Analysis in this sense was used by Freud and Joyce - indeed, it suggests some interesting parallels between the description of the unconscious in psychoanalysis and in fiction, for Joyce employed the idea of epiphany to "signifiy a psychological revelation of repressed or subconscious truth". 19 With his epiphanic scenes Joyce tried to cast into words the "most delicate and evanescent of moments". 20 As the scene with the bird girl demonstrates, an epiphany is meant to catch or record "moments that blend triviality with significance and to designate the revelatory climax of aesthetic apprehension". 21 In the process of creating such a quasi-religious and aesthetic moment of understanding, Joyce draws on several concepts of female beauty and femininity which he was to expand and complicate even to the point of irony in his later works. These concepts include the paradoxical if telling religious image of the 'virgin mother' (cf. the white skin and blue as a colour attribute in representations of the Blessed Virgin Mary 22 ), Catholic phrases from the Litany of the Virgin Mary, as well as Dante's idealized representation of Beatrice and the biblical erotic catalogue of the Song of Songs.23 Thus Stephen "secularises the notion of ivory, charging it with sexual connotations". 24 For this epiphany, in which a young man, in a moment of erotic ecstasy, learns to accept "all the ways of error and glory" of the mundane world, Joyce borrowed from a wide range and a vast heritage of mainly Catholic European and biblical representations of women in word and image. 25 Almost a century later, McCarthy inscribes his text in this tradition while

17

18

" 20 21 22 23

24 25

For discussions of Joyce's concept of epiphany see Erzgräber 1997, 219-232; and 1998, 1525. Also see The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, ed. Derek Attridge 1990, 60, 67, 115-16. See Reichert 1990, 60; and Joyce 1963, 77. See Mahaffey 1990, 192. Joyce 1963,211. Mahaffey 1990, 190. See Gifford 1982,222. See ibid. 222; and Seed 1992, 111 and the entire chapter on "Stephen's Dialogue with the Feminine" (103-122). Seed 1992, 111. A thorough analysis would have to cover not only texts from Wilde to the Bible but also contemporary visual representations of women in Joyce's time, e.g., the still popular PreRaphaelite images replete with female figures embodying sinners and saints in one person,

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drawing not only on Joyce but on long established frames of representing women before and after the great Irish novelist. What is important for my discussion of the supplement in McCarthy's text (the allusion to Joyce, to a 'dejä lu') is, first of all, the fact that in terms of intertextuality the American author adopts and adapts Joyce's notion of femininity, which is grounded in a particular layering and a telling combination of aesthetic beauty, temptation and recognition that leads to a special form of epiphany. By early twentieth-century standards, Joyce's verbal depiction of the girl in the river was extremely daring and erotic. Don Gifford has pointed out that "women's bathing costumes did not bare the legs but included skirts to mid-calf and black or opaque stockings" and that in a city "where the glimpse of an ankle was an event, this young woman's contemporaries might easily have found her behaviour 'shocking'". 26 McCarthy adapts what might be called a late nineteenth-century male (Catholic) gaze to the later twentieth century, as Billy is allowed by his author to watch a fully naked woman whose breasts swing above the water like those of the nudes painted by Cezanne and Degas. In an attempt to integrate supplements, the passage from The Crossing adopts much more than the Joycean erotic view leading to ecstasy and, finally, epiphany when Billy realizes that "the world which had always been before him everywhere had been veiled from his sight" (220). Like Stephen, Billy understands that "nothing was the same nor [...] ever would be" (220). Shortly after this episode, Billy meets the primadonna again. Asking her why Punchinello kills her in the play he saw, Billy receives an answer from Gaspar, another member of the group. In a conversation partly conducted in Spanish, Gaspar explains that the woman in the play is killed because the killer knows her secret. "El secreto", he reveals after further prodding, "es que en este mundo la mascara es la que es verdadera" (229), thus linking Billy's epiphany with the previous image of the veil (or mask), with seeing and understanding in a world of make-believe. Since McCarthy adapts the Joycean erotic-religious epiphany to the world of his roving cowboys as postmodern versions of such knights errant as Perceval27, he reinforces the aspect of temptation and gynophobia which is a strong undercurrent in Western literature and art. The view of the naked primadonna, whose white skin recalls the crane and dove images of Joyce's text, makes the young cowboy's heart labour under his shirt, but the first paragraph of description ends with an elliptic phrase ("The dark hair under her belly almost an indelicacy") which seems to underline a general rather than a particular view of the female sex in the double sense of the term.

26 27

impressionist paintings and previous pictures with such biblical subjects as Bathsheba and Susannah. Gifford 1982,222. In his review of McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Ulrich Greiner points out some interesting parallels between the adventures of Perceval and 'the Kid', McCarthy's nameless hero; both meet hermits teaching them the fear of God and the fear of men. See Greiner 1997, 39.

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Like Joyce, McCarthy gives his epiphanic if secular scene a partly religious atmosphere, as the nude woman holds one hand up and then passes "one hand over the surface of the water as if to bless it" (220). More often than not, rivers in McCarthy's fiction are described in terms of the sacred. In Blood Meridian, for instance, the young hero wades into the waters of the river "like some wholly wretched baptismal candidate".28 If McCarthy is "a writer of the sacred",29 his female characters seem to be conditioned by such a way of writing. Sara Mösle has argued that none of the women in the three border novels are particularly believable; and it is telling that the "most complex and sympathetic female character in the trilogy may be a wolf, whose consciousness McCarthy briefly enters in The Crossing".3,1 If this is so, the reason behind the lack of complexity in his female characters is less the genre of the Western with its male heroes who are usually ignorant of women but rather the fact that McCarthy's fiction draws on what might be called representational frames. These frames - particular ways of description that include presuppositions as well as entire mentalities, such as the Christian, or more precisely, Catholic, religious view of women - can be found in both texts and images serving as supplements in the play of intermedial difference which is at work in this novel.31 However, my concern here is with pictures. For their different versions of epiphany that link the male recognition of truth and beauty to the discovery of the female body and eroticism as well as to temptation and sin, both writers draw on visual representations that thematise epiphany even while foregrounding the idea of woman as the embodiment of truth/life/beauty and the Other, the mysterious temptress. Even before the major impressionists caught feminine aesthetic and erotic beauty in their light-drenched canvasses, truth was often depicted in the allegorical form of a naked female body - Rembrandt's Bathsheba (1654) may serve as an example (fig. 1). Had I world enough and time, I would explore at this point the chain of allusive signifiers (and the difference they engender) that lead us from McCarthy's scene of recognition to Rembrandt's canvas. Rembrandt's painting of his lover, Hendrickje Stoffels, is also a good case in point (see Hendrickje Bathing, 1655; fig. 2), not least because it has very close affinities especially with Joyce's text. These are representations in dire need of supplements, as they war against the danger of immorality and indecency by alluding to the 'pure' aesthetics of mythological figures and biblical female saints. In later periods, truth was often depicted in the allegorical form of a naked female body, as in Jules Lefebvre's The Truth (1870; fig. 3). However, the best examples of visualizations of such 'pregnant moments', a concept cherished by both Romanticism and Impressionism, can be found in the countless paintings of half-naked or nude 28 29

30 31

McCarthy 1992, 27. See Edwin T. Arnold's essay "McCarthy and the Sacred" in Lilley 2002,215—38. Unlike some other critics (e.g. Dana Phillips), Arnold sees in McCarthy's fiction not nihilism lurking below the surface of meaningless things, but rather an "animistic universe" (217). Mösle 1998, 16. For a recent discussion see Ambrosiano 1999, 83—91.

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women produced during the period of Impressionism. Both Joyce and McCarthy stress the light effects of their epiphanic episodes, even though Joyce presents a night scene, and in doing so they appeal to the reader's knowledge of major impressionist works. In this context, mention could be made of Gustave Courbet's The Source (1868), Auguste Renoir's Young Bather {1892) and Female Half Nude in the Sun (1876; fig. 4), Edouard Manet's Blonde Woman with Bare Breasts (1878); and, closer to Joyce's time, Edgar Degas's Woman Combing her Hair (1897; fig. 5) and Paul Ranson's Bathing Place (1906). In each case, what proves worth exploring is not any kind of influence but the way meaning is made through an appeal to important absences. Thus the supplement begins to play its important role. It is the excess of McCarthy's and Joyce's almost visual scenes that urges us to consider such paintings as we try to make meaning with words that cannot function without appealing to pictures as textual supplements. As palimpsests or rather iconotexts that contain (in the double sense of the term) both verbal and visual representations by way of unmarked allusions, the two texts discussed above refer to epiphanies closely linked with biblical scenes in which the woman observed plays the role of temptress or seducer. The most striking visual renderings, which are themselves again indebted to texts and can only function with this verbal excess, are the pictorial treatments of Bathsheba and King David that range from late medieval examples (e.g., in the Bible moralisie, fig. 6) to the Renaissance (e.g., Rembrandt's painting of 1654; fig. 1) and beyond, and of the story of Susannah and the Elders, which has found equal attention among painters (e.g., by Tintoretto in the late sixteenth century).32 If Cormac McCarthy's representation of the primadonna in The Crossing alludes to Joyce, and with or through Joyce to other supplements, such as Impressionism and biblical episodes (as represented in word and image), we may begin to realize the scope and richness of his works. More often than not, what makes meaning in McCarthy's fiction is not the mimetic or realistic description of the American Southwest and northern Mexico, but the iconotextual allusions of his prose to supplements, to texts and images including the strongly gendered stereotypes they transport33 - which we know from elsewhere. This intermedial dimension also implies a disadvantage that proves most problematical in McCarthy's construction of female characters. It is precisely because his novels depend so much on biblical and mythological representations of women that they also re-present the traditional male gaze and the gynophobia that is, more often than not, an essential part of these texts and images. Billy's view, much like Stephen's in Joyce's text, is predicated on a Western male gaze conditioned by a gendered culture. John Berger has argued convincingly that until Edouard Manet had his revolutionary nude challenge that gaze in his Olympia (1863), "the essential way of seeing women, the essential use

32

33

See Sandra Carroll's discussion in this volume of the biblical (apocryphal) story of Susanna, and its visual representations, in the context of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. See Shaw's essay in Wallach 2000, 256-68.

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to which their images are put" [did not change]; "the ideal spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him".34 Adopted by narrative cinema,35 this gendered gaze "derives from and reproduces a structure of male looking / female to-be-looked-at-ness (whereby the spectator is invited to identify with the male gaze at an objectified female)".36 Though separated by almost a century, Joyce's and McCarthy's texts thus perpetuate a Western gendered viewing that derives pleasure - aesthetic, sexual, spiritual and religious - not only from a division between masculine and feminine in terms of spectatorship (as de Lauretis has argued) but also by fixing power relations. In terms of post-structuralist supplementarity, one could argue that the more than obvious need ofMcCarthy's text of impressionistic representations in previous epiphanic scenes in word and image lead to a paradoxical situation that is characteristic of the process of dissemination. On the one hand, one recognizes that The Crossing cannot work without alluding to 'dejä lus' and 'dejä vus'. Once imported into McCarthy's text, these supplements engender meaning not by arresting sense but rather by deferring any kind of fixing. On the other hand, one also notices the play of difference in which, ultimately, a text can only signify by admitting to its own poverty - and by implication of the impossibility of the signifier to achieve meaning by itself. Cormac McCarthy's seemingly original scene thus proves an epiphany produced by the support of texts and images working as supplementary props. The intermedial allusions thus invite the reader to explore not the meaning in the text but the suspension and deferment of meaning produced by the supplements.

34 35

36

Berger 1972,64. See de Lauretis 1984. Significantly, she argues that in terms of spectatorship a division ensues between "male-hero-human, on the side of the subject; the female-obstacle-boundary-space, on the other" (119). Gamman and Marshment 1989, 5.

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Works Cited Ambrosiano, Jason. "Blood in the Tracks: Catholic Postmodernism in The Crossing" in: Southwestern American Literature, 25,1, (1999), 83-91. Arnold, Edwin T. "McCarthy and the Sacred: A Reading of The Crossing" in: James D. Lilley (ed.), Cormac McCarthy. New Directions. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002,215-38. "The Mosaic of McCarthy's Fiction, Continued" in: Wade Hall and Rick Wallach (eds.), Sacred Violence. Vol. 2: Cormac McCarthy's Western Novels. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2 2002, 179-87. Attridge, Derek (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Bell, Madison Smartt. "A Writer's View of Cormac McCarthy" in: Rick Wallach (ed.), Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000, 1-12. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin Books, 1972. Campbell, Jim. "A Translation of Spanish Passages in The Crossing". http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/spanishcrossing.trans.htm De Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn 't: Feminism, Semiotics and Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Derrida, Jacques. La verite en peinture. Paris: Flammarion, 1978 (Engl. The Truth in Painting, transl. by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). "La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines" in: L 'Ecriture et la differance. Paris. Seuil, 1967 (Engl. "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Science", trans, by Richard Macksey, in: Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer (eds.), Contemporary Literary Criticism, Literature and Cultural Studies, London: Longman, 2 1989,22949). Erzgräber, Willi. "Orality in the Epiphanies and Novels by James Joyce" in: Andreas Fischer, Martin Heusser and Thomas Hermann (eds.), Aspects ofModernism: Studies in Honour of Max Nänni, Tübingen: Narr, 1997, 219-232. James Joyce: Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spiegel experimenteller Erzählkunst. Tübingen: Narr, 1998. Gamman, Lorraine and Margaret Marshment (eds.). The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture. Seattle: The Real Comet Press, 1989. Gifford, Don. Joyce Annotated: Notes for Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Berkeley et al.: Universtiy of California Press, 2 1982. Greiner, Ulrich. "Blutspur: Cormac McCarthy's Roman Die Abendröte im Westen" in: Die Zeit, no. 2, (3 January 1997), 39. Hall, Wade and Rick Wallach (eds.). Sacred Violence. Vol. 2: Cormac McCarthy's Western Novels. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2002. Holloway, David. " Ά False Book is No Book at All': The Ideology of Representation in Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy" in: Rick Wallach (ed.), Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000, 185-200. Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. Theodore Spencer, rev. John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon (eds.). Norfolk, CN: New Directions, 1963. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Seamus Deane (ed.). London: Penguin, 1992. Lilley, James D. (ed.). Cormac McCarthy. New Directions. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002. Mahaffey, Vicky. "Joyce's Shorter Works" in: Derek Attridge (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 185-212. McCarthy, Cormack. Blood Meridian. New York: Vintage, 1992. 'The Border Trilogy': All the Pretty Horses. New York: Knopf, 1992. The Crossing. New York: Knopf, 1994; London: Vintage, 1994.

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Cities of the Plain. New York: Knopf, 1998. Mills, Jerry L. "Cormac McCarthy" in: Joseph Flora and Robert Brian (eds.), Contemporary Fiction Writers of the South: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993, 286-94. Mösle, Sara. "Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys" in: New York Times Book Review, (17 May 1998), 16-18 Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" in: Screen, 16,3, (1975), 6-18. Phillips, Dana. "History and the Ugly Facts of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian" in: American Literature, 68, (1996), 433-60. Rajewski, Irina Ο. lntermedialität. Tübingen: Francke, 2002. Reichert, Klaus. "The European Background of Joyce's Writing" in: Derek Attridge (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 5 5 82. Seed, David. James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Shaw, Patrick W. "Female Presence, Male Violence, and the Art of Artlessness in the Border Trilogy" in: Rick Wallach (ed.), Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000, 256—68. Simpson, Louis P. "Southern Fiction" in: Daniel Hoffman (ed.), Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979, 186-89. Wagner, Peter. "Learning to Read the Female Body: On the Function of Manet's Olympia in John Braine's Room at the Top" in: Zeitschrift fiir Anglistik und Amerikanistik 42, (1994), 38-53. "Oscar Wilde's 'Impression du Matin': An Intertextual / Intermedial Reading" in: Peter Wagner (ed.), Icons - Texts - Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediary. New York and Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995, 281-309; "Reading Hawkes Reading Stubbs: Intermedial Representation in John Hawkes's Whistlejacket" in: Udo J. Hebel and Karl Ortseifen (eds.), Transatlantic Encounters: Studies in European-American Relations. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1995, 322-347. Wallach, Rick (ed.). Myth, Legend, Dust: Critical Responses to Cormac McCarthy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Woodward, Richard B. "Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction" in: The New York Times Magazine, (19 April 1992), 31, quoted in Dana Phillips, "History and the Ugly Facts of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian" in: American Literature, 68, (1996), 436.

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List of Illustrations Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1 2 3 4 5 6

Rembrandt, Bathsheba (1654) Rembrandt, Hendrickje Bathing [Hendrickje Stoffels?] (1655) Jules Lefebvre, The Truth (1870) Auguste Renoir, Female Half Nude in the Sun (1876) Edgar Degas, Woman Combing Her Hair (1897) Illustration from the Bible moralisee: Bathsheba and King David

Wagner

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Fig. 1

Rembrandt, Bathsheba (1654)

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Fig. 2

Rembrandt, Hendrickje Bathing [Hendrickje Stoffels?] (1655)

Fig. 3

Jules Lefebvre, The Truth (1870)

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Edgar Degas, Woman Combing Her Hair (1897)

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Fig. 6

Illustration from the Bible moralisee: Bathsheba and King David

Ottmar Ette

Sex Literally Revisited Being-a-Body and Having-a-Body in Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Luisa Futoransky and Juan Manuel de Prada

Beyond binary oppositions In retrospect - and in this mirror objects may be closer then they appear - the second half of the twentieth century can perhaps best be described as an age in which traditionally secured oppositions and antonyms were put into question and eventually dissolved. These oppositions had formerly established the basis of knowledge of the West - and therefore Western culture in general. The astonishing point about this process, long familiar to us, is not only the fact that it took place within a global political situation that saw the post-war formation of binary blocs with areas of tension that prevented the resolution of problems in their respective spheres of influence (e.g. the Third World, a term that was only established after WW II, referring to Tier Etat). No less astonishing was the fact that the questioning of binary oppositions took place less in the mode of breaking with tradition (i.e., the radical departure from accepted norms and conventions) but in the mode of re-semanticising and deconstructing. With good reason and on several levels, we may call this a method of obstruction - 'obstruction' understood here in the richness of its German sibling 'Verstellung' that also implies dislocation and displacement as well as camouflage and friction.' Perhaps the seemingly stable formation of blocs in the political and military realms, which divided the world into different spheres of influence (a division which has been one of the foundations of the modern world at least since the treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 between Spain and Portugal), favored developments that drew attention to foundations and movements in thinking. If the seeming stability of an actually existing division symbolized by the wall - the wall as such - seemed impossible to overcome within our lifespan (as it appeared in 1989), the road was nonetheless open for a fundamental revision of Western thinking which had been held partly responsible for these developments leading into a historical and political dead end, into insurmountable binaries and antagonisms. Europe was affected by this development in a particular way. The European territorial division in two parts left no doubt about the facticity of oppositions that radically changed Europe's understanding and definition of herself in the second half of the twentieth century. Hence perhaps the contradictory roles which the intellectuals of several European countries played in the 1

For a definition of the frictional as unceasing movement between the two poles fiction and diction, as distinguished by Gerard Genette, see Ette 1998, 308-312.

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debate on post-modernism, especially since for European intellectuals the overcoming of clear delimitations and antagonisms seemed Utopian, in the shadow of Realpolitik, and melancholic at the same time. There can be no doubt that the year 1989 marked a deep change for it saw the end of the, in a sense, short twentieth century, starting after WW I. But it also proved the growing presumption that in all fields of human activities and thinking, binary structures have no inherent ontological basis. The fall of the Berlin Wall seemed to confirm what we had thought to overcome in literature, philosophy and epistemology respectively - the self-evidence of binary structures. Scholarship was more than a mere fly on the wall: there was and is a highly explosive force contained within the roots of its radical questioning. After the euphoria of the so-called reunification which did not reproduce a previously existing Germany but, as a metaphor, refers to the longing of that age which sought to overcome differences through processes of unification, one could not ignore two important phenomena in this new historical situation. On the one hand, existing oppositions (such as the differences between Germans and non-Germans, EU-citizens and non-EU citizens etc.) were reactivated; on the other hand new oppositions began to develop (e.g., Ossis and Wessis, NATO and non-NATO and other polarizations which from a Potsdam perspective can be noticed more easily). The security in the shade of the wall turned after its fall into the demand to gain new security/securities through the construction of limitations. History - in the sense of it being an ongoing process could now (not only in the transition from the 1980s to the 1990s) be increasingly experienced. This concerned and continues to concern the political definition of Europe as such, whose territorial and geo-cultural extension suddenly increased while new nation states came into existence in other parts of Europe. If in the second half of the twentieth-century politics as such, which was marked by decrepit structures, became less important than the political, one may expect in these times of change that the fields of traditional politics will again achieve more importance for philosophical and cultural thought. These new conditions of thinking, it seems to me, have not been sufficiently self-consciously analyzed in the area of cultural studies. This new emphasis on traditional politics will, however, not diminish the significance of the political. Rather, one may expect new relations and constellations, in whose interfaces the importance of intellectuals might increase. There are numerous clues suggesting the penetration of traditional politics by the new consciousness of the political. This is also true for the problem of cultural alterity. This constitutes a challenge especially for cultural studies in the sense that this field must take part more and more in the discussion of the role and influence of the political in and on politics. Cultural studies can thus make itself useful to society. This concerns the intellectual or the intellectuals in a very particular way, for in a complex society linked together by media they must be equipped not only with knowledge of their subjects, political engagement and symbolic capital but also with a high degree of performative competence. A

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point in which scholarship, especially in Germany, still resembles the proverbial wallflower. Without doubt, Judith Butler belongs to those US intellectuals who, in the course of the last decade, have most effectively contributed to the change of the political. Her work and presence in the media within the field of gender difference provide a fine example of how the thematization of the political can - almost unavoidably - impose itself as a political topic. The author of Bodies that Matter and Excitable Speech is certainly one of the prominent intellectuals of the 90s who managed, through their critique of logocentric structures of thought, to carry the problematization of basic binary oppositions, such as nature versus culture and myth versus history, into gender studies and to a public sensitized to the issue (not least by these writers themselves). Especially in gender studies the traditional borderlines seemed to rely on unshakeable natural differentiations. Roland Barthes was one of those intellectuals who, at least since the publication of his Mythologies, achieved with the help of the media a critique of bourgeois myths which sought to read myth as history. Barthes tried to change myth back into history, thus inscribing himself in the project of the Enlightenment which Jürgen Habermas calls the project of modernity. Judith Butler, on the other hand, was, since the end of the 80s, able to set the increasingly static discussion on gender in motion again by questioning positions that have not been analyzed before. In the 50s, Barthes's project aimed primarily at changing into culture - i.e. into a result of history - whatever the bourgeois myth had accepted as unquestionable nature. What seemed to be an unchangeable given by nature proved now to be a result of certain historical processes; an insight which always includes the recognition that such processes were subject to change: Whoever turns nature into culture, has always to think of changeability and concrete reshaping, too. Three decades later and in the wake of Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler laid bare a basic problem of the debate on gendering in a number of works of which the most effective was doubtless Gender Trouble (1990). Butler put into question the biologically 'given' as unchangeable nature. Gender identity no longer referred to biological sex. It is not a coincidence that the first epigraph2 that precedes the first chapter of Gender Trouble is from the pen of Simone de Beauvoir. It quotes the famous sentence from Le deuxieme sexe, that one is not born but made a woman.3 While Simone de Beauvoir did not intend to put the biological given of the female body4 into question, Butler uses the phrase as a starting point for a creative misreading aimed at the silently accepted fact that the female body is something naturally given. The previous basic division between sex as the biologically and 2 3

4

Butler 1990,1. Beauvoir 1987, 13: "On ne nait pas femme: on le devient. Aucun destin biologique, psychique, economique ne defrnit la figure que revet au sein de la societe la femelle humaine; c'est l'ensemble de la civilisation qui elabore ce produit intermediate entre le male et le castrat qu'on qualifie de feminin". See Nagl-Docekal 2000,54 and 67.

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'naturally' given and gender as the historically and culturally attributed was one of the binary oppositions on which Butler's critique focused. This important and convenient distinction caused much of the trouble that was provoked - not only in feminist theory - by the publication of Butler's theses in the 90s. A series of rhetorical questions, no less serious for being rhetorical, have accompanied this debate ever since: This radical splitting of the gendered subject poses yet another set of problems. Can we refer to a 'given' sex or a 'given' gender without first inquiring into how sex and/or gender is given, through what means? And what is 'sex' anyway? Is it natural, anatomical, chromosomal, or hormonal, and how is a feminist critic to assess the scientific discourses which purport to establish such 'facts' for us? Does sex have a history? Does each sex have a different history, or histories? Is there a history of how the duality of sex was established, a genealogy that might expose the binary options as a variable construction? Are the ostensibly natural facts of sex discursively produced by various scientific discourses in the service of other political and social interests? If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.5

What Butler subverts in these questions and undermines in the following argument is not only the discursive separation of sex and gender but the even more fundamental binary opposition between man and woman within the context of a questioning of the opposition between nature and culture. Drawing on French post-structuralism and especially on such writers as Julia Kristeva and Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Monique Wittig, Butler puts into practice a program and a theory which Roland Barthes had formulated as early as 1956 in the epilogue of his Mythologies in a completely differently-structured historical environment: II est possible de completer maintenant la definition semiologique du mythe en societe bourgeoise: le mythe est une parole depolitisee. II faut naturellement entendre: politique au sens profond, comme ensemble de rapports humains dans leur structure reelle, sociale, dans leur pouvoir de fabrication du monde; il faut surtout donner une valeur active au suffixe [sic!] de·, il represente ici un mouvement operatoire, il actualise sans cesse une defection. 6

With Barthes, we could understand Butler's attempt to subvert the discursive distinction between sex and gender as an attempt to abolish a (bourgeois) myth according to which that which is produced by language and transmitted in history pretends to be natural. The seemingly naturally given is understood as a depoliticized and de-politicizing fabrication. The unmasking of this fabrication might offer a possibility to reach the political in the deepest sense without losing sight of the consequences that it has for traditional politics. Biological sex thus appears to be a discursive construct which seeks to escape discursive analysis by masking itself as nature and therefore securing itself. In bourgeois society, sex thus becomes a myth, in an unconventional sense, whose commonplaceness be5 6

Butler 1990,6. Barthes 1993-1995, here vol. I, 707.

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came our second nature long ago. For as nature, biological sex tries to escape any questioning. But in culture, nature is never given by nature but naturally made.

The gender-specific dimension of literary texts One could maintain that Judith Butler's fundamental critique, situated as it is in the context of the dissolution of binary oppositions within the last decade of the 20th century, has not only been successful but has also solidified itself into a doxa. Almost a rigid discursive theorem by now, it has become the core of a new post-feminist debate on gendering in cultural theory. However one wants to judge these changes, one thing is incontestable: Butler's texts, together with the critical positions taken by Kristeva, Irigaray and Cixous, initiated a new phase of theorizing in the 21st century. It is only recently - beyond a rather diffuse resistance against turning away from positions already reached - that criticism of Butler's theses has increased. This concerns especially the question of the extent to which sex can really be considered as a purely discursive construct. Arguing both polemically and ironically, Herta Nagl-Docekal has said against Butler's 'thesis of constitution' that the idea of a discursive construction of biological sex will face an argumentative state of emergency once we try to apply it to plants and animals: Strictly speaking, one would have to claim that corporeal differences, such as those between hens and roosters, are the effects of juridical, medical and other "disciplinary" norms; but this is not done, probably because it would not be plausible. 7

The witty switch into the chicken coop8 might serve as an especially impressive piece of counterevidence or as a sign of the difficulties one is faced with when dealing with Butler's arguments. This debate has now gone beyond the constructive theorizing of the separation between sex and gender; it is more concerned with the fundamental departure from a philosophy and epistemology which have made great efforts to leave behind the thinking in binary oppositions.9 However one wants to position oneself in this debate - in the field of literature, which will be my focus of attention in the following pages, the dominance of discursive structures and structuring is undeniable. Butler's position, indebted as it is to the dogma of textuality of French post-structuralism ä la Derrida not only leads to a deliberately provocative and liberating collision with ways of seeing extra-linguistic reality, but it creates, moreover, new possibilities 7 8 9

Nagl-Docekal 2000,57. The comparison with hens is often made in this clearly and witty written book; see also 26. This is already obvious in the structure of the first chapter of Nagl-Docekal's Feministische Philosophie, where a solution of the sex-gender-problem is promised and the third paragraph denies the question of the book title, i.e., whether binary oppositions can be understood as discriminating speech acts.

