Constructions of - PowerPoint Presentation

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 CarolineSlide23
Slide24

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