Before I got on my graphic novel kick, I was reading a lot of classic works of literature. The majority of it was stuff from the European canon (so things like Don Quixote, Hamlet, the Divine Comedy, the Illiad, Life Is a Dream, Medea, and so forth) although I also read a good portion of works from India, China, and Japan with a few Native American and traditional African pieces thrown in for good measure. Some of it was good, some of it bad, some of it entirely incomprehensible because of vast cultural differences between myself and the author or authors. A lot of it, though, pissed me off.
One thing that has always bothered me–even when I still thought that the free market could solve everything and that white, male Protestants were an oppressed minority–is the way that some people view women as being fundamentally different from and less than men. This was something I thought was abundantly obvious to everyone capable of stringing thoughts together into comprehension: all people, regardless of race, gender, belief, or sexual orientation are equally capable and should be afforded equal respect and treatment in all situations. Unfortunately, this isn’t obvious to everyone else (as I discovered one year at church camp when I got into a shouting match with the youth minister who was leading my group in a devotional about what women’s roles should be in life, particularly in relation to their husbands, and ended up causing a scandal; most of the authority figures, a fair number of the males, and an unexpected number of the females at the camp sided with the minister). Unfortunately, it also wasn’t obvious to many of the writers whose work I was reading.
So I found myself in a curious position. While I recognize that Shakespeare is one of the best writers who has ever lived with any language in any culture, I have a hard time reading his plays for all the references to womanly tears, female weaknesses, and girlish fantasies. When Laertes says that he must stay the weeping woman inside of him until he can take his revenge on Hamlet for the death of Polonius and Ophelia I don’t think, “wow, that was an impassioned speech,” I think, “well, fuck you, too.”
This isn’t something peculiar to Shakespeare, though. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight contains numerous repetitions of the line that is part of this post’s title: “And I, like a woman…” Like a woman he wept; like a woman he felt fear; like a woman he was picky; like a woman he was this or that. Greek mythology is filled with fickle, fawning females; The Tale of Genji is the story of a man who runs around marrying on a whim and screwing anything that moves while the women are supposed to be polite and constrained. And don’t even get me started on the goddamn cat in the rain…
I have a problem, though: these are good stories and they are well-written (um, well, except for a few). They’re also the foundation for not only my culture, which makes them of debatable value because it’s already obvious to me that many aspects of the culture need an overhaul, but of my chosen profession. As a writer, I feel that it is necessary for me to not only know how to construct a story in theory but also how it has been done in practice over the course of the history of the written word. But by reading these works and by commenting on them as being fine examples of writing, am I not also condoning the views held therein? Do I need to preface every conversation I have about stories with the clause, “well, the writer was a misogynist pig, but…”
Some have reconciled this debate within themselves by saying that those writers of classic literature were writing from the point of view of another, less enlightened culture, and so while a speech about holding back the weeping woman inside wouldn’t be acceptable today (unless you write three hundred issues of a comic, then it’s okay) it’s acceptable for the same speech to have been written five hundred years ago. That doesn’t sit well with me; that’s not acceptable. I mean, let’s be frank for a moment: viewing feminism as some sort of modern invention akin to the internal combustion engine that couldn’t have occurred to cultures of the past is ridiculous. Human rights is not engineering; it is not math or chemistry or biology. I can understand a person thinking that the world is flat, but I don’t see how it could have occurred to someone, anyone, in any age, that one human being was less than themselves because of a difference in complexion or sexual organs. Is it so difficult to think that a man could stir a pot of beans and look after the kids while their mother went out to discuss philosophy?
Now, I know all about how in prehistoric times women stayed behind to watch the kids and gather grain and berries while the menfolk went to hunt (or at least that’s the current theory; take a quick browse through ancient history books from the last twenty years and you’ll see how this theory shifts and mutates as new evidence is found and old evidence is reexamined with women having sometimes more and sometimes less to do in prehistoric times) and how this prehistoric division of labor was accepted as normal when civilizations started sprouting up, but I still don’t see how someone wouldn’t get the idea that that might not be the best way of doing things. It occurred to our ancient counterparts that staying in one place and farming might be a better idea than wandering around hoping to find some berries.
Can I even say that? I just argued that human rights wasn’t a science to be discovered and yet agriculture is just that. I guess I find the issue of human rights to be so obvious, so basic, so completely fucking simple that I don’t understand how great minds like Valmiki and Homer could have not gotten it. Homer could write sympathetic characters from two sides of a war, but he and his culture couldn’t view people with different genitalia with empathy?
… I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know how to solve this dilemma except to, as I said, be careful with my praise and quick to acknowledge that there are things in the classics that aren’t worth absorbing.
The only other way I can think to counter this glut of misogynistic and racist literature is to produce great works of my own that value all people equally. Even there, though, I have a problem: at what point does an individual character cease to be an individual and instead becomes a symbol for a group? Or, to put it in the way that I’m thinking it, at what point in time does a female character of mine become representative of all women? At what point does an African-American character of mine become a symbol for black men and women around the world? If I write a character who is weak-willed and this character happens to be female, am I perpetuating a stereotype or am I not white-washing human nature by creating a balanced character?
I’m working on a story right now that has a lesbian as one of the main characters. She is the only lead character who is a homosexual; the only other homosexuals in the story are a gay male couple who don’t play a very large role in what happens. By having a lesbian main character and by not having a gay male as a main character am I continuing that grand tradition of male authors everywhere of having women who like to have sex with and fall in love with other women while not giving attention to, or ignoring entirely, men who like to have sex with and fall in love with other men? Or, on the other hand, am I doing the right thing by having a homosexual character in the first place and not sticking to safe territory by having all straight characters?
Elsewhere in the story is a female character who thinks about sex a lot. Am I striking a blow for women’s right to claim their own sexuality by being frank about a woman and the ways in which she thinks about sex? Or am I continuing to force women to be sexualized? Does this change if she’s not pretty? Will a conventionally unattractive woman who thinks about sex be viewed and analyzed in a different light than a woman who thinks about sex who is conventionally attractive? Am I doing something bold or am I just picking up where Sex and the City left off? Will the character be viewed in a different light if she likes to use sex toys than if she doesn’t? Do I have to create a story, as in The Hours, where women aren’t allowed to enjoy sexual contact unless it’s with another woman? (In which case, see the previous paragraph.)
I’ve noticed that some authors attempt to circumvent this problem by simply inverting the stereotypes. I think that this has mixed results. In the hands of a good writer, an intelligent and articulate woman can be a deep, nuanced character; unfortunately, too many writers create implausibly perfect female characters in an effort to make up for Shakespeare’s crap. Let me be clear, though: I don’t think that most writers are engaging in a sort of self-censorship in order to avoid some platoon of PC Police. I think that writers who try to create strong characters who are women and/or minorities are trying to create a new type of art that escapes the rampant stereotypes present in older works (and, alas, too many modern ones). I just feel that a number of these writers in turn create caricatures instead of characters. Not to pick on the movie, having not read the book, but I feel that The Hours is a good example of this type of fuck-up. I don’t doubt that the author/screenwriter was trying to create women that were nuanced and interesting but I feel that he instead created a collection of flat, boring characters whose only emotion was despair. I do not doubt that women feel despair just as keenly as men do, but The Hours seemed to me to be doing to women what all those old stories did in a different way: allowing women to only have one dimension, one emotion. If not loving devotion, then depressive disconnect. Why can’t we have both contained in a single character in a single story?
So what can be done to step out of the tradition of the writers of the past? Do we have to keep lauding their flawed works? How far does their shadow reach?.
Just be careful to let the characters be themselves, even if it seems to fall into a ‘stereotype,’ or else all your characters will be is a dedicated breaking of stereotypes, and that’s hellaciously dull and obvious to read.
Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) wrote a bit about this when he created Tina the tech writer (and her antithesis Antina) and got complaints for both. In his opinion, every character starts out as a stereotype and it’s only as they grow and become nuanced that anyone can spot any differences from the expected cliche.
Besides, is there any character anywhere who can’t be distilled to a single cliched brand? Any real human person who isn’t labeled, even if that label is incorrect?
The best thing to do is let the characters live for who they are, whatever that might be.
Is it possible you’re overthinking this? Or are you one of those femi-nazis who ruin it for the rest of us who simply live our own lives day to day?
You make a few good points here but only in a glib and passing way. Historically, it’s true, women were seen as the “weaker sex”. Perhaps that notion derived purely from our dimorphic differences — men and women have real physical differences and abilities. Perhaps it goes back to the spread of Chritianity — which stripped women of social power practically everywhere it spread. But that’s a point on which others can speculate.
The fact is that women were seen in this particular light. That fact in itself makes any of these aged literary works valid — whether or not you like that. You really can’t judge a past era with today’s eyes. This is not a trite phrase that exists solely for rationalizing or dismissing the past. This lit major’s rule of thumb serves to remind us that times change and literature is important, in part, to show us how.
Part of the problem facing women’s issues today is that women insist on believing that any woman in any public light represents all women everywhere. From politics to porn to literature, any depiction of a woman is something that reflects on all of womankind. Because of this real weakness of character, too many of us XX’s think that we should show women only as strong, admirable, competent…well the adjectives abound.
This not only overlooks our individual circumtances and interests, but also perpetuates the notion that women are weak — we are held captive by these depictions. It also implies that men (and women) are too stupid to judge individuals for who they are rather than what one writer may have thought. Some “feminists” like this kind of victimology because it places blame on others, thereby excusing themselves from taking any responsibility in fixing what’s broken (either in a public arena or a private one).
And you seem to forget that we’re still just human. While there are a great many examples, both real and imaginary, of accomplished women, a great many of us are flawed, weak fuck-ups. What’s the big deal? To pretend that women should be anything other than plainly human does a real disservice to “the cause” and to literature.
First, before I get into the nitty gritty of my response to this post – or moreover, the thoughts that were inspired, I felt the need to give a resounding ‘pfft’ to the former poster (girl) who felt the need to begin her response with the partyline anti-fem ad hominem ‘are you a feminazi or what’. I can’t even begin to rant enough about how irritating I find men or women that use that term in the manner that the poster prior to me just did, as if it’s some sort of write off to any controversial idea of feminism that doesn’t suit them just perfect. /rant off, on to my response to PDP.
“Now, I know all about how in prehistoric times women stayed behind to watch the kids and gather grain and berries while the menfolk went to hunt (or at least that’s the current theory; take a quick browse through ancient history books from the last twenty years and you’ll see how this theory shifts and mutates as new evidence is found and old evidence is reexamined with women having sometimes more and sometimes less to do in prehistoric times) and how this prehistoric division of labor was accepted as normal when civilizations started sprouting up, but I still don’t see how someone wouldn’t get the idea that that might not be the best way of doing things – PDP”
A year ago I would have said ‘Can we get an Amen!’, but at this point I have one answer to this idea (which still by the way can back up this post for the most part) – the practicality of breastfeeding. As a new mother that is breastfeeding, I’m often floored at just how big of an undertaking being the soul source of nourishment for a living breathing little being can be. I’ve had moments lately of pondering evolution and begun to wonder if breastfeeding is the answer behind why women are more generally smaller and more delicate in structure than men. While it’s said that men can breastfeed (after all, why else do they have nipples other than as a back up source of food/lactation), it isn’t the most -practical- solution to making sure the young of a species are fed. I’d write more on this – and perhaps will later if any discussion arises, but alas….I have to feed my child!
I think that if you concentrate too much on the outside of your characters and not on their insides, you won’t have any sucess building a good character. Sure, Shakespeare and all the old dead white men were racist, sexist, et al. but we don’t honor them for being these things. We honor them for creating rich narratives with deep, conflicted characters that populated them.