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of making and attributing sense. The creation of human bodies in literary texts does not depend on 'natural' facts that can be measured scientifically (e.g., anatomically, chromosomicaly and hormonally), but on certain narrative, descriptive and literary methods which are themselves embedded in cultural-historical and literary traditions. Literature, created by human beings as it is, can be shown as non-organic in its construction as long as we do not attribute the conception of literary texts to an immaculate conception. Whatever attribution of gender human bodies are subjected to, in literary texts these bodies, including their primary sex characteristics, are produced verbally and in this sense discursively. Biological sex thus proves to be a cultural pattern of explication defined by certain conventions and representations; it does not need any foundation outside language in order to act and move within fiction. This does not mean that literary artifacts produced in this way cannot or should not be related to certain extra-linguistic realities, but it does mean that a separation of sex and gender in the traditional sense as explained above is not relevant. The idea of construction obviously refers to both. Naturally given biological sex, like real people made of flesh and blood, skin and hair, exist only outside literary texts - whatever the authors of these texts might believe. Hens and roosters do not constitute an exception in this case; on the contrary, in literature their sex/gender is constructed discursively, too. One could even imagine animals - as in Virginia Woolf s 'dog-novel' Flush - discussing their corporeality and sexuality in greater detail. The consequences are obvious. At least in the realm of literature, sex becomes gender and gender, as something to be interpreted in terms of culture and history, becomes intertwined with the literary idea of genre and its historically dependent definition. It is genre that finally decides which corporeal features will be mentioned to construct human bodies and make them move in a credible way in literature. The historical novel constructs human bodies in a way that is different from the private diary; the travel report of the nineteenth centuiy does not create them like avant-garde poetry, and the erotic literature of the twentieth century knows methods that are quite different from those that were available to the chroniclers of the sixteenth century. The rules governing the construction of the female body in Sade's Justine are different both individually and generically from Jacques le fataliste et son maitre or the Histoire des deux Indes by Sade's contemporaries Diderot and Raynal. Both of them signal (and therefore construct) sex in a different manner. Gender in so far as it relates to gender theory has a lot to do with literary genres, and the characteristics of genres can tell us a lot about the forms of construction of gender categories. The space of literary genres is related to the category of gender without naturally dissolving in it. Hence one could discuss in literary texts not only the distinguishable dimensions of three-dimensional space, time, society, imagination, specific literary space (like the intertextual construct), cultural space and literary genres,10 but 10

See the first chapter of my book: Literatur in Bewegung. Raum und Dynamik grenzüberschreitenden Schreibens in Europa und Amerika (in print).

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also a gender-specific dimension marking all literary texts. The most important question for that dimension concerns the manner in which human bodies are constructed in a specific text and the way in which they are marked and differentiated (or discriminated) as far as gender is concerned. Corporeality and physicality constitute not the only but a central aspect of the gender-specific dimension of literary texts. Analyzing this dimension, one could emphasize the gendered modeling of literary characters, including the modeling of narrator, author and reader. The gender-specific dimension includes the (static) structure as well as the (mobile) structuring of gendered markings in the protagonist, the narrator, the implicit reader or the explicit author. It is not least through the introduction of implicit or explicit readers that the gendered marking also affects the female or male reader, directing their glance in gendered ways. The gender-specific construction of literary texts thus also encompasses their appropriation in the process of reading and is, in this sense, always capable of provoking reading acts in the true sense. Italo Calvino has repeatedly demonstrated this erotic significance of literature and of reading (e.g., in his novel Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore), which has been known at least since Dante's Comedia. In Calvino's novel, the introductory scene shows how male (or female) readers are present - be it only by holding the book - in their corporeal and physical dimensions: Prendi la posizione piü comoda: seduto, sdraiato, raggomitolato, coricato. Coricato sulla schiena, su un fianco, sulla pancia. In poltrona, sul divano, sulla sedia a dondolo, sulla sedia a sdraio, sul pouf. Sull'amaca, se hai un'amaca. Sul letto, naturalmente, ο dentro il letto. Puoi anche metterti a testa in giü, in posizione yoga. Col libro capovolto, si capisce."

While analyzing the gender-specific dimension, one may discover a new importance of the difference between sex and gender which is not hampered by its embedding in textuality. To put it more simply, one could say that these two terms can serve as concepts in the analysis of literary texts. They may help us to recognize the ways in which biological sex is being constructed in literary texts, and to explore the methods that are used in narration and discourse to dramatize primary and secondary sex characteristics. The term gender would then be available to describe the manner in which the literary construction of biological sex is transformed or 'translated' in literature in the patterns of explication, specific gender identities and norms as well as form of conduct. For in literature too, gender identity is not determined by biological sex. It should be obvious that the literary formation of biological sex cannot be reduced to verifiable scientific facts, and the variety of possible or changeable gender identities in literature remains within the area of binary patterns. In this context, processes of translation between different systems of discourse are of great importance. Examples would be discourses of scientific, juridical and aesthetic origins, but also discourses of different literary and non-literary genres

"

Calvino 1994, 3.

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which meet in such hybrid genres as the novel and may construct multi-perspective patterns in the attribution of gender identities. The (often didactic) relation between the body as experienced by the individual (what is called Leib in German) and the body as object (what is called Körper in German) is of great importance for the modeling of gender in literary texts. This "play between being-a-body and having-a-body",12 which has not, as far as I know, been explored for literary analysis, is based on the fact that our own body is to us - "in contrast to other bodies, which we may have under certain conditions" - "already and still the body (Leib) we also experience as long as we live".n Drawing on Helmuth Plessner's anthropology, Hanspeter Krüger has described the Körper-Leib-difference as follows: Our own body is given to us twofold, which constitutes an ambivalence for us: On the one hand, our own body is a "Leib", and on the other hand we have it as other bodies, too. It is first of all the directness in which this body meets us which makes it so special. We can feel it directly and we can move it directly [...] In contrast to other bodies our own body is given to us as "Leib". Whereas other bodies are mediated through media of perception and are accessible through media of interaction. Or we handle other bodies in a restricted sense, through certain means. 14

It is of course quite possible that our own body may become an objectified body, with which we deal indirectly, making it an object for ourselves. This play between being-a-body and having-a-body, between corporeality and embodiment, between indirectness and directness, which are intertwined, is revealed in its complexity when we relate it to an erotic relation between different people (it does not matter whether the bodies are of the same sex or of different sexes). This problem is important for the representation of any love relationship in literary texts, and especially for the genre of erotic literature. Hanspeter Krüger comments: Even here, in the context of intimacy, in which embodiment dominates, one cannot do without the erotic union of bodies (Leiber) in their most adequate physical shapes and movements. I am not even considering the possible physical consequences of interaction and their ending in a reasonable marriage, and even the fact that the two lovers may apply the technique of the magic hats to dupe a third party. Even here, in this context, one needs the game of eroticism, if in a human way one wants to account for the fact that every participating body (Leib) must be able to embody itself in any interaction. 15

12 13 14 15

Krüger 2000. Ibid. 1. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 9. This embodiment of one's own body certainly has its limitations. Referring to Edith Stein, Herta Nagl-Docekal 2000, 32 points out that "we - in contrast to objects that we can observe from any side - never can see ourselves entirely. The possibility of getting into distance, necessary for a complete empirical understanding, is missing". Literature offers here - not least compensatory ones - possibilities of achieving a distance that allows a different relation between the corporeal and the embodied, separated from one's own body. A distance that is aesthetically mediated and impossible to have unmediated.

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At this instance already one must draw attention to the fact that the difference between being-a-body and having-a-body constitutes a problem in literary aesthetics. As far as the narrative technique is concerned, this problem depends to a large extent on the locus of narration and the modeling of the narrator. The literary representation of the perception of one's own body (in a corporeal or embodied dimension) allows different narrative focalizations that influence the gendered structuring of the literary text. Thus constant changes of perspective in situations of personal narrative may demonstrate both embodiments of (originally personal) bodies (Leiber) and personalizations of (originally other) bodies {Körper). The literary possibilities of modeling bodies experiencing themselves and their different embodiments can be handled more freely in that its textuality represents sexuality in textualized bodies {Körper and Leiber). In this process the issue of sex and gender does not need to be based on any biological sexuality outside language. In literary texts, the difference between having-a-body and being-a-body thus proves to be similar to the problem of gender and gender identity as an intra-linguistic, discursive dynamic. This becomes important in its extra-linguistic dimensions only when the bodies of male and female readers are affected by it. Politics and the political are evident in this affection. Reading stops here and turns into life in order to create literature through this appropriation of literature - literally - from mouth to mouth. Already in Dante, for Paolo and Francesca, their joint reading turned into joint erotic pleasure: Per piii fiate gli occhi ci sospinse quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso: ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse. Quando leggemmo il disiato riso esser baciato da cotanto amante, questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, la bocca mi bacio tutto tremante. Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse: quel giorno piü non vi leggemmo avante. 16

As we know, the joint reading leads the two lovers not only to erotic bliss but also directly into hell. Thus an easily visible warning sign was erected in literature for literature. The sign forbade its direct pragmatic use, its immediate translation into life. The best known witnesses in this case are Cervantes's Don Quixote and Flaubert's Emma Bovary. From the perspective of our analysis, their crime would consist of an aesthetic identification which uses that which was 'written on the bodies' of literary protagonists as a motive for one's own corporeality and embodiment. Thus the corpus delicti of literature may paradoxically consist of the ignoring of the verbal transmission of literary texts and of the transference of the corporeal in literature into or onto one's own body. The body of literature is never fully separated from the bodies of its readers, however virtual the bodies represented by literature in their sexuality might be.

16

Infsrno V,

130—138.

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Senos We must not, then, confuse primary and secondary sexual characteristics in literature with those in extra-linguistic reality. Alerted in this way - un homme averti en vaut deux - we may now turn to the analysis of texts that belong to the area of erotic literature, although they differ in some ways. The focus of my considerations will be on the representation of the feminine. The texts analyzed on the following pages by Gomez de la Serna, Luisa Futoransky and Juan Manuel de Prada form a series on the basis of their singular and at the same time plural titles: Senos, Pelos, Conos. What they have in common is not only the common characteristic of erotic literature but also the problem of the fetish, in so far as they represent isolated parts of the human body as fetishes and transform them into (aesthetic) fetishes. In these three texts the act of writing has been brought into an inescapable relation with collecting: reading, writing and collecting are activities that cannot be separated.'7 The (chronologically) first of the three texts already points to this fact. In Senos, at the end of a text suggestively entitled El colleccionista, in which a collector of female breasts first analyzes and 'reads' a new object offered to him before deciding to give it a special place in his own collection, the collector puts down these remarks in his book: Soledad R . . . , calle de las Palmas, 84. Senos opulentos a la vez que delicados... Senos sin caida, los primeros senos que he visto, que siendo grandes, no tengan pliegues de sombra ni se anuncie en ellos el principio de la ruina y la hundicion... Senos con la particularidad de que parece que avanzan por su resplandor como dos focos de automovil... De tan puros y bellos como resultan, no se siente la necesidad de tocarlos. 18

As in a mise en abyme, this passage, marked as it is by the obsessive repetition of the word «senos», demonstrates the transition to writing. The short fragments with their dots suggest that they all constitute possible kernels of a narration which might be developed by the collector. The breasts are separated from the body of the young woman, examined separately, and perceived only optically; but they develop a life, an autonomy and a mobility of their own through their plastic moving. This 'auto-mobility' is characteristic of the whole collection of texts.19 The three publications are themselves collections of shorter texts - which is significant in regard to the subgenre - which always contain the figure of (male) collecting and, repeatedly, that of the collector, too. What I want to focus on hereafter, however, is not the aspect of collecting but the ways in which the gender dimension is represented and developed in the three collections of texts.

17 18 19

The three texts can be found in the beautiful collection by Sanchez 1999. Gomez de la Serna 1968,63. This 'auto-mobile' dimension occurs manifold within the text, sometimes refering back to the headlights of a moving automobil, see ibid. 271: «Los senos tienen tambien algo de focos de automovil, de faros de automovil».

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The scholar of romance literatures Werner Krauss, who was personally acquainted with Ramon Gomez de la Sema, said once about the enfant terrible of Spanish Literature (and he could have said this about himself, too), that writing had been "a vital desire" for him, "almost the only one he satisfied unrestrictedly".20 Senos might serve as a paradigm for such an understanding of literature. The collection of the Spanish avant-garde writer Ramon Gomez de la Serna, who was well known (not only) for his collecting activities in other fields as well, dates from 1917. His texts are accompanied by an extensive paratextual apparatus framing the more than 120 short texts with classificatory titles. Several threshold-texts embrace the short texts of Senos while pointing at thematic, stilistic and meta-literary motifs. In the preface to the first edition, Don Ramon, who is still famous for his great variety of short writings, also commented on the genre of Senos: Este libra no es un libro pornogräfico. No hay procacidad en el, sino serenidad, sensible y una tranquila y sonriente consideration frente al espectaculo de los numerosos senos que se ven en los huertos de la vida. Hay en el las mäs puras depravaciones, las depravaciones distinguidas en que estä curada la depravation, habiendo servido solo de Camino al esclarecimiento. Hasta se expia al final de el el pecado de la delectation excesiva y se quedarä el espiritu depurado, dramätico y problemätico. Los senos son lo mäs plastico en el secreto del hombre, y es eso lo que divulgo y expreso con todo encarnizamiento. Los hombres quizä se han movido siempre fuera del momento de sintetizarse en unos senos, esperando esos senos, y aun cuando hayan estado olivdados de ellos se han portado como sonämbulos en el asueto de los senos. En los dos hemisferios de esfera que son los senos, estä la vana esfera terrestre. Maldita sea la madre de los que abominan hipocritamente del desnudo, la madre que se desnudo ante el padre de esos hombres, y cuya desnudez fue el incentivo para que naciesen. 21

In the first part of this quotation, the classification of the text as pornography, obvious for a contemporary audience, is firmly rejected. Instead, the text argues along the lines traditionally followed by writings which the censors considered to be dangerous to young people - we find an allusion to the healing, therapeutical power of these representations. Medical and diagnostic metaphors are supplemented by a moral-hygienic one, and it is argued that the book presents (and at the same time carries out) a process of purification while opposing cathartically the garden of lust as spectacle of numerous breasts in real life. The whole ends in the oxymoron «mas puras depravaciones», a kind of 'magic cross', that is able to tame all danger. In the second part of the quotation the strategy changes from a defensive to an offensive one, ending in a cursing of all those opposing the book in a hypocritical way. There is an obvious allusion to Baudelaire's famous turning to the reader in his poem Au lecteur, which prefaces Fleurs du mal·.

20 21

Krauss 1972,83. Gomez de la Serna 1968, 38.

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Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre delicat, - Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable, - mon frere! 22 '

It is hardly a coincidence that Don Ramon's turning to the reader at the beginning of those 'flowers' growing in his 'gardens' is also gendered. Following Spanish custom, it is the mother who is cursed here, but the addressees are the male readers. It is these readers that the I of the prologue, which achieves the transition from the real author to the narrator, could have called "mon semblable", and "mon frere". For the praise of the plasticity, of the aesthetic and cosmic importance of female breasts, which as hemispheres will form the world of this book far away from the «vana esfera terrestre», moves to the gaze at the mother undressing in front "of the father of these men" and without whose nakedness procreation would have been impossible. The reproach of pornography is contradicted by the reference to genealogy - even if not everyone will be convinced. Remarkable in this second passage is that the female breasts are there for the man who - whether consciously or unconsciously - misses them and who is, according to the preface of the first edition, marked in different ways by this failing. It is no less remarkable that it is the mother who uncovers herself, not the father, and she who presents her sexuality before her husband's eyes. Obviously, no sexuality and no gender is explicitly ascribed to the father. He takes the position of the observer, who cannot contribute to the issue of procreation, but who coincides with that of the collector who collects and 'objectifies' the various concretizations of the primary sexual characteristics of women. Gender is attributed to the woman, not to the man.23 The ostentatious destruction of the taboo in the presentation and representation of the female as sex ceases to function in this genre of literature where the area of the male begins. Moreover, the male body as a gendered being-a-body as well as a having-a-body is tabooed by giving it a quasi sexless position. At the same time, the female body is embodied and made into an object offered to the male gaze or exposed to the gaze of the male collector. This fundamental structure of gendering is not only introduced in the preface but also employed in the first short text. In Los senos de la ventana a woman agrees to show her breasts to the insisting I-narrator - not from nearby but at night from the seemingly safe distance of an illuminated window across the street. The square of the window brings the framing of femaleness into play. Through the spatial distance and the window panes, which are repeatedly mentioned and thus refer to the medium - which is the message here as well - the sensual perception is reduced to sight. The woman becomes a moving picture (in both senses of the phrase). When the unequal pair has taken their separate positions, the plot moves ahead unstoppably. The hope of the young man that 22 23

Baudelaire 1975, 6. Simone de Beauvoir had already recognized and criticized this confusion of the male with the universal, an analysis which was then intentionally inverted by Luce Irigaray. See Butler, 1990, 12.

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his partner will stop the exhibitionist process wanes when he notices the resolute movements of the girl in her room. The virgin girl transforms before the observer into a woman. The peek-a-boo game of showing and hiding described as a spectacle only lasts for a few seconds, in which the erotic is determined by spatial and temporal interruptions: Por fin miro hacia donde yo estaba, sin clavar en donde se me suponia una de sus largas miradas de siempre, sino una mirada breve y despectiva como si no me quisiera, y abriendo su blusa y bajando al mismo tiempo su camisa, me enseno sus senos, como la mujer que en la tragedia dice, abriendose asi el pecho: «jMätame, clavame ahi el punal que me amenaza!» Espero a que yo la hiciese la fotografia prohibida. Calculo el tiempo de la exposition, pero apago demasiado pronto. ^Demasiado pronto? No. jPobrecilla! Siempre hubiera sido demasiado pronto. Para asomarse a unos senos, para reconocerlos, para recordarlos, hay que pasar muchas noches sobre ellos, como el bacteriologo sobre el microscopio.24

The 'taking' of a picture of this rudimentary striptease in this example of masterly short prose is explained in rising metaphors of instrumental perception. The 'forbidden photo' of the breasts, which in its exposure time is determined not by the one taking the photo but by the one whose photo is being taken, is followed by a comparison with a (no less male) bacteriologist analyzing his object with the help of a microscope. While the male position of the narrator is marked from the beginning by this ecriture courte, it is then changed into the professionally distanced gaze of the photographer and researcher, with the bacteriologist projecting the semantics of illness on the exposed breasts. Here we find the medical-therapeutical level of meaning in its instrumental dimension as 'playing doctor' with a parascientific connotation. The erotic moment has consequences. The next morning, after a night of crying, the beauty stands on her balcony, her eyes still full of tears. After the short exposure of her breasts, she had fallen back into the darkness of her room and had felt «robada, vejada, inutilizada ya».25 She is not only 'injured' but also 'useless' and 'robbed'. Is this only the loss of innocence? Without doubt, the game of showing and hiding has turned serious - it was not for nothing that the breasts had been framed by clothes and had been exposed like isolated things. The trap snapped shut and indeed changed the breasts into isolated objects. Through the lens of the male glance, the embodiment of the body has reached in the breasts a degree of objectified alienation of the self; and at this point there seems to be no possibility of returning to a self-determined body-to-be. It is impossible to make undone the showing, the making public, and it cannot be suspended by quick hiding: the breasts are fixed as a (now even literary) image. Not only have the breasts become an isolated fetish, they are also public, an object of public (male) interest: a part of the woman's body becomes public space.26 The showing changed into a being-seen, into a knowledge of being 24 25 26

Gomez de la Serna 1968,42. Ibid. 39. See Duden 1991.

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Ette

seen, and thus into passivity which recognizes too late its form of suffering. On a metaphorical level a robbery can be witnessed, a rendering into uselessness, whose blind mechanism the young woman can no longer prevent. The man for his part remains isolated in his own room, behind his window panes. He has neither undressed himself nor given away a part of his body. He has thus abandoned nothing at all, has offered nothing to the glance which is ultimately cannibalistic by eating up the missing, the other. One could call this visual anthropophagy. A part of the female body is objectified and made available to the male glance, to the male body and its instruments of collecting or scientific incorporation. This implies the destruction of the woman's body-tobe. The body of the woman is separated into different erogenous zones and thus tears apart that which used to be a whole. The crying, the liquification of the body, which changes from something solid into something liquid, refers to this painful transition and becomes a sign of this liquidation of the unity of the body. With this background the consequences of such a zoning and scientific fixing become clear. The fixating transformation of the female being-a-body into the exposed having-a-body will be transposed at the end of the book into a long introduction to a Botanical Museum of the Breast - what the Garden of Lust has been transformed into - that reflects in numerous fragments the main themes of the previous short texts. The classificatory scientific gaze with its disregard for the body and its reduction to the objectifiable will then be paraded before the eyes as an example: Debia haber un Jardin botanico de los senos, un verdadero y amplio jardin botanico en que figurasen todas las especies de senos del universo, sostenidos y alimentados por las mejores mujeres de todas las especies. Ellas podrian estar desnudas, con sus senos al aire, y estäticas eomo los ärboles. El cartoncito latino que cuelga de los ärboles y de las plantas de los botänicos colgaria del intervalo de sus senos como un gran medallön, senalando la procedencia de cada mujer y el nombre de sus senos «SENUS ABISINIUS». «SENUS GOMOKRIENSES», «SENUS JAVANESES».27

Beneath the scientific gaze, woman has become nature, occurring in a great number of species but always in a single one of the twin biological genders. The narrator calls for a «Humboldt estudioso y viajero»,28 who could comprehend this geographical diversity of the phenotype. The Alexander von Humboldt meant here, we may add, would have been of only very limited competency for this goal, since he is the exemplary embodiment of a scientist.29 27 28 29

Gomez de la Serna 1968, 274. Ibid. 240. However, Humboldt would have added the male version of the female breast since he mentions the proved case of a man who was able to breastfeed his child. Cf. Humboldt 1970, 376: "C'est dans ce meme village que vit un laboureur, Francisco Lozano, qui offte un phenomene de Physiologie bien propre ä frapper ['imagination, quoiqu'il soit tres-conforme aux lois connues de la nature organique. Cet homme a nourri un ills de son propre lait. La mere etant tombee malade, le pere, pour tranquilliser l'enfant, le prit dans son lit et le pressa contre son sein. Lozano, äge de trente-deux ans, n'avoit point remarque, jusqu'ä ce jour, qu'il eüt du lait; mais l'irritation de la mamelle, sucee par l'enfant, causa l'accumulation de ce liquide. Le

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Be that as it may, the structuring of Senos as an imaginary museum for female breasts suggests - as with every museum and every collection - a radical isolation and decontextualization of the collected objects. No pedagogics of museums can reinstate their original relations, their lost unity. But this does not explain sufficiently the fact that the collection of texts by Gomez de la Serna dramatizes with such obsession the motif of the separated breasts that have become independent of their "bearer" and at times even rebel against her will.30 La confesion, whose title, reminiscent of Rousseau's Les confessions, follows Senos sin boton, which alludes to an incident with a female breast in Rousseau's autobiography, the first autobiography in a modem sense. In La confesion we get the 'candid' confession of a woman answering the question of the male narrator about her sensations when her breasts are touched. The woman confesses intimately but with the claim that generalization is possible: - Bueno, pues escucha - continuö ella - : es fria la sensation de nuestros senos... Estän lejos de nuestra sensualidad, son las montanas en la que hay cierta nieve... Nos haceis cosquillas agrias y tozudas en ellos... Solo una vez, cuando los toco el primer hombre que nos toco, sono en toda nuestra sensibilidad el primer timbrazo de alarma, el timbrazo de que habia llegado la hora. No han vuelto a ser tan sensibles nunca. 31

Only once, at the time when they were first touched, at their first awakening remarkably enough by a man - were the breasts part of the female body and part of a corporeality that could be experienced through the senses. Their metamorphosis into extraneous objects, which are basically merely affixed to the female body and - as is stressed repeatedly in Senos - can easily be separated in an operation that is both irreversible and male oriented. Underneath the female breasts a male body becomes visible as it were. In relation to this body the female breasts represent a sexual deviation, a 'soft' and 'pure depravation'. Santa Agueda, whose martyrdom was known to consist of the removal of her breasts,32 serves as an example of that form elsewhere sacralized as «la mäs pura y sagrada forma».33 Sexuality is projected only onto the woman and becomes obvious in the breasts as in many regards pure objects.

30

31 32

33

lait etoit epais et fortement sucre. Le pere, etonne de voir grossir son sein, donna ä teter ä l'enfant, pendant cinq mois, deux ou trois fois par jour. II attiroit sur lui l'attention de ses voisins, mais il n'imaginoit pas, comme il auroit fait en Europe, de mettre ä profit la curiosite qu'il excitoit". This motif is particularly obvious in the texts «las que fueron matadas por sus senos» (109) or «Los senos en la danza» (102). Ibid. 50. «jPobre Santa Agueda, la de los senos cortados, mäs santa que nunca sin senos, transfiguradamente santa, la que mäs hizo sentir a los espacios la necesidad del paraiso!» (ibid. 259) Ibid. 247. There the narrator, with the gesture of the real author, presents an implicit poetic of his own book: «Por eso se yo que no he fabricado un libro exagerado sobre cualquier cosa, ο un libro hlbrico. Yo se que he escrito un libro de tetanias con sentido, de letania en que he atendido mas a la diversidad que al estilo, sobre la mäs pura y sagrada forma, sobre el ostensorio que he arrancado a las mujeres banales para meterlo en un libro, para que los gocen los que temen el contagio y la suciedad, libro para los ermitanos cuyas almas y cuyas manos

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We can thus see the basic mechanisms of this collection of texts and the essential forms of the representation of the feminine in an erotic literature produced by men. In many respects, it is a literature of locations which appropriates certain (common) places of the female body, using them as a starting point for relations with other bodies. Instead of a complex game of being-a-body and having-a-body we get an extraneous embodiment that leads to a fragmentation of the female body and a proliferation of mostly independent bodily parts. This dislocation is subservient to a sort of making-public of the female body, a procedure which is demonstrated in detail in Gomez de la Serna's Senos. The inscription of the female breasts in the botanical garden alludes to the relationship of the representative function of (male) writing and the fragmented (female) body parts. The appropriation of the territory called woman is achieved through the breaking of taboos in the avant-garde writing of the creator of the aphoristic short forms of greguerias. The fragmentation of the female body-to-be allows the re-assembling of the female body-to-have after the operation and its reconstruction as a non-organic embodiment. With Gomez de la Serna we thus get bodies that are functionally related to the breasts, mammo-centric bodies as it were. Simultaneously, woman becomes a puzzle, and only a man can rearrange the fragments to create a new unity. For in Senos the female body does not appear as self-sufficient, it needs the male gaze. In this sense and in view of the production of the historical avant-garde, one could say that authors such as Marinetti, Aragon or Bataille, but also their predecessors (Jarry and Apollinaire), constituted a vanguard of the male glance in their erotic writings. This gaze created new female figures and female pictures from fragmented and discontinuous bodily parts. It was only later that the rule of this constructing perspective was broken by new avant-gardes who tried to subvert the alleged neutrality and sexlessness of this gaze of disembodiment. Valentine de Saint-Point did try to develop an opposing position to the dominating, male-centered image of woman in her Manifest der futuristischen Frau as early as March 25th, 1912, written as a manifesto in critical response to Marinetti. De Saint-Point condemned as "absurd" the practice of "dividing humanity into women and men".34 Nevertheless, she fell back upon stereotypes that refer not only to Marinetti, but also to his Italian rival D'Annunzio and to the Nietzschean discourse of the Superman that had become determinative for both Italians as for the Frenchwoman: Lust is power, because it destroys the weak and arouses powers in the strong, leading to their renewal. Every heroic people is sensual. Woman is the most seductive prize. Woman must be mother or lover. True mothers are always poor lovers, and lovers make poor mothers. A mother giving birth brings the future with the past; the lover announces her desire for the future. [...]

34

son puras y continuaran puras». (ibid.) This self-references takes up the moral-hygienic terminology of the cited foreword and plays it out against those books which one does not read with clean hands. Saint-Point 1995, 22.

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Women, for too long you believed mistakenly in morals and prejudices; return to your sublime instinct, to wildness and cruelty.35

Here too, woman is constructed from her sexuality, from her 'nature'. The biological sex is made apparent in order to be able to derive from it a double gender identity as lover and mother: embodiments that are likewise constructed from the 'biological'. However, we must not forget here that - despite all the fragmentations - Ramon de la Serna aimed at another unity which we find on another level - it is the unity of writing and not that of the body. In his comparatively long Los senos del estilo, which is important for his remarks about poetics, the corporeal aspect of the breasts is transferred to that of the text and the collection as such. According to de la Serna, art has the programmatic function of transferring the endless variety of the particular to the higher if always endangered unity of the general and the archetypal: jCuantos senos se han disipado en el mundo! Por eso contra esa disipacion viene el arte y los embalsama en el estilo gracias a su condiciön inmarcesible. Frente a los senos de fondo fangoso de la vida, los senos embriagantes del estilo quedarän cömo cälices arquetipos.36

In view of the ultimately endless variety of manifold different representations, which no text can bring to a conclusion, one could agree with Silvia Bovenschen on one point: "The richness of the imagined pictures seems to compensate for the silence of the women".37 To be sure, such a statement will not explain the cunning many-layered structure and the bizarre humor of de la Serna's book. I have only been concerned with its representation of the feminine while leaving aside other important levels of meaning. In their proximity to the serial avantgarde technique of writing and their never ending hybridity as «senos heteroclitos del estilo»38 these 'breasts of style' remind one of Raymond Queneau's Exercices de style. In de la Serna's Senos we find the Utopian wish, which is not related to any (bodily) location, to overcome the lack of breasts mentioned above or at least to compensate for it. As metaphors the female breasts become abstract and freely available, they turn into objects of writing and function within a combination that both fragments and assembles. The text suggests that wholeness, an almost cosmic order of perfect hemispheres, is achieved on the level of the 'breast of style' in the unity of art, in the corpus of literature. As a technical metaphor, the stilus, the instrument needed in this case, also refers back to a male instrumentation in the sense that it is an elongated tool for writing, an iron pen, which impresses itself on the soft matter of the wax plate.39

35 36 37 38 39

Ibid. Gomez de la Serna 1968,109. Bovenschen 1979, 41. Gomez de la Serna 1968, 108. Gumbrecht 1986,726-788.

