Victims of Sexuality Artemisia Gentileschi fl 161420 Agostino Tassi as Holifernes Lord Hale 45 men convicted of rape between 1700 and 1799 f rom 281 trials Lady Montague Wortley Virtue in Danger ID: 718419
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Slide1
Constructions of WomenSlide2
…construction…
…need to think about how roles, norms, expectations shape the behaviour of those subject to them…
ways of getting people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do – violence, force, coercion, command/authority, persuasion, preference changing, financial, social and emotional dependence, grooming
dialectic of self and other – search for confirmation in the responses of others means a dependence on their opinions – Rousseau’s
amour
propre
determinism vs autonomy – an infinite gradations between them
Books to think with:
James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990)
E Goffman, Presentation of Self in Everyday life (1959)
Berger and Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality (1966)
Pierre Bourdieu,
Pascalian
Meditations (2000)Slide3
Histories: of sexuality vs of female sociabilitySlide4
Victims of Sexuality
Artemisia Gentileschi (
fl
1614-20) Agostino
Tassi
as
Holifernes
Lord Hale
45 men convicted of rape between 1700 and 1799 from 281 trialsLady Montague Wortley, Virtue in Danger – Griselda Murray and the Servant c 1721 (Epistle from Arthur Gray)Slide5
Nature and Art
Then, seated on a three-legged chair,
Takes off her artificial hair:
Now, picking out a crystal eye,
She wipes it clean, and lays it by.
Her eye-brows from a mouse’s hide,
Stuck on with art on either side,
Pulls off with care, and first displays ’
em
,
Then in a play-book smoothly lays ’
em
.
Now dexterously her
plumpers
draws,
That serve to fill her hollow jaws.
Untwists a wire; and from her gums
A set of teeth completely comes. Slide6
Conduct in Public
William
Upcott
(1807) sets off on the roof of the coach with a solitary female on the roof. ‘I placed myself beside her and we soon became quite familiar. If there was nothing striking either in her exterior or her manners, still she proved a pleasant companion – and enliven the tedium of riding – we were full of our jokes – and when we parted from each other at Wheatley – she made me promise to call upon her at her return to London – I did so – willingly, but as yet, I have thought nothing more on the subject.’Slide7
‘Tis
not your virtues make you refuse me.
Women are often coy, though seldom chaste.
Howe’er
you use me
You seem
straightlaced
The fruit in the midst of the garden laced You long to tasteThink not to cheat me then with seeming coldnessYou do but counterfeit when you seem nice A little boldness
Will thaw that iceHe spoils his market, sets too high a price On your device
Hogarth: Before
John
Shebbeare
(1756) Every print shop has its windows stuck full with indecent prints to inflame desire through the eye, and singers in the streets to charm your ears with lascivious songs to awake you to the same employment.’ Slide8
And afterSlide9
Represented – or ImaginedSlide10
Conduct booksSlide11
Formal EducationSlide12
Female accomplishments
The picture-gallery, and two or three of the principal bedrooms, were all that remained to be shewn. In the former were many good paintings; but Elizabeth knew nothing of the art; and from such as had been already visible below, she had willingly turned to look at some drawings of Miss Darcy’s in crayons, whose subjects were usually more interesting, and also more intelligible.Slide13
InfantalisationSlide14
Self-constructions/self-critiques
Jane Collier, 1753, An essay on the art of tormenting…
Slide15
18th Century Novels
Moll Flanders and Roxana Daniel Defoe
Pamela
– Samuel Richardson ‘my virtue’
Fanny Hill - Cleland
Julie – Rousseau
Dickens vs Trollope
Women’s novels
Fanny Burney - EvelinaElizabeth Inchbald – A Simple StoryCharlotte Smith – The Manor HouseAnne Radcliffe Mysteries of UdolphoMaria Edgeworth – Castle
RackrentCatherine Hutton – Miser MarriedJane Austen - EmmaSlide16
Women’s informal educationSlide17
Letters – public and private and the boundaries
Lady Montague
Worsley
Fanny Burney, Letters/diary
Hays to Godwin/
Frend
Helen Maria Williams
Mary Wollstonecraft
Epistolary novels:Montesquieu’s Persian LettersFrancoise de Graffigny, Letters of a Peruvian WomanChanderlos
Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses Slide18
Letters: Alderson and Parr to GodwinSlide19
Theatre
The Beaux
Strategem
- George Farquhar 1710
She stoops to conquer – Oliver Goldsmith (1773)
The Belle’s Stratagem Hannah
Cowley
(1780)Slide20
Women playwrights
18
th
C Women Playwrights
Aphra
Benn 1650-1689 The Rover
Susanna
Centlivre
(1669-1723)Hannah Cowley (1743-1809) Mrs Frances Sheridan (1724-66) Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821)
Joanna Baillie (1762-1851)Slide21
Actresses and their virtue
Pamela
vs memoirs and biographies of: Nell Gwynn, Lavinia Fenton, Anne Oldfield
Public parts vs private world
Masculine vs feminine ‘virtue’
Celebrity, persona, representation
Aristocratic friends
Objects of speculation/desire
Fashion Slide22
Scandals
Lady Worsley
Duke of York and Frederica of Prussia 24.1.1792
Harriet Wilson
Queen CarolineSlide23Slide24
Criminal Conversation Strathmore 1793; Gawler 1796Slide25
Sarah Elwes 1792-4Slide26
Resistant women
Catharine Macaulay, Historian and republican (Letters to Burke, On Female Education)
Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication (1792.1792)
Mary Hays,
Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in behalf of Women
(1798)
Mary Robinson,
A Letter to the Women of England
(1799)Mary Ann Radcliffe, The Female Advocate; or, An Attempt to Recover the Rights of Women from Male Usurpation (1799)
John Bowles
, Remarks on Modern Female Manners, as distinguished by indifference to character and indecency of dress
(London, 1802),
‘Female modesty is the last barrier of civilised society. When
that
is removed, what remains to stem to torrent of licentiousness and profligacy.’
T J Mathias,
Pursuits of Literature (1797) “Our
unsex’d female writers now instruct, or confuse, us and themselves, in the labyrinth of politics, or turn us wild with Gallic frenzy’Slide27
How to construct oneself amidst the constructions of others and how you interpret others
Whore – virgin
Princess – crone
Brazen – modest
Knowing – innocent
Shrewd – naïve
Extravagant – prudent
Fashionable – retiring
Exhibitionist – domesticSurface – depthAppearance - characterSlide28
Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Hays