OK! OK! I’ve heard enough! You know what, sometimes this stigma that women are weaker is beneficial, I know a few warnings that would have been tickets if I didn’t “cry”, or if my busty friend wasn’t in the car. I know a lot of men that never would have listened to me if I had seemed to know what I was talking about right off the bat (It’s called the talking dog syndrome) So let’s face, let society view us as weak, we can use it our advantage.
I am so tired of this. It’s ridiculous!
We see a woman in power, take Hillary for example, well we all know she’s a bitch! (actually I LIKE Hillary) She’s strong, smart and forceful, but many women see her as bitchy annoying and loud. We can’t all be Donna Reed, or Hillary or Sarah Jessica Parker and why should we try to be? we ask for a woman in power, we get one and then we chastize her for being a woman in power as overstepping her bounds as a woman!
I am a human and a woman and am flawed in many ways, I know that, if you knew me you’d know that too!
Maybe we are weak, as a sex, but maybe it’s just that we can’t agree that we are all different, some of us are stupid, ugly, irritating, and some of us need to understand that THAT IS OKAY! AND NORMAL! me? i’m smart and good looking but gods am i annoying and lond winded! so, sorry if this response made no sense some women just can’t write as well others.
Maybe you’re a bit caught up in the language, rather than the character. I’m guessing just about any pre-19th century author had pretty horrifying views on women. But when you look at the female characters Shakespeare for example wrote, it also betrays a deep understanding for the women of his age. You mention Laertes, but not Ophelia or Gertrude. Yet the more I watch or read Hamlet, the more interesting they become. Go to the comedies and the women characters are almost always the equal, if not the better, of the men. I wrote a paper once about All’s Well that argued the basic Shakespearean comic structure was a pre-societal idyll in which gender and class were subverted. You’ve got cross dressing, kings leaving the palace for the forest, Rosalind teaching Orsino how to woo her, etc, etc. The comedy always ends with marriage and a return to social norms, but from the energy, inventiveness and love you find in the comedies I’ve always felt it was the genre and perhaps the world Shakespeare preferred.
Sorry to go on a bit. My point was language and metaphor-“And I, like a woman…”-aren’t the only place where an author’s sexual politics are revealed. Character, and an author’s understanding of their character, reveals a lot too. So perhaps the classics aren’t always as evil as it may seem.
You wrote nearly 3000 words, and by and large, said nothing.
Yawn….
Two warnings.
G. the M., you’ve posted twice that I’ve seen, both all insult, no content.
Girl, you used the term “femi-nazi.”
Neither of these things are tolorated on this website. I welcome opposing views; I don’t welcome insults. And if you don’t know the difference between intelligent disagreement and insults, then you don’t belong on this site.
This is the only warning – next time I’ll just ban you, or at least start deleting your posts.
Fair enough…it’s your space. Let me just pose this. The “…femi-nazis who ruin it for the rest of us…” in the opening lines expresses an idea that is contrary to the rest of the post. It’s a literary device called irony. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.
It strikes me that the two of you who complained about that one term did not take any issue with the real content I posted. Why is that?
girl,
I will most certainly respond to the content of your comment, but first a word on the “femi-nazi” thing. First, you stated that your use of the term was meant ironically but I would posit that the ironic intent was not clear. Second, thanks for being the first person to call me a femi-nazi since I started blogging here. The femscouts will finally let me have my Pink Fascist merit badge! Well, unless the ironic intent invalidates the charge…
More seriously…
The fact is that women were seen in this particular light. That fact in itself makes any of these aged literary works valid — whether or not you like that. You really can’t judge a past era with today’s eyes.
It is my contention that it is impossible to judge the past with any eyes but the present’s. Let me ask you this, though: why shouldn’t stories be viewed through today’s eyes? We aren’t reading them in the past; we are reading them, absorbing them, and applying them in the present.
I’d like to point out real quick, though, that I never claimed that these past literary works were invalid. In fact, I made a point of mentioning that I considered these works to be great works of art. My problem with them lies in the fact that they portray women in a way that is demeaning to women; this does not mean that people should stop reading Homer, or that Shakespeare is invalid, but rather means that I’m wary of treating them as unqualified masterpieces that should be taught to people as some of the finest forms of thinking the human race has produced.
My other problem is that there doesn’t seem to be much discussion, particularly in schools, about the ways in which women are portrayed in the “classics.” It is assumed that because they are the classics, because they are well-crafted, that they are beyond criticism and discussion and should just be absorbed. My post was meant not to dismiss works of literature but to express my frustration that few seem to have considered if the ways in which women and minorities were depicted in past works of art changes the way in which they should be interpreted, should be taught, and should be viewed.
As I mentioned, I think the argument that the authors were writing from an unenlightened era isn’t a very good one, but part of that is predicated on my belief that while one should keep in mind the situation in which a work was created one cannot view it but through the lens of today. On that issue we may just have to agree to disagree.
This lit major’s rule of thumb serves to remind us that times change and literature is important, in part, to show us how.
You make a good point here (if I were being snarky I’d be tempted to say that you made it in a glib and passing way, but instead I’m just feeling passive-aggressive). Literature is a valuable way to measure the way in which the world has changed. I am not in any way advocating for the censorship of these works because I believe them to be valid works of art that are worthy of study partly because they show how times have changed.
However, the literary canon should not consist entirely of works that view women as being weak. How can one see how times have changed when the literary canon consists almost exclusively of works by men who viewed women as lesser creatures?
Part of the problem facing women’s issues today is that women insist on believing that any woman in any public light represents all women everywhere. From politics to porn to literature, any depiction of a woman is something that reflects on all of womankind.
I find it funny that you level this as a criticism against my post since this very question was actually brought up in my post. In fact, this was basically the point of the entire latter half of my post: when viewing a work, and when creating a work, at what point in time does “a woman” become “women”? I don’t know the answer to that question. Should I take it from your response that you think the answer is “never”?
Because of this real weakness of character, too many of us XX’s think that we should show women only as strong, admirable, competent…well the adjectives abound.
Again, I addressed this…
This not only overlooks our individual circumtances and interests, but also perpetuates the notion that women are weak — we are held captive by these depictions. It also implies that men (and women) are too stupid to judge individuals for who they are rather than what one writer may have thought.
But it isn’t just “one writer.” It’s a few hundred writers who happen to be viewed as the cream of the crop so far as humankind goes. The idea that happens to be common to most of this cream of the crop is one that happens to have been used to oppress whole groups of people.
Some “feminists” like this kind of victimology because it places blame on others, thereby excusing themselves from taking any responsibility in fixing what’s broken (either in a public arena or a private one).
Again, I already talked about how to fix this problem. I wrote at length about how I felt that writing new, non-sexist stories was a way of working to bring balance to a literary canon that currently projects and image of men as great and women as weak. I don’t see how my wanting to fix the problem, proposing a solution, and working toward making that solution is a way of abdicating responsibility.
And you seem to forget that we’re still just human. While there are a great many examples, both real and imaginary, of accomplished women, a great many of us are flawed, weak fuck-ups. What’s the big deal? To pretend that women should be anything other than plainly human does a real disservice to “the cause” and to literature.
I feel as though writers are currently in a bind by which writing weak characters who belong to a group that is traditionally viewed as being weak can be, whatever the noble intentions behind the act, perpetuating the stereotype that that group is weak. On the other hand, refusing to write characters from this group who are weak can create characters that are flat and this in turn does damage to the work in question.
My opinion on this conflict is that one should be careful how one writes characters from groups that are traditionally viewed in a single way and have had that way used to oppress them. Your opinion seems to be that writers shouldn’t worry about this because people are smart enough to figure things out on their own.
Fair enough. I don’t think, though, that the literary canon is presented as something that should be taken in context. They’re consistently referred to as classics that can and should apply to all people in all eras. How many times have you heard the phrase “a timeless classic”? I feel that the literary canon is viewed as a body of work that is off-limits to criticism of sexism and racism because of its age and supposed greatness. I think that this view of the invulnerable classics affects the way in which people think about their contents. People are less likely, I feel, to question the justice of views put forth in a work of literature when they have been told that this work of literature is perfect in every way. Add this to the fact that people know shockingly little about where, when, why, and by whom their stories were written and it seems to me that the transmission of shamefully incorrect and dangerous views is made much more likely. There’s my rub.
Craig,
You said: My point was language and metaphor-“And I, like a woman…”-aren’t the only place where an author’s sexual politics are revealed. Character, and an author’s understanding of their character, reveals a lot too. So perhaps the classics aren’t always as evil as it may seem.
I have two things in response to that… One is that, yes, the characters that an author creates do reveal more about his sexual politics than possibly his language does. Shakespeare did, yes, create female characters were wittier than men were. Still, he had his fair share of sexist moments and comments; also, he’s one man out of a canon of hundreds. His being more nuanced in his view of women hardly abdicates the other authors.
However, I think that language and metaphor is a problem not so easily dismissed. In the same way that calling someone a pussy is perpetuating a stereotype by way of metaphor, so too can the metaphors in stories be used to perpetuate sexism. Calling someone a sissy girl still portrays the view that women are weak whether that insult is slung two, twenty, or two-hundred years ago.
Also, specifically referring to Shakespeare: even his women referred to their weak female wills. Not all of the comments can be ironic. Let us also not forget that comedies are often about upsetting the natural balance of things and doing the forbidden. Let us also not forget that all of Shakespeare’s comedies ended with things returned to their natural orders with kings in their castles and women in their dresses (and married to boot).
Kim (basement variety!),
First, I think your alias is great. It’s the exclamation mark that really tips it over the edge into wonderfulness. And no, I don’t think that’s a word.
You said: As a new mother that is breastfeeding, I’m often floored at just how big of an undertaking being the soul source of nourishment for a living breathing little being can be. I’ve had moments lately of pondering evolution and begun to wonder if breastfeeding is the answer behind why women are more generally smaller and more delicate in structure than men. While it’s said that men can breastfeed (after all, why else do they have nipples other than as a back up source of food/lactation), it isn’t the most -practical- solution to making sure the young of a species are fed.
Your point is very valid and very well-taken. I had actually taken it as a given in my post that women would, in prehistoric times, at least, be a child’s primary caregiver while that child is breastfeeding. It’s the most practical and most natural. My point about why the men can’t stir the beans while the women talked philosophy was meant for when the children no longer have to take their nourishment directly from their mother’s body. A man is just as capable of feeding a three-year-old as a woman is.
PDP,
Actually Bean and Amp and I were chatting about it over Settlers of Katan. It seems they make the very same point that you do, that ‘in the meantime…’ the males certainly had things that they would occupy their time with. I expect one or the other will pop into this conversation addressing that very issue due to the glossing over that I’ve done, that they feel merits some correcting (pfffft, I say!) and further clarification.
I also was thinking about the Shakespeare – what about Much Ado About Nothing – in which there is lots of sexism but also very strong and clever women. Someone brought up Ophelia and Gertrude, I’d have to add a hat tip to Beatrice as well.
I’m just going to add that sometimes in literature you see the author both as transcending his own time and still stuck in it–I’d add More’s Utopia and other writings and Plato’s Republic for their views of women that can in some ways be classified as feminist and in some ways anti-feminist. It’s kind of like how in The Merchant of Venice Shylock is both the stereotypical mercenary Jew and the tragic figure–like some spark of God can float through great writers’ unconciousnesses and cause them to empathize. Or else it’s just that while great writers may tolerate the usage of the mores of their culture in their writing, they can’t tolerate stereotyped, one-dimensional characters.
it’s interesting to me that i should come across this discussion now; a parent of a high school in my area is suing the school district because they won’t remove the adventures of huckleberry finn from the curriculum, which she says is racist and offensive. this is, of course, not a new debate and one that seems to crop up repeatedly every few years. speaking of shakespeare, a similar argument arises periodically over the depiction of jews in the merchant of venice and the use of violence against the lead female character in the taming of the shrew. it’s one of those situations where i’m afraid there are no easy answers, but i would agree that censorship is not one of them. it’s good that you feel an impulse to respond creatively. however, i believe that narratives out of history, whether introduced as fiction or not, rather have a life of their own — even those that contain egregious lies and calumny. even mein kampf has its place in literature [i must say that among other charges against it, it is simply a dreadfully boring book]; we would do well to instruct ourselves in the ways of thinking that we set ourselves against, intellectually, philosophically, or morally.