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Pelos In the context of Senos and Conos, breasts and vaginas, hair has an almost nomadic and, in its conventionalized locations, a limited, ubiquitous importance. There is hardly a place on the surface of the body where hair cannot be found. This is precisely why hair, growing long from the scalp, short soft hairs on the arms, or the stubble of an unshaven beard have both a framing and symbolic function in the symbolic topography of sexuality. There is hardly an element of the body that has been as much determined and functionalized as far as its historical, cultural and gendering perspectives are concerned. It is precisely because hair is ubiquitous and moveable that it allows modeling on the human body and asks for a conscious cultural encoding of locations and spaces and - in the context of my concern here - of a topography of sexuality. At first glance and from a European perspective, binary oppositions seem to dominate. If hairy legs are considered virile with men, they are apparently found to be disturbing on female legs; if male hair is accepted on the armpits, it is almost forbidden today in female armpits. If for a long time in Western history the lack of hair on a woman's head was considered unfeminine, this lack is hardly unmanly with men: there is hardly an athlete today who does not shave his head. Beards and moustaches, however, are clearly gendered. And while the hair on a man's breast has become the sign of virility, it is not felt to be a sign of femininity on a female breast. Thus a complex system of mutually exclusive distributions has developed which is obviously highly gender-specific. But things are even more complex. For example, not only the male inhabitants but also the females of New Spain, the later Mexico, were proud of growing moustaches. In this case, the convention was conditioned less by gendering than by social and racial aspects, for in this way the ladies wanted to appear different from the male and female Indians (who possessed less hair), a discrimination one cannot understand outside of this context and which disappeared at the beginning of the twentieth century.40 Since hair is not a primary sexual characteristic and since it is obvious that sexual characteristics of both sexes can only be scientifically demonstrated in relative accumulation in individuals,41 hair has a very important function in the establishment of gender identities as well as in the gendering dimensions of literary texts. Hair serves in part those functions that Jacques Derrida attributed to the frame with regard to the painting.42

40

41

42

See Futoransky 1990, 171. Even Frieda Kahlo still quoted this distinction in some of her portraits. Refering to well-known scientific investigations, Herta Nagl-Docekal points out: "Hardly a single individual has all the characteristics of femaleness or maleness. In the majority of human beings an accumulation of characteristics of one of the sexes can be seen, while a great number of people have combinations that do not allow a definite assignment to the female or male sex". (2000, 65) Derrida 1978.

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First published in 1990, the volume entitled Pelos, by the Argentine writer Luisa Futoransky, pursues these issues, although not systematically. Like Gomez de la Serna's Senos and Prada's Conos it is marked by a collector's passion. It shares with these works the fact that it refers to itself (if one is ready to take the hints given in the paratext) as erotic literature. Pelos is not only a collection, it also appeared in the Collecion Biblioteca Erotica, which includes inter alia similarly eroticizing volumes on the subjects of beds (Lourdes Ortiz), underwear (Ana Rossetti), erotic art works (Beatriz Pottecher) and erotic magic (Emma Cohen). Like the books of these authors, Futoransky's volume contains the remark «la lectura de este libra no esta recomendada a menores de 16 anos».43 This is certainly to be seen in the context of marketing and the target audience. The paratextual framing also includes - like Gomez de la Serna's book - a prologue and an epilogue, which are held in italics in the table of contents. Within this frame, the volume contains nine chapters which are numbered and bear titles; these chapters again have 44 short texts of which each is also preceded by a title. From the very beginning a narrator figure is introduced. Narrating in the first person singular, this figure, unlike the one in Senos, is marked as feminine and leads us in a conversational tone through the various chapters and short texts. Thus a less fragmented structure is created. As in Ramon Gomez de la Serna's text, an array of textual strategies can be found in Pelos, that should guide the reader toward an identification of the narrator figure with the real author, Luisa Futoransky. Together with the occasional bits and elements from the biography of the author, the gendered marking of the narrator figure - as in Gomez de la Serna's book - constructs an autobiographic foundation which one often finds as a structure of verification in erotic texts. As often in this genre, the invented secures itself with the gesture of the experienced. From the beginning - even if this seems to be slightly exaggerated here - a relation is established between hair, gendering and power. The reader is introduced to an «ejemplar masculino fortachön», clad in a bear skin, who has seized a woman by her hair and dragged her into his cave.44 The subsequent ideas of the female narrator puts this scene into the context of the collective unconscious and a related gendered marking: De veras curioso esto de la imagineria humana, porque dentro del vergel de la flora y fauna de las creaciones simbolicas, el hombre con respecto a la mujer ha podido pasar de casi todo, hasta de la cavema; pero de raelena y senos, no. 45

The long 'mane' of hair - if we relate it to the male perspective - is put on the same level of primary sexual characteristics with female breasts which, as we

43

44 45

Futoransky 1990, 6. It is rather astonishing that such a remark is missing in the presently available editions of the books by male authors discussed in this article. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13

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already saw, seem to have a relation of mutual topographical exclusion to hair. Even if in the second half of the book one finds more consideration of the hair on male bodies, it is clear that from the beginning the relation of the representation of the feminine with hair is in the foreground. As the voice of the narrator is frequently marked as that of a female, the male gaze - as in the passage just quoted - is marked separately. In contrast to la Serna's Senos, the generalization and objectification of one gaze is thus subverted - in the game of being-a-body and having-a-body the position of the gaze is (almost) always gendered. In view of the gender dimension in Senos, this is an important modification which has found an expression in the forms of representation of the feminine. In Pelos one cannot find - besides rare remnants - the gender-neutral, objectifying gaze, that equates the male with the human. In the comments of the narrator the nomadic tendency of hair on the human body increases discursively in so far as the text argues that hair can achieve effects without the human body: El pelo es el elemento mäs vivo de nuestro cuerpo. Por ello se eonsidera que aun lejos de su posesor puede obrar benigna ο rnalignamente sobre el. Desde el fondo de la memoria es decir, en el sitio preeiso donde se construye toda la historia el pelo (solo ο acompanado de congeneres y se obtenga de donde se obtenga) ha sido y es el componente obligado de toda pociön ο filtro magico'46

Two additional levels of meaning are integrated into the collection in this instance. On the one hand, hair - in whatever shape - has a life of its own. It exists independently of the human body (even long after the body has died) and it can thus be much more easily objectified. Hence any process of separation, fragmentation and isolation can be carried out. In Gomez de la Serna's text, this process concerned the female breasts, and with Luisa Futoransky it is further pursued with the example of the objectification and separation of human hair, be it in the form of its being processed, as wigs, or be it as brushes, or accessories made of hair. It is precisely through this separation, through this objectification that an eroticization and a fetishization of hair becomes possible. The book of the Argentinean author provides a great number of examples of seeing in hair that part which embodies the human body in a most basic and radical way. The most prominent example is the lock of hair cut off from a dead body, which had to be part of this collection.47 On the other hand, the passage quoted above also refers to the fundamental relation between hair and power. This concerns forms of magic or erotic power as much as forms of political and ideological power. The problematics of power is present not only in a text of chapter 7, entitled Los dictadores lo prefieren cortisimo,4i but in the entire collection as such. It reaches from Argentinean Junta generals to the shaving of French women who had relations with Germans (the male collaborators escaping without a hair out of place), and it encompas46 47 48

Ibid. 30. Ibid. 83. Ibid. 145.

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ses male violence against the female body and violence against one's own body which is embodied and objectified precisely through the action of tearing out hairs, either from the eyebrows or from the legs, from the armpits or from the nose. One could claim that the embodiment of the body can best be approached by the example of hair and that we find in this example a fundamental relation between forms of domination, power and violence. The cutting off of Samson's hair, which contained the whole supernatural power of his body,49 provides just one of many examples. Power implies control over (the other's) hair. In the first text of the chapter of Pelos the general relevance of hair as a subject is justified in an allusion to the cultural history of mankind: Los libros sagrados de todas las civilizaciones dan testimonio del protagonisrao de la cabellera y el vello pubico en episodios arquetipicos y fundacionales. Una muestra del valor que se le otorgaba es que, hasta bien avanzada la Edad Media, para convalidar un contrato era necesario que las partes juraran por sus partes pudendas ο las de sus respectivas consortes.50

At the beginning of the main part we find a reference to those areas where hair grows on the human body and which find special attention in this collection: the hair on the head and pubic hair. Time and again, the text alludes to their mutual and intimate relations, including Hitchcock's assertion that he could not love brunettes because they displayed their sexual parts on their faces.51 At the same time the example of pubic hair demonstrates that it is precisely the intimate parts of the body which are declared a public location which guarantees the reliability of the two parties entering into a contract. Hair is the result of conventions and therefore vouches for them. A mutual relationship exists in which the publicly visible hair refers to the hair of the intimate area, while the latter take on a public function which, over a long period of time, found expression in formulas of contracts. This allows for a relational construction of the female and male bodies as designed in Luisa Futoransky's book. With the help of hair, the human body is constructed not from only one but from several points. The gaze that constructs the female body in Gomez de la Serna's book (beyond all literary methods of parody and travesty) is phallogo-centric and breast-fixated. Luisa Futoransky's collection develops a more complex crossing of marked gazes that are differently gendered. These gazes form a net, constructing the human body that of men as well as that of women - from different locations which are as much interconnected as the various directions of the gaze. It is here that we find one of the basic differences from Gomez de la Serna and, at the same time, one of the strengths of the book which occasionally loses some of its aesthetic force, especially compared to Senos, through its conversational tone that might follow the stylistic conventions for series. 49 50 51

Ibid. 28. Ibid. 21. Hitchcock's saying, which is often quoted but not not always in the same way, is given in the form of a quotation: «De paso, una opinion de Hitchcock sobre et tinte de las damas: 'Detesto a las morenas, se les ve el sexo en la cara'» (Ibid. 26).

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But there are more parallels in Pelos and Senos concerning the effect of advertising images - representing the body without reference to these images now seems unimaginable. In the short text, Los sensos falsos, there is not only an allusion to the "valor sexual"52 of advertising, but also the presentation of an almost archetypal image of a woman advertising «pilules orientales», pills, in other words, fostering the growth of breasts. Esta mujer se ha hecho inolvidable, como una vampiresa, y junto a las mujeres de nuestros amores, de los viajes y de los libros, fijarä ella la sempiteraa mujer de las revistas y de los periodicos, sietnpre en ese estado de madurez erecta, deseosa y ardiente.53

In Luisa Futoransky's book, the female narrator must also pay tribute to this omnipresence of advertising: De acuerdo, hay que rendirse ante la evidencia: la cabellera estä manipulada por una formidable industria mundial. Moda, cosmetica, medicina, peluqueria, pelucas, accesorios, pero sobre todo la publicidad, hacen de ella su pan de cada dia; pareceria que para hacer tragar el mäs insignificante de los yogures fuera indispensable un golpe de rubia cabellera. (Y bajo ella una eterna senorita de anos dieciocho, casi dos metros de estatura e inalterables kilos cuarenta y siete. jCon todo cuanto seductoras devoran ante las cämaras!)54

It is no accident that these worlds of images in both Senos and in Pelos are made visible with the help of a metaphor of devouring. It is precisely in advertising that visual anthropophagy grasps the body by its hair and its skin, and incorporates them. If Gomez de la Serna, in the first decades of the century, understood advertisements in their picturing power and sought to integrate them into his micro-narratives, at the end of the century mass communication and the advertising of an industry that works all over the world have become overpowering factors. In the face of the (alleged) monotony of the world of pictures and female figures produced by this industry the diversity of the pictures projected in Pelos must capitulate. The book accepts the dominance of advertising in the construction of human bodies as objects even while constructing a minority position of resistance against this dominance. Behind this opposition, however, one must not overlook the fact that Futoransky's book - as we saw at the beginning - is itself an object of advertising. As a product in a line of products reaching from seductive underwear to erotic aids, it also tries to exploit the market in a profitable way. It is important that it was precisely in Spain, where her book appeared together with the other two discussed in this article, that after the end of Franco's regime a golden age began for those series to which the Coleccion Biblioteca Erotica belongs. I will return to this fact, because since the end of the 1980s a commercialization of this 'erotic' book segment has taken place whose massiveness hardly permits one to speak of a market niche. Literary, or rather discursive constructions of biological sex are now peaking beyond the Pyrenees. 52 53 54

Gomez de la Serna 1968, 121. Ibid. 122. Futoransky 1990, 141

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Last but not least, the parallels in the two books also concern the structure of endlessness. If the impossibility of concluding a subject is due to the serial aspect in the works of the Spanish avant-garde's perhaps most famous writer de la Serna,55 endlessness is explicitly referred to in the comments of the female narrator in an epilogue dated 8 February 1990 (Paris). It starts with these words: Cuanto mäs avanzo en estas hebras, mäs me confundo en el remolino de todo cuanto no dije, todo lo que hubiera querido decir mejor y, sobre ambos, el vasto laberinto del olvido.56

The last volume to be discussed here also contains a preface but does without an epilogue. It thus works without the frame that creates at least a formal unity (even if it can never reach a total unity) in the short texts of de la Serna and Futoransky. Juan Manuel de Prada's Conos seems not to need such a framing.

Conos While the volumes of the master of Spanish short prose of the twentieth century and of the Argentinean poet were concerned with objects that can usually be found in the plural on or in a single body, Juan Manuel de Prada's book, first published in 1994, focuses on a part of the female body which is always singular: the female sexual organ. This is, however, not sufficient reason for the claim made in the preface from the pen of Luis Garcia Jambrina that the book is «sin precedentes en la literature espanola».57 Jambrina argues that the relation which this book has with Ramon Gomez de la Serna's Senas does not extend beyond the homage and the fact that both volumes are concerned playfully and monographically with the same semantic field. 58 The foreword hardly surpasses the credibility of an advertising text and highlights the intertextual relationship in spite of itself: If Gomez de la Serna refused in his preface to classify his book as pornography, now the author of the preface in Conos does exactly that, adding by way of conclusion: A pesar de su titulo, estos Conos no tienen genero conocido. La linica etiqueta que las cuadra es la de libro insöüto, no tanto por el tema como por el modo de tratarlo, a mitad de

55

56 57 58

While the endless variation of the breasts in the text is stressed, the male narrator finds another justification that is typical of don Ramon in that it is inherent in the object. At the end of the epilogue in a fictional letter written to a «gran escritora norteamericana», who lived in Paris in her youth, the narrator writes: «Si, Natalis: declaro que en vez de un tomo he debido escribir dos, puesto que dos forman la obra completa en sus fuentes, y que tal vez he ido al seno del abismo, abismändome en ellos». (Gomez de la Serna 1968, 239 and 244.). Futoransky 1990,201. Garcia Jambrina 1997,6. Ibid.

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Camino entre lo narrativo y lo iirico, el cuento y la poesia, con la brevedad y ei matiz, la variedad y el esmero que siempre exige materia tan sagrada. 59

It is left to the paratext, written by a different hand, to term the author of the volume in a short summary on the dust jacket «el mejor escritor de su generation»60 and to praise him as a «verdadero orfebre de la prosa»61 while adding further superlatives; the book itself is praised to heaven as an «objeto de devotion y culto entre los iniciados en los misterios gozosos del cono».62 While Juan Manuel de Prada does without an explicit preface and - at first sight - a paratextual framing of the book written by himself, this self-referential dimension is introduced in some of the short prose. Several times a narrator, equipped with autobiographical traits, appears with the gesture of the real author. Especially in El cono de mi novia he presents the author in the act of writing - which brings along a temporal abstinence from the act of love.63 In this short text that is in its entirety framed in brackets and placed in the centre of the book, the author hints at both the speed with which the text was written as well as at his self-confidence of being unmistakably Spain's best author. The story of the genesis of the book is brought in using a humorous64 and self-ironical style.65 In this manner, the paratext is worked in quite artfully with the help of an intermittently appearing narrator in the text itself and produces a strengthened relation to the allographic paratext of preface and blurb. Let us return to the question of the intertextual relations of Conos. The reference to other titles of the publisher's series in which Spanish translations of classic works, such as Apollinaire's Les once mil verges and Alfred Jarry's he Supermäle, occur (thus suggesting an additional relation with the historical avant-garde) cannot remove one's doubts about the uniqueness and generic singularity of Conos', this also applies to the paratexts of the author which establish a dense intertextual relation with Gomez de la Serna and thus go far beyond the limits of an homage. For not only is the motto before the 54 short texts a passage from Senos, the table of contents lists a series of titles that correspond exactly to those of de la Serna's collection of 1917 as soon as one substitutes conos for senos. There are also references, often explicit, and often effective im59 60

61 62 63 64

65

Ibid. On first page of inside dust jacket, together with a picture of the author, who was born 1970 in Baracaldo (Vizcaya). Second page of inside dust jacket. Ibid. Ibid. 84. In interviews, Juan Manuel de Prada has repeatedly pointed out the humorous dimensions of these short texts; see, for instance, the interviews by Pilar Cabanas with the author of Conos, June 2000) (in print); Barrios 1995; and Prada 1996. Elements of the allogenous paratext, written by somebody else, are also reflected in other short texts; for instance in El cono de las ahogadas: «me centrare en los efectos sobre el coo, que es el motivo que me trae a este libra, unico catälogo veridico que hasta la fecha se ha escrito sobre el particular» (ibid. 62). And in El coo de las filipinas it is said with some ironical self-presentation: «pero sobre culos hablare en otro libro, para cobrar por partida doble» (ibid. 119).

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plicit ones, to texts from, among others, Denis Diderot and Henry Miller, Laurence Sterne and Georges Bataille. They create a literary space in which the most widely varying traditions of erotic literature come together. In the central text, El coo de mi novia, there is a clever allusion to the most successful erotic series of recent Spanish literature, La sonrisa vertical from the Tusquets publishing house, in which the male author, while writing, is smiled at by a «risa perpendicular» by the sexual organ of his girlfriend - a smile that may not be a «risa vertical» «para no hacerle propaganda a la competencia».66 There can be no doubt - we are faced with a high intensity of explicit and implicit intertextuality which makes it hard to accept the claim that Prada's text creates a new generic tradition. These doubts are reinforced by the first sentences of the first short text: Pasa el ano y las facciones de Nuria se van desgastando, hasta que ya solo sobrevive el triängulo isosceles que forman su pubis y la materia frondosa de sus sobacos, que no se los afeita nunca. 67

The I-narrator is marked as a male from the beginning. He reports that Nuria never removes the hairs from her legs while stressing the fact that his gaze is always attracted by the hair on the body of the young girl: Yo, entonces, aprovechare para desviar la rairada hacia sus axilas, hacia esos penachos, intonsos y tupidisimos, que Nuria siempre Ueva, y los imaginäre como anticipos del cofio (el cono de Nuria, que siempre me ha sido vedado), como cofios excedentes que, a falta de sitio en la entrepierna, hari venido a alojarse a la sombra del brazo, en una espera acechante que algiin dia darä fruto y los restituirä al lugar al que pertenecen. Los sobacos de Nuria, misteriosos de tanto pelo que les asoma, me guinan su ojo ciego en cuanto ella se despista, con una morosidad de parpados que caen para mostrar una pestafia inverosimil de tan peluda.68

These passages from the opening text refer not only ironically to the lash with which Luisa Futoransky closed her text,69 they draw so obviously on techniques of construction of the (female) body by way of mutually engaging visible and invisible hair that a knowledge of the volume by Futoransky (published a few years previously in Madrid) cannot be excluded. Simultaneously, the passage introduces a 'network' model of the construction of female physicality which in the very first text would seem to justify the plural of the title of the book. For the topography of the female sex proposed in Cofios conceals many a surprise, for example the female sexual organ sometimes appears twice, as in El coo de Melusina, or it is in places where it should not be according to the biology textbooks. The discursive construction of sex is the basis for, in many regards, an 66

Prada 1997, 85; here should be referred to an other excellent monography, published in this series, by Reinstädler 1996. ® Prada 1997,13. 68 Ibid. 13 69 The epilogue of Pelos bears the title «Un remolino embrollado de rizos y hasta una pestafina olvidados en el tintero». Further parallels regarding content and structure could be easily pointed out.

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altering discourse of the biological. Conos continues the possibilities that were developed by Senos and Pelos consistently, even if the text El cono de mi novia is not as ambiguous as Gomez de la Sernas Los senos del estilo. But some of the misogynist elements of Don Ramon's collection of texts are implicitly criticized by the different narrative voices of Coiios. There are good reasons, then, to consider Conos from the beginning of my analysis not as a singular, genetically unique and - as the paratext states several times - 'outrageous' literary act, but rather as one which fits into a generic line derived from Gomez de la Serna. Obviously, Conos represents a consciously dramatized outdoing (which is already suggested by the analogy of the titles) of the text of 1917, a strategy of triumphing which was not only enormously successful but will no doubt have consequences - in the near future, we'll probably see an outdoing of the outdoing that will no doubt focus on the male body.70 To this very day, the success of Juan Manuel de Prada's book is impressive. It appeared at a time (the post-Franco period in Spain) and in an atmosphere when various Colecciones eroticas were put together overnight and when both new titles and classics of erotic literature - such as de la Seraa's Senos - were reprinted with sensuous and titillating cover designs.71 Conos first appeared in an «edition clandestina»72 by Ediciones Virtuales in Salamanca in 1994. It circulated, according to the preface,73 first in an edition of two printings of fifty copies and then - for reasons that should be obvious - 69 copies containing eleven short texts. The first edition by the publisher Valdemar contained these original eleven texts as well as 43 further texts which Juan Manuel de Prada, encouraged by the positive echo among Spanish authors (among whom Francisco Umbral and Rafael Alberti are mentioned first74), is alleged to have written within five days and in time for the feria del libro in Madrid.75 What followed after the first Madrid edition of May 1995 reads like a publisher's success story. In the same year, two further editions appeared and in the years 1996 and 1997 the publisher could bring out three editions in each year. Juan Manuel de Prada may not have been the undisputed best writer of his generation for everybody, but the success of Conos won the 25-year-old author fame among the public in any case.

70

71

72 73 74 75

One may look forward with eagerness to see whether a female or a male author will rise to this challenge. The outdoing as a textual strategy can especially be found in texts that deal with other male authors of erotic literature like Henry Miller or Georges Bataille (and his Histoire de I'ceil). The edition used for this article first appeared in September 1992 and contains at the end a small photo album for browsing which is obviously devised for the illustration of the readership. The attempt of an artistic discussion forms the four-volume edition of Senos with illustrations by Victor L. Rebuffo, Luis Seoane, Jose M. Morana and Albino Fernandez , published by Albino y asociados in Buenos Aires (1979). Prada 1997, 7 (here one can also find the original cover of this edition) Garcia Jambrina 1997, 5. Ibid.; cf. Cuenca 1996, 9-11. Ibid, second page of inside dust jacket. In El cono de mi novia (85) it is again referred to this fast writing.

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With this background, it is striking to notice the space Prada allots in his work to phenomena of mass culture. Repeatedly, one finds in his short texts attempts to find a position vis-ä-vis literary history and cultural history. For example, at the beginning of El cono de la violonchelista the text states that the avant-garde artists had «ya defmitivamente» stopped provoking people, and that even cubism had become a classic movement.76 At another place in the text, the post-avant-garde self-reflection, combined with a critique of a literature that has lost its impetus, is related to «esta actualidad postmoderna y confusa».77 A great number of textual elements introduces in a playful way theories and terms of post-structuralism and post-modernism that always remain unexplained and are read against the grain. For example, the title Arqueologia del conon does not fulfil one's hopes of a Foucauldian reading nor does the title Corns codificados79 announce a structuralist or semiological analysis. In this case, the «coleccionista de conos»80 - yet another of the many allusions to Gomez de la Serna - satisfies his passion less and less in vivo but instead changes to the nightly channels of the canales de pago, pay-TV, to discover something new the female pudenda are now encoded according to the technique of TV. Mass culture, the international and US-dominated sex industry, has taken on the role of directing sexual experience by exposing the female body and bodily parts. Thus the nightly reading of pornographic magazines in boys' bedrooms becomes not only a common experience of a (young) men's language that is marked by its solidarity and stereotypical nature. It leads the protagonist, who prefers Velazquez's erotic painting, to the discovery that «lado menos amable del sexo, su dosis de mercaderia y cambalache».81 Not only through the technique of television is the biological now coded. This does not mean that the phenomena of mass culture and of the sex industry are simply devalued and excluded. In the short texts they are exploited from different perspectives and used creatively. A simple opposition between the realm of mass culture and that of literature (of the text in this case) is not possible anymore. The politics of the construction of gender touches on the transformation of the female body through mass culture into a public body. Gender is not only business, it becomes - without contradicting Jürgen Habermas' idea of a 'new un-overviewability' - a sign of a new unavoidable visibility, that jumps out at us from all channels, including the literary. Naturally the biological is present only at first glance: it is much more a parole dipolitisee in the sense of Roland Barthes: bios as mythos. Thus the political appears where the readership does not expect it. It is present in the traditional assignment of roles in lesbian love, as the reception clerk of a cheap hotel imagines he can

76 77 78 79 80 81

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.

19. 40. 33. 23. 31.

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read out of the damp bedsheets of the female hotel guests.82 It is equally present in the tragedy of a transvestite, in whom, despite seven sex changes, a male organ continues to grow within the cosmetic arrangement of his surgically produced vagina.83 The presentation, designed to remove taboos, constructs the most varied societal taboos and lets them appear precisely in the relation between biological sex and gender. The purity of the biological is literally not be had. In post-modernism, the taboo-breaking gesture of the avant-garde, which is also present in the formula of outdoing, is integrated into new contexts and loses its dynamics. As we know at least since Peter Burger's study,84 the latter is based on an aesthetics of rupture, no matter whether it is a rupture with tradition or with taboos. But to some extent the historical Avant-Garde is still present; this presence suffices (if one wants to pursue an idea of Roland Barthes's) to inoculate art and literature against a relapse into the avant-garde.85 This is the mode in which the historical avant-gardes are suspended in the literary production of the 90s. It is a form of appropriation which Juan Manuel de Prada's Conos demonstrates in its aesthetic and popular dimensions. Here, too, purity is impossible. Felipe Trigo, the one-armed author of erotic writing, makes a score and uses the proceeds to build his 'Villa Louisiana'.86 Prada's texts are successful in the mass market because they both show and hide the rules of the game, because they present and represent. The female parts of the body thus become self-reflexive and poetologically relevant though this is achieved in a way that is quite different from Gomez de la Serna's Senos del estilo. In Prada's book, the (aesthetically) encoded sexual parts of a pay-literature we cannot have without paying appear as re-presentations of the female body. In doing so, the 54 short texts rely on narrator figures that are marked as males. In turn, these figures are indebted to modes of representation of sexual organs in the novel, in poetry, TV and the cinema as well as in painting, sculpture, sports and games. Whether it is Diderot's Les bijoux indiscrets or pornographic films, whether Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy or police reports on sex crimes: everything becomes equally an impulse for a way of writing that is, for all its professionalism and refinement, grown with the waters of the postmodern. In Envio para Georges Bataille, Georges Bataille's Histoire de Γceil is offered not exactly in the sense of a radical break with taboos on depictions, but rather is displaced, treated with a creative false reading. Continuous changes of perspective on the part of the narrator make this possible and, at the same time, interrupt any attempt at autobiographical identification, that might be created from the 'seriousness' of erotic literature.

82 83 84 85

86

Ibid. 54-56 (El cono de las lesbianas). Ibid. 75-77 (El cono del travesty. Bürger 1974. For a detailed discussion of this idea see my article, "Avantgarde - Postavantgarde Postmoderne. Die avantgardistische Impfung", 2000 (in print). Prada 1997, 151-153. Here it is explicitly called «dinero räpido».

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It is precisely for this reason that Prada can do without a frame of prologue and epilogue. His texts themselves form a changing frame of a poetics of writing. As a poetics of the vagina it is dramatized time and again and in its collective structure - much like Pelos or Senos - it can be extended infinitely. The biological is displaced into the metaphorical and it is impossible for the readership to fixate it in this movement. On the narrative meta level of the collector discussing his field of collections we read the telling phrase, «la tipologia de los conos, como la tabla de los elementos quimicos, admite incorporaciones».87 This poetics embraces at the same time a politics of the sexual. But one basic problem remains. It is the additive structure one finds in pornographic magazines, for example, and which can never be brought to an end. The first person narrator in Cono de papel cuche sums up the problem in relation to printing: «Algo eminentemente aburrido que ni siquiera la variedad de posturas lograba contrarrestar».88 This cannot be changed even if one constantly changes perspectives or the camera angles. Making the female body available to the male gaze also includes the embodiment of the male sexual organ which is introduced several times in the passages which are called sexually explicit in popular culture. On the basis of the texts discussed here, the discursive production of biological sex proves to be a necessarily additive, collecting construction. The text collections of the 90s are marked by methods in which various texts and discourses are mixed in a complex manner. The devouring, anthropophagic character of this literature is as evident as its embedding in mass cultural reception forms that are no less consuming. Even if biological sex is always described anew, this description never finds an end nor can it mark a beginning. The traces of sex are lost in the lines of the sexes. It is precisely the descriptive forms of the representation of biological sex which are based on an infinite play of allusions which never stops. In Luisa Futoransky's Pelos the approximation to sexual insatiability proves to be hairraising for the readers; inevitably it also leads to a description of the corresponding male sexual organ. The double representation reads like a mise en abyme of all discursive creations of biological sex. For the description of this object, whose dimensions require an additional explanatory footnote, comes from the pen of his biographer Robert Massie who, in turn, relied on the statements of Rasputin's daughter Maria.89 A true genealogy of (the) sex(ual organ.) A second description, this time without any reference to centimeters, occurs after Rasputin's violent death and castration. What we find here is a disembodiment and objectification in the two senses of the terms as it were. A chamber maid is alleged to have taken the cut-off member and, later on, to have carried it with her into exile in Paris:90

81 88 89 90

Prada 1997,23. Ibid. 31. Futoransky 1990, 166. Ibid. 169.

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Hasta 1968 solia mostrar su precioso tesoro, que guardaba en una caja laqueada. Despues se le perdio la pista y no se sabe quien ha heredado el fetiche."

Represented through allusions to another text, which also draws on another text, the sexual organ is cut off, fragmented and objectified before the traces of this embodiment of being-a-body begin to disappear. The sexual organ in literature always escapes verification - if only by a hair. Translated by Peter Wagner and Katharina

91

Ibid.

Fester.

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Works Cited Barthes, Roland. Mythologies in: Roland Barthes, Oeuvres completes. 3 vol. Edition etablie et presentee par Eric Marty. Paris: Seuil, 1993-1995. Barrios, Nuria. «Los escritores somos hoy 'freaks' de barraca», afirma Juan Manuel de Prada, in: El Pais (Madrid), 12.11.1995. Baudelaire, Charles. "Au lecteur" in: Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres completes. Vol. I.: Texte etabli, presente et αηηοίέ par Claude Pichois. Paris: Gallimard (Editions de la Pleiade), 1975. Beauvoir, Simone de. Le deuxieme sexe. Vol. II: L'experience vecue. Paris: Gallimard, 1987 ('1949). Bovenschen, Silvia. Die imaginierte Weiblichkeit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979. Biirger, Peter. Theorie der Avantgarde. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York & London: Routledge, 1990. Pilar Cabanas. «Escribir con punal. Entrevista con Juan Manuel de Prada» in: Miscelänea (Wien), June 2000. Calvino, Italo. Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore. Presentazione dell'autore, Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1994. Cuenca, Luis Alberto de. «La narrativa de Juan Manuel de Prada» in: Insula (Madrid), marzo 1996, 591. Dante, Inferno V, 130-138. Derrida, Jacques. La Verite en Peinture. Paris: Flammarion, 1978. Duden, Barbara. Der Frauenleib als öffentlicher Ort: Vom Mißbrauch des Begriffs Leben. Hamburg & Zürich: Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 1991. Ette, Ottmar. Roland Barthes: Eine intellektuelle Biographie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998. "Avantgarde - Postavantgarde - Postmoderne. Die avantgardistische Impfung" in: Wolfgang Asholt und Walter Fahnders (eds.), Der Blick vom Wolkenkratzer: Avantgarde Avantgardekritik - Avantgardeforschung. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000, 671-718. Literatur in Bewegung: Raum und Dynamik grenzüberschreitenden Schreibens in Europa und Amerika (in print). Futoransky, Luisa. Pelos. Madrid: Ediciones Temas de hoy, 1990. Garcia Jambrina, Luis. «Prehistoria y noticia de un libro de conos» in: Juan Manuel de Prada, Conos. Madrid: Valdemar, 9 1997. Gomez de la Serna, Ramon. Senos. Barcelona: Editorial AHR, 1968. Gumbrecht, Hans-Ulrich. "Schwindende Stabilität der Wirklichkeit. Eine Geschichte des Stilbegriffs" in: Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer (eds.), Stil. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986. Humboldt, Alexander von. Relation historique du Voyage aux Regions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent. Vol. I, ed. Hanno Beck. Stuttgart: Brockhaus 1970. Krauss, Werner. "Eine Generation der Niederlage" in (ders.), Spanien 1900-1965: Beiträge zu einer modernen Ideologiegeschichte. München & Salzburg: Fink, 1972. Krüger, Hanspeter. "Das Spiel zwischen Leibsein und Körperhaben. Helmuth Plessners Philosophische Anthroplogie" in: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie XLVIII, 2, (2000), 1 29. (Ms.) Nagl-Docekal, Herta. Feministische Philosophie. Ergebnisse, Probleme, Perspektiven. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000. Prada, Juan Manuel. «El cigarro del monje» in: Ajo bianco 83, marzo 1996. Conos. Madrid: Valdemar, 9 1997. Reinstädler, Janett. Stellungsspiele: Geschlechterkonzeptionen in der zeitgenössischen erotischen Prosa Spaniens (1978-1995). Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1996.

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Saint-Point, Valentine. "Manifest der futuristischen Frau. Antwort an F.T. Marinetti" in: Wolfgang Asholt und Walter Fahnders (eds.), Manifeste und Proklamationen der europäischen Avantgarde (1909-1938). Stuttgart & Weimar: Metzler, 1995. Sanchez, Yvette. Colleccionismo y literatura. Madrid: Catedra, 1999.

Jan Hollm

Streamlining Multicultural Feminism Shakespearean Traits in Disney's The Lion King

"If you cannot beat them, join them", seems to have been the leitmotif in a recent turn in policy of the Disney corporation. Representing and reinforcing traditional ail-American middle class values, the Disney industry had to come to terms with the discourses that take their origin in the counter culture of the 1960s and that question the very basis of US identity. In the following it will be argued that the production policy of the new Disney management under the leadership of Michael Eisner has incorporated counter cultural ideas into their Disney Weltanschauung while at the same time taking the edge off the criticism that was put forward by the counter culture of the 1960s. Disney's best-selling recent animated film The Lion King in particular will be analyzed as an example of how patriarchal structures are preserved while at the same time lip-service is paid to feminist and queer demands for a restructuring of gender issues. In order to make this change less threatening to the conservative parts of American society, Disney made use of Shakespeare as a ghost writer for its film production. Shakespeare's canonical status in Anglo-American culture as a timeless classic thus bestowed cultural credibility and significance to the Disney product. But, as will be demonstrated below, in this process of amalgamation Shakespeare and the counter culture became streamlined in such a way that they both fit into the Disney view of American culture. How did this re-framing of the Disney representation of American culture come about? One of the reasons can be seen in the decline in profits of the Disney corporation in the 1980s, which finally led to the dismissal of the executive Ron Miller. His idea of reviving the company by putting many of the older Disney films on videocassettes was adopted by his successors Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. The implementation of Miller's design proved to be a full success and led to an economic recovery of the Walt Disney Corporation in the 1990s. Large profits were generated for stockholders through diversification and innovative projects. Disney expanded its theme parks overseas, ventured into professional sports, diversified its film production capacities, and forged partnerships with fast food restaurants to sell its products. These strategic management decisions went along with a re-structuring of the cultural setting of new Disney productions. Since the change in management the Disney corporation has followed a liberal multicultural agenda which mirrors Michael Eisner's involvement in the Democratic Party. Gabriel Gutierrez sees

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this as "Disney's contribution to reconciling the population that feel wronged by the attempt to democratize society during the Civil Rights era". But it is this agenda which according to Gutierrez leads to defending the status quo: [...] the appropriation of liberal multiculturalism during this epoch allows this reconciliation through people of color and women who accept, promote, and defend ideas of the American status quo. As the status quo comes to include some people of color and women, it becomes more repressive and exclusive of truly diverse ideals and cultural practices. 1

Such far-reaching criticism of Disney's artistic production needs critical reflection. It is for this reason that Gutierrez' analysis will be used as a working hypothesis in the following discussion of The Lion King in order to understand the frame of representation of this best-selling animated Disney film. It will be taken as a case study to verify, falsify or modify the interpretation of the 1990s Disney change in production policy which Gutierrez among others has seen as an attempt to hide the reactionary image of the corporation behind a multicultural liberal veil. The Lion King tells the story of a young lion, Simba, who is the son of the wise and heroic King Mufasa and heir to the Pride Lands. While still a child, Simba witnesses the death of his father. Simba's uncle Scar causes a massive stampede in the Pride Lands in order to assault the realm of King Mufasa. When Mufasa is wounded rescuing Simba from the onrush of animals, Scar throws the King down to his death and afterwards blames Simba. Simba, who believes that he was responsible for his father's death, runs away and is followed by hyenas who are Scar's allies and have the task of killing Simba. Simba escapes into the desert. The hyenas stop chasing Simba because they believe that he will die in the desert. Almost dead, he is found by two friendly animals who live in the jungle bordering the desert. These helpers are the meercat Timon and the warthog Pumbaa. Shortly after Mufasa's death, Scar, helped by an army of hyenas, assumes the throne in Pride Lands. After Simba's escape, the film follows two narrative lines. The first one tells about the carefree days that Simba spends in the jungle with his companions. Timon teaches Simba to avoid all cares and worries. In the second narrative, the slow demise of the Pride Lands under the rule of Scar and his hyenas is shown. The lines eventually converge, as the lioness Nala, Simba's childhood fiancee, rediscovers Simba and reproaches him for avoiding responsibility. After seeing the image of his father in the stars and facing the past, Simba returns to defeat his uncle. Scar dies in a violent fight, and Simba restores prosperity to the kingdom. The film ends with a Scene in which Simba and Nala proudly present their newborn cub to their animal subjects, thus completing the circle of life. The plot of The Lion King feeds on many different sources, the most prominent being William Shakespeare's tragedies and history plays. The most obvious in1

Gutierrez 2000, 19.

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tertextual relationship between Shakespeare and The Lion King can be drawn to Hamlet. This was already pointed out in the first newspaper reviews of the film. The New York Times critic Perri Klass even went so far as to call The Lion King "Hamlet with fur". 2 In both cases a disadvantaged younger brother commits fratricide in order to become king. Later on, the murdered king is revenged by his son. Other individual characters in Hamlet find their doppelgängers in The Lion King. The king's adviser in Hamlet, Polonius, is mirrored in Mufasa's toucan-bird Zazu. One might even have a feeling of dejä vu as far as the setting is concerned: the graveyard scene in Hamlet is duplicated in the Elephants' graveyard in The Lion King. A very striking resemblance of Hamlet and The Lion King is the supernatural appearance of Hamlet's father as a ghost informing his son about the murder and asking him to avenge the crime. The same can be said about Mufasa. After hearing from Nala about the demise of the Pride Lands, Simba wanders throught the night - Hamletlike - pondering the question of what he should do. Finally, the image of Mufasa appears in the clouds and tells him to fulfill his destined duty. However, Mufasa does not tell Simba that he had been murdered by his own brother Scar. This explains Matt Roth's comments, comparing these two ghostly apparitions: Unlike the more sensible ghost of Hamlet's father, Mufasa forgets to tell the guilt-ridden Simba that the father was really murdered by Scar, a revelation that would have instantly put an end to Simba's paralyzing angst.3

Striking as these similarities between Hamlet and The Lion King are, it is also quite obvious that a Disneyfication of Shakespeare's hesitant Danish prince has taken place. The incestuous discourse in Hamlet, for instance, is left out in the Disney version of the plot. Scar and the King's widows - obviously a lion lives in a polygamous marital context - do not seem to have sexual relationships. Unnatural as this may seem for a royal lion, this situation is explained implicitly at least for the adolescent and adult viewers because Scar is quite obviously depicted as a homosexual. Scar's mannerisms and his body language fit homophobic stereotypes of gay behaviour. Richard Finkelstein even went so far as to describe Scar as a Wildeian figure.4 The Disney taboo of sexuality in cartoon films, which we can for instance detect in the Duck family (where everybody seems to have uncles but no mother and father) is not as strict in The Lion King, because the metaphor of the circle of life - an ecological leitmotif in the film obviously cannot function without procreation. But breaking the incest taboo as in Hamlet would probably have been too much for Disney. So the main plot of Hamlet had to be watered down sexually in order to fit into the Disney cosmos.

2 3 4

Martin-Rodriguez 2000, 48. Roth 1996, 19. Finkelstein 1999, 191.

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Even so, there is an unresolved dilemma at the heart of The Lion King, as Babak Elahi points out.5 Mufasa is the only breeding male, making Simba and Nala half-siblings, which makes the suggestion of incest almost unavoidable. This underlying problem became important for the writers of the sequel to The Lion King, Simba's Pride. The story deals with the love between Simba's daughter Kiara and Sheera's son Kovu. Michael Eisner was concerned about any suggestion that Kovu might be Scar's son, which would make Kovu and Kiara cousins. In order to avoid any suggestion of kissing cousins the writers for Simba's Pride made Kovu Scar's handpicked heir rather than his biological offspring. Disneyfying Shakespeare obviously involved many other changes, which I will discuss later. At this point of my argument I would only like to mention the fact that whereas Hamlet ends with the death of the protagonist, in The Lion King we are confronted with a happy ending. In this context an American idiosyncrasy should be mentioned that seems particularly striking for a European. Whereas the depiction of any sexuality beyond a hug is left out of the film, severe acts of violence are shown openly in The Lion King. It comes as no surprise that the British video edition of the film has a label on its package saying that "some scenes may be upsetting for very young children". The second Shakespearean play whose traits can be detected in The Lion King is Macbeth. The basic parallel in the plots - a usurper kills the rightful king and in the long run is punished for his crime - is very clearcut. Less obvious are other Shakespeare quotations in the Disney film. Doug Stenberg has paid particular attention to this question in his analysis of Shakespearean motifs in The Lion King. He points out that Scar, who in his dealings with Simba acts as if following Lady Macbeth's advice to the letter ("look like th'innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't" 1.5.65-66), is a cartooned combination of Claudius and Macbeth.6

The third Shakespeare play which the Disney company used for the plot of The Lion King is Henry IV. 1 Henry IV shows us young Prince Hal's carefree days of adolescence. Falstaff and his Eastchap figures are mirrored in Simba's companions Timon and Pumbaa, who deny the duties of adult life and enjoy a nonconformist life without responsibilities. Right after finding Simba in the desert Timon and Pumbaa share their credo of carefree bliss with him. They tell him their motto "Hakuna Matata", which in the Swahili language means something like "don't worry, be happy". Timon, Pumbaa and Simba live according to this principle till they are found by Nala, who confronts Simba with the responsibilities and duties that he has inherited as heir to the throne of the Pride Lands. Leaving the joys of adolescence behind, Simba accepts the responsibilities and

5 6

Elahi 2001, 135. Stenberg 1996,36.

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burdens of the life of a king. The message Disney gives its audience seems quite clear, or, to put it in Finkelstein's words: The corporation ultimately disciplines these characters' desires for behavioral diversity by closing the movie with marriage and childbirth, the culmination of Frye's festive pattern. The gay-inflected Timon is present at Simba's ritual celebration of his new son. 7

It is this coming-of-age theme that The Lion King shares with Shakespeare's history play Henry IV. Henry IV's son Prince Hal, later to become the vigorous and heroic Henry V, also spends his youth with crude and base amusement. As Bernhard Klein points out, Shakespeare criticism has agreed that Henry IV gives the audience a mixed message as far as Prince Hal's behaviour is concerned.8 The text of the play does not put forward the idea that the Prince's acts can only be seen as adolescent indulgence in the Dionysian. There is also the possible view that Prince Hal's youthful escapades could be seen as the prince's preparation for his tasks as a king, because through Falstaff and his lot the prince gets to know a cross-section of his future subjects, who are as yet fully unknown to him. It is through this experience that Prince Hal learns to understand the attitudes and behaviour of people outside the royal household. It is this Macchiavellian layer in Prince Hal's character that would explain his cold-hearted rejection of Falstaff after the coronation at the end of the Second Part of Henry IV, when the new king says to Falstaff: "I know thee not, old man".9 And later he goes on to say: Presume not that I am the thing I was, For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. 10

A Disney animated film could, of course, never be so openly cruel if not to say realistically Machiavellian. So Timon and Pumbaa are taken along on Simba's road to the Pride Lands. They help Simba to fight the usurper Scar and his hyenas. The film ends with the presentation of Nala's and Simba's new-born cub and heir to the animals of the Pride Lands. And in this last scene of the film you can see Timon and Pumbaa right next to the royal couple just like godparents at the baptism of a child, while Rafiki fulfills the pastoral role of the baptist. This Disney inclusion of the Falstafflan meercat Timon and the warthog Pumbaa into the royal household is even more striking if one includes Richard Finkelstein's argument into the analysis of the Falstaffian figures in The Lion King. According to Finkelstein the Disney Timon becomes, like Falstaff to Prince Hal in 1 Henry IV, a substitute father to Simba. Timon also resembles Falstaff because he has no memory or knowledge of time. He acts histrionically and offers an alternative sexual identity because by the time of The Lion King's appearance, 7 8 9 10

Finkelstein 1999, 188. Klein 2000, 359-368. Shakespeare 1974,5.5.47. Ibid. 5.5.56-59.

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Nathan Lane, the voice of Timon, had played the role of an aging gay man in The Birdcage, and a prominent gay role in the stage version of Love! Valour! Compassion! Finkelstein sees a rather clear-cut message here: Timon thus signifies gayness, or at least, Simba's unsettled adolescent sexuality. Although Timon's values are positive forces for pleasure, they must be overcome in order for Simba to regain his kingdom."

In this context, we can also detect a Disneyfication of Shakespeare because the complexity and the mixed message of the English poet's text are simplified and Americanized. At first sight one is reminded of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After running away from the Pride Lands, Simba enjoys his youth in the jungle just like Huck on the raft, but like Tom Sawyer he finally follows the call for duty which comes into his life through females. Like Aunt Polly and Becky for Tom, Nala represents this voix feminine that calls Simba to order. In both cases the negligent youth leaves the non-conformist world of his youth and turns into a responsible adult who takes his predestined position in society. Maybe it is this American message in the subtext of The Lion King that reminded the critic Babak Elahi of a college fraternity when he thought of the trio Simba, Pumbaa and Timon.12 In a sense Simba's time in the jungle can be seen as a very long spring break at Daytona Beach till his fiancee Nala finds the hero on holidays - just in time to make him leave the wilderness and seek his place in corporate America. Manuel Martin-Rodriguez thinks that this part of the film represents a direct message to the baby boomers who would take their children to watch The Lion King and who experienced the pleasures and excitements of the counter culture of the 1960s but later on found decent jobs, came back to suburbia and had traditional heterosexual families. It is this part of American society that would buy tickets for their children to watch the Disney film and who might even be in the audience with their children.13 To end the exploration of the Shakespearean sources for The Lion King, I would like to pay particular attention to the name of Simba's fatherly friend - the meercat Timon. Contrary to the speaking name of Scar, which depicts the bearer's scarred personality, or the names Mufasa and Simba, which obviously are of African origin, the name Timon generates quite a different connotation because the educated viewer is automatically reminded of the title of Shakespeare's play Timon of Athens. This explains Richard Finkelstein's argument that Simba's substitute father can be understood as a comic version of Shakespeare's misanthrope from Athens. The meercat Timon teaches Simba that

11 12 13

Finkelstein 1999, 188. Elahi 2001, 134. Martin-Rodriguez 2000, 49.

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"when the past turns its back on you, you need to turn your back on it". Richard Finkelstein comments on this view by saying While Shakespeare's tragic hero enacts this attitude by turning from Athens and cursing his friends, Disney's Timon imparts the message jovially, as a means of encouraging Prince Simba to forget his worries.14

So when Simba runs away from his past and denies his royal duties he moves from Hamlet to 1 Henry IV via Timon of Athens}5 The depiction of the meercat Timon as a gay character in The Lion King also mirrors the Shakespeare play because in Timon of Athens we find intimacy and close friendship only between men. As a matter of fact the only female characters in Timon of Athens are the Amazons in Act I, and the prostitutes in Act IV who Timon sends to Athens in order to spread venereal diseases. This absence of women and the close bonding between men explains why Sabine Schülting detects a homoerotic undertone in Timon of Athens}6 This idiosyncrasy of Shakespeare's play makes it very unlikely that the choice of the name Timon in The Lion King can be seen as mere coincidence. Summarizing this point, one can follow Matt Roth who has pointed out that The Lion King can be seen as yet another example of a discourse propagated in Disney films since the 1980s.17 It is acceptable to stray a little bit apart as long as you come back to mainstream American culture once you have reached maturity. This makes it difficult to agree with Annalee Ward, who sees the description of the coming of age of Simba in The Lion King merely as a depiction of an archetype.18 It is rather Richard Finkelstein's analysis that gives us a greater understanding of what The Lion King is trying to do. This notion is underlined if one takes a look at the other prevalent discourses in the film. One example to support this argument is the present U.S. debate about immigration and ethnicity. As Manuel Martin-Rodriguez, Babak Elahi and Gabriel Gutierrez have elaborated, The Lion King should be interpreted as a film that reveals societal anxiety about Latinos/as and their immigration to the United States. Martin-Rodriguez sees the antagonism between lions and hyenas portrayed in the film as a border conflict. The colour symbolism of the film - dark Scar stands in contrast to the fair-haired Mufasa and Simba - and the linguistic features of the language of the hyenas who sometimes speak Spanish ("Que pasa?") have been read as indicators of latent racism in the Disney film.19 As Matt Roth among others has pointed out, the hyenas speak in "street voices" 14 15 16 17 18 19

Finkelstein 1999, 187-8. Ibid. 187. Schülting 2000,573. Roth 1996, 15-20. Ward 1997. Martin-Rodriguez 2000,60.

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that are provided by Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin and clearly represent poor blacks and Hispanics.20 In his article "A Short History of Disney Fascism: The Lion King", Matt Roth even detects in The Lion King (and in many other Disney productions) the propagation of a patriarchal leadership ideology. Although the lionesses are stronger than Scar and his hyenas, they have to wait for the return of the rightful male heir to the throne in order to be courageous enough to overthrow Scar and his hyena regime of terror and incompetence. The message, as Roth points out, seems quite clear: "without a leader, even groups who possess all of the apparent power are in reality helpless".21 This analysis brings up the question how gender issues are depicted in Disney's best-selling animated film. First of all, it is quite striking that all positions of power are held by male animals. The choice of gender as far as King Mufasa, his brother Scar and even the royal heir Simba are concerned may seem to be a rather natural one. But even the royal adviser Zazu and the wise priestlike monkey Rafiki are male. There are only two female characters who have names and play prominent roles: Queen Sarabi and Simba's fiancee Nala. Of these only Nala has significance for the plot of the film. When the Pride Lands are in dire straits it is Nala who goes out into the desert to look for help. It is her determination that triggers Simba's decision to go back to Pride Rock and confront his uncle. The very first time the audience gets to know Nala in the film an element of superiority over Simba can be sensed. Whenever Simba and Nala romp about, it is the lioness who pins down the royal heir. But these playful victories never lead to doubting Simba's superior birthright. Nala fits the stereotype of the determined spouse who stands behind her man and who lends him the decisive support. But, of course, never would she doubt the leading position of the male partner. Although Nala gives the impression of an emancipated female, on a deeper level patriarchal power structures are never questioned. In order to defend the writers of the script of The Lion King one could argue that it would have been absolutely unnatural for lions to be led by lionesses. But it is actually this point that supports the argument that The Lion King is constructed on the ideology of patriarchal leadership. A very obvious Social Darwinist parallel may be drawn between the realm of the lions and human society: male leadership of born leaders who are supported by strong women is the natural way. Disturbing such natural order would only lead to chaos and dismay, as seen in the era of Scar's kingdom. The fable of the lion king thus has a very clear message for American society and aims at documenting the necessity of a patriarchal power structure.

20 21

Roth 1996, 18. Ibid.

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In a polemical attack against the founder of the company, Walt Disney, Matt Roth goes so far as to compare the Disney vision with fascist ideology. For Roth, Disney blends fascist ideas with the 1950s dream of suburbanite America that celebrates traditional mainstream culture and leaves out, or at least streamlines, multiculturalism and gender issues. The climax of his argument is a polemical comparison of Walt Disney with Adolf Hitler: Hitler envisioned a society requiring a great deal of lebensraum, organized around autobahns and Volkswagens and interspersed with centers of monumental national architecture and educational 'castles' in which children would imbibe their national culture. In other words, suburbia dotted with Disneylands. 22

Although such a direct comparison of the leaders of the Third Reich and of the Disney Company seems highly overdone (despite the fact that Walt Disney expressed admiration for some of Hitler's political projects in the 1930s), Matt Roth does not seem to be entirely off the track when he says that The Lion King voices fascist concepts: The Lion King echoes [...] fascist themes: hatred of gays, communists, and minorities, and the glorification of violent male initiation and feminine domesticity - all set in a bucolic suburban environment under the strong leadership of an all-male state. 23

After tracing the Shakespearean intertext in The Lion King and its significance for the plot of the film, we can now come to the question why the creators of the animated film about Simba's life decided to use themes and plots from Shakespearean plays. Following Pierre Bourdieu's argument about the appropriation of cultural capital by industry, Richard Finkelstein analyses Disney's animated films The Lion King and The Little Mermaid as examples of how Disney tries to raise its status among educated viewers and thus reach the wealthier and more influential parts of American society: Shakespeare's presence in The Lion King and The Little Mermaid provides Disney with cultural capital that puts its entertainment products in a position to win the approval of critics - recently, even Broadway critics - and thus the tickets of upper-middle-class, educated parents who bring their children to the theater and must sit through the presentation. Approval by the affluent also brings good public relations and political influence for the company. 24

This appropriation of Shakespeare, however, is based on a simplified and partly outdated reading of the Shakespearean text. As Richard Finkelstein manages to demonstrate, The Lion King adapts Hamlet in such a way that it follows Ernest Jones' analysis of Prince Hamlet, first published in 1949 under the title Hamlet and Oedipus. Ernest Jones identified Claudius as a displaced version of Hamlet's father and diagnosed the Prince's failure to act as deriving from unresolved, conflicted feelings about his parents. Richard Finkelstein detects a 22 23 24

Ibid. Ibid. Finkelstein 1999, 183.

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similar psychological pattern in The Lion King. King Mufasa tells his son about a shadowy, dangerous country beyond the borders of the Pride Lands and urges him never to go there. Out of adolescent wantonness, it seems, Simba disobeys his father's commands and almost gets killed by hyenas. It is only his father's intervention that saves him. According to Finkelstein these father-son dynamics leave Simba unable to resolve an implied set of internal conflicts. Simba lies in competition with his father, is ready to replace him while at the same time feeling small next to the grand, powerful father he loves. It is his feeling of guilt over his father's death that explains Simba's avoidance of all effective action by living with Timon and Pumbaa in the forest. Like Jones' Hamlet, Simba seems immobilized. Even before Simba is accused by his uncle Scar as responsible for his father's death, Simba already wears an oedipal scar because he is intimidated by his father's greatness and physical strength. As Richard Finkelstein elaborates, this transference of a particular reading of Hamlet onto the The Lion King leads to a very clear-cut message for the implied viewers of the animated film: The film thus replicates Shakespeare's supposedly Oedipal design to authorize the discipline of transgressive adolescent desires. At the same time, it offers a high-concept reading of Hamlef. a young Prince is prevented from taking his place in the masculine world of action and politics because of improper longings. The double appropriation of Shakespeare and Freud/Jones gives credence to the developmental scheme that Disney presents, in which male children risk being scarred and emasculated if they stray beyond the boundaries of discipline, desire, and dominance. With Simba restored to his father's role, the ending of The Lion King therefore narrows Shakespeare's double signifying: initially a sign of transgression and authority, by the end of the film Shakespeare as dramatist signifies only the discipline of culture. While Shakespeare reifies Disney's products, Disney in turn alters or fixes Shakespearean economies of reception. 25

The use of Shakespeare can thus be seen as an intertextual and intermedial marketing decision. This implementation goes along with a Disneyfication of Shakespeare, which means that the ambiguities and complexities of the Shakespeare text are streamlined in order to fit into the Disney paradigm of American middle class values of the 1990s. The same can be said for the multicultural discourses of a counter cultural agenda. At first sight The Lion King mirrors cultural ideals such as the demand for an equal treatment of both sexes and acceptance of non-heterosexual relationships. A deeper reading though shows that homosexuality is not accepted as a valid expression of sexuality outside the heterosexual mainstream. It is rather ridiculed as an integral part of adolescence. It is seen as an element of an immature phase that will be overcome in adulthood once a return to heterosexual bonding and the founding of a traditional family are achieved. This impression is underlined by the fact that latent homosexuality is also identified as an idiosyncrasy of Scar, the villain of the film.