Maureen, way to bring up the Republic since that’s what I was thinking of throughout reading PDP’s post. Also on Shakespeare, don’t forget Macbeth, which is one of my favorite plays of all time, but always bugs me kind of that Macbeth is all good and noble until Lady Macbeth drives him toward evil. Kind of like how I love the Oresteia but have to cringe when reading The Eumenides when Athena explains how a child is not really his mother’s kin since she’s merely carrying the father’s seed. Even though the whole of The Eumenides is undeniably awesome.
Anyway, this seems to just be a lot of stuff, not much more to add than that. It’s late. I go to bed soon.
I’ve heard of irony, girl. Frankly your post was poorly executed enough that your themes didn’t come through clearly, thus rendering the irony difficult to detect. As to the term “feminazi,” I have nothing to say; but as I do take issue with the actual content of your post, I’ll just start at the beginning.
“You make a few good points here but only in a glib and passing way.” As far as I can tell, you never actually specifically mention what these good points are. Why, then, is this sentence here at all? Why is it at the beginning of a paragraph about the possible reasons women have been seen as the weaker sex?
“Perhaps it [the view of women as the weaker sex] goes back to the spread of Chritianity [sic] — which stripped women of social power practically everywhere it spread.” What social power was it, exactly, that women were stripped of? The Norse society made most of its money from trading women as sex slaves. To Hebrews, a woman was the property of her father, and then her husband, although she could be rented out pre-marriage for a fee. Islam requires (this is in the Koran and not just a modern fundamentalist fashion, if I remember correctly) its female followers to cover their faces and bodies in public. How old is the Chinese practice of footbinding? I suspect it predates the spread of Christianity to that particular corner of the globe. Many African tribal societies practiced polygamy, but only one allowed a woman to have more than one partner, and that one was more of a sharing one’s wives kind of culture than a woman having any social or sexual bargaining ability herself. I hardly think the spread of Christianity is to be blamed for women’s lack, or loss, of social power.
“The fact is that women were seen in this particular light. That fact in itself makes any of these aged literary works valid.” Valid in what way? That they give us a view of what people, or at least the privileged people who could write, were thinking about and how life was lived during a certain time period? Certainly, they’re valid in that sense; but that’s considering them as historical artifacts, not as works of literature. Literature, as I understand it, exists to do two things: act as a force for social change, and express truths about the human condition. When literature goes with status quo, or makes a statement about humanity that is not true (women are cowardly, for example), it voids its status as literature and becomes instead a text that is valuable only in showing the way things were at a certain time period, or a literary form and style of execution.
“You really can’t judge a past era with today’s eyes.” If I judged a past era with today’s eyes, then it *would* be Tess of the D’Urberville’s fault that she got pregnant, and, for that matter, that she was raped; I would assume the Montagues and the Capulets were black families; and the Trojan war would have been completely justifiable on the part of the Greeks because one of their most impressive monuments (their queen) had been taken from them. Again: literature exists to ask the question, How could things be different? Literature doesn’t view its own time through it’s day’s eyes, so why should we? When we’re reading *Medea,* we’re not supposed to be siding with Jason and thinking Medea is, like all women, a hysterical conniving bitch; Euripides constructed the play carefully so that its audience and readers *wouldn’t* view his time through that time’s eyes.
“This lit major’s rule of thumb serves to remind us that times change and literature is important, in part, to show us how.” I’ve been studying literature at the college level for four years now, and while I have heard that phrase, which, I’m sorry, *is* trite (although I would argue that it’s overly simple, period, and hasn’t just been rendered so by overuse), I have never once been told by any literary tome or literature instructor that “you really can’t judge a past era with today’s eyes” is a rule of thumb or even a viable suggestion. With history, I could understand it being so. But again: literature doesn’t deal exclusively with the way things are in a certain time period. Quite the opposite: literature’s primary purpose is to imagine the way things *could* be. It’s that ability to imagine things as different than they are that allows humans, and thus literature, to say, Hey, this isn’t okay, it could be better, we should change this and we *can.* That’s what literature is FOR.
“Part of the problem facing women’s issues today is that women insist on believing that any woman in any public light represents all women everywhere.” We do? I wasn’t aware that women had that problem. Either way, it’s irrelevant– PinkDreamPoppies is male, and we’re not talking about any woman in any public light, we’re talking about female characters in stories. And by and large, characters in literature *are* meant to represent some set of characteristics in people as a whole. One of the themes of *Hamlet* is that people are always under an incredible amount of pressure to follow whatever they’re told to follow. This wouldn’t be apparent at all if the reader didn’t understand that what applies to Hamlet and Ophelia (each of whom take a different course as far as listening to counsel is concerned, and each of whom suffer the consequences of their respective decisions) *also applies to every human in the world.* If anyone listens to everything she is told all the time, and tries to follow all of it, she will go crazy, because it’s impossible. The only way to retain sanity is to follow your own course, but if you do you may well become so isolated and at odds with other people that you doubt your sanity anyway. Hamlet is a main character, and as such the story is designed, as all stories are designed, so that we feel empathy with him. How can we not? We’re pretty much stuck inside of him. And, feeling empathy with him, we understand that what is true for him is also true for us, and by extension, anyone.
“From politics to porn to literature, any depiction of a woman is something that [women think] reflects on all of womankind.” Again, PDP is male, so this is kind of irrelevent. Nevertheless, I will point out that, as far as mass media are concerned, this is absolutely the case. That’s why *Self* magazine tells you that *you* (meaning, any woman who looks at it) that you can have those killer abs.
“Because of this real weakness of character, too many of us XX’s think that we should show women only as strong, admirable, competent…well [sic] the adjectives abound.” I’m assuming from the context that the “weakness of character” to which you’re referring is women’s alleged tendency to see females in the public view as representative of females as a whole. Even if women did, by and large, think this, and I don’t think they do, and even if thinking so is incorrect, which I don’t think it is, is a mistaken opinion congruent to a weakness in character? Very harsh.
And maybe it’s true, maybe women do feel it’s necessary to show women only as basically good, together people. To be frank, from the literature I’ve read in my lifetime (which is an amount large enough that I’m willing to make a generalization based on it), we could sure use the help, because the numbers are against us. The number of female main characters in literature (romance novels and that career-girl Sex-in-the-City-type crap don’t count) is shamefully small. The number of female main characters who aren’t foolish or stupid or incapable of logical thought is even smaller. The number of female main characters who aren’t foolish and who aren’t in need of a stronger male character to validate them is smaller still. Et cetera, et cetera. It’s perfectly true that real-life women are, by and large, equally as fucked up or together as real-life men. But that’s not what you’d believe if literature was all you had to go from. And since literature’s *whole purpose* in the first place is to (to steal a phrase from a ridiculous and charming ABC miniseries) “teach us how to live, and why,” this severe lack of capable, sane female characters begs the question: how many times does the main character in a story have to be male and not female, what proportion of male main characters to female main characters in stories does it take, before people start believing that women aren’t capable of being or aren’t meant to be or can’t succeed as main characters?
“This [women’s need to portray female characters as strong and competent] not only overlooks our individual circumtances and interests, but also perpetuates the notion that women are weak — we are held captive by these depictions.” If I’m understanding this correctly, you have two different ideas in this sentence. One, you’re saying that portraying women as always being strong will create a societal expectation that women will always be strong, and will thus punish the women who have interests other than being strong and competent. Two, if women write a lot of strong female characters and not a lot of weak or flawed ones, people will think that women have to give themselves constant encouragement to suck it up; that is, that a lot of strong literary characters will be evidence that women are compensating for some lack in their nature. The first argument is plausible, but I think we’ve got a long way to go against the current and a lot of very tough female characters to write before that becomes a problem. (Incidentally, I wouldn’t call being being weak, un-admirable, and incompetent an “interest,” exactly.) The second argument is so ridiculous as to be nonsensical. Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you were saying.
“It [the alleged state of women thinking it’s necessary only to write strong, admirable, and competent female characters] also implies that men (and women) are too stupid to judge individuals for who they are rather than what one writer may have thought.” A lot of people ARE too stupid to judge individuals for who they are rather than what one writer (or photographer, or corporation, or religion, or parent) may have thought. This is called “prejudice.” It’s the reason authors allow things like “and I, like a woman, was afraid” into the mouth of a character who is otherwise perfectly empathetic: the author is prejudiced, and believes what his or her mother or boss or newspaper or fashion magazine has told him is true about women rather than bothering to judge individual women on their individual merits.
“Some ‘feminists’ like this kind of victimology because it places blame on others, thereby excusing themselves from taking any responsibility in [sic] fixing what’s broken.” It’s victimology to believe that some people are prejudiced? Or is it victimology to make a deliberate effort, or feel the moral obligation to make a deliberate effort, to write characters that defy prejudices and stereotypes? And even if it is, again, you have a very harsh judgment of people who hold the “wrong” opinion: by putting quotation marks around the word “feminist,” you imply that people who partake in such “victimology” are not, in fact, feminists at all, as though holding a mistaken opinion can somehow void their right to use the word to describe themselves.
“To pretend that women should be anything other than plainly human does a real disservice to ‘the cause’ and to literature.” Exactly. And that’s why we need a lot of strong, competent, admirable female characters. Because so far that’s a brand of female who is grossly underrepresented in literature. Does every female written need to be strong, admirable and competent? I don’t think PDP was suggesting that was the case; I think he was merely commenting the difficulty of creating characters whose humanity shines through all of the many different categorizations they might fit into.
All of this, though, fails to address the three main questions PinkDreamPoppies poses, those being, a) “by reading these works [that contain sexism] and by commenting on them as being fine examples of writing, am I not also condoning the views held therein?”; b) is seeing all human beings as equally worthy an intrinsic part of humanity or is it merely a construct of our times?; and c)”at what point does an individual character cease to be an individual and instead becomes a symbol for a group?”.
To the first and second question you answer only that we shouldn’t judge works of ages past on today’s standards, so I gather that you believe seeing all human beings as human beings and thus equally worthy of regard is a modern construct. If that’s the case, I point you in the direction of the Gospels of the Bible. Not modern, and yet one of their themes is that all people are equally eligible for entry into redemption, regardless of race, class, occupation, or gender. Mary Wollenstonecraft had a lot to say, too, long before “her time,” about seeing all people (particularly women in addition to men) as human beings. Again: not modern. Are these incontrovertible proof that it’s an intrinsic part of humanity to recognize the humanity of others? Of course not. But they are proof that individuals are capable of defying what they’ve been taught, defying the eyes of their own time, to think something different. “Everyone else was doing it” is not an excuse for abominable behavior toward others, no matter when that behavior occurred.
Without directly answering PDP’s third question, you attacked him and the female gender as a whole, saying that it was a “character flaw” in those who held the opinion that any image of a person could represent the group to which that person belonged. I will take this to mean that you don’t think any image of a group’s member can be construed to represent the characteristics of every member of that group. Here I must disagree as well. Many, many images in mass media are designed, either through construction or through repetition or through omission of details, to represent a every member of a particular group. Women’s magazines construct images of women that are repetitive, aggressive, and homogenous, creating a belief in their viewers that the women in the magazines are a norm or standard to be adhered to. Despair, confusion, and a great deal of consumption on the part of the women who read such magazines frequently result. (If they didn’t result, clothing, accessory, cosmetic, and jewellery companies would stop advertising in the magazines and the magazines would fold, as the magazines’ readership is not large enough to cover their production costs.)
Literature’s characters, in particular, as I stated above, are *designed* to act as representative of a larger group than just themselves. An author holds a certain and not small amount of power over her readership, and I think PDP’s questions as to how that power might be best put to use are valid ones. Even if they aren’t, they’re not heresies for which he should be verbally crucified.
*blinks* When I started typing my comment above, PDP’s responses to girl were not yet posted.
Girl, I apologize to you and to the blog at large for any overkill on subjects PDP covered before I got there.
So what can be done to step out of the tradition of the writers of the past? Do we have to keep lauding their flawed works? How far does their shadow reach?
I think your problem may be, in part, your conflating form with content. The structure of a good story, what makes it sing to so many people, is usually thematic in nature rather than based on any specific piece of dialogue or narrative. If you write with an eye toward the universal – what makes us all human, the things we have in common as people, our hopes and dreams and fears and frustrations – you can take it from there to flesh out specific characters and their personality quirks and dialogue any way you want.
why shouldn’t stories be viewed through today’s eyes?
They can, of course, but it’s not fair to blame people for not being ahead of their time. (On the other hand, as we’re finding out more about women’s roles in medieval times – thanks, Terry Jones! – we see that by Shakespeare’s age the roles of women in English society had in fact backslid pretty drastically, so it can now be effectively argued that Shakespeare & co. weren’t “of their time” at all but in fact less enlightened than their medieval forebears had been.)
there doesn’t seem to be much discussion, particularly in schools, about the ways in which women are portrayed in the “classics.”
Really? That’s a shame. That sort of analysis was all over the place 25 years ago when I was in college. Maybe it’s just ’cause I was an English and linguistics major with a feminism minor…
always bugs me kind of that Macbeth is all good and noble until Lady Macbeth drives him toward evil.
I always saw that as Shakespeare’s take on the Adam & Eve & apple myth, Raznor.
there doesn’t seem to be much discussion, particularly in schools, about the ways in which women are portrayed in the ‘classics.’
Really? That’s a shame. That sort of analysis was all over the place 25 years ago when I was in college. Maybe it’s just ’cause I was an English and linguistics major with a feminism minor…
You were also in college. While there wasn’t as much discussion of these issues in my college classes as I would have liked, there wasn’t any discussion of them at all in my high school and middle school classes which is arguably a more important time to be having said discussions.
Elayne, interesting Macbeth theory. I never thought of it that way.
Not to nitpick, but supposing that Shakespeare was doing his take on the Adam & Eve myth, how does that make the situation any less sexist?
A very interesting discussion. I have thought a lot about PDP’s questions when reading the classics. I escaped into their world to avoid my childhood conditions, and to my despair found some of those conditions replicated there. Is human rights something dependent on our age or an eternal value? I’m not sure. Is caring and concern for other creatures an eternal value or not? In medieval Europe, parades sometimes included spectacles of tortured bears ripping apart screaming cats, and the spectators thought that this was funny. The Romans thought that watching gladiators and animals die in the arena was at least interesting, and many ancients thought that women and slaves were definitely lower breeds, perhaps not human. Does this mean that the values many of us hold today are novel?
Does history record these things correctly? Or literature?
I doubt that, very much. I suspect peole were not as cruel as they are sometimes portrayed, and I suspect that there were more strong women than the literature has left us with. But there is something that’s needed for thoughts of human rights and animal rights etc. to become expressed in a culture, and that something must somehow come alive from within the culture. Until this ingredient is present, people struggle to give expression to their arguments, trying to use concepts that don’t quite fit, applying religion or local tradition or something to the irritating itch and doubt they have about the injustices of their world. As long as the needed concepts are missing, their outrage at the injustices comes out in a different form, covered-up and distorted.
This is very convoluted writing, as I don’t quite have the concepts of what I’m trying to say, but perhaps it is that I believe the basic feeling of, say, the rights of all humans, are there, but they cannot be brought to the surface and properly verbalized until the tools have been constructed that allow us to talk about them. The past didn’t have these tools, in most cases.
But it’s also true, of course, that many people even today don’t think that other people are their equals. Shakespeare was a great writer, but he was still only a human being and only a man. There’s no need to assume that what he said about women would completely transcend the fact that his social position was different from their and that he saw them partly as human, partly as the objects of and obstacles to the satisfaction of his sexual and caring needs. And of course, we don’t know what he wrote that didn’t sell well enough for the markets of his time to eternalize.
I’m no student of literature as is obvious by now, but I have thought a lot about what girl said: that women see any one woman in the public eye as a symbol for all women, and I think that this is both true and false. It’s false in the sense that most women are well aware of the fact that women, too, are individuals, but it’s true in the sense that the society tells us so. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read or been told that what Martha Stewart or Hilary Clinton or Margaret Thatcher do is WHAT WOMEN DO, and this comment is mostly made by men, not by women.
Women are seen much more as a representative of their sex than as individuals, and this is not something feminists have invented. It’s how the system works: despite our numbers, women are a subgroup, and very often seen that way. While individual men can commit individual mistakes in the public eye, women are seen as committin woman mistakes. Feminists just accept that this is so.
This is why employed mothers and at-home mothers are at each others’ throats, as illogical as it is, because the society tells them that they are essentially the same woman, and that therefore one of them MUST be wrong in her life choices.
Not very helpful, is it PDP? Thanks for writing about this, though.
I do not deny the imbalance of the authors in the accepted canon. Nor do I think the teaching of literature everywhere is as comprehensive as it can be. There are imbalances in what works continue to be studied (or overlooked). These are the issues that need attention, not the content of the works themselves.
Yes, we question what any of these white men thought about women. But we need to take into consideration the accepted social structures of the time in which each work was written. Often, this means looking at issues from the point of view of the priveleged class. Plenty of authors (before and after Willy) were paid to create works for specific audiences. It would follow that certain themes or images would reflect the thoughts and life styles of the patrons. So yes, “that they give us a view of what people, or at least priveleged people who could write, were thinking about how life was lived during a certain time period” is an essential part of the work itself.
But can we ‘pass judgment’ on each work? Is it right to praise or condemn stories (or parts of them) simply because they offend our modern views? That’s a tough question that may not ever receive a satisfactory answer. I say no, but that’s just me. I prefer to look at each example and note how things are now different or the same. The question that follows is, “What does that say about us today?” That is the point of literary study as far as I am concerned.
This is not to deny that there were real injustices against women at any given point in history, or that those injustices were perpetuated, mocked, skewed by the likes of priveleged literate white guys. Life really was, and in some ways still is, a male dominated forum.
But that this should be (one of) the most pressing issue on creating characters to me, seems odd. But then I also have questions concerning the responsibility of the readership. Is it the author’s fault, or that of the reader, if the reader draws broad-based conclusions about whole groups based on one character in a story? I’m not sure how to read some of the above posts on this point. It seems like the agreed upon answer is it’s the fault of the author.
Now comes the argument that there is an imbalance in the types of images out there. Yes there is. Still, are we saying that people will believe what’s out there simply because there’s a-lot of it around? In my view, this seems to underestimate the intelligence of the audience. It also seems to pander to the ‘dumbing down’ mentality.
I know you are saying you want smarter writing. But it sounds like some of you are saying that people will make decisions about others based solely on what authors or mag editors put on the market. We should expect, in fact demand, more from the reader. That starts with the notion that, while many authors may present folks in the same manner, each book is still one book and the themes therein reflect the feelings of that one author. The questions the reader should ask are “What do I feel about these things? Does this work in any way reflect my own views? If so, why?”
The author’s primary goal should be to write a good story with well developed themes and characters. Whatever you write, the reader will do with it what the reader wants. This could be construed as unfortunate. I have mixed feelings on this point. But I do think we should expect intelligent thinking from the reader as well as the writer.
Yes, readers bring their own prejudices to what they read. Maybe we should expect people to get beyond those, just as we are expecting authors to go beyond prejudice. We should really be satisfied saying “some people really are too stupid?” Hell, why write anything at all?
Let me clarify something I may have said clumsily. I do think it is a personal weakness to expect that any single representation of a character reflects all members of a group. But hey, some people really are too stupid. I think there is too much concern sometimes for presenting women as super achievers, rather than real people because writers don’t want to perpetuate the notion that women are weak. On this we can agree? Kind of a Napoleon complex.
And I’m not sure I follow this…Morphienne talks about “…women’s alleged tendency to see females in the public view as a representative whole. Even if women did, which I don’t think they do, and even if thinking so were incorrect, which I don’t think it is…” So, there aren’t any women out there who think one example represents all of us, but they’d be right if they did? And if this weren’t a real issue then how did PDP get to writing the article in the first place?
About the Bible, it’s a quaint collection of short stories, which well reflect the history of the area in which they take place. One of its central themes may be that all are entitled to equality. I wonder about this. Take the women characters, for example.
One could argue that they are unfavorably represented all through the Bible. Why are so many of the Bible’s heriones whores? Ah, don’t we all love a good hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold story? And why was there not even one woman among the Apostles? In all of Jerusalem big JC couldn’t find one woman he thought worthy of the task?
I’d finish my thoughts but my friend from London called and I need to end.
An interesting difficulty, and beautifully put, PDP et al.
I have never been able to resolve this issue for myself, but I suggest that you read (re-read) Flannery O’Conner’s short stories for a sideways possible answer. She was able to write from a racist’s perspective without being racist; that is, she was able (somehow–I haven’t quite figured out how) to portray her world accurately without compromising the reader’s integrity… does that make sense?
Sort of off topic, I would also recommend to PDP especially that you read Mark Nathan Cohen’s “The Food Crisis in Prehistory” and Marjorie Shostak’s “Nisa: The Life and Times of a Kung! Woman,” for different perspectives on gender roles throughout human history and across cultures.
So what can be done to step out of the tradition of the writers of the past? Do we have to keep lauding their flawed works? How far does their shadow reach?
IMHO, we should be able to simultaneously appreciate the value they do have (as good literature) and acknowledge their flaws. I don’t think it should be dismissed out of hand because of it’s flaws, but I also don’t think we can dismiss and ignore those flaws simply because of when they were written. Those flaws need to be acknowledged and discussed, all the while still appreciating the values the work does have to offer.
I’ve been thinking about this (in a related context) a lot lately — and hopefully I’ll get around to expounding on this more. But, in short, I think this is something we will run into no matter what we are looking at, whether it be literature, art, or political figures. Take Martin Luther King, Jr., for example. Should we dismiss the great work he did in the Civil Rights Movement because he held some rather patriarchal views of women? IMO, no. However, that doesn’t mean we should ignore those flaws, either. We should be able to openly and fully discuss all aspects of a person (or work of art), both good and bad — without letting the good negate the bad, or the bad negate the good.
And even more briefly, wrt hunter/gatherer societies. Fact is, there isn’t a universal hunter/gatherer society. They varied by society and location. In some, there was a very strict division of labor, while in others the division of labor was much more lenient. In some, women never (or very rarely) engaged in the hunt, in others, it was fairly common (this most often, but not solely, depends on the type of hunting that was done). In those where women did participate in the hunting, only women who were not mothers did so. In others, mothers would also participate — even so far as bringing the babies with them.
There are a few things that are fairly common for the vast majority of these societies though:
Also, wrt breast-feeding. While there is very little (if any) documentation of men taking up lactation to help out, there is evidence that in some societies, women would breast feed each other’s babies.
Quick afterthought…
As for the expression of womanly emotions…well, that is one freedom to which women have always been entitled. Hey, we rant and cry and pout. And get away with it. Think of the subversive kind of power that really is. And men were the more stoic, logical of the sexes.