25

Ibid. 191-2.

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The Disney message of defending hierarchical patriarchy and the American status quo is also reinforced through racist undertones. The inhabitants of Pride Lands can enjoy their lives of harmony again in their niche in the hierarchy of the circle of life once the wave of threatening immigrants, the hyenas from across the border, are repelled. The propagation of traditional role models can be identified in the relationship of the male and the female. Following the hierarchical Darwinist metaphor of the food chain patriarchal dominance is never questioned. Although the fight between the lions and hyenas at the end of the film is won by the prowess of the lionesses it is seemingly only the vigour and determination of the new patriarch Simba who sparks the lionesses' will tö fight and overthrow Scar's illegitimate regime of terror. Following the principles of reading a fable, which represents the underlying literary paradigm of The Lion King, and transferring the lesson into the human realm the message seems to be clear. Men are the born leaders and it is only through their leadership that women are led to the right action. This message is brought home to an American audience by quoting the archetype of the frontier lone hero - mythologized in American literature and Hollywood films - who can turn a seemingly hopeless situation to his own advantage by a sheer demonstration of his unfathomable determination. One can be quite sure that Walt Disney would have liked The Lion King.

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Works Cited Elahi, Babak. "Pride Lands: The Lion King, Proposition 187, and White Resentment" in: Arizona Quarterly: Α Journal of American Literature, Culture and Theory, 57,3, (2001), 12152. Finkelstein, Richard. "Disney Cites Shakespeare: The Limits of Appropriation" in: Christy Desmet and Robert Sawyer (eds.), Shakespeare and Appropriation. London: Routledge, 1999, 179-96. Gavin, Rosemarie. " T h e Lion King and Hamlet. A Homecoming for the Exiled Child" in: English Journal, 85,3, (1996), 55-57. Gutierrez, Gabriel. "Deconstructing Disney: Chicano/a Children and Critical Race Theory" in: A Journal of Chicano Studies (Atzlän), 25,1, (2000), 7^16. Klein, Bernhard. "King Henry the Fourth, Parts I, IF in: Ina Schabert (ed.), Shakespeare Handbuch. Stuttgart: Kröner, "2000, 359-368. Martin-Rodriguez, Manuel M. "Hyenas in the Pride Lands: Latinos/as and Immigration in Disney's The Lion King" in: A Journal of Chicano Studies (Aztlän), 25,1, (2000), 47-66. Palmer, Janet Patricia. "Animating Cultural Politics: Disney, Race, and Social Movements in the 1990s" in: Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: The Humanities and Social Science, 61,10, (2001), 4188-89. Ricker, Audrey. "The Lion King Animated Storybook: A Case Study of Aesthetic and Economic Power" in: Critical Arts: A Journal of Cultural Studies, 10,1, (1996), 41-59. Roth, Matt. "A Short History of Disney Fascism: The Lion King" in: Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 40, (1996), 15-20. Schütting, Sabine. "Timon of Athens" in: Ina Schabert (ed.), Shakespeare Handbuch. Stuttgart: Kröner, 4 2000, 570-574. Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 6 1974. Stenberg, Doug. "The Circle of Life and the Chain of Being: Shakespearean Motifs in The Lion King" in: Shakespeare Bulletin, 14,2, (1996), 36-37. Ward, Annalee R. " T h e Lion King's Mythic Narrative: Disney as Moral Educator" in: Journal of Popular Film and Television, 23,4, (1996), 171-78. "Unearthing a Disney World View: The Rhetorical Dimensions of Disney Morality in The Lion King, Pocahontas, and Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Diss. Regent University, 1997. Wickstrom, Maurya. "Commodities, Mimesis, and The Lion King: Retail Theatre for the 1990s" in: Theatre Journal, 51,3, (1999), 285-98.

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Questioning the Frames of Lara Croft Body, Identity, Reality

Introduction Cyber-Goddess, Virtual World Star: Lara Croft is not real. She is a virtual character constructed out of a complex wireframe covered with pixels (fig. 1). Originally the main character of the action computer game Tomb Raider, Lara is by now well known outside the player community, has become an 'icon of the nineties' and is part of Western everyday reality. She is the covergirl for computer and lifestyle magazines, the protagonist in a music video, in several TV advertisments and in a recent Hollywood movie. She is a model for famous clothes designers and of course the valuable resource for a vast merchandise industry. Lara is ubiquitous. In her genre she is revolutionary: heroines, who solve problems without the aid of a hero are practically non-existent in the world of computer games.1 And no other computer game protagonists have managed to leap out of the subcultural world of gamers and aquire a degree of popular recognition - and market value - that is usually reserved for celebrities of film or music. With her impressive body, squeezed into tight fitting outfits Lara can hardly be overlooked. Or ignored. Opinions diverge whether she is a liberating feminist icon or a reactionary object of male desire. To explore this question further, I will present and analyse the frames used to construct the phenomenon 'Lara Croft'. First, the different frames within which Lara is presented will come under scrutiny: the different media as well as the different contexts in which she is represented. I will show that even though Lara's manifestations are diverse as far as media and contexts are concerned, they are strikingly uniform as far as the form of representation - both verbal and visual - is concerned. What could be an interesting and multi-facetted character is reduced to a virtual sex-bomb carrying a gun. Second, I will analyse these representations and show how Lara is framed within the discursive concepts of 'body', 'identity' and 'reality'.

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For my analysis I draw on a theoretical background that is informed by postmodern and feminist theories. By feminism I understand, to use Claudia Springer's words, "a philosophy that seeks to end patriarchy and institute in its place an egalitarian system. Feminism seeks to release all people, men and women, from narrowly defined ideas about gender". 2 In order to achieve this aim, it is necessary to take a close, theoretically informed look at how these ideas of gender come into existence, are perpetuated, are protected from deconstruction and what/whose ends they serve. One particular area in which ideas about gender are transported, reinforced and/or subverted is that of representation. Representation frequently reinforces the notion of the male subject and the female object. But images do more than just posit one gender as object and one as subject, they perpetuate meaning and power. Discourses and images are vital in the construction and perpetuation of social and symbolic order,3 an area that Michel Foucault 4 has theorised in great detail, analysing how power, discourses and institutions interrelate. Seeing discourse as "a social language created by particular cultural conditions at a particular time and place", 5 which aims to explain human experience in a culturally specific way, it becomes evident that discourse and ideology are closely linked. By mediating all areas of life, discourses control the production of knowledge: "they put a limit on what is sayable at any one time: they define what counts as 'legitimate' or 'illegitimate' statements".6 But discourses do not simply reflect the ideological frameworks within which they come into being, they also influence this ideology in return. Since there is no monolithic discourse, able to explain all of a culture's complex dynamics of power, different discourses are constantly negotiating exchanges of power. This opens up the possibility of opposition: human beings are never merely victims of an oppressive discourse, because power also stimulates resistance to that power. Within this matrix our identity, or subjectivity, is formed. And similarly to the process outlined above, it is neither simply a product of society nor a product of our individual desire. Rather, it is constantly shaped an re-shaped in a mutually constitutive and dynamically unstable relationship with culture and discourse. It will therefore be of interest to look at how Lara's identity is created, which social formations and ideologies are reflected in this construction. Furthermore, I will trace how the discourses surrounding Lara interact with the shaping of our own identity, pointing out both elements of oppression and elements of opposition and resistance. This ambiguity of oppression and resistance becomes particularly apparent when analysing represenations of Lara's body. Seeing the body as a vehicle for 2 3 4 5 6

Springer 1996, 15. Bertens 1995. See for instance Foucault 1972 and 1978. Tyson 1999,281. Ward 1997, 129.

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self-expression and self-creation, it mirrors the power struggles outlined above. As Anne Balsamo has so lucidly pointed out: Transgressive body displays (of female bodies that are also strong bodies) are neutralized in the mass media through the representations that sexualize their athletic bodies - their sexual attractiveness is asserted over their physical capabilities. 7

Even though Balsamo is discussing women body builders here, this quote applies equally well to Lara Croft. Her strong, athletic and weapon-wielding body is continually in competiton with her sexually attractive and highly 'feminised' body. The question of course arises, why an overtly sexualised body is in any way oppressive. Several feminist theorists have used Michel Foucault's notion of the disciplined body, showing that the female body is controlled via a normative gaze. In Western visual culture women are bombarded with normative images of femininity, and while aiming to fulfill these norms, women's bodies turn into docile, controlled bodies. The dynamic interactions of different discourses and ideologies are mapped onto Lara's body, her liberating and empowering potential - a strong, independent, successful woman - is constantly undermined by her inhibiting physical appearance. I will show that while questioning some social codes of femininity, Lara immediately reinforces others to keep the balance. Lara's body is not only acutely 'feminine' it is also constructed within virtual reality using the latest information technologies. These new technologies bring about many changes within society and in their wake many boundaries are blurred - such as human-machine, nature-culture, and real-artificial. And while technological progress is predominantly celebrated, it also induces fears, since it brings with it instability and a loss of certainty. This ambiguity is reflected in the representations of Lara, where we can discern both the fears of society along with its remedy of traditional certainties (such as what a woman's body should look like) - and the hopes of many feminist theorists that the questioning of reality by new technologies will open up the chance to question other certainties (such as the concept of gender) as well.

Tomb Raider and Lara Croft The 3D action/adventure computer game Tomb Raider first appeared in November 1996 and was subsequently followed by Tomb Raider II, III and IV: The Last Revelation in one year intervals, V: The Chronicles in 2001 and VI: Angel of Darkness to be released in June 2003. All Tomb Raider games are produced by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive, both of which are British companies. The target audience of the Tomb Raider games would usually be

7

Balsamo 1995,217.

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males between 15 and 26 years of age.8 Lara Croft started out as the curvaceous protagonist of the game. But by now she has become a character in her own right, with her own background story, curriculum vitae and lifestyle. She is of upper-class origin and highly educated, extremely fit physically and she has chosen her own way of life. Lara is modern and she is not tied to old-fashioned traditions. She epitomises the lone-ranger ideal of the independent, self-sufficient person striving for success and happiness without having any obligations towards anyone. The key adjectives that are generally associated with Lara are 'powerful', 'sexy', 'agile', 'charming', 'virtual', 'no-nonsense', 'independent', 'athletic', 'adventurous' and 'feminine'. She does the job that needs to be done, using her skills, determination and quite an impressive array of weapons. But while displaying these traditionally more 'male' characteristics - Indiana Jones and James Bond seem to have served as blueprints among others9 - she still retains a very 'feminine' side: she is charming, cultivated, sexy and beautiful. "Lara represents independence and strength of conviction in a really female way - although she's tough, there's nothing at all butch about her. She still retains her feminine qualities".10 This quote from a computer game magazine demonstrates the public opinion that in order to be accepted as 'female', one needs be 'feminine', defined in contrast to 'butch', which in society at large is usually used in a derogatory sense. In order to make an aggressive and powerful woman acceptable - and convince us that she still is a 'woman' - Lara's bodily features need to be overemphasised. Otherwise her presence might be perceived as too threatening, which could lead to a loss in market value.

Representations of Lara Croft Lara Croft is definitely largely a visual phenomenon. Pictures of her abound, both official productions by Eidos and many artworks produced by fans and artists. There is no article, no website or any mention of her without it being accompanied by visuals. The majority of the pictures are computer renditions, produced by Eidos. The vast number of images cannot obscure the fact that Lara 8 s

10

Bradley 1997a, 14. Among the female fighters that provided role models and partial identities for Lara's creation are Emma Peel, the protagonist of the hugely popular 1960s TV series Avengers; from the area of comics Wonder Women, Barb Wire - the latter the perfect mix between a sexy vamp and a professional killer - and Tank Girl, the Australian punk outlaw living in post-nuclear devastation. Virtual predecessors include Kyoko Date, the Japanese 'idoru', whose singing career was hugely successful (she is recognised by 95% of the Japanese population) and who also served as role model for William Gibson's two cyberpunk novels Idoru (1996) and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999). Mention should also be made of Busena, by the same creators as Kyoko but aimed at an international audience with a face that is neither Asian nor American or European. Bradley 1997b, 25 (emphasis mine).

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is shown either as the dangerous, active adventuress, wielding a whole array of weapons, or as the highly eroticised object presented for the male gaze. These images generally show Lara in either of three different 'moods': aggressive/active, cheeky/flirtatious or sensual/vulnerable. She hardly ever displays other emotions and she is never sad, pensive or hurt. These representations seem to reduce her to either of three stereotypes: the tough heroine acting on her own, content with herself (fig. 2 and 3), the self-conscious woman showing herself to an audience presumed to be male (fig. 4), and the vulnerable woman, oblivious of the voyeuristic gaze directed towards her (fig. 5).

The Book and the Magazine That products centered around Lara are biased towards a male audience becomes particularly clear in both Douglas Coupland's Lara's Book11 and the German Lara Croft Magazin,12 which also appeared in Great Britain, France and Japan and is published by Eidos Interactive Germany. The back cover of Lara's Book, for example, invites the potential reader to "get to know the real Lara Croft - a fearless, tough, and completely loveable femme fatale" as the author "turns his keen eye to the world's love affair with pop culture icon Lara Croft". The book - which has magazine format - consists mainly of high gloss images with short texts in-between. The author seems to be sharing his love for Lara Croft with the reader, assuming he feels the same way about her (and thereby implicitly positioning the reader as a heterosexual male): Lara has left her mark on so many people. It is as soft as laughter. As insistent as a bullet hole. As recognizable as her perfect smile. When I think of her, it's more than just a single image filling my mind. It's her poetry in motion. 13

Similarly, the Lara Croft Magazin is aimed at a male audience that shares an erotic fascination for Lara. The cover topics are Eroticism - Unknown Facets of the Super Star, Uncovering the Myth and The New Pleasures of Digital Toys. The cover image was created especially for the magazine and is reminiscent of high-gloss erotic photography. The magazine features several full page pictures of Lara which clearly draw on traditional erotic imagery (fig. 5). The closeness to Playboy Magazine14 is underlined by the centrefold showing Lara lying on the beach, wearing only bikini pants but covering her breasts with one arm. In general it can be said that in both book and magazine, emphasis seems to have been placed on the image of the vulnerable, startled female.

" 12 13 14

Coupland 1998. Lara Croft Magazin 1/1999. Coupland 1998,38. Also note that one of the few advertisements in this magazine is for Playboy

Magazine.

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The Internet The internet is probably the best place to look for anything related to Lara Croft and Tomb Raider. Search engines list about 5000 sites relating to the key words 'Lara Croft'. Both official and unofficial sites usually have information concerning the game, such as gameplay strategies, hidden features, detailed maps etc.; and Lara herself. The sites are full of graphics, artwork and Screenshots of Lara and often all the newest information and gossip. Furthermore, some sites have chatrooms where fans meet to discuss Lara or Tomb Raider. Most of the fans' websites also contain artwork and stories produced by the fans themselves. The artworks created by fans cover a broad range of images. There are drawings (from childlike to quite sophisticated), paintings and computer generated images. The subject matter is similar to that of the official pictures: Lara in action with her weapons and/or Lara in some sort of sexualised situation. There are some artworks that depict Lara in the nude but it would seem that most fans distance themselves from these kinds of representations and most sites carry the logo Nude Raider Free. I had some trouble finding any pictures showing Lara naked (which were not on some pay-to-look sex sites) and could only find two very amateurish ones. It seems that most fans would agree with one author in the Lara Croft Magazin that Lara is only in 'full splendour' when she is scantily dressed instead of naked, since true eroticism needs the element of the concealed.15

Merchandise Because of Lara's enormous popularity and her huge number of fans there is quite an impressive array of merchandise available. The products which use familiar images of Lara range from the conventional T-shirt, to mousemats, calendars, watches and clocks, statues, a deck of cards, stickers, posters, wallets, bathing robes, etc. Most of the images used are from the 'sexy Lara' category rather than from the one 'Lara in action'. I would deduce that the merchandising industry considers the fans to be more interested in Lara's erotic side and therefore uses the highly sexualised images to sell their products. Whereas some merchandise is aimed solely at men and some at both male and female fans, there is no product that is specifically geared towards women, giving them in some way the opportunity to identify with a strong, courageous and independent woman. Even though Eidos claims to have chosen a female protagonist so as to attract women and girls as potential players of the game, the merchandise offered seems to be telling a different story. On a personal and subjective level, as female consumer of Lara, I never had a sense of being addressed by the product, the advertisement or even the char15

Lara Croft Magazin 1/1999, 60.

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acter as such while I was sighting all the Lara material. The feeling was more one of catching a glimpse of a world constructed for the stereotypical heterosexual male viewer. If there was a chance to connect to Lara and to get a sense of her empowering possibilities, it was always with a sense of reading her 'against the grain'.

Advertisements The Game Looking at advertisements for Tomb Raider in different countries it becomes clear that no single advertising or marketing strategy focuses solely on the game and its characteristics, or as one reviewer puts it: The poster and media publicity reveal exactly what the EIDOS ad men see in Lara. They know that their target audience will latch onto a girl in short shorts and a crop-top more rapidly than any images of atmospheric 3D or logical problem solving.

As the ads and the above quote show, Tomb Raider is aimed at a male audience, even though Eidos claims that they have finally created a computer game that is appealing to women as well. A striking example is the so-called 'washroom campaign' for Tomb Raider when pictures of Lara were placed in the Gents toilets in bars and pubs all over Great Britain in winter 1997.17 A male consumer is also the target of the German campaign that accompanied the release of Tomb Raider IT. huge posters showed Lara, batting her lashes and telling the viewer: "You can move me into 2000 different positions. Try that with your girlfriend!". 18 Not only does this motif completely ignore any potential heterosexual female buyers (and very probably did not mean to address any homosexual women) but it is also blatantly sexist. Another example is an animated ad on the internet19 for Tomb Raider III demonstrating again the strategy to sell sex and adventure together. The animation shows six different panels. The first shows Lara with two guns, next to her the question "What more do you want?" The following four panels answer by showing Lara in action and emphasising the quality of the game play. The last panel then adds the necessary amount of sex, showing Lara's breasts squeezed into a tiny shirt, suggestively asking "More ...?". In a series of three American TV advertisements20 for Tomb Raider II the emphasis is more on the game itself. All start by showing deserted locations usually associated with men (a basketball court, a gents toilet and a stripper 16 17 18 19 20

Bradley 1997a, 15. Ibid. 14. Lara Croft Magazin 1/99, 110 (my translation). See http://www.eidos.co.uk (accessed September 1999). These ads are completely animated.

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bar). After showing several action scenes of the game the text 'Where the boys are' is superimposed and the empty location is shown again. The spots imply that men have stopped doing what they 'normally' do and are instead playing Tomb Raider. They are not where they used to be (sports fields, stripper bars and the toilet) instead they have now joined Lara in her adventures. By linking the game to such stereotypically male pastimes and by the directly mentioning 'boys', playing the game is constructed as a very male occupation. Similarly, in another American advertisement21 the focus is more on the game instead on its protagonist. It makes use of the idea that the players identify with Lara. Here the viewer sees the world through Lara's eyes. She enters a big laboratory, is introduced to her new adventure, receives some new 'toys' such as a rocket launcher, and new outfits. The whole ad is reminiscent of James Bond: the way she is addressed as 'Croft', the new gadgets she is being shown, the professor in a white coat with an English accent showing her around. Like Bond she is linked to adventure, action, exotic places, impressive weapons, and sex. But whereas Bond always needed women to add sex to this cocktail designating success, Lara represents eroticism and sexuality herself, considering the clothes offered to her - such as tight-fitting hotpants and a crop top - and the phallic implications of the rocket launcher which is called 'a girl's best friend'. Other companies quickly realised the potential of Lara's appeal as well and tried to capitalise on her symbolic value. Not only is she pleasant to look at, she is also independent and strong-minded, so people are likely to trust her judgement concerning the products; and her virtuality emphasises the company's up-todate technology and its forward-looking philosophy.

Seat The car company Seat produced a series of French TV ads22 featuring Lara. In the first commercial, Lara is continually chased, first by a tyrannosaurus rex, then by two men on motorcycles and finally by a helicopter. In each situation she chooses a car from the Seat range and thereby manages to escape. In the last scene she sees a group of good-looking surfers trying to hitch a ride. Quickly exchanging the small car she has been driving for a large family car, she gives them a lift. The main emphasis of this commercial is on adventure, action and risk. Lara is a tough woman, able to handle adverse situations. Only the last scene makes a reference to Lara's attractiveness - when we see the sufers' broad grins and admiring gazes as they see who has stopped for them - and gives the (male) viewer the chance to identify with the surfers.

21 22

This one is 'real film' except when scenes from the game are shown. All of them completely animated.

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The second commercial is similar, in that Lara is on the run again, driving a car through the snowy Alps, followed by the 'bad guys' on snowmobiles, shooting at her. While the car manages the adverse conditions perfectly, the pursuers have more problems. In the end, Lara arrives at a little cottage, with three men sitting in the back of the car, wearing nothing but their boxershorts, freezing. Leaning against the wall of the cottage are three surfboards, so presumably they are three of the surfers she had picked up in the previous commercial. The scene ends with Lara offering them the obligatory cup of tea. Here again she is in complete control over the situation. The third commercial makes a stronger reference to the game itself: we see Lara hurrying home to her mansion, because a player has put in the Tomb Raider CD-ROM and the game is loading. In order to get home fast enough, Lara again uses a Seat. In the last moment, she jumps into the game, ready for action. But even here the erotic element is not absent: in the first scene we see her walking onto the beach, carrying snorkelling gear and wearing a bikini then she realises the time and rushes off. In the latest commercial the focus is purely on Lara's erotic side. Again, we see her coming out of the sea, walking towards the beach, wearing a bikini and seductively swaying her hips. Then, we see a middle-aged man with glasses, sunhat and a beer belly who gapes at her. This is followed by cutting back and forth between the man - subsequently getting very red and very hot - and Lara's body, coming towards the camera, in the last scene cut off at the neck and the thighs. The camera position then shifts, so that it is behind Lara, slightly to the right and slightly below. We watch Lara walk towards the man, raising her harpoon due to the position of the camera, we have Lara's bottom in full view, at times filling out half the screen. She makes him get into the Seat right behind him, pushes the air-condition button and locks the door, triumphantly leaning against the car, the man timidly knocking against the window. We are then informed that all Seats are now available with air-conditioning and that they 'cool men down'. In the last scene the man is writing Ί ψ Lara' on the steamed up rear window. The whole commercial is accompanied by a seductive musical score. I find this commercial particularly interesting because Lara is again overly sexualised and the viewer is encouraged to identify with the gaping man who is not attractive or in any way a desirable person to identify with. He is a wimp and he is helplessly locked into a car. Lara is in complete control of the situation. She does not hesitate once, she does not get angry, she just reacts in a matter-of-fact style with a touch of humour. She seems to be more amused than angry at his reaction and seems to be saying, 'Well, that's just the way men are ...'. It is this representation of male sexuality that I find most problematic here. Again, the popular myth of the ever-willing male is perpetuated along with the belief that all men invariably - 'naturally' - react to a woman like Lara. Women have to be witty in order to handle men and it is their job to find ways of dealing with these 'natural male instincts'; no responsibility is put on the men's shoulders. This popular construction of male sexuality is limited and reductive and

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reinforces tendencies to explain male (and female) behaviour in terms of biological essentialism.

Play Station Another company using Lara is Play Station. It does seem rather obvious that they use the protagonist of one of the best selling Play Station games to advocate their products. The ad 23 is for several games which are top hits and which are in a sale (including Tomb Raider). A father wakes up his son, and excitedly tells him about this. The son is quite surprised because, as he states, he does not even have a Play Station. The father rushes off, fights his way through the crowd of people and then spots Lara, sitting at a desk with Tomb Raider CD-ROMs on it, looking rather bored. The father jumps the crowd barrier which keeps the fans at bay, rushes to her side and takes a photograph of himself holding Lara, who is looking rather irritated and annoyed. In the last scene we see the son holding this picture asking his dreamily distant father, if his mother knows about this, getting the short and absent-minded answer 'who?' As in the previous ad, Lara is portrayed here as the good-looking, extremely sexy woman who drives men mad, leads them to disregard rules and previous behaviour (the man in the Seat ad does not seem to be the typical womaniser and I suppose the son did not have a Playstation because his father would not buy him one) and makes them act on instinct. But while, on the one hand, inviting the viewer to laugh at male foolishness, the commercials also encourage us to excuse such behaviour, since it is 'common knowledge' that men cannot be trusted when it comes to women and/or sexuality.

Brigitte24 Lara shows a very different side of herself in a TV spot25 for the German women's magazine Brigitte. The ad starts conventionally with Lara shooting at some people and pursuing them. But then she spots a wedding dress in a shop window, stops and admires it, forgetting her pursuit. As the Lara Croft Magazin states, this shows that "before all else, Lara is a woman". 26 She demonstrates that even though she is a tough woman, she can be 'feminine' - here romantic as well. We are again reassured that women are essentially feminine, no matter what our impression might be. Even an independent fighter like Lara has the

23 24

25 26

This one is a real film with an animated Lara faked in. This magazine is aimed at modern, self-confident women (and men), regularly tackling issues of gender equality in a popular manner. It is one of the best selling magazines in Germany. Completely animated. Lara Croft Magazin 1/99, 117 (my translation).

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same dreams and desires deep inside (here, getting married) as every other woman. On the whole, it can be said that the focus in the advertisements is never entirely on Lara's action-oriented, independent side. Though she is shown to be in control and she is behaving more sensibly than her male partners, we are never allowed to forget her 'feminine' side, usually represented via erotic imagery or - as in the last example - via romanticism.

Video Lara Croft not only appears in TV advertisements, she also stars in a music video. The song Ein Schwein namens Männer [A Pig Called Men] by the German punk rock band 'Die Ärzte' was released on 6 April 1998 and became a number one hit within three weeks, holding its position for two months. The song satirises the popular notion that men only ever care about sex - and that perpetually. In the video, we see the band playing in an old warehouse until all of a sudden Lara holds a pistol next to the lead singer's head. The three members of the band flee, manage to make it to their own weapons and a serious battle between them and Lara ensues. Particularly noticeable about this video is the fact that neither of the three male members of the band are dumbstruck by Lara's figure. Rather, they quickly realise that she poses a real threat and take her - as a fighter - seriously. She does receive quite a lot of serious kicks and punches - but most of the time she outwits her male opponents. If she is knocked to the ground she is quick to be up again and she is always unharmed. In the end Lara wins by using her wits. Surrounded by all three men, she shoots down a huge grille, and while she quickly jumps to the side, it covers her three adversaries. On the whole video the emphasis is put on Lara's fighting abilities, her courage, her wit and her determination. Her representation is not overly sexualised, the producers of the video could have chosen other camera angles or shots, showing off more of Lara's body. She is the winner in all aspects, whereas the men are constructed more like loosers, trying to be cool and macholike, but failing utterly, as they are clearly over-confident. They like to show off but instead of impressing anyone they make fools of themselves. In one scene the lead singer and the bass player shoot at Lara from a very short distance. They try to look like cool, experienced killers but this image is shattered when the viewer realises that they do not manage to hit Lara and that she has ample time to turn around and walk away. In a later scene the lead singer wants to attack Lara with a chacko but while showing off his ability to twirl it around until Lara becomes impatient and shoots it out of his hand.

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Lara could be seen here as the 'new kind of woman' who does not accept macho-like behaviour and silly swaggering in men and who acts on her dislike, letting the men know what she thinks of them - and not in a particularly nice and 'feminine' way either. But maybe her body is feminine enough so that she can be allowed to behave in such an 'unladylike' fashion?

The Game Surprisingly enough, in the game Tomb Raider itself, the representation of Lara Croft is less hypersexualised than in most other representations. She certainly has that impressive figure but due to the facts that the angles and planes of the wireframe used to construct her are clearly recognisable, that she is rather 'pixely' or 'blocky' - compared to those images produced for publication - and that her size on the computer screen is usually only a couple of centimetres, her body is not as striking here as it is in other forms of representation. Furthermore, about 90% of the time the player only sees her from behind. There are certainly very strong sexual connotations in this perspective as well - particularly when she is climbing onto something or when swimming - but the whole context of the representation reduces the effect. When playing the game one quickly starts to focus on the action and the problems at hand, taking less notice of Lara's body. It seems that the programmers at Core place great emphasis on Lara's looks. When Tomb Raider II was released one of the main criticisms was that only cosmetic changes had been made - mainly concerning Lara - whereas many faults of the original game had been left untouched.27 Besides her looks, the way Lara moves was revolutionary when the game first appeared and her movements have been made smoother ever since, while new moves were added with each sequel as well. Lara can run, jump (backwards, forwards or sideways or just up), swim, climb, duck, crawl, summersault etc. "She is the first artificial figure whose movements are so fluid that they come close to that of a real person and who is at the same time under such direct control".28 This element of control is probably one of the attractions of the Tomb Raider games: not only can you move your character around on the screen, but you can also make her do things, whenever you feel like it and how often it pleases you. Particularly hard moves are furthermore accompanied by a soft moan by Lara, which has its own appeal for many players. Lara is always at the fans' disposal, all they have to do is play the game. Every fan can have their own copy of this 'dream woman' in their own home, sitting there completely passive until the owner decides what to do with her (or rather, what to make her do). The idea that a famous person belongs to the public and therefore, in a sense, to everybody is shifting into whole new dimensions here. 27

28

McCauley 1997, 29. Die Zeit 51/1997, no page (my translation).