That women are sometimes portrayed as weepers can’t be inaccurate. Say what you want about what the different emotions signify…I’ll go along with that. But women really do cry and hiss more than men. Is it how we’re raised? Is it an unfair characterization? I don’t know, but science is rapidly revealing how differently men and women are wired.
So long as it’s on topic, I should recommend my cousin Elyce’s book Fantasy Girls which gives an indepth look at the portrayal of women in scifi television shows. Anyway enough of that.
girl, you’re comments seem to reflect a look at literature as an artistic tool as being more important than literature as a political tool. Entirely justifiable, but you seem to ignore that larger-than-life idealized characters pop up all the time, in both classical and modern literature and media. And for the most part, these have been portrayed as men. Which perpetuates the idea that men are more capable of overcoming human frailty than women. I see no problem with taking this as a reason for an author to center a story around an idealized woman, and still make a good story out f it.
And while we’re on the subject, I’ll say to mg that Flannery O’Conner rocks hardcore.
Just a few random thoughts:
“Classic” does not equal “perfect”, and in talking about classic works of literature one should not overlook the flaws. Nor do people do that on the whole (as far as I can tell from my admittedly limited experience), because when discussing classics questions like “is A a better writer than B”, “is play P better than play Q” or “in what way is X a more modern writer than Y” will come up at some point. And certainly with more modern authors a critique of an author’s politics and social views generally will be made. I don’t think for instance that I ever read anything about Kipling that did not refer to what was controversial about his views (or what critics thought his views were). Just because something is set forth in a great piece of literature does not mean I have to agree with it in every aspect (not that it would be possible, given that different classic writers hold different views on the same subject, indeed one writer may hold different views in different works and in some cases even within one and the same work).
Obviously one can look at any literature only through eyes of our present (although, since not all people think alike, this may mean very different things for different people even within one culture), it would be somewhat over-optimistic to think that we could in fact read William Shakespeare, Murasaki Shikibu or Homer or even Jane Austen as they were read by their contemporaries. However, I think that reading these classics can sort of open a window into the past and illustrate how ways of interpreting the world have changed over the centuries and millennia. And there of course a play like the Eumenids can be quite useful precisely because it frames an argument which from the POV of a modern reader is so unpalatable — it is a piece of evidence that in a fictional court case illustrates the shift in ancient Greek society from the primacy of matrilinear descendence (as embodied by the Eumenids) to that of the patrilinear one. Ben Jonson’s comedies demonstrate how people in his day saw human character largely determined by the mixtures of the four basic “humours” (aka temperaments, sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholy). And of course Shakespeare demonstrates tons of prejudices, not just against women, but also against Welshmen, Irishmen, foreigners in general and Frenchmen in particular, those not of gentlemanly or noble birth, children of unmarried parents etc. etc. Which is not to say that Shakespeare embodied the prejudices of his day or that there weren’t contemporaries who contradicted him (I read for instance that one of his fellow playwrights wrote a sequel to “The Taming of the Shrew” with the intriguing title “The Tamer Tamed”, although I unfortunately never read it or even a synopsis). But looking at literature can indeed show a reader how what was seen as “masculine” and “feminine” changed with the times (there are nuances between different eras as to what extent saying a man was behaving or thinking like a woman (and vice versa) was seen as insulting, and what behaviour was seen as “masculine” or “feminine” (or “mannish” and “effemniate”) and while one may condemn all of them, the differences are not without significance. (E.g. in quite a few periods it was not seen as “unmanly” to cry).
Re. “Macbeth” — here one has to take into account that it is to a large extent a propaganda piece (e.g. with the prophecy serving to praise the Stuarts (as Banquo’s descendants), i.e. the family of King James I) and one that was based on previous rewritings of history serving the winners (according to what I read, Duncan actually was killed in battle against Macbeth, and Macbeth may actually have had the better claim to the Scottish throne). But still the question remains – are we treating Lady Macbeth as a historical person who may or may not have been the dominant partner in the marriage (as apparently were, nearer to Shakespeare’s time, Isabella of Castile (and Spain) and Margaret, queen of Henry VI of England).
Morphienne: If I remember correctly, footbinding (“lily feet”) came up during the Ming Dynasty (15th-17th century A.D.). It was a practice restricted to the upper classes, a more extreme form of these standards of “beauty” that demonstrate that the person conforming to it does not do menial work. Like the pale skin fashionable for European women before the 20th century and the also at times health-hazardous corsets worn during the 2nd half of the 19th century.
Girl: but science is rapidly revealing how differently men and women are wired.
This is very debatable. Science has revealed astonishingly little about this, so far. That PET scans show differences in the areas that are lit up with certain emotions is the only piece I know about in the field. Very few PET scan studies have been done due to their expensiveness, so we don’t have any proper large-scale results on these differences.
PET scan differences don’t necessarily follow from innate wiring differences anyway. Studies of London cab drivers showed that the area of long-term memory grew in their brains when they had to do the enormous memorizing of street addresses to pass the licence test. Another recent study seems to show that juggling increases the size of the brain used for this function. And so on. IOW, we don’t know what’s innate, what’s environmental, and how the two interact. Some studies even suggest that our environment determines which gene sequences are pressed “ON” and which “OFF”. Thus, to say what is eternal and unchanging in sexual differences is something we can’t do yet.
I’d be wary of the attempts to see women as crying and hissing (?) more than men omehow ‘naturally’ for such reasons, given that among my acquaintances men hiss considerable more, and also tend to demonstrate feelings of anger much more openly than women do. Maybe today and certainly in the past this is not seen as emotional because the society is defining the way men are as the norm and the way women are as expections from that norm. It’s also true that an underling who shows anger too much is more likely to be kicked out of the organization than an underling who shows sadness too much, and given the societal rankings, women may have a very good reason to show grief more openly than anger.
Finally, ‘girl’ notes that men were viewed as the more logical of the sexes. Current tests of logical ability may not be that great, of course. However, they show men and women equally gifted in logical argumentation.
girl,
Now that you’ve restated your case a bit, I think I agree with you a bit more than I did before. You bring up some good points. I think that bean did a pretty good job of saying what I’m more or less settling on as my “answer” to this question for now: that we must view these works both as marvelous works of art and as flawed works of art. On cannot gloss over either the flaws or the skills needed to write.
I will say, though, that you may want to consider Raznor’s point about how literature is used to further political ends. This is why it bothers me so much that the canon is so homogenous and so underdiscussed in lower-level education: it shows a very small group, aka white men, as being the only ones considered worthy of adulation. I think we can both agree that this view can have long-term impacts.
I didn’t realize the goal of science is to find eternal and unchanging answers for anything, but thanks for that update.
Anger is traditionally more accepted as a man’s emotion and sadness as woman’s. That shouldn’t be news to you. But anger was seldom seen as something that interfered with one’s rational abilities. Anger and ferocity is common among the males of many species and I don’t know if it’s really that far off base to say that human males are exempt. In human society, chest beating and stick throwing becomes war, politics, et cetera…areas in which women have only recently in human history been allowed to participate and often only peripherally.
Anger seemed to go hand in hand with logic sometimes. I will crush my enemies and here’s is a complex plan showing how. Read Shakes.
Generally there are plenty of differences in the way men and women express themselves. Men tend to be fact oriented, women more attuned to subtlety. (A man will tell you his shirt is blue, a woman will say cobalt.) Men tend to speak to prove a point or relate a specific message. Women speak to connect. When married couples fight it’s often because neither knows how to communicate in the other’s lingo.
Nature, nurture. Where do they meet? I don’t know that finding answers to this is as important as accepting we have to live with the questions.
Yes, I tend to begin my analysis of literature from an artistic point of view. Whatever an author says, saying it well remains an art. I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to appreciate something just for that.
That’s one of the reasons we study the imperfect classics. Who was confusing these terms, by the way? Another is that they still contain information that is pertinent. Sometimes it’s not about noting societal changes, but in understanding the things that don’t change. Gulliver’s Travels is still discussed because humans have alwasy been egotistical, and also plenty of governments continue to throw their weight around unnecessarily.
Things become classic because what it’s about doesn’t change. A good play, the black dress, creme brulee…They hang around because we like what they provide.
Ah, crap. You can’t edit your own post? That should be “human males are NOT exempt.”
And a quick word about the words? Male an female are classifications in any species. They are biological distinctions. Man and woman are human social characterizations and it drives me bonkers when people use male/female in discussing human social relationships.
How funny. I just got this…any geeks out there? Or maybe you just liked clue a whole lot.
http://www.robinjohnson.f9.co.uk/advetnure/hamlet.html
I don’t have any real answers, really (except, maybe, study work done by women/people of color).
But I DO believe one thing—we must avoid double standards: our critiques of racism/sexism/heterosexim must be a broad enough net to encompass ALL Western culture—be it “high” or “low” (read popular) culture. All too often, cultural criticism (at least in the mainstream media) has singled out pop culture—particuarly that produced and/or consumed by people of color, young people or working-class/poor people. For example, the rap/rocker Eminen (who comes from the trailer parks, i.e. poor white people) has been attacked (and rightly so, IMHO) for misogyny and homophobic images in his songs. (and, ndeed, some cultural poobhas even say Eminen, et al should be banned on that basis) But let any feminist point out Shakessphere’s sexism/racism/classism—or that of the canon of any other DWEM (Dead White Eurppean Male)—it’s whitewashed as being from His Time at best—or she’s accused of being a Politically Correct Feminazi on the Rush Limbugh Hatefest…..
I don’t know where the devaluing of women began, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had some relationship to the frequency with which women were either disabled by pregnancy or killed by childbirth — the former because it prevents them from holding up their part of the providing burden (even if only for a few months), and the latter because it means that women often didn’t live into what we would now consider adulthood, that many men had several wives, and generally that it was hard to “get too attached” to such efemeral creatures. There was a time when so many children died in their first few years that nobody would really take even their own offspring seriously (as more than a burden or maybe amusing toy) until they were 3 or 4. It’s not so hard to imagine only offering half-serious status to a large group that had a good chance of dying by 15 or so . . .
just a speculation I’ve had lately.
“And I’m not sure I follow this…’…women’s alleged tendency to see females in the public view as a representative whole. Even if women did, which I don’t think they do, and even if thinking so were incorrect, which I don’t think it is…’ So, there aren’t any women out there who think one example represents all of us, but they’d be right if they did? And if this weren’t a real issue then how did PDP get to writing the article in the first place?”
I didn’t say there aren’t any women out there who think one example represents all of us. *You* said that *all* of them thought that: “Part of the problem facing women’s issues today is that women insist on believing that any woman in any public light represents all women everywhere.” “Women insist.” Your words. Not “some women,” just “women.”
And no, I don’t think a woman, or anyone else, would be entirely incorrect in thinking that an image of a woman presented by any kind of mass media would be taken by many people as representative of women as a group. People who are, say, black, struggle a great deal with the fact that viewers of, say, the local news constantly see images of black men being arrested for a violent crime and think that that is representative of black culture and black people. This results in statements like “well, they come from warrior societies, they’re naturally more violent,” which is just garbage.
And perhaps the constant repetition of phrases like “and I, like a woman, wept” in literature it’s taboo to question the validity of the themes of results in statements from literature readers like, “But women really do cry and hiss more than men.” Do they? *Really?* It depends on how you define “really.” In public, or in private? Because they’re just that way, or because men are mocked and beaten when they cry and hiss and women are told verbatim, “it’s okay to cry if you want to?”
Maybe that makes no difference. “Nature, nurture. Where do they meet? I don’t know that finding answers to this is as important as accepting we have to live with the questions.” Hm. Yes and no. I see your point– that there may not ever be answers, but we have to keep living while we wait– and yet this still doesn’t sit right with me. If women are treated as irrational creatures in a culture, does it matter if they’re naturally irrational or whether they’re raised to believe that hysterics and tantrums are appropriate and expected of them? (And isn’t it possible that they’re raised to believe that hysterics and tantrums are appropriate and expected because the people raising them believe that that’s what’s “natural,” congenital, in women?) Either way, individual women in that culture are limited in their power of self-determination (“I really don’t think you’re cut out for command– what if you weren’t able to deal with the grief of seeing a crewmate killed and so you really lost it at the wrong moment?”) more than their male counterparts are. So yes, we do have to live with the questions.
But we should keep in mind, *especially* in view of all the many, many exceptions to the gender “rules,” that even biological determinism’s effect is limited on the human soul, and not assume or expect or demand any kind of behavior or lack of behavior from an individual simply because they belong to a certain group.
I find describing the fact that women are seen as emotional and thus allowed to “get away” with expressing their emotions as “subversive power” is laughable at best. In cultures where logic and stoicism is valued and display of emotion is viewed as indicative of a lack of willpower and intelligence, being allowed to show emotion seems like a poor consolation prize. And it seems to me that women “get away” with expressing their emotions because they are assumed by those letting them get away with it to be creatures incapable of any other type of behavior. That’s not power, that’s prejudice.
“About the Bible, [sic] it’s a quaint collection of short stories, which well reflect [sic] the history of the area in which they take [sic] place. One of its central themes may be that all are entitled to equality. I wonder about this. Take the women characters, for example.”
I said nothing about the Bible having a theme of all people being entitled to equality. I mentioned *four* of the stories contained in *one version* (the Protestant canon) of the Bible: the Gospels. But since you brought it up, what is it, exactly, that makes the saga of the Hebrews and the development and morph of their religion “quaint” and, say, *The Odyssey* a classic?
“One could argue that they are unfavorably represented all through the Bible. Why are so many of the Bible’s heriones whores?. . . . And why was there not even one woman among the Apostles? In all of Jerusalem big JC couldn’t find one woman he thought worthy of the task?” I haven’t read all of the Bible in a very long time, so I can’t criticize you for not having read it, either, but you seem to be making a lot of critical assumptions about a text you’ve either never read or absorbed very poorly.
If I recall correctly, two of the Bible’s female characters are whores (the woman in the OT who helps two of the male characters escape from the city, and Mary Magdalene) out of a possible… I don’t know, but I’m counting at least eleven– Eve, Ruth, Naomi, Esther, Semiramis, Jezebel, Delilah, the abovementioned woman whose name escapes me, the girl who sits at Jesus’ feet to listen to his stories, that girl’s mother, and Mary (the mother of Jesus).
There are two or three female Apostles mentioned, none of them (or any other Apostles, if I remember correctly, which I may not do) in the Gospels. Perhaps you’re thinking of the twelve Disciples, who are, yes, all male. They aren’t from Jerusalem, though. Jesus is something of an itenerant hippie, and travels a great deal; he collects the Disciples from the cities and areas around Jerusalem. I don’t know why Jesus doesn’t select women to be Disciples. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, women were considered the property of of their fathers, their husbands, their brothers, or their pimps, and were not able to follow Jesus, who, as I said, is a wanderer. Or perhaps (I find this less likely, but amusing) it’s because all of the Disciples are morons, and Jesus doesn’t want to give women a worse rap than they already had.
People learn from literature just as they learn from porn, or soap operas, or school, or magazines. You say that we can extrapolate what a certain culture (group of people) was or is like from reading the literature that is in part about that culture (group of people). Is it so unthinkable, then, that a reader would extrapolate what a certain group of people are like from literature that is in part about that group?
I’m not saying that people are so stupid that they can’t overcome their prejudices or learn to recognize bad information when they see it. But there it is again: “learn.” How can someone learn to recognize that “and I, like a woman, cowered in fear” is bad information unless there is alternative evidence available? In the literary canon, there isn’t.
So what I’m saying is this: the canon needs to change. The way we discuss the canon needs to change. And until there have been a LOT of works about amazing, strong, disciplined, intelligent, passionate, driven women being everything and more than they can be and concerning themselves with more than just what it is to “be a woman” in a particular culture at a particular time, we’re not going to have the pool of works to draw from that we need to create a new canon.
Thinking about how others will view the characters in your work as being representative of the group your characters are from is a valid enterprise, because people *do* view characters as representative of the group they’re from as a whole. And this is not innately a bad thing: as I mentioned before, literature is *designed* to make this happen. But twig is right: creating characters who are true, flawed, whole human beings is the best way to go about writing literature; and showing that an individual can be an individual in spite of belonging to a misunderstood group might well be the most effective way of showing the lie of prejudice, too.
Sorry, that should read “. . . .and Jesus doesn’t want to give women a worse rap than they already have,” not “already had.”
girl–Women fought in the armies of pre-Christian Celtic societies; ever heard of Boudicca, who fought the invading Roman armies? It’s only within the last two thousand years that warfare came to be seen as an exclusively male domain (at least among the Celtic peoples of Europe, I don’t know much about the rest of the world).
Morphienne–The Twelve Apostles were chosen as Jesus’s representatives to the twelve tribes of Israel, which was a patriarchal society–hence he would have had to choose men. Yet there’s no evidence that they were the only disciples to attend the Last Supper.
You were also in college. While there wasn’t as much discussion of these issues in my college classes as I would have liked, there wasn’t any discussion of them at all in my high school and middle school classes which is arguably a more important time to be having said discussions.
Well, as I recall there aren’t a heck of a lot of substantive discussions at all in high school; college is where a lot of that stuff kicks in, because high school is (now more than ever) so damn concerned with test-passing and proper socialization and all that bullshit that the amount of actual learning going on tends to be negligible. :) So that’s why I thought you were referring mainly to college Shakespeare courses. As I recall, in my two years of high school Shakespeare classes the focus was more on how to read the language itself, and on the general themes of the plays. I know we talked a lot about how women were treated in the context particularly of Taming of the Shrew but also others (the same way we talked about the treatment of the Jewish character in Merchant of Venice and the black character in Othello), but I took so much Shakespeare through high school and college, and it was so long ago, that I may be misremembering what I learned where.
Elayne, interesting Macbeth theory. I never thought of it that way.
De nada, Raznor. It’s not hard to extrapolate stuff like that, Shakespeare was a notorious idea thief. And hey, if you’re going to swipe, you can do a lot worse than taking themes from the Bible, it’s pretty tried and true (particularly in his time, when I would guess most homes had a Bible).
Not to nitpick, but supposing that Shakespeare was doing his take on the Adam & Eve myth, how does that make the situation any less sexist?
Oh, I don’t think the sexism inherent in the “woman leads man to sin” trope is in question, but (as girl implied) to go against something like that in a religious society like Elizabethan England might have been to invite charges of heresy, and Liz might not be your patron in that case. He’s playing to the crowd and to his patron, like he always did.
Menshevik, Lis Riba talks about The Tamer Tamed here. I’ve alerted her to this post and comment section in the hopes that she’ll join in; she’s a veritable Shakespeare wiz!
I was actually in high school not all that long ago so I think I can give you a pretty good report from the ground: there isn’t a whole lot of learning going on, there could be more, and if women’s roles in anything was mentioned it was because one of the girls in the class brought it up. That’s pretty well how my college literature classes went as well, but I also never took any Shakespeare-only classes. Still, there was plenty of opportunity to discuss sexism in all of the things I read in high school and college and it never came up.
It must just be those damn kids these days. They don’t wanna learn nuthin’.
(A) Part of the reason Shakespeare’s female roles may seem so weak was because he was writing them for boy actors, who, by virtue of their age, were probably more limited performers than the adults who took the male roles. And even so, he was better than many of his contemporaries.
(B) As Elayne mentioned, John Fletcher (who coauthored some later plays with the Bard) wrote a sequel to Taming of the Shrew. I’ve just found the text online, though haven’t read it yet. newspaper reviews describe Petruchio remarrying after Kate’s death, and his new wife decides to tame him, including a Lysistrata-like sex strike, having him locked up in a plague house when he feigns illness to win her sympathy, and when he goes further and pretends to be dead, she hurls invective upon him. The epilogue sounds astonishingly modern:
I’ll (probably) address further points as I reread the rest of this lengthy discussion, but since I was asked to comment upon that portion, I thought it best I begin there…
PDM: Of course your ref. to high and low culture rather put me in mind of the side-swipe at comics in PinkDreamPoppies’ original post ;)
Morphienne: Obviously there are quite a few more female characters in the Bible (including Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, Dinah, Miriam (sister of Moses), Deborah, Jael etc. etc.), although I can’t at the moment think of any more Biblical whores; Thamar (or is she spelled “Tamar” in English?) comes kind of close, pretending to be a whore in order to trick her father-in-law Judah into sleeping with her (after he failed to let her marry his third son after her first two husbands (his first two sons) had died), vide Genesis ch. 38. By the way, the nameless female sinner (ex-prostitute) who anointed Jesus’ feet was only later identified as Mary Magdelene, the Gospels can be read under the assumption that they were two different people. Some scholars believe that this was an attempt in later tradition to diminish the stature of Mary Magdalene by saddling her with a sordid past. The woman who sat at Jesus’ feet was called Mary (sister of Lazarus), her sister who thought it more important that someone did the housework was Martha.
Elayne: Thanks for the “Tamer Tamed” info!
Oh, forgot one woman who at least has been seen a a kind of whore by some detractors: Judith, who slept with Holofernes before killing him in his sleep.
Yes, but you’re narrowly defining power. In societies in which the members value stoicism and logic rather than emotion — like this one — girly displays limit a woman’s abilities in some arenas. Politics, et cetera.
But they have proven effective for how many centuries? in getting our way with parents, teachers, cops, lovers, husbands. This is not the kind of control or influence any of us even think about when we talk about the influence women have on society. Too bad, too…we wield an awful lot of it in these areas.
I’m not saying that this is the only area in which can or should thrive. But I think that it is equally, if not sometimes more, important than what happens in the public domain.
We aren’t all activists every day of our lives, some of us are not professionals, but we are always someone else’s something. Ah, I can hear the uproar of the femidons now. But none of us can define ourselves 100% in solitary terms. Part of our very identity is our relationships.
I did, in fact, assert earlier that the canon needs serious review. Besides being unbalanced, it does contain a fair amount of worhtless reads that we could well do without. Wordsworth? All crap.
I think the difference in the way we look at the Bible as lit and The Odessy have to do with surviving belief systems. The Bible is still an “active” book…people still believe what’s in it’s pages. As far as I know, no one believes in the Greek gods anymore. Aren’t they all dead?
And Eve? Well, her role is questionable. Sure it was woman who first decided to think for herself. And she used her feminine wiles to get Adan to join her. The power of batting those lashes. But the story goes that they were banished from paradise and Eve was punished with the pain of childbirth. Heroic or stupid?
Admittedly, quaint was a bit of sarcasm as I don’t believe in any god and have a particular disdain for the Christian tradition.
I also think we remove ourselves from the reality of things sometimes. Politicians, writers, educators…the endless list…even us average folk often make the mistake of getting too wrapped up in what is politically correct and forget about the humanness. When did life become so very impersonal?
“Macbeth is all good and noble until Lady Macbeth drives him toward evil”
No, no, no.
A couple minutes after Macbeth first hears the prophecy of his greatness, he’s thinking things like this:
“…why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings;
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man…”
[I.iii.146-152]
And the next time he sees the King:
“Stars, hide your fires!
Let not light see my black and deep desires…”
[I.iv.60-61]
By scene vii, Macbeth has openly entertained the murder plan but rather half-heartedly decided against it because (a) it would be rude and (b) he’ll probably get in trouble. But he kind of wishes he could talk himself into it: “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent.” Lady M appears and tells him he’ll be more of a man if he goes for it. He decides to go for it, and compliments her on her brave, manly nature.