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Looking at all these different forms of representation I find that there are several recurring elements. Particularly striking is the way in which the images repeatedly combine danger and threat with eroticism. Lara is constructed and perceived as a woman who has to be treated with respect and who can certainly become dangerous. Beautiful but deadly women have always fascinated men. But, for all we know she might very well still be a virgin. Unlike a femme fatale, who has sexual relationships with several men, she never has any lovers or relationships. To keep the interest up, she has to appear to be always available (and just out of reach). As opposed to male heroes like Indiana Jones or James Bond, who always have several women devoted to them, Lara has to remain single. The two men are aimed at a male audience which is to identify with the male heroes and their success with women and not at women who might desire them. I believe this is another indication that Lara is mainly aimed at men who are to desire her and not at women who should identify with her.

The Question of Identity People can change their identities more frequently, experiment with them, select more options from a cultural supermarket with far less commitment than ever before. 29 [T]he masculine desire [is] to fix the woman in a stable and stabilizing identity. 30

The concept of identity has undergone a shift in recent years and it has been subjected to a thorough critique. The deconstruction of the term 'identity' has taken place within several disciplinary areas, and as diverse as these new theoretical debates are, they are all, in one way or another, critical of "the notion of an integral, originary and unified identity".31 The idea of the self-sustaining subject, the 'essential' or pre-social self, that has been at the centre of post-Cartesian Western metaphysics has been severely challenged. Stuart Hall has poignantly summarised the main characteristics of the new conception of identity: [T]his concept of identity does not signal that stable core of the self, unfolding from beginning to end through all the vicissitudes of history without change; the bit of the self which remains always-already 'the same', identical to itself across time. [...]

29 30 31

Harris 1996, 207. Owens 1985, 75. Hall 2000, 15.

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It accepts that identities have never been unified and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions. 32

The question of how identities are then constructed leads us to three central mechanisms: discourse, performativity and exclusion. For Foucault "the subject is produced as 'an effect' through and within discourse". 33 Therefore, identities are produced in specific historical settings, within specific discursive practices, by specific enunciative strategies and within specific institutions. This means that language and wider cultural codes offer certain subject positions to us and identities are temporary attachments to and 'performative' enactements in and through these positions. 34 Performativity is here used in Judith Butler's sense, which means that it is stripped of its associations with volition, choice and intentionality. In Butler's words, performativity needs to be re-read "not as the act by which a subject brings into being what she/he names but rather as that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena it regulates and constrains". 35 But identities are not only constructed in and through discourse and performativity, they are also constituted in and through exclusion and 'difference': Derrida has shown how an identity's constitution is always based on excluding something and establishing a violent hierarchy between the two resultant poles [...]. What is peculiar to the second term is thus reduced to the function of an accident as opposed to the essentiality of the first.36

Judith Butler also argues that an identity can only be constituted in relation to the abjected, the marginalised, that which it itself lacks, which it is not - to what is called its "constitutive outside". 37 We need this discursively constructed outside in order to produce the positive term 'identity' but it also comes back, threatening our established identities which are "in consequence inherently unstable, divided and haunted by the liminal presence of those Others' from whom they seek to distinguish themselves". 38 The endless perfomativity of the self and the rejection of any notion of processes of 'closure' in the construction of identities contains both celebratory and threatening elements. A sense of liberation goes hand in hand with a sense of loss of orientation and reliability. This ambiguity is often reflected in a search for stability and structure in a world that is full of multiple meanings, fragmented experiences and a wide range of possible identities.

32 33 34 35 36 37 38

ibid. 17. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 19 and Redman 2000, 10. Butler 1993, 2. Laclau in Hall 2000,18. Hall 2000, 28. Redman 2000, 10.

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Lara epitomises this ambiguity: on the one hand, as an artificial character, her identity exists only when it is performed. Since each person that interacts with Lara in some way - as gamer, as consumer or just as fan - creates his or her own fragment of Lara's identity, there cannot be any 'unitary' and 'directive' self somewhere within her. Lara can never be fully defined, in the attempt we can only find more and more layers of created fragments. Her multi-mediality, her virtuality and the technophoria associated with her are further elements of her tendency to celebrate multiplicity, fragmentation and rejection of 'closure'. But even though this empty 'form' of Lara - or maybe rather her theoretical construction - can be seen as celebratory, the content with which this form, or construction, is filled certainly epitomises the ongoing struggle to find reliability and stability. Lara has lived through a terrible tragedy (an airplane crash with her as the sole survivor), and subsequently has found out what is 'really' important in her life, namely adventure and independence rather than an aristocratic lifestyle. This sense of an 'essential self which one needs to uncover, and then be true to, in order to lead a fulfilled and happy life is contradictory to newer concepts of identity introduced above, but it offers a (seemingly) straightforward and 'easy to understand' road to happiness. But not only does she transport this 'find your true inner self ideology, her identity is conservative in many other ways as well. Her behaviour is predictable, her identity - as presented in the various public discourses is firm and unchanging and it is reduced to some recurring characteristics such as her sexiness, her toughness and her independence. The possibilities offered by the fact that everybody can have access to Lara, that she has no 'real' identity and that she can truly 'be anything' are vast, but they largely go unused. The meanings associated with Lara could become multiple, contradictory and they could have the force to challenge boundaries. Fans could for example be offered the chance to officially present their versions of Lara. Rather, the opposite is taking place and Eidos Interactive keeps tight control over all representations (in every sense) of Lara, and things that do not fit into the company's construct of its heroine are immediately sanctioned.39 As suggested earlier, the major changes that the new technologies and the second media age bring with them do not only bring about enthusiasm and fascination but also fear and disorder. This instability is perceived as threatening and needs to be dealt with - one way is to fix other things more firmly in their designated place, such as Lara's identity. Her stable characteristics are overemphasised, and the focus placed on her more 'reliable' attributes. This is on the one hand her body (paradoxically perceived as stable, even though - as a construct of pixels - it is just as easily changeable as her identity) and on the other hand her adventurous and actionoriented lifestyle. 39

When the former Lara Croft body double Nell McAndrew undressed for Playboy Magazine in 1999, it said 'Lara Croft' on the cover and showed her in Lara's clothes. Eidos immediately intervened and the publishers of Playboy had to recall the magazines and black out all evidence that linked Nell McAndrew to Lara.

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The Question of the Body The endless depictions of the human body have in effect replaced actual human bodies in the public imagination.40 One implication of the nw conceptions of power ... is the radical 'deconstraction' of the body, the last residue or hiding place of'Man', and its 'reconstruction' in terms of historical, genealogical and discursive formations.41

Changes in our culture, particularly the rise of consumer culture, have drastically changed our lives. In the Western hemisphere the Protestant work ethic has been replaced by hedonism and consumption. Individuality is the key word and 'eveiything' is within reach: "An ideology of personal consumption presents individuals as free to do their own thing, to construct their own little world in the private sphere".42 In these conditions, where the construction of identity is a central endeavour, the body has become inscribed with a whole new meaning: it is the vehicle for self-expression and self-creation.43 But the body is also a "powerful symbolic form, a surface on which the central rules, hierarchies, and even metaphysical commitments of a culture are inscribed and thus reinforced through the concrete language of the body". 44 Foucault has unmasked the body as "the primary site for the operation of modern forms of power - power that was not top-down and repressive, but rather, subtle, elusive and productive".45 As Foucault describes it: [What was then being formed was] a policy of coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, its behaviour. [...] Thus, discipline produces subjected and practised bodies, 'docile' bodies.46

He describes such bodies as docile because all energies are diverted to activities that are unthreatening to the social order and the status quo. For feminists the link between these 'docile' bodies, the processes of discipline and normalisation and social control - especially of the female body - has been particularly interesting and has been repeatedly analysed.47 In her article "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity: A Feminist Appropriation of Foucault", Susan R. Bordo maintains that women are always in pursuit of an unattainable "ever-changing, homogenizing, elusive ideal of 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Springer 1996, 40. Hall 2000, 24. Featherstone 1983, 21. Davis 1997,2. Bordo 1989, 13. Davis 1997, 3. Foucault 1979, 138. See for example Bordo 1989, Butler 1993, Davis 1997 and Bartky 1997.

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femininity". 48 This pursuit turns women's bodies into docile bodies, forcing women to spend their energies 'improving', transforming and subjugating their bodies to external regulation. Bordo argues that this "discipline and normalisation of the female body [...] has to be acknowledged as an amazingly durable and flexible strategy of social control". 49 Today's feminine ideal demands two very contradictory characteristics in a woman: she has to be warm and nurturing, charming and caring and at the same time tough, cool, successful and in control, offering the best of 'masculine' and 'feminine' virtues. 50 Lara is one of these women, seemingly offering everything a man may wish for today: she has the necessaiy 'macho' characteristics, but she is in no way 'masculine' as it is used in a derogatory way of women. She may be self-determined, independent, in control and strong (even carrying weapons: fig. 5) but she retains those characteristics that are associated with femininity in Western cultures: in the way she walks and moves, in the way her body is overemphasised and hyper-sexualised and in the way she is often represented in traditionally 'feminine poses' with a 'feminine look' on her face (vulnerable, pouting or flirtatious). She might therefore seem an ideal of positive empowerment to many women. The popular associations with the term 'feminist' have sadly become overly negative, for both men and women. A feminist is frequently perceived as an unattractive, man-hating and aggressive woman. Therefore, many women wish to disassociate themselves from this term, but still consider themselves equal to men and as independent. For many of these women, Lara seems to be the perfect role model: she does not threaten their perceived 'female identity' (she is still a 'real woman', neither afraid to be beautiful or sexy) but she is independent and strong as well. But, [p]opular representations [...] may speak forcefully through the rhetoric and symbolism of empowerment, personal freedom, 'having it all'. Yet female bodies, pursuing these ideals, may find themselves distracted, depressed, and physically ill as female bodies in the nineteenth century, pursuing a feminine ideal of dependency, domesticity, and delicacy. si

Paradoxically, the attempt to shape one's body according to the ideals actually offers many women a sense of control and mastery that they often lack in a male dominated world. But, Bordo argues, this sense of control - at least over one's own body - is illusory and turns one's body into one of Foucault's 'docile' bodies. Similarly, Sandra Lee Bartky, in her article "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power", 52 argues that modern disciplinary practices render a body 'feminine' and seek to "regulate its very forces and operations, the economy and efficiency of its movements". 53 These practices are not 48 49 50 51 52 53

Bordo 1989, 14. Ibid. Bordo 1989. Ibid. 28. Bartky 1997. Ibid. 129.

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violently enforced on women, there are no formal authorities or institutions who discipline transgressive bodies, so why, asks Bartky, do women conform to these practices - if we discard both the notion that they are performed voluntarily or that they are natural? She argues that the very subjectivity of the subject is constituted by the structure of power. Woman is under constant surveillance. But this surveillance does not only originate from a central tower as in Foucault's Panopticum, instead the "conscious and permanent visibility"54 induces in the inmate the need to perpetually surveille his (or her) own self, internalising the disciplinary gaze. Women have internalised the standards of femininity and keep themselves under constant surveillance: In contemporary patriarchal culture, a panoptical male connoisseur resides within the consciousness of most women: They stand perpetually before his gaze and under his judgement. Woman lives her body as seen by another, by an anonymous, patriarchal Other. 55

Bartky argues that even though the effects of the self-discipline may actually harm and inhibit women, it is practised nonetheless because it also offers a sense of mastery (control over one's own body, mastery of all the 'beauty care skills' required of women) and a secure sense of identity. Therefore she reminds particularly feminists that any political project which aims to dismantle the machinery that turns a female body into a feminine one may well be apprehended by a woman as something that threatens her with desexualization, if not outright annihilation. 56

Lara is a prime example of a standardised visual image that normalises women. She manages the dual demands placed on women today, to be 'macho' and 'feminine' at the same time. She thereby helps to perpetuate a feminine ideal that women are desperately and unsuccessfully trying to achieve. Particularly her body represents an ideal that is hardly realisable: she is incredibly thin, has a improbably large breasts and is physically fit to an astonishing degree (fig. 6). She perpetuates a potentially limiting and inhibiting image of a woman's body. She furthermore takes commodification and idealisation to an extreme. She is readily available, she is linked to consumer goods and she is often reduced to a commodity. Brought to the peak, one could say that a woman's life, her body and mind can be bought and sold at will and used whenever the owner feels like it. This may not be quite the case, particularly since she is not real, but it is without a doubt an underlying current in the different forms of representation. The hyper-sexualisation of Lara furthermore makes apparent what Foucault, in the first volume of The History of Sexuality57 describes as the ever growing discourse on sex: 54 55 56 57

Foucault 1979, 201. Bartky 1997, 140. Ibid. 146. Foucault 1978.

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The discourse on sexuality creates the notion that sex is an absolute, abstract category. Sex and sexuality have become the titles used to cover all bodies and their pleasures. [...] All bodily pleasures are now understood in the terms of the degree to which they deviate from, conform to, improve or avoid sex. Sex is the dominant term, the standard against which 'the body and pleasure' are measured. 58

In this sense, the discourse on sexuality objectifies and categorises our experiences, a process which fundamentally affects our experience of both personal and social identity. The representations of Lara with their overt connotations of sexuality further enforce this idea. A game - as well as the other products she is used to promote - can only give pleasure when it is related to sexuality and the body. The idea that female sexuality is dangerous is age-old and deeply embedded in Western, patriarchal society: "sexuality is dangerous, and sexual women pose a threat either because they are killers themselves or because they incite violence in men". 59 Being both extremely sexual and quite a killer at the same time, Lara is the epitome of 'woman'. But her particular form of existence allows men to act out their desire to control and contain women and their sexuality. Women's bodies have always been perceived as "far more permeable, fluid and subject to 'leakage'" 60 than men's bodies.61 This instability inspires both repulsion and desire - the female body offers emotional security but also threatens engulfment. 62 By playing the game or by consuming images of Lara, men have the chance to explore their fascination with female sexuality without a real threat, while at the same time controlling the process - either very directly in the game or indirectly through their choice to look or not to look. Female sexuality and women's bodies are thereby objectified and turned into a commodity, loosing their perceived danger. Even though Lara may challenge the patriarchal notion of femininity as weak, compliant and dependent, the inherent threat is reduced by overemphasising the supposed biological difference between men and women, constantly reassuring the viewer of these differences which are necessary to justify male superiority. This over-emphasis on of biological difference in the representations of Lara raises another issue that postmodernism and feminism frequently deal with: the fact that Western thought is based on the concept of binaries and that these not only designate difference but also assign a value to the opposing elements. Both postmodernism and feminism have therefore raised a strong criticism of binary

58 59 60 61

62

Ward 1997, 131. Springer 1996, 157. Lupton 1995, 101. Interestingly enough, Lara's body is represented as very 'contained': she does not sweat, she does not urinate or have bowel movements, she does not menstruate, she does not give birth and she does not have sex. The only body liquid we ever see in contact with her is blood - when she is killed in the game. Lupton 1995.

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thinking, demanding instead to be able to conceive difference without hierarchy: 63 The female body becomes a metaphor for the corporeal pole of this dualism, representing nature, emotionality, irrationality and sensuality. Images of the dangerous, appetitive female body, ruled precariously by her emotions, stand in contrast to the masterful, masculine will, the locus of social power, rationality and self-control. The female body is always the 'other': mysterious, unruly, threatening to erupt and challenge the patriarchal order.64

Anne Balsamo takes this even further, arguing that only "the construction of a boundary between nature and culture [...] guarantees a proper order of things". 65 Blurring the 'proper' boundaries through her 'masculine' behaviour, Lara's overly feminine body is used to even things out. Since she is completely fictional, her body could have had any shape, but as Anne Balsamo realised, "the gendered boundary between males and females is one border that remains heavily guarded despite new technologised ways to rewrite the physical body in the flesh". 66 The dissolution of boundaries in other areas such as nature/culture and human/non-human, needs to be countered by a reaffirmation of perceived stabilities, such as biological difference. The creation of characters such as Lara could help bring us closer to what Donna Haraway, in her essay "A Cyborg Manifesto", 67 describes as a post gender world. Using new technologies - Haraway uses the cyborg as an example we could rid ourselves of the self-imposed limitations inherent in our constructs of gender and our binary thinking. 'Real' and 'artificial' are challenged along with 'natural' and 'cultural'. Haraway envisions a world that might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanent partial identities and contradictory standpoints.68

63 64 65 66 67 68

Owens 1985, 62. Davis 1997, 5. Balsamo 1995,215. Ibid. 216. Haraway 1991. Ibid. 154.

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The Question of Reality If there is a common denominator to all these postmodernisms, it is that of a crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real in the widest sense. 69 In the second media age 'reality' becomes multiple.™

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard 71 is particularly associated with theories of reality and simulation. He argues that there is no direct relationship between an image and reality and that therefore simulation cannot be the opposite of truth. Rather the two concepts operate on different planes. This dissolution of the dichotomy real/simulation or authentic/inauthentic is closely related to the proliferation of different media and mediations that have permeated our society. Our daily experiences have become mediated by images, so that 'authentic' experience becomes impossible.72 But Baudrillard goes even further: according to him, there is no real, essential, unmediated stance outside of simulation. He argues that, contrary to popular belief, images precede the real and produce it instead of reality producing the images. Even our construction of identity is deeply influenced by this: since it is constructed by experience, how does the impossibility of authentic experience effect our sense of self? Baudrillard argues that society's reaction to the simulation we experience is panic. Desperation and a longing for reality let us make fetishes of the supposedly authentic. In an attempt to assure ourselves of our reality and that of experiences, products, images etc., we manufacture what Baudrillard calls the hyperreal, meaning more real-than-real. This underscores my earlier point that Lara needs to be particularly feminine (more real-than-real) precisely because she challenges at the same time through her artificiality - our concept of reality. Computer games are becoming more and more realistic, virtual reality for the masses is just around the corner, digital characters are becoming indistinguishable from real persons. All of these changes further enhance our increasing doubts about reality and authenticity. We are at the same time frightened and fascinated by their possibilities and these alternating currents are also visible in representations dealing with new technologies. Nigel Clark (1995), drawing on Marshall McLuhan, Walter Benjamin and Baudrillard, suggests that, whenever confronted with new experiences and drastic changes, people tend to 'look backwards', towards the past in an attempt to 69 10 71 72

Bertens 1995, 11. Poster 1995, 85. See for instance Baudrillard 1999 and 2001. Landsberg 1995.

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master the new challenges. Major changes and transformations lead to an insecurity - in order to deal with this insecurity and the discomfort that what we perceived up to now as reality, has changed, we take refuge in the imagined certainties of previous times. The digital media in particular oscillate between onward roll and backward glance, since they contribute strongly to the destabilisation of our traditional sense of reality. This - frightening and new - destabilisation is often countered by the deployment of these new media "as instruments for the containment, subjugation and recording of a universe of refractory messages". 73 The representations of Lara can be seen as a prime example of this. New technologies - virtual reality but also genetic engineering and plastic surgery threaten to make sexual difference obsolete, thereby undermining a pillar of patriarchy. In a desperate attempt to hold on to old conventions and securities, signs of masculinity and femininity have to be over-emphasised. Lara therefore offers fascinating - but also potentially threatening - new territory (new technology, virtual reality) on the one hand while on the other hand also offering reassurance and stability. She seems to oscillate between reinforcing social codes - such as correct 'feminine' attire or the need for women to exhibit 'feminine' character traits - and challenging them - for example with her physical prowess, aggressiveness and independence. It would seem that the possibilities for a feminist subversion and challenge to patriarchy are present but go, as yet, mainly unused. The world of cyber is still male dominated and clings desperately to old gender concepts, as can be seen in the construction of Lara. But cracks in the patriarchal ideology are becoming visible, changes are taking place - if slowly. Lara sends out contradictory messages and she can have multiple meanings. I believe there is a chance if we explore the cracks further and find ways of subversion. Women could use the playfulness that Lara offers in order to explore and to experiment with identity but also with the concepts of body and reality.

73

Clark 1995, 115.

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Works Cited Balsamo, Anne. "Forms of Technological Embodiment: Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture" in: Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows (eds.), Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. London: Sage, 1995, 215-37. Bartky, Sandra Lee. "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power" in: Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina and Sarah Stanbury (eds.), Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia UP, 1997, 129-54. Baudrillard, Jean. The Revenge of the Crystal. London: Pluto Press, 1999. Selected Writings. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001. Bertens, Hans. The Idea of the Postmodern. London: Routledge, 1995. Bordo, Susan R. "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity: A Feminist Appropriation of Foucault" in: Alison M. Jaggar and Susan R. Bordo (eds.), Gender/Body/Knowledge. Rutgers University Press, 1989, 13-33. Bradley, David. "Introducing Tomb Raider" in: PC Format Gold, 4, (1997a), 14-15. "Scoring With the Heroine" in: PCFormat Gold, 4, (1997b), 23-25. Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex'. London: Routledge, 1993. Clark, Nigel. "Rear-View Mirrorshades: The Recursive Generation of the Cyberbody" in: Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows (eds.), Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. London: Sage, 1995, 113-133. Coupland, Douglas. Lara's Book: Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider Phenomenon. Rocklin: Prima Publishing, 1998. Davis, Kathy. "Embody-ing Theory: Beyond Modernist and Postmodernist Readings of the Body" in: Kathy Davis (ed.), Embodied Practices: Feminist Perspectives on the Body. London: Sage, 1997, 1-26. Die Zeit, 51 /1997, no page. Featherstone, Mike. "The Body in Consumer Culture". Theory, Culture and Society, 1,2, (1983), 18-33. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. The History of Sexuality: Vol. I. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage, 1979. Hall, Stuart. "Who Needs 'Identity'?" in: Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans and Peter Redman (eds.), Identity: A Reader. London: Sage, 2000, 15-31. Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" in: Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991, 149-181. Harris, David. A Society of Signs?. London: Routledge, 1996. Landsberg, Alison. "Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Bladerunner" in: Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows (eds.), Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. London: Sage, 1995, 175-189. Lara Croft Magazin. Ed.: Eidos Interactive Deutschland GmbH. Hamburg: Future Press, 1999. Louis, Chantal. "Lara und die tausend Helden" in: Emma, 1, (1998), 106-109. Lupton, Deborah. The Imperative of Health. London: Sage, 1995. McCauley, Jim. "Tomb Raider 2" in: PCFormat Gold, 4, (1997), 27-30. Owens, Craig. "The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism" in: Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture. London: Pluto Press, 1985, 57-82 (first published as The Anti-Aesthetic by Bay Press, 1983). Poster, Mark. "Postmodern Virtualities" in: Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows (eds.), Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. London: Sage, 1995, 79-95. Redman, Peter. "The Subject of Language, Ideology and Discourse: Introduction" in: Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans and Peter Redman (eds.), Identity: A Reader. London: Sage, 2000, 9 14.

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Springer, Claudia. Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age. London: Athlone, 1996. Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. New York & London: Garland, 1999. Ward, Glenn. Teach Yourself Postmodernism. London: H o d d e r & Stoughton, 1997.

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List of Illustrations Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1 2 3 4 5 6

Lara Croft's wireframes Lara in action Lara with weapon Lara posing, wearing a bikini designed by Gucci Erotic image of Lara Lara's body

Birgit Pretzsch

Lara Croft's wireframes. From: Lara Croft Magazin. Reprinted here with the kind permission of Eidos Interactive Germany.

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Fig. 2

Lara in action. From: Lara Croft Eidos Interactive Germany.

321

Magazin. Reprinted here with the kind permission of

Birgit Pretzsch

Fig. 3

Lara with weapon. From: Lara Croft Magazin. Reprinted here with the kind permission of Eidos Interactive Germany.

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BWWBi

Fig. 4

Lara posing, wearing a bikini designed by Gucci. From: Lara Croft Magazin. Reprinted here with the kind permission of Eidos Interactive Germany.

Birgit Pretzsch

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Erotic image of Lara. From: Lara Croft Magazin. permission of Eidos Interactive Germany.

Reprinted here with the kind

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Lara's body. From: Lara Croft Magazin. Reprinted here with the kind permission of Eidos Interactive Germany.

Notes on Contributors

S a n d r a C a r r o l l is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin. She has published on Psychoanalyis and Salvador Dali in The Letter: Lacanian Perspectives on Psychoanalysis. She lectured in the Department of English on Cultural Studies and Women's Studies at the University Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau. She has also worked in Canada and is currently working as a psychotherapist in private practice and in the field of Addiction in Dublin. O t t m a r E t t e is Chair of Romance Literature at the University of Potsdam, Brandenburg. He was a visiting professor at Toluca, Mexico, at Mexico-City (UAM), and Maine, USA, and he has received numerous national and international awards for his outstanding monographs on Jose Marti and Roland Barthes and for his editions of the works of Alexander von Humboldt. Also known as the co-editor of the journal Iberoamericana, Professor Ette has distinguished himself with publications in the fields of literary and cultural theory as well as French, Francophone, Spanish and Latin American literatures from the Enlightenment to the postmodern period. His latest work is the English edition (Literature on the Move, 2003) of a book first published in German in 2001 (Literatur in Bewegung). Bernadette F o r t is Weinberg College Board of Visitors Research and Teaching Professor of French at Northwestern University, U.S.A. and editor-in-chief of the interdisciplinary journal Eighteenth-Century Studies. She has authored and edited books on Crebillon fils, Fictions of the French Revolution, Les Salons des 'Memoires secrets' and The 'Memoires secrets' and the Culture of Publicity in Eighteenth-Century France (with J. Popkin). Her volume on The Other Hogarth: Aesthetics of Difference (Princeton UP, 2001), co-edited with Angela Rosenthal, has won two prizes from art historical associations. She is currently at work on representations of gender in the work of the painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Brigitte Glaser has taught at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt and the Technische Universität Braunschweig. Among her publications are The Body in Samuel Richardson's 'Clarissa': Contexts of and Contradictions in the Development of Character (1994) and The Creation of the Self in Autobiographical Forms of Writing in Seventeenth-Century England: Subjectivity and Self Fashioning in Memoirs, Diaries and Letters (2001). J a m e s A. W . Heffernan, Professor of English and Frederick Sessions Beebe Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College, has published widely on English Romantic Poetry and on the relations between literature and the visual arts. His books include Wordsworth's Theory of Poetry: The Transforming Imagination (1969), The Re-creation of Landscape: a Study of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Constable, and Turner (1985), and Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (1993). He has also edited Space, Time, Image, Sign: Essays on Literature and the Visual Arts (1987) and Representing the French Revolution: Literature, Historiography and Art (1992).

328

Notes on

Contributors

Jan Hollm is Lecturer of English at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau. He studied English and History at the Technische Universität Berlin, at the University College of North Wales, Bangor and at Whitworth-College in Spokane, Washington. He has a particular interest in eco-criticism and has published his research into ecological Utopian novels as Die angloamerikanische Ökotopie: Literarische Entwürfe einer grünen Welt (1998). Thomas K r ä m e r born in Annweiler am Trifels. Read dramatics in Munich but abandoned it. Was trained as a nurse and specialized in psychiatry. Worked as a therapist from 1985-2001. Took up English literature, art history, and German literature at the University KoblenzLandau, Campus Landau in 1994. M.A. in 1999. Has been working freelance for the English Department at the University Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau since 1999. Roy Porter, born in London in 1946, remained a true-blue Londoner all his life, even as visiting professor at prestigious American Universities. For 20 years, he astonished the literary world with his tireless high quality output. Working as Professor in the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Trust Centre in London, he was known to a wider public for some 20 books, for a spate of articles and book reviews, and for broadcasting on a wide range of subjects. His publications covered such diverse areas as madness in the Age of Reason (1987), venereal disease and gout, but also intellectual history (Enlightenment, 2000) and the history of psychiatry. One of his last books (Bodies Politic, 2001) dealt with the representation of death and doctors in Britain in the long 18lh century. After taking early retirement in 2002, he died suddenly in St Leonards, East Sussex. His colleagues and students will remember him as a charming human being who was always prepared to help and give advice, and his friends will never forgive the grim reaper for calling him so early. Birgit Pretzsch is Lecturer of English at the University Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau. She studied English Literature at the University Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau and Women's Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where she received her M.A. in 1999. Currently she is working on her PhD in English Literature, analysing cyberpunk literature. Her particular interests are body, gender, identity and complexity theory. Her volume on Visions of the Human in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction which she is co-editing, will appear both as an ebook and a hard copy volume with Rodopi in 2004. Angela H. Rosenthal is Associate Professor of Art History at Dartmouth College,USA, where she specializes in 18lh- and ^"'-century art and visual culture. She is the author of Angelika Kauffmann (1741—1807): Büdnismalerei im 18. Jahrhundert (Reimer: Berlin, 1996), co-editor of the German-language art journal Frauen Kunst Wissenschaft, and of The Other Hogarth: Aesthetics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 2001). Her book Angelica Kauffman: Image and Identity will appear with Yale University Press in 2004. Rosenthal is currently working on a book addressing race, the representation of skin and issues of whiteness in 18lhcentury visual culture. Peter Wagner held various teaching jobs in his life (in England, Germany, and the USA) before entering an academic career. He has published on colonial American Puritanism, erotica of the Enlighenment (Eros Revived, 1988), postmodern fiction, and more recently, on textimage relations {Reading Iconotexts, 1995) and William Hogarth (Hogarth, 2001). He teaches in the English Department at the Universität Koblenz-Landau (Campus Landau). Werner Wolf is professor of English literature at the University of Graz. He is the author of Ursprünge und Formen der Empfindsamkeit im französischen Drama des 18. Jahrhunderts (Lang, 1984), Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzählkunst. Theorie und Geschichte mit Schwerpunkt auf englischem illusionsstörenden Erzählen (Niemeyer, 1993) and The Musicalization of Fiction: Α Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality (Rodopi, 1999). He has also published numerous articles on literary theory, especially on narrativity, self-referentiality and aesthetic illusion, moreover on the functions of literature, 18th- to 20lhcentury English fiction and drama as well as on intermedial relation between literature and other media, notably music and the visual arts.