If you insisted on drawing an Adam and Eve analogy, Adam would come out looking like the instigator, though a rather passive-aggressive one.
PDM: Of course your ref. to high and low culture rather put me in mind of the side-swipe at comics in PinkDreamPoppies’ original post ;)
Not of comics in general, just one particular author.
But they have proven effective for how many centuries? in getting our way with parents, teachers, cops, lovers, husbands.
That’s called manipulation. I suppose you could consider it a kind of power, but it isn’t exactly smiled upon.
I personally don’t believe in using tears to “get my way;” it feels too much like lying. And I have never been let out of a speeding ticket for honest ones–but maybe I’m not pretty enough to look either good or pitiable crying.
Maybe you’re not. I don’t know.
Power, according to the first two entries in the closest dictionary at hand, is defined as: possession of control, authority or influence over others; ability to act or produce an effect.
To manipulate is to manage or utilize skillfully. The end phrases mention cynical interpretations, but that’s not the original (and are I say, true) meaning of the word.
Having power means you have the ability to manipulate — situations, people, whatever. Some individuals or goups do this for honorable reasons, some not.
Just reread Menshevik’s line about “Judith, who slept with Holofernes before killing him in his sleep.”
And let’s not forget Delila wooed Sampson only to turn on him. Dude brought the whole place down. Well, I guess a bitch gets what she deserves. Nice try, though, Dee.
In any case, even the Bible suggests that women get ahead by spreading the legs.
But recognizing this is a kind of real power is why women like me are not allowed to be feminists.
“Admittedly, quaint [sic] was a bit of sarcasm as I don’t believe in any god and have a particular disdain for the Christian tradition.”
And I don’t follow Islam, yet I’m still capable of seeing the Koran as a work of literature. I’ve noticed that the Bible seems to definitely be in the classic literary canon. You’ve argued for the validity of other works in that same canon despite their sexism and racism; why not this one? Because you just don’t like it?
“. . . . you’re narrowly defining power. In societies in which the members value stoicism and logic rather than emotion — like this one — girly displays limit a woman’s abilities in some arenas. Politics, et cetera.
“But they have proven effective for how many centuries? in [sic] getting our way with parents, teachers, cops, lovers, husbands. This is not the kind of control or influence any of us even think about when we talk about the influence women have on society. Too bad, too…we wield an awful lot of it in these areas.”
Oh, holy hell. Firstly, I think this was PDP’s point: that weeping and snivelling and whingeing and hysterics are NOT “girly” or “womanly.” They’re *human,* and it sucks that one gender is forbidden from expressing them and the other is thought incapable of doing anything else. Display of emotion is not a congenital, involuntary response to stimulus that comes with two X chromosomes. Women are perfectly capable of being in full command of their emotional displays. Period.
And I’m sorry, manipulating a situation to your advantage by deliberate use of emotional display is not power. It is perpetuating a stereotype that adversely affects millions of women to temporarily gratify your own selfish ends, and it is disgusting.
And talk about underestimating the intelligence of your audience, which I believe you earlier accused me of doing. Display of emotion is not a chemical formula for mind-control. I assure you men are as completely capable of controlling their emotional (and sexual) responses to emotional (and sexual) stimulus as women are. After all, they are the “stoic” sex, aren’t they?
“In any case, even the Bible suggests that women get ahead by spreading the legs.
“But recognizing this is a kind of real power is why women like me are not allowed to be feminists.”
Women who get ahead by “spreading the legs” (whose legs? you mean *their* legs?) gain what power they have because men *allow* them to have it.
If a man gets what he wants out of a woman (money, a free place to stay, a good word about him to her boss) by emotionally or sexually manipulating her, we call him a sleaze, because he is one. So are women who emotionally and sexually manipulate others to meet their own ends sleazes. People who sexually and emotionally manipulate others for their own ends are not powerful, unless you’re talking about the stench from the slime covering them.
Whether my 6 year old whines and wheedles to get me to buy him a toy or whether he cleans his room for three days and achieves the same end, it does not mean he is in a position of power. I am still the one with the power to grant him what he wants or not. A woman “spreading her legs” or crying or giving someone a blow job to get something they want is no more in a position of power than my 6 year old. There is still an authority figure (who holds the *real* power) who must be appeased.
For a woman to cry to get out of a traffic ticket, or “spread her legs” to get a mink coat (or a bowl of rice for her starving children) is not exerting power. It is merely an appeasement of those who hold the real power to grant her what she is seeking. Real power would be arguing her case in court to get the ticket thrown out or buying her own coat or bartering eggs from her own chickens for the rice.
And men throughout the centuries have been comfortable perpetuating the myth of women’s power through “feminine wiles” because they inherently understand that it’s not real power, that it doesn’t threaten their (men’s) supremacy.
PinkDreamPoppies: Well, you could have been a bit clearer, what you said sounds as if the creator in question was getting an especially easy ride because he (or she) wrote comics, not novels or screenplays.
Belated thanks to Lis for coming over and adding her expertise to this thread!
Other stuff:
One of the problems for critics of literary classics (be it for reasons of sexism, racism or any other theme) is that no-one likes a critic. (You know the joke: “Critics are like eunuchs – they know how it’s done, but they can’t do it themselves.”) And even if someone who is a great artist himself criticizes a widely-perceived giant
(e.g. Mark Twain criticizing Cooper or Ben Jonson and G.B. Shaw criticizing Shakespeare), that is often treated as a personal idiosyncrasy or as motivated by personal vanity and rivalry and not taken seriously.
Add to the fact that if you look at works of art under such aspects, you can easily give the impression to a reader who does not agree with your views that you are go into a work with the full intention of finding something that offends you, i.e. you are “just fault-finding”. And if there is a disagreement about one or more possible instances of alleged sexism, racism, classism or whatever (and if something is obvious, it is that interpretations of works of literature are frequently highly contentious and unlikely to be resolved one way or another to everybody’s satisfaction), then a reader may get the impression that you are so overeager to make your point that you are using dubious evidence or at least are making a mountain out of a molehill. Also, writers will generally already have their communities of admirers while the critics generally don’t, and an admirer of e.g. Shakespeare may react to PinkDreamPoppies’ original post with something on the lines of “Shakespeare may have been a misogynist, but (insert explanation/rationalization of choice or the words “I don’t care because literary greatness does not depend on an author’s social and political views”) and by the way, little man, who do you think you are to call him a pig?” It also doesn’t help that many if not most people tend to see such matters in black and white, saying “writer A is sexist”, not “writer A is more sexist than writer B but a lot less sexist than writer C” or even “writer D held view X but kept this view out of his work”. And it probably will not win you points with a sceptical reader if you bandy about terms like “dead white European males”, because it then looks as if you are attacking writers not for their works or even their personal opinions, but for being white, male and European, while writers who came from different cultural backgrounds and/or were/are women and/or persons of color are just as sexist. (Not that PinkDreamPoppies was guilty of that, he did mention for instance “The Tale of Prince Genji”, which was written by a dead Asian Japanese woman).In this respect I have to take issue a bit about the comparision between criticism of Shakespeare and of Eminem: After all, Shakespeare from what we know of him as a person, also came from a poor background, worked in the theatre which at the time was also a kind of “low art”, and he was attacked both by contemporary and later critics for the gaps in his education etc. (so much so that there are several schools of thought who like to believe that Will Shakespeare did not write those plays himself, but that they were written by Bacon, the Duke of Oxford or some other upper-class guy of the day, which in turn provoked others to label such theories as “classist”). Arguably Eminem got more appreciation of his work in his lifetime so far than Shakespeare did in his, and I suspect he may already have made more money from it.
Heh, I ususally hate posts like this, but I can’t help it — this time it really is called for.
I need to repeat these wise, wise words:
Whether my 6 year old whines and wheedles to get me to buy him a toy or whether he cleans his room for three days and achieves the same end, it does not mean he is in a position of power. I am still the one with the power to grant him what he wants or not. A woman “spreading her legs” or crying or giving someone a blow job to get something they want is no more in a position of power than my 6 year old. There is still an authority figure (who holds the *real* power) who must be appeased.
For a woman to cry to get out of a traffic ticket, or “spread her legs” to get a mink coat (or a bowl of rice for her starving children) is not exerting power. It is merely an appeasement of those who hold the real power to grant her what she is seeking. Real power would be arguing her case in court to get the ticket thrown out or buying her own coat or bartering eggs from her own chickens for the rice.
And men throughout the centuries have been comfortable perpetuating the myth of women’s power through “feminine wiles” because they inherently understand that it’s not real power, that it doesn’t threaten their (men’s) supremacy.
Thanks pseu
I’d like to third pseu’s point (and Morphienne’s): The ability to use emotion to manipulate isn’t as powerful as being in the position to grant favors based on (or not) that manipulation.
(Sorry to get stuck on this particular point; I don’t have much to say about PinkDreamPoppies’ original post, except that I really enjoyed reading it.)
I’ll fourth that point, with an additional comment.
Even if we were to consider that sort of manipulation of sexual desire “real power,” it wouldn’t change that it’s goddamn unacceptable that that’s the primary, most easily accessable, or ONLY route to power for many women. Using it just reinforces that sexist status quo and makes it harder for women everywhere to weild the same sort of power men have held for millenia.
It reinforces that that’s “all women are good for,” it promotes society’s dismissal of unattractive or older women, and it’s ultimately destructive, both to feminism as a whole and to the person using it.
To me, anyway, whether it’s “real power” or not is secondary. A big stick and a loud threat is “real power” for men, but that doesn’t make it good either. Let’s try to move beyond our scripted roles.
—JRC
PinkDreamPoppies: Well, you could have been a bit clearer, what you said sounds as if the creator in question was getting an especially easy ride because he (or she) wrote comics, not novels or screenplays.
I probably should have been, but I thought that anyone who was into comics would know who I was talking about and anyone who didn’t wouldn’t care. Far be it from me to rag on people for writing comics; I want to be one of those people.
To clear things up, I was ragging on Dave Sim, a notorious misogynist who just published the 300th issue of his self-published comic. I’ve read a lot of comments from comic critics that have excused his lengthy essays on “the male light” and “the female void” because he had written so many issues. Because the volume of work, and the quality of the earlier work, made up for the crap that came later.
Incidentally, I do think that comic writers get an easy pass on sexism in the same way that most science fiction writers are given an easy pass for sexism. Science fiction and comics are both seen as male-only genres and so tend to not get criticised at all or dismissed in one lump sum. I’m not surprised, though, that fewer people have tried to criticize the sexism of comics and/or science fiction. Saying that you think that Neil Gaiman’s Sandman or Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time or Robert Heinlein’s anything is sexist is liable to get you hate mail.
Oh, and I’ll fifth Morphienne and pseu’s comments.
Longtime lurker, first-time commenter.
PDP commented: People are less likely, I feel, to question the justice of views put forth in a work of literature when they have been told that this work of literature is perfect in every way. Add this to the fact that people know shockingly little about where, when, why, and by whom their stories were written and it seems to me that the transmission of shamefully incorrect and dangerous views is made much more likely.
I’d like to corroborate this statement with an experience of my own. At the college I graduated from we studied only the Western canon and made no formal effort to place the works we studied in context. While it’s a valuable approach in many ways, I think it encouraged a social (and to some extent academic) environment of male privilege, because our sexist assumptions were frequently reinforced and rarely, if ever, challenged. By the third year of this I had largely given up investigating open sexism in the books we read and was content to dismiss it as “the product of its times”, etc.
This attitude, which I guess I assumed defensively, made it hard for me to read certain books so deeply as they deserved. The first time I read Paradise Lost (for example) I already felt overwhelmed by several years worth of sexist reading and let its misogyny slide. Now that I’ve thought about it more, I consider its misogyny to be serious and integral to it. I would argue that merely dismissing its gender politics does the work a disservice as much as uncritically assuming those politics to be “natural” and right does.