General Index

The index covers only the main text of the book, excluding bibliographical references and footnotes. Abbe Gougenot, 101 abortion, illegal, 212 Acker, Kathy, Empire of the Senseless, 4 actress, 31, 53, 54, 71 Addison, Joseph, 32, 33, 134; see also Spectator, the adultery, 47, 58, 92, 106, 142, 213 visual, 105, 106 advertising, 272-274, 301 Alberti, Rafael, 277 Alembert, Jean le Rond de, 4 Altdorfer, Albrecht, 2 androgynous, 4 6 , 9 8 , 167 angel, 30, 73, 138, 161, 168, 189,297 'angel in the house', 5, 30, 131, 146 Apollinaire, 266, 275 Archenholtz, Johann Wilhelm von, 43 aristocracy, 6 5 , 9 4 , 136 artistocrat, 134, 136, 139, 144 aristocratic, 4 6 , 9 1 , 109,128, 134, 136, 137, 159, 309 Aristotle, 27 Arnold, Mathew, 165, 190 Art Nouveau, 154 Astell, Mary, 30, 139 asylum, 10, 35, 207,218, 220, 222 Atwood, Margaret, 5, 10 Alias Grace, 2 , 4 , 10, 207-215, 2 1 7 225 Augustan, 2, 154 Austen, Jane, 30 avant-garde, 266, 273, 275, 277-278 artists, 277 poetry, 256 writers, 261 writing, 266-267 Barrett, Elizabeth, 165 Barthes, Roland, 11,48, 253-254, 278

Bassano, Leandro, Susanna in the Bath, 216, 229 (fig.) Bataille, George, 266, 275, 279 Bathsheba, 239, 240, 245 (fig.) Baudelaire, Charles, Fleurs du mal, 261 Baudrillard, Jean, 315 bawd, 33, 35, 40, 59; see also courtesan, harlot, prostitute and whore Beardsley, Aubrey, 1, 9, 153-173 The Baron's Prayer, 166, 184 (fig.) Battle of the Beaux and Belles, 170ff., 187 (fig.) The Cave of Spleen, 169-172, 186 (fig.) The Climax, 162-163, 178 (fig.) The Rape of the Lock, 168-169, 185 (fig) Salom0 with St. John's Head, 155-158, 161-162, 177 (fig.) Tail Piece, 162, 180 (fig.) The Toilet, 163, 183 (fig.) The Toilette of Salome, 162-163, 169, 181 (fig.) Beauvoir, Simone de, 53, 253 Beckett, Samuel, 234 Beeton, Isabella, 219 beholder, 48, 45, 63, 65, 71, 92, 100, 102, 111, 112; see also spectator and viewer male, 48, 106 Belinda, 154, 163-173 sexual ambiguity of, 168 Benjamin, Walter, 315 Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, 101 Bible/biblical, 2, 3, 7, 36, 216, 217, 235, 237, 239, 240 binary, 192,251,257 concepts, 11,313 oppositions, 11, 251, 253, 254, 255, 268 structures, 252 thinking, 313-314 biological, 191, 199, 219, 253-254, 264, 267,276-279, 286 difference, 191, 313-314

Framing Women

330 essentialism, 304 sex, 11,12, 253-257, 259, 267, 273, 278-280 discursive construction of, 12, 255, 273, 276, 279-280 biology, 27, 29, 276 socio-, 191 bisexuality, 161 blood, 156, 157, 159, 190, 218,221-222, 239, 256 ίπιρυΓεΛΕύ, 160, 216 thirsty, 172,207 body, 3, 11-13, 27, 32, 43, 54, 69, 159, 170-171, 251, 257-259, 263, 266-268, 270-273,295,310,316 being-a-, 251, 258, 259, 262, 264, 266, 270, 280 construction of, 11-12, 256-257, 2 7 1 272, 276 and control, 100, 297, 310-312 as cultural sign, 70 disciplined, 297,310-311 docile, 2 9 7 , 3 1 0 - 3 1 1 female, 11, 65, 89, 98, 100, 104, 112, 236,239, 253-254, 260, 2 6 3 , 2 6 5 266, 271, 273, 275, 277-279, 295, 296-297, 303, 3 0 5 - 3 0 6 , 3 0 9 - 3 1 4 construction of, 256, 271, 276 control of, 297, 310-311 dead, 221 exploitation of, 212 exposed, 215, 277 fragmentation of, 264, 266 as metaphor, 314 naked, 98, 162, 239; see also female nude as object, 262, 264 as 'other', 314 as passive, 100 as permeable, 313 physically ill, 219, 311 as public body, 266, 278 transgressive, 297 as vessel, 69 violence against, 271 feminine, 311-312, 314 as fetish, 260 having-a-, 251, 258-259, 262, 264, 266, 270 joys of, 3 language, 70, 130,285 male, 156, 262, 264-265, 270-271,276 male control over female, 100 metamorphosis of, 170

naked/nude, 98 objectified, 258 and pleasure, 313 and power, 310 pregnant, 103-104, 109 self-determination of, 139 sexualized, 297 shaping of, 311 of the sitter, 68 transgressive, 297, 310, 312 as vehicle of self-expression, 296-297, 310 violence against, 271 woman's, see female Bohr, Margrethe, 194-195, 201 Bohr, Niels, 194-195 Bolt, Robert, 191 Bonnie and Clyde, 223 Boswell, James, 3 1 , 5 8 Boucher, Franfois, 90, 106 Bond, James, see James Bond boundaries, 40, 42, 45, 201, 292, 297, 309, 314 Bourdieu, Pierre, 220, 291 bourgeois, 1,92, 254 conventions, 71 ethos, 46 experience, 5 family, 208 myths, 253 norms, 144 society, 255 bourgeoisie, 136 breasts, 53, 91, 97, 107, 109, 168-170, 236, 238,260-268, 270, 272, 299, 301, 312 as female attribute, 106 as fetish, 263 as metaphor, 267 sexual appeal of, 106 Brecht, Bertolt, 191 Brenton, Howard, The Genius, 191-192, 195-196 Brookner, Anita, 89, 91 Brown, Tom, 40 Browning, Robert, 165 Bryson, Norman, 71 Burney, Fanny, 30, 199 butch, 42, 298 Butler, Judith, 11, 39-42, 70, 253-255,308 Calvino, Italo, 257 Careless, Betty, 58 Casanova, Giacomo, 42, 68 Castle, Terry, 42-44, 46

General Index

331

castrate, 42 castration, 280 Catherine II, 102 Cellini, Benvenuto, 160 censor, 106, 261 Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote, 259 Cezanne, Paul, 23 Β Chaucer, Geoffrey, 28 child/children, 27, 34-35, 90, 94, 103, 108— 110, 134, 145-146, 168-170, 190, 202, 207, 210, 212, 217, 219,233, 284, 2 8 6 288, 291-292, Gibber, Colley, 125, 134-135

cubism, 277 cuckold, 6, 2 8 , 3 9 , 4 0 , 4 7 , 107 cultural achievements, 100 agenda, 292 alterity, 252 artifacts, 100 capital, 291 change, 8 codes, 308 conditions, 296 cross-, 7 fields, 2

The Careless Husband, 127-133 Cixous, Helene, 100,255 class, 40, 58 difference, 128, 134-135, 137, 142 high-, 59 lower-, 53, 134 middle-, 5 - 6 , 39, 94, 109, 125, 135, 199,218, 223,291 rise of, 144 values, 128, 136, 183,292; see also norms restrictions of, 40-41 upper-, 128, 298 Cleopatra, 67-71

history, 7, 11, 126-127, 146, 271, 277 limitations, 14 multi-, 12,283-284 discourse, 292 norms, 1 paradigm shift, 112 practices, 2, 42, 284 sign, 70 space, 257 studies, 252 theory, 11,255 thought, 252 culture, 10, 12, 110, 235, 253, 292, 296 American, 12-13, 283, 289 Anglo-American, 283 black, 12 Christian, 160 consumer, 310 counter, 12, 283, 288 eighteenth-century, 8, 13, 140 gay, 29

Cleland, John, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, 33-34, 43, 59 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 225 commodification, 312 commodified object, 96 computer games, 2, 5, 12-13, 295, 2 9 7 298,301,315 Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, 234 consumption, 66, 71, 74, 103 Cooper, Lucy, 58 corporeal, 259 aspect/dimension, 257-258, 267 difference, 255 features, 11, 256 pole, 314 project, 70 corporeality, 256-259, 265 counter culture, 12, 283, 288 Coupland, Douglas, 299 Courbet, Gustave, The Source, 240 courtesan, 3, 6, 7, 39, 46, 54-55, 57-60, 63, 65, 69-72, 168, 193; see also bawd, harlot, prostitute and whore Cranach, Lucas, 2 Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Croft, Lara see Lara Croft cross-dressing, 41-42, 45

3

and gender, 240, 256 Hispanic, 11-12 literary, 8 mainstream, 12,291 mass, 277-279 national, 291 in opposition with nature, 94, 192, 2 5 3 255,297,314 patriarchal, 147, 312 popular, 64, 279, 299 postmodern, 13 and power, 296 of reading and writing, 126 of sensibility, 141, 143-144, 147 sub-, 29, 160,295 Victorian, 165,208, 212,214 visual, 7 Western, 11-13, 152, 2 5 1 , 2 9 7 , 3 1 1 cyberculture, 5 cyborg, 314

332 Dante Alighieri, 257, 259 Darwin, Charles, 12, 190, 198, 290, 293 daughter, 28, 29, 30, 34, 59, 96, 103-104, 134, 136, 147, 157, 197, 199,211,222, 280, 286 restriction of, 199 De Angelis, April, 200 Breathless, 199-200 death, 27, 7 2 , 9 0 , 153, 164, 189, 193, 195197, 216, 220-223, 235, 280, 284, 286, 292 and femininity, 3 as mother of beauty, 235 and sexual pleasure, 101 and sleep, 101 decadence, 154 deconstruction, 1, 2, 9 , 4 0 , 4 6 , 190, 251, 296, 3 0 7 , 3 1 0 Defoe, Daniel, 28, 31 Degas, Edgar, 238 Woman Combing Her Hair, 240, 249 (fig·) dejä lu, 238, 241 De Piles, Roger, 105-106 Derrida, Jacques, 1, 211, 254, 256, 269, 308 desire(s), 13, 27, 41, 54, 57, 102, 104, 164, 166, 169, 173, 261,267, 296, 305, 307 and destruction, 155 feminine/female, 28, 31, 40, 55 masculine/male, 7, 40, 55, 58, 100, 112, 291,307,313 object of, 98, 295 psychology of, 71 sexual, 57, 69, 112 transgressive, 104, 192 unfulfilled, 161 devil, 19, 221; see also Satan diary, 140, 199, 256 Dickens, Charles, 153, 222 Oliver Twist, 222 Dickinson, Emily, 213, 214, 222 Diderot, Denis, 4, 6 9 , 9 0 - 9 4 , 97-98, 100, 103, 104-111, 256, 275 The Indesereet Jewels, 69, 279 differance, 235, 239, 241 discipline, 5, 35, 2 8 7 , 2 9 2 , 2 9 7 , 310-312 discourse, 1, 2, 11-13, 42, 70, 142, 207, 210, 222, 257, 258, 266, 279, 283, 289, 296 anti-patriarchal, 12 of the biological, 276 definition of, 296 heterosexual, 41 and identity, 308

Framing

Women

and ideology, 296-297 incestuous, 285 and knowledge, 296 oppressive, 296 pornographic, 45 and power, 5, 296 scientific, 190, 254 on sexuality, 312-313 on women, 7 written, 209 Disney Corporation, 12-13, 283, 286, 291 film, 283-284, 286, 288-289 industry, 283 Disney, Walt, 291, 293 domestic, 90, 91, 103, 105, 108-109, 162163 sphere, 33, 125, 145, 191 tragedy, 146 virtues, 62, 144 domesticity feminine/female, 57, 126, 137, 146, 291,311 sentimental celebration of, 135 domestication of women, 33, 137 Dostoevski, Fyodor, 234 double standard, 135, 142 Du Guernier, Louis, 171 Dürer, Albrecht, 2 Die Heimsuchung Maria [The Visitation], 4, 22 (fig.) Nürnbergerin im Tanzkleid, 2, 18 (fig.) Das Meerwunder, 3, 19 (fig.) Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, 191 dwarf, 168-169, 171-172 signifying lust, 168 effeminacy, 42, 160, 170 ekphrasis, 6, 9, 39, 42, 93, 105, 215, 217 Eliot, George, 208 embodiment, 1,4, 8 , 5 5 , 57-58, 63, 132, 134, 211, 215, 219, 239, 258-259, 262264, 266-267, 270-271, 279-280 non-organic, 266 empowerment, 53, 136, 139, 199, 200, 297, 301,311 Enlightenment, 1-2, 4 - 6 , 9 - 1 0 , 30, 34, 35, 55,94, 142, 195,253 emancipatory tendencies of, 126 epiphany, 1 1 , 2 3 3 , 2 3 5 - 2 4 1 epistemology, 7, 10,190, 191, 252, 255 erotic ambiguity, 164 art, 3, 215, 269, 277

333

General Index beauty, 239 charms, 97 consumption, 71 effect, 107 femininity, 91, 162 homo-, 43-45, 289 imagery, 3 1 - 3 2 , 2 9 9 , 305 literature, 2, 12, 256, 258, 260, 266, 269, 273, 275-276, 278-279 lure, 93 photography, 299 pleasure, 259 power, 271 eroticism, 159, 1 6 2 , 2 1 5 , 2 3 9 , 2 9 9 - 3 0 0 , 302, 307 ethic, 197 norms, 139 Protestant work, 310 sexual, 134, 142, 145 ethnicity, 12, 289 Eve, 27, 147, 156, 167 evolution, 190, 198 existentialism, 234 fall from innocence, 57; see also innocence 'fallen woman', 2, 5 - 6 , 27-28, 31, 34, 36, 57, 60, 101, 135,223 Falstaff, 166, 283, 287 family, 29, 5 8 , 9 4 , 109-110, 111-112, 195, 197, 211-212, 217, 233, 285, 292, 302 bourgeois, 208 drama, 92 hierarchy of, 64 ideology of, 8, 90, 108 of love, 7, 37 nuclear, 111 and patriarchal authority, 145 portrait, 111 relationships, 94, 108, 112, 146 Royal, 199 structure, 64 values, 90 woman's place in, 8 , 9 0 father, 28, 34, 55, 6 4 , 9 3 - 9 8 , 108, 111, 134-135, 197, 233,262, 287-288, 2 9 1 292, 304 murder of, 199, 284-285, 292 Faulkner, William, 11,233 female, 2, 4, 9, 27, 29, 30, 36, 42, 44, 91, 94, 130, 134, 200, 207, 262, 268, 277, 288, 298, 300 activities, 125 agency, 53 approach to science, 201-202

attributes, 106 author, 126 beauty, 237 behaviour, 220, 304 body, 1 1 , 6 5 , 8 9 , 9 8 , 100, 104, 112, 236, 239, 253-254, 260, 263, 2 6 5 266, 271, 273, 275, 277-279, 295, 296-297, 303, 305-306, 309-314 construction of, 256, 271, 276 control of, 297, 310-311 dead, 221 exploitation of, 212 exposed, 215, 277 fragmentation of, 2 6 4 , 2 6 6 as metaphor, 314 naked, 98, 162, 239\ see also female nude as object, 262, 264 as 'other', 314 as passive, 100 as permeable, 313 physically ill, 219, 311 pregnant, 104, 109 as public body, 266, 278 representation of, 11, 278 transgressive, 297 as vessel, 69 violence against, 271 breast, 106, 260, 262, 265-266, 270 characters, 2, 5, 11-13, 91, 99, 126, 142, 189, 190-192, 195, 199, 209, 221, 223, 225, 239, 240, 266-268, 272, 289, 290, 300 chastity, 143 companionship, 212 cultural artifacts, 100 desirability, 53 desire, 28, 3 1 , 5 5 discipline of, 5 domesticity, 126, 137 ecstasy, 101-102 education, 142 empowerment, 53 genitalia, see female sexual organ heterosexuality, 29, 301 homoeroticism, 44 homosexuality, 45 identity, 10, 210, 212, 214, 217-218, 222,311 independence, 64, 137, 298 inferiority, 138

jouissance, 102, 109 licentiousness, 67 madness, 220-222

Framing Women

334 masquerade, 39 'modesty', 132, 135 moral superiority, 136 moustache, 268 narrator, 269-270, 272-273 nerves, 145 norm, 127, 132, 139, 143, 145 nude, 98, 162, 169, 239 objectified, 1 0 2 , 2 4 1 , 2 9 6 oppression, 147 orgasm, 28, 219 passivity, 131 patterns of behaviour, 144 power, 139, 141, 161 rake, 132 reader, 257, 259 reading and writing culture, 126 reproductive system, 29 saints, 239 scientist, 9, 189, 191-193, 198, 200 sensuality, 96 servant, 197, 199 sex, 12, 34, 238, 276 sexual organ, 6 9 , 2 7 3 , 2 7 6 sexuality, 6, 57, 71, 313 as dangerous, 313 sitter, 54, 63 subject, 55 submissiveness, 132 supremacy, 145 viewer, 110 virtue, 30, 63, 90, 129-147 vs. male, 2 0 1 , 3 1 4 vulnerable, 299 feminine, 71, 162, 269, 297, 298, 304-306, 315 aesthetic beauty, 239 allure, 55 appearance, 5 3 - 5 4 behaviour, 45, 132 body, 311-312, 314 characteristics, 46, 298, 316 desire, 40 domesticity, 146, 291 gender roles, 8, 125, 137, 144-145 humility, 135 ideal, 311-312 identity, 214 masculine power relations, 241 norms, 127, 132, 143-146 representation of the, 260, 266-267, 270,311 sensibility, 127, 136, 141, 145 sexuality, 69

stereotype, 132 supremacy, 145 virtues, 30, 63, 90, 129-147, 311 femininity, 8, 57, 74, 90, 91, 130, 140, 237, 238,311 authentic, 3 9 - 4 0 characteristics of, 311 construction of, 127, 138 and death, 3 defining, 7, 5 4 - 5 5 definition of, 58 erotic, 91, 162 ideal of, 57,90, 310-311 moral, 139 normative images of, 297 patriarchal notions of, 4, 313 performance of, 71 reproduction of, 310 sexual markers of, 97 social codes of, 297 standards of, 312 triumph of, 137 virtuous, 5 6 , 9 0 Western, 71 feminism, 125, 147, 2 9 6 , 3 1 3 multicultural, 283ff. feminist, 4, 10, 12-13, 125, 133, 139, 192, 283,310,311,312 author, 39 epistemology, 10, 191 icon, 295 perspective, 53, 96 playwright, 198, 200 scholars, 199, 297 studies, 192 theory, 42, 254, 296 feminization, 8, 126-127, 140-141, 143, 146 'feminocentric' novels/texts, 126-127, 144 femmefatale, 5, 207, 213, 299, 307, femme fragile, 138 fetish body parts as, 12, 260 breast as, 106, 263 hair as, 154, 270 the authentic as, 315 fetishism, 160 Fielding, Henry, 40 The Female Husband, 42 The Masquerade, 41, 44 Shamela, 137 Fielding, John, 34, 35 fin-de-siecle, 9, 154, 159, 173 Finn, Huckleberry, see Huckleberry Finn

General Index Fisher, Kitty, 53-74 Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary, 4, 259 Foucault, Michel, 112,209,210, 254, 296, 297,308,310-312 Fox Keller, Evelyn, 191 Fragonard, Jean Honore, 45^46 Frayn, Michael, Copenhagen, 10, 192, 194195,201 French Revolution, 4 Freud, Sigmund, 27, 218, 223, 224, 237, 292 Futoransky, Luisa, 12,251 Pelos, 260, 268-273, 276,279 gay, 43, 56, 287-288; see also homosexual behaviour, 285 character, 289 culture, 29 hatred of, 291 liberation, 12 gaze, 63, 68, 73, 104, 220, 262, 272, 302 demure, 98 disciplinary, 312 of disembodiment, 266 gendered, 241, 270, 272 male, 3,45,48, 96,97, 236, 238, 240241, 262-264, 266,270, 275,279, 299,312 normative, 297, 299 objectifying, 270 phallogo-centric, 271 of photographer, 263 predatory, 97 scientific, 264 spectator's, 90, 97 voyeuristic, 299 gender, 6, 10, 11, 13, 27, 39, 41, 48, 90, 110, 129-10, 141, 145, 189-190, 199, 201-202, 255-260, 262, 270, 278, 290291 attribution of, 258, 262 biological, 264 change of, 43 and class, 58, 142 concept, 296 constructions of, 12, 89, 133, 256, 278, 296 debate, 253 definitions of, 45 difference, 11,44,196-197, 253 enactment of, 70 formation, 146 frames of, 7 ideas about, 296

335 identity, 253, 257-259,267-268 and madness, 219 male, 45 markers, 53 and meaning, 42 model, 125; see also two-sex-model ontology, 40 opposition, 48, 127, 192, 196, 296 original/primary, 41,254 and performance, 42 post-, 296 representation of, 12 research, 125 restructuring of, 283 roles, 126, 141-142, 146, 197, construction of, 145 feminine/female, 8, 125, 127, 131, 135, 137, 143-45 normative, 7, 55 sentimental, 138 stereotypical, 42 and sex, 11-12, 254-257, 259, 278 stereotypes, 200 studies, 192, 253 theory, 256 gender-crossing, 170 gendered, 12, 94, 257, 259, 262, 268 body, 262 boundaries, 296 culture, 240 economy, 94-95 gaze, 241, 270, 272 markings, 257, 269 response, 109 stereotypes, 240 subject, 53, 254 theory of portraiture, 105 vision, 94 gendering, 7, 10-11, 268-269 assymetrical, 94 debate on, 11,253,255 and hair and power, 269 of sexuality, 27 structure of, 262 genetic engineering, 197, 316 Genette, Gerard, 211 genre scenes, 89, 91, 102-103, 110 Dutch, 63 gentlewoman, 60, 62 Goffman, Erving, 1 Gomez de la Serna, Ramon, Senos, 260274,276,278-279 Goncourt, Edmund and Jules de, 91 Gouges, Olympe de, 4

336

Framing Women

Gothic, 199, 234 novels, 190,233 romance, 158 woman, 200 Goya, Francisco Jose de, La maja desnuda, 4 Gray, Thomas, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, 72 Greuze, Jean-Baptiste, 7-8„89ff. L 'Accorde de village, 89, 91, 93-95, 97-98, 104, 111-112, 116 (fig.) Etude de jeunefille, 102, 122 (fig.) Head of a Sleeping Woman (AnneGabrielle Babuti), 99, 117 (fig.) Madame Greuze on a Chaise Longue with Dog, 100, 120 (fig.) La Mere bien-aimie, 89, 91, 105, 107111, 124 (fig.) La Philosophe endormie, 89, 99, 119 (fig·) Une Tete en pastel, 105, 107ff., 123 (fig·) La Volupte, 101, 121 (fig.) Grey, Zane, 11 Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, 96, 110-111 grotesque, 153-154, 159-160, 169, 172173 gynophobia, 5, 23.8,240 Habermas, Jürgen, 253, 278 hair, 9,46, 67, 69, 98-99, 105, 154-155, 157-159, 160, 162-164, 168, 170, 172, 182-187 (figs.), 189, 216, 236, 240, 256, 272, 275-276, 280 cutting of, 154, 162-163, 165-166, 168-169, 171,270-271 eroticization of, 236, 270-271 as female attribute, 54, 162 fetishization of, 154, 270 and gendering, 268 and power, 269, 271 and honour, 166 as hybrid sign, 220 and intellect, 54 as jewelry, 165-166 male, 3, 270-271 Medusan, 155-156 objectification of, 270 pubic, 236, 238,271 sexual magnetism of, 165 and sexuality, 101, 18, 164-165,268, 270 as wig, 53

Hall, Stuart, 307 Haraway, Donna, 314 harlot, 2 , 4 , 6, 21 (fig.), 31, 34-35, 3 9 , 4 5 48, 52 (fig.), 156; see also bawd, courtesan, prostitute and whore Harrison, Tony, Square Rounds, 192-194, 201 Heidegger, John Jacob, 40 Heidegger, Martin, 234 Heine, Heinrich, 157-158 Heisenberg, Werner, 194-195, 201-202 Hemingway, Ernest, 234 hermaphrodite, 160-161, 170 Herschel, Caroline, 199 'herstory', 125, 142, 147 heterosexuality, 12, 29, 41, 45, 71, 288, 292, 299, 301 Heywood, J.C., 157-158 history painting, 3, 66, 89 Hitchcock, Alfred, 271 Hobbes, Thomas, 32 Hogarth, William, 7, 34, 48 A Harlot's Progress, 2, 4, 6, 21 (fig.), 35, 39,46, 52 (fig.) The March to Finchley, 63 Masquerades and Operas, 41 A Rake's Progress, 218, 230 (fig.) Hollywood, 293, 295 Holofernes, 3 homoerotic, 43^t5, 289 homophobia, 29 homosexual, 44, 285,301 character, 12 subculture, 29 homosexuality, 29, 44-45, 161, 292 Hone, Nathaniel, 56 Kitty Fisher, 72-73, 87 (fig.) Huckleberry Finn, 288 Human Genome Project, 197, 201 Humboldt, Alexander von, 264 Hunt, William Holman, 211 Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 158-159, 179 (fig.) Hutchinson, Francis, 32-33 Huysman, Joris, 158 hybrid, 170, 219, 220, 258, 267 hyperreal, 315 hyper-sexualisation, 306, 311-312 hypnotism, 208 hysteria, 32 hysterics, 219 iconoclasm, 5, 160 iconotext, 3, 240, see also palimpsest

General Index identity, 13, 62, 212, 295, 313, 316 change of, 41, 309 deconstruction of, 307 destabilization of, 211 establishment of, 209, 211 and exclusion, 308 female/feminine, 10, 210, 212, 214, 217-218,311 fragmented, 309 gender, 253, 2 5 7 , 2 5 9 , 2 6 7 loss of, 89 male, 42 partial, 309 production of, 296, 310, 315 search for, 10,217 sexual, 287 stable, 2 1 1 , 2 2 3 , 307, 309, 312 traditional notion of, 211 true, 237 unified, 307 unstable, 213 US, 283 ideology, 234 of consumption, 310 discourse and, 296-297 of family, 8 , 9 0 , 108 fascist, 291 patriarchal, 5, 12, 92, 94, 111-112, 138, 143, 1 4 5 , 2 9 0 , 3 1 6 'reactionary', 138, 309 illustrated books/novels, 9,45, 153ff., 212 Immerwahr, Clara, 193-194, 201 immigration, 289, 293 Impressionism, 239-240 Impressionistic art, 235 incest, 285-286 independence, 72, 154, 309, 316 female, 64, 137, 298 Indiana Jones, 298, 307 Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, La Grande Odalisque, 215, 228 (fig.) innocence, 33, 35, 133, 168, 219 fall from, 57 loss of, 263 intercourse, 45^46 lesbian, 45 intermediality, 2, 10, 214, 234-235, 2 3 9 241,292 intertextuality, 10-12, 209, 214, 2 3 4 235, 238, 257, 274-275, 283, 291-292 Irigaray, Luce, 39-40, 96, 104, 255 Isabella, 158, 179 (fig.)