I’d like to second the commenter who said that (paraphrasing) “we don’t have to laud everything about the works of the Western Canon, just that which deserves laudation.”
Whether or not the power of which you speak is to socially acceptable is not the point as I understand it in reading the comments.
The issue at hand is whether or not it’s true that different genders have “different powers.'”
They do and one should not underestimate their reach or effects simply because one’s contemporary outward correctness is threatened.
While missinig some of the subtleties, girl isn’t entirely wrong. Perhaps you should consider why instead of offering knee-jerk responses.
artist,
We already did. To reiterate: the ability to cry (or spread your legs) and have someone give you what you want is not power because the power to allow you to have what you want is ultimately in their hands.
Reread pseu’s comments above and tell me what that has to do with “contemporary outward correctness.”
Actually I am into comics, but I somehow hadn’t made the connection because from my occasional looks at Sim-related discussions on the net (which admittedly I didn’t do all that often as I may be into comics, but not into Cerebus), I did not get the impression that he Sim was getting a particularly easy ride. (Of course one has to take into account that Sim’s audience is a hell lot smaller than e.g. Eminem’s). And as far as his defenders went, it usually seemed to me that they were either people who also supported his misogyny or who thought that his later stuff was also so brilliant that it outweighed their annoyance at his misogynistic essays (with a few people who changed their mind about him when Sim’s misogyny spilled over from his essays into the actual stories).
PinkDP wrote: To clear things up, I was ragging on Dave Sim, a notorious misogynist who just published the 300th issue of his self-published comic. I’ve read a lot of comments from comic critics that have excused his lengthy essays on “the male light” and “the female void” because he had written so many issues. Because the volume of work, and the quality of the earlier work, made up for the crap that came later.
What does “excused” mean, in this context?
I mean, if someone asked me if Cerebus was worth reading, I’d say that Cerebus includes some of the best comics ever done, and is well worth reading; but nonetheless, it’s badly marred by Dave Sim’s growing misogyny in the final two-fifths of the series. That’s something I’ve seen critics say often – that the best Cerebus material is good enough to justify reading the series despite Sim’s insanity.
If that’s excusing Sim, then count me in with the folks making excuses. On the other hand, if people are saying that his misogyny is irrelevant – or doesn’t harm how good Cerebus is – then I think they’re crazy.
PDP and Co.
Where would we be without creatures like you to tell us what is and is not proper, acceptable womanhood? Oh, wait…
artist,
I think you missed the entire point of pseu’s comments.
glossomania: I love your post. And it points out what’s so great about the classics, is that they’re alive, as much today as they were in their time if not moreso (or less so, but then that completely eliminates my point). We damn well should take advantage of the extra 400 years of history we have over Shakespeare when commenting on his works.
Eli, I kind of suspected that the specific interpretation I had of that part of Macbeth mentioned earlier was probably a bit over simplistic. I love Macbeth but the whole Lady Macbeth part is not what I dwell on when I think about it, more of the whole power corrupting and self-fulfilling prophesy thing. But then this is tangent to the discussion at large, so while I’d love to spend all night discussing Macbeth, I’ll end there.
And pseu – rock on!
And then there’s the news story of the English university student who’s selling her virginity to pay for school. Perfect.
What I like most about the idea of Lady Macbeth is that the Rolling Stones directly drew on her character.
Lysistrata.
Artist– If the war in which Lysistrata’s city is engaged in the play had been voted upon, and the women of that city had been allowed to, say, vote, and take part in determining the future of the government that ruled them, maybe Lysistrata and her compatriots would not have had to manipulate and trick the people in power into giving the people not in power what they wanted. Again: tricking a person in power into giving you what you want is *not* gaining power. It’s just getting what you want at that moment.
“. . . .One should not underestimate [the female powers’] reach or effects simply because one’s contemporary outward correctness is threatened.”
I assure you that I, for my part, offered my response of what I thought about sexual and emotional manipulation from my heart as well as my head, but nowhere near my knees; my “contemporary outward correctness” remains safely intact. Your implicated assumption that no one could possibly *really* think that methods of gaining power are or should be equal-opportunity is insulting.
And, frankly, I don’t believe that there are different male and female powers, period. I believe, instead, that there are different types of methods to power (e.g., logical argument versus compromise) that have been *ascribed* to the respective genders, and, through millenia of sexism, males and females have been discouraged in their use of power relegated to use only by the other gender. Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, but as that’s honestly what I believe to be true I can’t really blame my contemporary outward correctness (which governs things more along the lines of not wearing medieval bodices to work) for it.
“Lysistrata” was fiction, a comedy, and satire, so it can hardly be considered an example of women’s power, since it never actually happened. (Besides, a sex strike forces women into temporary chastity, too. Not my idea of an effective boycott.)
Anyway, “Lysistrata” still doesn’t violate the hierarchy of power that places men in a position to grant the favors instead of always asking for them.
You’re so smart. It is a work of fiction. But if it’s being ficticious deems it unacceptable as an example then why are you debating the impact of women characters in any fiction at all?
Maybe it’s not your idea of an effective boycott. In the play the women thought the sacrifice was worth it. Didn’t a group of Scandinavian women use this ploy in the 80s to get some no-nuke agenda passed?
Calling off a war can hardly be reduced to granting a favor, by the way. You really don’t get how this is not all about the men?
You Dworkinites exhaust me.
Spoken like a true Paglian.
How can it be an achievement if you have to sacrifice?
Debate? Oh…no wonder I was getting nowhere trying to have a discussion. Certainly explains the diatribes.
Well, look at that. Now I’m bored.
artist, I thought we were discussing power available to real women, not power that women in fiction have exerted. If that were the case, then we should really be talking about Herland.
Any fictional story about women is utterly irrelevant if you want to list advantages women have in real life. It’s as if I said, “In Herland, women control society, so of course women can control actual society right now.” Surely you can recognize the implausibility of such an assertation. (Yes, I’m dangerously simplifying the plot of Herland.)
And besides, it’s still the men who can call off the war, not the women. The men could just as easily have kept fighting; the only reason they didn’t is because Aristophanes wrote it that way. The ability to manipulate puts the power in the hands of those who can either submit, or not, to such manipulation. I don’t understand what’s so hard to understand.
I’m interested, though, in your point about the impact of women in fiction. I don’t think the way you mean it has been discussed in this thread; if it has, I apologize, I must have missed or forgotten it. Has fiction ever really influenced reality in a significant way? Should it? I know it reflects reality, it represents reality, but change it? Can we even measure that kind of effect? (Even if it can, that doesn’t necessarily mean it does, as your “Lysistrata” example implies.)
How can it be an achievement if you have to sacrifice?
I suppose I was being unclear. I was trying to make the point that female sexuality is taken less seriously than male sexuality. Aristophanes stereotypes women as having little or no interest in sex, and thus they can afford to withhold it. I certainly believe sacrifices are necessary for boycotts, but giving up sex is, in my opinion, more than a sacrifice; it’s living up to that stereotype and denying an aspect of your identity. (Well, my identity, anyway. I can’t speak for anyone else.)
No — we’ve been throwing around ideas of what fictional characters say about real groups of people. It sounds to me as artist questions why Lysistrata does not represent women in any positive way, not whether or not society should be taking its cues from made up stories.
Although, we do…again, the Bible. Aside from being substantial literature, it provides a moral outline for living. Certainly this collection of tales has some really ugly representations of human nature, but it also has some really good ones. And that stuff never happened either, but even I wouldn’t deny that it makes some really good points on how we should treat one another.
So, I don’t think artist meant that we should use books as our guides, but the case can be made that people do.
That’s not really what this whole thing was about anyway.
And I like Camille Paglia. She’s fabulous.
And yeah. They stop fighting because Aristophanes wrote it that way. Making the point that men will do anything for pussy. Why is it you just refuse to even entertain that possibility? Or consider the alternate interpretations such a perspective allows? Lysistrata or other stories.
Don’t interpret what follows in the rest of the text as an attack, it’s merely observation. Why do you, in one breath, deny the power of sexuality and, in the next, tell us it’s a big part of your identity? I don’t espouse that you use or express it in any way you don’t feel comfortable. But it seems there is only one basic concept of womanhood that is acceptable around here and I just don’t get it.
Talk about stereotyping. Someone made the point way back that as women, we’re the ones who most often (and most critcally) define and measure what is the most correct way to be a woman. Tedious, don’t you think? Your ideas and pursuits don’t match mine closely enough. You aren’t a real woman. I get it constantly when people hear I don’t want kids…ever. Not at all a humanist attitude.
I don’t think that at any time I implied that anyone is wrong for thinking what they do on any of these subjects. If I did, I didn’t realize. But there’s been plenty of arrogance and spite thrown back at me because I can look at these ideas from this perspective. Touching your defenses? I don’t know. But isn’t that a good thing?
I also suspect some of the ‘tude is for my taking some of the academics out of it and just talking as a regular Joanne who reads for fun. Which isn’t necessarily my whole deal but I think I’m more comfortable living with my own ideas on a personal level than worrying about whether or not they meet some bullshit pc standard. In my very heart I think the world would be just a smidge better if more people were like that.
(The post in which I derail the thread even further and at length…)
It sounds to me as artist questions why Lysistrata does not represent women in any positive way, not whether or not society should be taking its cues from made up stories.
Well, that’s not the way I read it, but OK: No, I don’t think “Lysistrata” portrays women in a particularly positive manner, because sexual manipulation isn’t considered a positive character trait. Nor do I think it portrays them as powerful, since, as has been said over and over, the men were the only ones who could actually stop the war.
Why do you, in one breath, deny the power of sexuality and, in the next, tell us it’s a big part of your identity?
I’m not quite sure what you mean. I’m denying the power–and acceptability–of using sexuality as manipulation. When I talk about sexuality as my identity, I mean that it’s something I enjoy, not that it’s something I hold over my boyfriend’s head.
Someone made the point way back that as women, we’re the ones who most often (and most critcally) define and measure what is the most correct way to be a woman…
I won’t get into whether women define womanhood or not. But to me, manipulation is lying, and I can’t condone this kind of lying. It isn’t limited to women; it’s a human problem. I’m not trying to define womanhood; I’m trying to define decent-personhood, which doesn’t include threatening to withhold sex or faking tears. Maybe you don’t agree. But can you honestly say that encouraging women to manipulate to get what they want, and supporting a stereotype that calls women manipulators, is A Good Idea?
Personally, I would never use sex, tears, blackmail, threats, or bribes as a get-out-of-jail-free card, even if it did work every time, and I just can’t think well of anyone–female or male–who would. It doesn’t mean I don’t think someone is a “real woman;” as far as I’m concerned, womanhood is entirely biological. (Of course it’s more complicated than that, but again, that’s another post.) It does mean I don’t think you’re a nice person. So you can understand why I don’t believe that manipulation is a power, if it is a power, that women should claim.
And after thinking about it a bit, I have to concede that manipulation is a power, one that really isn’t gendered–but only in the sense that asking or telling anyone to do anything is a power, that is, forcing the “manipulee” to make a choice. The success of this power depends on the consequences of the choice (i.e., a gun is (usually) more effective than “It would make me very happy if you…”), and there’s a difference between “good” (asking nicely) and “bad” (threats of force) forms of this power–but the choice is always, in the end, up to the person being asked. The person doing the asking can never depend on getting what s/he wants.
I’d like to finish up with something Morphienne wrote that I thought was important:
I don’t believe that there are different male and female powers, period. I believe, instead, that there are different types of methods to power (e.g., logical argument versus compromise) that have been *ascribed* to the respective genders, and, through millenia of sexism, males and females have been discouraged in their use of power relegated to use only by the other gender.
Indeed.