337 James Bond, 298, 302, 307 Jarry, Alfred, 266, 275 Jeffrey, Simon, 31 Johnson, Samuel, 31, 56, 66 Jonson, Ben, The Alchemist, 190 jouissance, 101-104, 109-110 Joyce, James, 233-235, 238 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 11,235-241 Ulysses, 4 Judith, 3 Julius Caesar, 67 Juvenal, 167 Kafka, Franz, 11 Kauffman, Angelica, 54, 81 (fig.) Keats, John, 158-159 kept mistress, 5, 6, 10, 34, 39, 58, 139, 207, 221 King Arthur, 213 Kinsey Report, 91 Kipphardt, Heinar, 191 Körper, 258-259 Kristeva, Julia, 7, 154-155 Laborde, Jean-Joseph marquis de, 110-111 Lacan, Jaques, 218, 224 Lady Macbeth, 219-220, 286 Lagrenee, Louis-Jacques Francois, 98 Lamb, Charles, 41 Lancelot, 213 Laqueur, Thomas, 27, 29, 125 Lara Croft, 1, 12, 295-316, 320-325 (figs.) Lefebvre, Jules, The Truth, 239, 247 (fig.) Leib, 258-259 Lemoyne, Francois, 98 lesbian, 44-45 behaviour, 44 caresses, 109 identity, 42 intercourse, 45 love, 44, 278 relationships, 44, 4 6 - 4 8 role, 4 4 - 4 5 way of life, 6, 39 lesbianism, 43 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 9 5 - 9 6 libertinism, 29, 127ff„ 134, 136 libertine, 58, 134, 140 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 46 Lillo, George, 146 Silvia, 8 - 9 , 125-128, 133-137 The Lion King, 12, 283-293 Locke, John, 28, 34, 239, 242

338 lock(s), see hair London, 7, 39-41, 55-57, 59, 62-63, 6768, 146, 155 Georgian, 6, 29ff. Louis XIV, 172 Louis XV, 93 Louis XVI, 159 lower-class, 53, 134 'rnacho',29, 132,305,306,311,312 mad, the, 36, 200, 219-220, 224 madness, 209, 218-223 Magdalen Hospital, 35 mainstream American cultural, 12, 289, 291 heterosexual, 292 male, 3, 13, 27, 29, 30, 45, 46, 48, 53, 56, 96,139, 142, 189, 191, 196, 198,225, 262, 286, 298 artist, 5, 102, 103 audience, 45,48, 299, 301, 307 author, 45, 126, 146,266, 275 authority, 143, 161 behaviour, 29, 35,302-303 beholder, 48, 102, 106; see also male spectator and male viewer body, 262, 264, 270-272, 276, 313 bonding, 289 characteristics, 298 characters, 95, 127, 134, 189, 197, 305306 constitution, 145 consumer, 300-301, 307 control over science and technology, 9, 190-192, 195-196 cultural achievements, 100 desire, 28,58, 100, 111, 216,295, 303304, 307 dominance, 12, 145, 190, 201, 125, 190, 292,311,316 dream of control, 100, 313 dress, 6, 39, 42, 44 fear of women, 5,313; see also gynophobia foolishness, 304 'forwardness', 130, 132, 167 gaze, 3, 45,48, 96-97, 236, 238,240241, 262-264, 266, 270, 275, 279, 299,312 gender, 45 role, 146 hair, 268, 270 heroes, 11, 239, 307 heterosexual, 299

Framing

Women

roles, 29 thinking, 45, 143 homosexuality, 29, 43^44, 288 as human prototype, 27, 270 ideal, 5 identity, 42 instincts, 303 leadership, 290-291, 293 libertinism, 127 metaphors, 129 narrator, 263, 265, 275, 279 norms, 129, 139, 140 orgasm, 28 painter, see artist power, 96, 139, 145, 290 prerogatives, 138 rake, 129, 132, 133, 140 reader, 45, 108, 257, 259, 262 scientific project, 9, 191 scientist, 9, 197, 201,263 sensibility, 96 sexual liberation, 58 marker, 12 organ, 270-280 sexuality, 29,31,303-305 spectator, 97, 110, 240; see also male beholder and male viewer superiority, 313 transvestites, 44 view of women, 13, 132, 219, 266 viewer, 97, 102, 103, 105, 107, 111, 301-303; see also male beholder and male spectator violence, 271,291,313 vs. female, 125, 127, 144, 201, 293, 296,313-314 writing, 8, 266 man/men central position of, 195 effeminate, 42, 170 enlightened, 196 and friendship, 289 of feeling, 141 and gender attribution, 262 -hating, 311 homosexual, 43, 44, 288 impregnated, 170 and marriage, 95ff., 112, 128 and opposition to woman, 8, 10, 28, 144, 197,211,254, 266 perfect, 144 powerful, 55, 67, 225 reform of, 146

General Index and tears, 141 Mandeville, Bernard de, 31 Manet, Edouard Blonde Woman with Bare Breasts, Olympia, 4, 240 make-up, 53, 162 Mark Antony, 67, 71 Marlowe, Christopher, Doctor Faustus, marriage, 34, 92, 137, 258 and adultery, 47, 58 celebration of, 111-112, 128, 135 companionate, 7, 132, 142 conditions, 137ff. devaluation of, 128, 134, 139 as emotional relation, 130 as exchange of money, 94, 130 as exchange of women, 95, 112 and ideology of the family, 90, 94, idyllic view of, 7, 112 and love, 129, 134-135, 140 monogamous, 110 and possession, 135 reformist conception of, 94, 112 as sacrament, 94 sanctity of, 104, 130, 135 and sexuality/sex, 28, 29, 58, 129, as social contract, 9 4 , 9 7 - 9 8 , 112 as social institution, 126, 135 social rise through, 92, 137 unlawful, 157 as unviolable bond, 130 wife's position in, 126 masculine, 160, 311 activity, 189 behaviour, 314 desire, 7, 55, 307 immorality as, 130 power, 4, 314 public sphere, 146, 197, 292 roles, 126 sexual licentiousness as, 129 spetatorship, 241 virtues, 145, 156, 311 masculinist values, 9, 192 masculinity, 42, 316 mask, 40-43, 53-54, 238 as aphrodisiac, 46 masquerade, 6, 39-^14, 46, 62 mass culture, 277-279 masturbation, 102, 219 maternity, see motherhood matrimony, see marriage McCarthy, Cormac, All the Pretty Horses, 11, 234

339

240

190

287

140

Cities of the Plain, 234 The Crossing, 11, 234-236, 238-241 The Orchard Keeper, 233 McClintock, Barbara, 191 McLuhan, Marshall, 315 mechanics classical, 195 quantum, 194 media, 252, 258 attention, 56 different, 3, 104, 2 9 5 , 3 1 5 digital, 316 mass, 297 new, 2 , 3 1 6 postmodern, 5, 12 presence, 253 publicity, 301 second media age, 309, 315 Medusa, 155-156, 160, 162 Meitner, Lisa, 191 Melville, Herman, 11, 234 memory, 208, 221, 224, 287 menstrual cycle, 29 mental health, 209,218, 223 and madness, 218 illness, 2 0 8 , 2 1 8 - 2 1 9 institution, 222 metaphor, 125, 195 cat as, 72 of the circle of life, 285 of devouring, 272 female body as, 314 female breast as, 267 for female genitalia, 69 of the food chain, 293 of instrumental perception, 263, 267 for madness, 222 male, 129 medical, 261 patchwork/quilting, 10,208-210 of possession, 135 rape as, 162ff. Satan as, 28 sexual, 6 6 , 9 6 for unification, 252 visual, 68 for women's worth, 71 middle-class, 5 - 6 , 39, 94, 109, 125, 135, 199,218,223,291 values, 128, 136, 183,292 Millais, Sir John Everett, 211 Ophelia, 212,219, 231 (fig.) Miller, Henry, 275

340 Miller, J. Hillis, 3 Milton, John, 156, 167 mise en abyme, 11, 138, 140, 260, 280 misogyny, 5, 130, 207 mistress, kept, see kept mistress modernism, 2 Moodie, Susanna, Life in the Clearings, 210-211,213-214, 220-222 Moreau, Gustave, 158 Moreau, Jean-Michel, 99 Morris, William, The Defense of Guenevere, 213 mother, 99, 103-108 and adultery, 106 of beauty, 235 cursed, 292 and emotion, 94, 106, 146 happy, 103 as ideal woman, 29 role of, 5, 8, 197,267 social position of, 191 untouchability of, 112 virgin, 237 virtuous, 109 Mother Douglas, 60, 63 motherhood, 91, 108 cult of, 103, 111 glorification of, 108 sanctity of, 103, 104, 110 and sexual gratification, 109 voluptuous, 103 multiculturalism, 284, 291 Murray, Fanny, 58 murder, 10, 158, 199,207,209-210,212, 217-218, 220-222, 225,285 muse, 54, 89 myth, 10, 207, 235, 278, 299, 303 ancient, 158 aristocratic, 136 bourgeois, 253-254 as history, 11, 253 sex as, 255 mythologies, 2, 3, 11, 54, 90, 239, 240, 253-254, 293 Nattier, Jean-Marc, 98 narrative cinema, 241 frames, 208-210,213-214 pattern, 217-218 technique, 10, 208, 213, 256, 259 narrator, 207, 262, 264, 270, 274,279 female, 269-270, 272-273 first person, 262, 269, 275, 279

Framing

Women

gendered, 257, 259,269 male, 263, 265, 275, 279 unreliable, 208 natural order, 290 nature in opposition with culture, 94, 192, 253-255,297,314 necrophilia, 154-155, 158, 162, 163 New Woman, 191 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 234, 266 Noether, Emmy, 191 norms, 251; see also values body, 297 bourgeois, 144 cultural, 1 disciplinary, 255 feminine, 127, 132, 139, 143, 145 feminization of, 146 historical, 128 male, 129, 139, 140 middle-class, 135 patriarchal, 125, 145 Restoration, 128-130, 132, 134 of sensibility, 134, 136, 142, 144 sentimental, 128-130, 132, 135 sexual, 128 nude boy, 160 female, 98, 162, 169, 239 hermaphroditic, 160-161, 170 object of desire, 98, 295 O'Brien, Nelly, 58, 66, 84 (fig.) O'Connor, Flannery, 233-234 Oedipus, 291-292 onanism see masturbation one-sex-model of sexual difference, 27-28, 144; see also two-sex-model Ophelia, 212, 129, 231 (fig.) order cosmic, 267 familial, 111 natural, 290, 314 patriarchal, 314 social, 111,296,310 symbolic, 296 orgasm, 29, 109 female, 28, 219 oriental novel, 69 pearl, 69 woman, 67 Original Sin, 27-28 'Other', the, 45, 144, 211, 239, 264, 312, 314

General Index palimpsest, 240; see also iconotext Paradise, 27, 156, 167,213 paratext, 10, 209-213, 261, 269, 274-276 pastiche, 208 Patmore, Coventry, "The Angel in the House", 131 patriarchal authority, 145 culture, 147, 312 dominance, 293 economy, 90, 96 frames, 13 ideology, 5, 1 2 , 9 2 , 9 4 , 111-112, 13B, 143, 1 4 5 , 2 9 0 , 3 1 6 leadership ideology, 290 marginalization of women, 127 norms, 125, 145 notions of femininity, 4, 313 order, 314 'other', 312 oppression, 8, 125, 147 power, 311 structures, 45, 112, 290 right, 95 society, 8 , 2 8 , 200,313 structures, 200, 283 supremacy, 145 system, 192 world, disintegrating, 112 patriarchy, 1 3 , 2 9 3 , 2 9 6 , 3 1 6 penis, 27, 167; see also phallus and male sexual organ penitentiary, 35, 210, 222; see also prison Perceval, 235, 238 performance of femininity, 71 perfomativity of the self, 308 phallic object, 45, 169 symbolism, 215, 302 phallogocentrism, 40, 271 phallus, 28; see also penis and male sexual organ naked, 160, 167 plastic surgery, 316 Playboy Magazine, 299 Pliny, 67, 68 Poe, Edgar Allan, 221 Poliakoff, Stephen, Blinded by the Sun, 192, 196 political, 252-254, 259, 278 authority, 94 influence, 291 interests, 254 power, 68, 270-271

341 project, 291,312 radicalism, 126 right, 112 situation, 251 polygamy, 142 Pope, Alexander, 1 Rape of the Lock, 9, 152-154, 162-164, 166-170, 172-173, 182-184 (figs.) popular culture, 64, 279, 299 pornographic discourse, 45 films, 45, 279 magazines, 277, 279 representation, 46, 91 pornography, 45, 48, 261-262, 274 post-feminist, 11, 255 postmodern, 279 art, 10 culture, 13 film, 12 genre, 2 media, 5,12 period, 2, 9 text, 1 0 - 1 1 , 2 3 4 - 2 3 5 , 2 3 8 theories, 296 postmodernism, 1, 9, 252, 277-278, 313, 315 postmodernist paradigm, 234 post-structuralism, 241, 254, 256, 277 power, 28, 141, 160, 172, 224, 232, 290 and the body, 31 Off. and discourse, 5, 296-297, 308 economic, 67 erotic, 270 exchanges of, 296 female, 139, 161 and hair, 269ff. ideological, 209, 270 and knowledge, 209-210 and love, 128, 134 lust as, 267 male, 4 , 4 5 , 96, 139, 145 abuse of, 135 moral, 142 of nature, 191 -oriented behaviour, 128 patriarchal, 290,311 political, 270 positions of, 197, 290 relations, 13, 241 representational, 7, 271, 261, 272, 296 resistance to, 296 sexual, 68 social, 314

342 and subjectivity, 312 supernatural, 33, 271 tempation of, 136 tender, 132 and violence, 271 of virtue, 133 Prada, Juan Manuel, 1 2 , 2 5 1 , 2 6 9 Conos, 260, 268, 273-280 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 159, 211, 222 prison, 211,222; see also penitentiary private sphere, 145-146, 310 prostitute, 5, 6, 29, 31-35, 39-40, 43, 46, 48, 58-60, 63-65, 289; see also bawd, courtesan, harlot and whore prostitution, 34-35, 57, 59 psychiatry, 208, 218, 223, 225 public body, 278 discourse, 42, 309 display, 66, 112, 263,271 identity, 32 image, 56 imagination, 310 life, 54, 197 power, 67 and private, 54, 63, 145, 192 reputation, 198 spectacle, 54 sphere, 145-146 woman, 56, 64 purity, 69, 138, 167, 278 Queen Elizabeth I, 146 Queen Guenevere, 213-214 Queen Victoria, 29, 44, 219 queer, 12, 283; see also homosexuality and gay racism, 289, 293 Radcliffe, Ann, Mysteries of Udolpho, 199 Raimondi, Marcantonio, Woman with Dildo, 3 , 2 0 (fig.) rake, 58-59, 129,218, 230 (fig.) reformed/reformation of, 131-137, 139-140 woman as, 28-30, 132 Ramsay, Allan, 33 Ranson, Paul, Bathing Place, 240 Raoux, Jean, 98 Raynal, Abbe de, 256 rape, 9, 29, 140, 154, 162-164, 168-169, 171-172, 182-187 (figs.) as metaphor, 162ff.

Framing

Women

reality, 7, 13, 146, 191, 256, 260, 295 appearance and, 165 multiple, 315 questioning of, 297, 315-316 social, 147 virtual, 2, 2 9 7 , 3 1 5 - 3 1 6 religion, 5, 219-220 Rembrandt, 11, 89 Bathsheba, 239-240, 245 (fig.) Hendrijke Bathing, 239, 246 (fig.) Renaissance, 2-4, 12, 100, 160, 195, 240 Renoir, Auguste Female Half Nude in the Sun, 240, 248 (fig.) Young Bather, 240 representation of biological sex, 12, 279 crisis in, 3 15 and gender, 12 of lesbians, 44-45 of male sexuality, 303 pornographic, 4 6 , 9 1 race and, 7 of sexual organs, 279 sexualised, 103, 107, 305 Restoration, 143 comedy, 46, 128, 134, 137 coquette, 130, 132 heroines, 128, 134 immorality, 128 libertinism, 127, 134 norms, 128-130, 132, 134 thinking, 129-130, 139 upper class, 128 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 7, 53, 56, 61-71, 74 Kitty Fisher, 62ff., 82 (fig.) Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra, 67ff., 85 (fig.) Kitty Fisher as Danae, 66ff., 83 (fig.) Richardson, Samuel, 126 Pamela, 8 - 9 , 57-58, 125, 127, 133, 136-143 Ripa, Cesare, 54 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 211-212 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 30, 265 Emile, 90 Julie, ou La Nouvelle Helo'ise, 90, 96, 108-109 Rowlandson, Thomas, 160 Six Stages of Mending a Face, 53—54, 79 (fig.) Royal Academy, 7, 89, 92 Rubens, Peter Paul, 89

General

Index

Sade, Marquis de, 4, 45 Justine, 256 Salome, 9, 154-163, 169-173, 177 (flg.), 180-181 (figs.) Santa Agueda, 265 Satan, 28, 156, 167; see also devil satire, 65, 167, 190,218 Schongauer, Martin, 2 science, 190, 192, 195, 197 vs. belief, 192, 201 and ethics, 197 female approach to, 196, 198, 201-202 feminist epistemology of, 10, 191-192 fiction, 190-191 history of, 200 holistic approach to, 199 men's control over, 9, 190, 192 and politics, 195-196, 201 popularization of, 192 of psychiatry, 208, 218 . women in, 9-10, 189ff. Scott, Sir Walter, The Lady of the Lake, 219 sensibility, 8, 55, 125ff. cult of, 111 as domestication of women, 126, 135, 137ff. female, 127ff. and feminization, 8, 126ff., 141 ff. male, 96 and tears, 141 sentimental ballad opera, 125 celebration of domesticity, 29, 135 comedies, 8, 127 construction of femininity, 127 domestic tragedy, 146 drama, 8, 126 emotionality, 130, 145-146 feelings, 57 fiction/novel, 126-127, 143 gender roles, 138 literature, 127, 129, 143, 146 view of marriage, 130, 135, 142 movement, 34 norms, 128, 130, 132, 135, 140 sexual ethic, 134 tableau, 159 tears, 41 virtues, 57, 133-137, 142-147 sex biological, 11-12, 29, 253-259, 267279 and body and pleasure, 313 change, 278

343 commercial, 31 crimes, 278 discursive construction of, 254-257, 273, 276, 279 and gender, seperation between, 11-12, 253-259, 278 industry, 277 and oppression, 30 restrictions of, 40 sexism, 208, 301 sexual act, 29, 33, 46, 69 adventures, 40 ambiguity, 168 appeal, 55, 96, 104, 106, 107, 297 arousal, 29 business, 58,66 charisma, 61 charms of the virgin, 99 conquest, 165 contract, 89, 95, 112 desire, 57, 112, 222 difference, 27, 316 one-sex-model of, 27-28, 144 two-sex-model of, 8, 27, 125, 144145 division of labour, 146 double standard, 143 drives, 31 economy, 98 ecstasy, 99, 101 ethic, 134, 142, 145 exhaustion, 102 fantasies, 69 favours, 221 gratification, 109 harrassment, 139-140 identity, 287 invitation, 110 liberation, 58 liberties, 54 licentiousness, 129-130 magnetism of hair, 165, 220, 268-269 marker of femininity, 97 marker of masculinity, 12 metaphor, 66, 96 morality, 48 norms, 128 object, 103, 112 organ, 278, 280 female, 238, 273, 275, 276 male, 270-280; see also penis and phallus pleasure, 33, 101, 109, 241,313

344 politics of the, 279 power, 68 practices, 29, 45 problems, 218 prowess, 103 purification, 30 response, 100 restraint, 29 self-determinism, 71 surrender, 165 transgression, 216-217 sexuality, 91, 259, 260 adolescent, 288 bi-, 161 discourse on, 312-313 and family, 112 female, 6, 57, 102-103, 262, 265, 267, 302 dangerous, 3, 6, 27, 313 exotic, 69-71 illicit, 213 lesbian, 45 and love, 129, 140 male, 303-305 and marriage, 128-129, 140 and morality, 140 promiscuous, 40, 58 and reputation, 6, 28 suppression of, 215 taboo of, 112, 285-286 Victorian, 29, 219-220 and violence, 207 sexualized bodies, 297 representations, 103, 107, 112, 300, 303, 3 0 5 - 3 0 6 , 3 1 1 - 3 1 3 sexualization of male gaze, 97 of maternity, 109 Shakespeare, William, 33, 195, 219, 222, 283-284, 291 Hamlet, 12, 285-286, 289, 291-292 Henry IV, 12,286-287, 289 Macbeth, 286 The Tempest, 190 Timon of Athens, 288-289 Shaw, George Bernard, Mrs Warren's Profession, 191 Sheherazade, 225 Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, 9, 190-191, 197 Shelley, Percey B., 159 Sherman, Cindy, 5 - 6 , 24 (fig.) Siddal, Elizabet, 211-214

Framing

Women

simulation, 315 'Sleeping Beauty', 100 snake, 155, 215 social Darwinism, 12, 290 classes, 40 codes of femininity, 297, 316 contract, 94, 97-98, 112 control of women, 41, 310-311 conventions, 110 hierarchy, 212, 217 history, 126 institutions, 126, 135, 140 liberties, 54 order, 111,296,310 position of mother, 191 power, 314 promiscuity, 40 reality, 147 reputation of women, 29 rise through marriage, 92, 137 rules, 44 sodomy, 29, 43 Spectator, The, 32, 134, 145; see also Addison spectator, 71, 74, 90, 106, 107, 109; see also beholder and viewer female, 109, 189 male, 92, 96-97, 103, 110, 240-241 spinster, 92, 196 Stendhal, 159 Stephenson, Shelag, An Experiment with an Air Pump, 10, 189-190, 196-201 Sterne, Laurence, 275 Tristram Shandy, 279 Stone, Lawrence, 7, 132 Stoppard, Tom, 10 Arcadia, 192, 1 9 5 - 1 9 7 , 2 1 3 - 2 1 4 Hapgood, 191 Indian Ink, 213 subculture of gamers, 295 grotesque, 160 homosexual, 29 subjectivity, 192, 195,296,312 Sumner, Jane, 58 surveillance, 48, 312 Susannah and the Elders, 215-217, 229 (fig·) Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels, 190 swooning, 101, 139 sylph, 163-164, 167-168 symbolism, 5 4 , 2 8 9 , 3 1 1 phallic, 215

General Index taboo, 40 on adultery, 106 on motherhood, 104, 106, 109 of sexuality, 47, 112, 262, 266, 2 7 8 279,285 incest, 285 technophoria, 309 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 190 Thompson, Edward, 72 Tintoretto, 240 Tomb Raider, 13, 295, 297, 300-304, 306 Tooker, George, The Chess Game, 5, 23 (fig.) transgression, 27, 104, 106,200, 292 sexual, 216-217 transgressive, 111 bodies, 2 9 7 , 3 1 2 desires, 104, 292 transvestite, 43^14, 278 ; see also crossdressing trauma, 209, 219, 225 travesty, 4 3 ^ 8 , 271 Trevisani, Francesco, The Banquet of Cleopatra, 70-71, 86 (fig.) trompe I'ceil, 63, 166 two-sex-model of sexual difference, 8, 27, 125, 144-145; see also one-sex-model Umbral, Francisco, 277 uncanny, the, 224 Unconscious, the, 224, 237, 269 upper-class, 128, 298 vagina, 27-28, 268, 279; see also female sexual organ surgically produced, 278 vanity, 62, 73 Velazquez, Diego, 277 Victorian author, 131 beliefs, 210 critics, 164-165 culture, 165, 2 0 8 , 2 1 2 , 2 1 4 eroticism, 215 madwoman, 219, 222 models of women, 29, 146, 221 opinions about women, 211 period, 9, 220, 223-224 sexuality, 29, 219-220 society, 217 Victorianism, 8, 143 Victorians, 161, 190, 218, 222, 223 Vien, Joseph-Marie, 98

345 viewer, 3, 53, 62-63, 66, 69, 72, 91-92, 98-99, 101, 108, 168, 172, 285, 288, 291-292, 304-305, 313; see also beholder and spectator female, 110 male, 97, 102, 103, 105, 107, 1 1 1 , 3 0 1 303 violence, 235, 286 against the body, 271 male, 2 7 1 , 2 9 1 , 3 1 3 and power, 271 and sex, 207 Virago, 171 virgin, 4, 97, 104, 2 6 3 , 3 0 7 fallen, 101 modesty, 138 mother, 237 sexual charms of, 99 untouchability of, 112 vestal, 98, 103 Virgin Mary, 237 virginity, 91, 156, 165 as commodity, 135 lost, 91, 101 virtual reality, 2 , 2 9 7 , 3 1 5 - 3 1 6 virtue, 57-58 appearance of, 166 domestic, 62, 144 female/feminine, 30, 63, 90, 129-147, 311 male/masculine, 145, 156, 311 middle-class, 128 sentimental, 57, 133-137, 142-147 Voltaire, Candide, 45 voyeuristic, 74, 99, 299 Walt Disney Corporation, 12-13, 283, 286, 291 Ward, Ned, 40 Watson, James, Nelly O'Brien, 84 (fig.) Wenham, Jane, 32-33 Wertenbaker, Timberlake, 10 After Darwin, 192, 196, 198-199 West, Benjamin, Angelica Kauffman as Pictura, 54, 81 (fig.) Western, the, 11, 233-234, 239 Western culture, 11-13, 125, 251, 268, 291, 297, 311,313 femininity, 71 literature and art, 1, 3, 13, 215, 238 thinking, 2 5 1 , 3 0 7 , 3 1 0 , 3 1 3 Wharton, Edith, 208 Whitefoord, Caleb, 66

Framing Women

346 whore, 6, 28, 31, 34, 41, 59, 63, 138, 156; see also bawd, courtesan, harlot and prostitute wife adulterous, 213 inferior position of, 130, 138-139 perfect, 30 position of, 5, 8, 28-29, 58, 126, 135, 197, 2 0 9 , 2 1 8 sentimental, 133, 142 supportive, 197 Wilde, Oscar, Salome, 9, 153-162, 173, 178 (fig.), 180-181 (figs.) Wister, Owen, 11 witch, 32-33, 36 witchcraft, 32, 221 Wittig, Monique, 254 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 133 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, 30 woman as adventuress, 299; see also Lara Croft as angel, 30, 138 asleep/sleeping, 99-103, 117 (fig.), 167 biblical representation of, 237, 240 body of, see female body as commodified object, 59, 63, 95, 135, 312-313 . constriction of, 5-6, 217 construction of, 1, 2, 12, 127, 254-257, 267, 272, 275 criminal, 207ff. dangerous, 299, 307, 314 deconstruction of, 2 discourse on, 7 discrimination of, 125, 144, 191, 201 as domestic/domestication of, 33, 137 'dream', 306 and education, 9, 30, 35, 141-142, 191, 196-197, 2 0 0 , 2 1 5 , 2 9 8 emotional side of, 94, 131, 141-142, 189, 195,222, 299,314 essential, 53 exotic, 67, 71 exploitation of, 35, 199,212, 225 'fallen', 2, 5 - 6 , 27-28, 31, 34, 36, 57, 60, 101, 135, 223 and family, 8, 90 fear of, 5, 313; see also gynophobia as fighter, 13, 304-305; see also Lara Croft Gothic, 200

and instinct, 267 kept in ignorance, 197 mad/and madness, 200, 218-224 marginalization of, 8, 10, 125, 127, 137, 189 as mysterious, 211, 214, 222-223, 225, 239,314 mythological representation of, 90, 158, 225,239-240 nature of, 9, 210-211, 267 as object of desire, 98, 295 as object of exchange, 95-96, 103, 111 objectification of, 199, 241, 262, 264, 313 oppression of, 4, 8, 30, 125-127, 147, 200, 212, 297ff. as'other', 144,211,239,314 in positions of power, 41, 67, 71, 197; see also Cleopatra powerful, 125ff„ 160-161, 298; see also Lara Croft and Salome as puzzle, 2 2 4 , 2 6 6 religious view of, 2, 237, 239 reputation of, 6, 28-29, 32, 36, 223 respectable, 57-58, 60, 64-65, 74 romantic, 304-305 in science, 9-10, 189ff. scientist see female scientist as seducer, 27, 58, 63, 66, 69, 71, 240, 303; see also woman as temptress and self-empowerment, 200 and self-representation, 7, 69, 200 in sexual ecstasy, 99, 101 as sexual object/prey, 103, 112 silence of, 5, 267 strong, 139, 221, 290, 297, 300, 311 successful, 57-58, 198,200,297, 311 as temptress, 48, 221, 239-240, treacherous charm of, 156 unemancipated, 131, 133 'unnatural', 129 Victorian opinions about, 211 virtuous, 2, 13, 29-31, 35, 56, 90, 96, 109,136 as vulnerable, 56, 96, 299, 311 womb, 27, 29, 6 9 , 2 1 9 Woolf, Virginia, 256 Orlando, 4 Wright of Derby, Joseph, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 10, 189, 206 (fig) Yellow Decade, 1, 9