Female Heroes in "Men's Fiction"
Fiona Oceanstar
and the fact that his early stories were published in _Cavalier_,
a men's mag back in the 70's, and I got to thinking about the
whole topic of "men's fiction."
This is my question: do any of you women ever get P.O.-ed when
you're reading a novel and somewhere in the back is an ad for "other
titles in our men's fiction series"? Well, I sure do. So the last
time I was reading such a book--a police procedural, I believe, or
maybe a spy--I went to the trouble to call the goldurned publisher
in NYC, and kept pushing until I got all the way to the editor of
their "Men's Fiction" line. Gently but firmly, I let him know the
score. :-) It was a good experience. I recommend it. Maybe if
enough of us call or write, they'll get the picture: *Women* read these
books, too--aw gee, gosh! Which is an important picture for them
to get, because then (just maybe) they'll figger out that we'd like
to have more *female* heroes (forget "heroine"--like "stewardess"
it's a word on the way out)--female heroes in these novels about spies
and cops and stuff. I'm not saying I don't know about V. I. Warshawski
and her sisters, but I'd like to see more female heroes in the horror,
crime, and police procedural genres--not just mystery and detective.
Speaking of which, I highly recommend the novel _Rush_ by Kim
Wozencraft--a dark, realistic, ultimately satisfying portrait of a woman
who goes undercover as a narcotics cop. *Great* picture of what happens
in that weird zone where the cop world meets the drug world, and values
get kind of warped as people try to figure out what's not just the legal
thing to do, but the right thing to do. The author has *been* there.
--Fiona Oceanstar
Rita Marie Rouvalis
>This is my question: do any of you women ever get P.O.-ed when
>you're reading a novel and somewhere in the back is an ad for "other
>titles in our men's fiction series"? Well, I sure do. So the last
No. I've never noticed a gender issue in most of the fiction
I read. Well, perhaps feminist literature . . .but I've never seen it
explictly stated that men couldn't enjoy it as well; somehow I just
assumed most (not all) wouldn't . . .
But, I *do* hope you are egalitarian enough, Fiona, to get
just as P.O.'ed as when a a books lists "other titles in our *women's*
fiction series."
--
Rita Marie Rouvalis ri...@eff.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation | Fragment. Another fragment. Good
155 Second Street | device. Will be used more later.
Cambridge, MA 02141 617-864-0665 | -- Metamagical Themas
Francis Muir
Fiona Oceanstar) writes:
Do any of you women ever get P.O.-ed when you're reading
a novel and somewhere in the back is an ad for "other
titles in our men's fiction series"? Well, I sure do.
Is this any more pissing-off (let's cut out the euphemisms, please) than
rec.arts.books posters addressing "any of you women"?
No. I've never noticed a gender issue in most of the fiction
I read. Well, perhaps feminist literature . . .
PERHAPS feminist literature? Doesn't it occur to Mizz Bouvalis that there
is nothing more outrageously sexist than some -- perhaps most -- of the
so-called feminist literature out there?
Fido
Janet M. Lafler
>Rita Marie Rouvalis writes:
>
>
> No. I've never noticed a gender issue in most of the fiction
> I read. Well, perhaps feminist literature . . .
>
>PERHAPS feminist literature? Doesn't it occur to Mizz Bouvalis that there
>is nothing more outrageously sexist than some -- perhaps most -- of the
>so-called feminist literature out there?
>
> Fido
We all pay attention to what affects us most deeply. I'm prepared to admit
that I'm more likely to notice and be angered by what I see as a literary
maltreatment of myself than the similar mauling of another. You should recon-
sider the pronouncement that some feminist literature is more sexist than
anything else out there. You may not have even noticed the routine misogyny
in a lot of literature, but it's there, though it may not seem important to
or worthy of notice to you.
God, I can't believe how polite I'm being.
/Janet
--
send mail to: repn...@leland.stanford.edu
"We're living in a PROTESTANT POLICE STATE and all I'M worried about is getting
a job so I can help perpetuate the paranoid patriarchal DEATH culture!"
--Mo
Ohlhausen, Esther LaNelle
>In article <1991Aug5.2...@grebyn.com> f...@grebyn.com (Fiona Oceanstar) writes:
>
>
>>This is my question: do any of you women ever get P.O.-ed when
>>you're reading a novel and somewhere in the back is an ad for "other
>>titles in our men's fiction series"? Well, I sure do. So the last
>
>just as P.O.'ed as when a a books lists "other titles in our *women's*
>fiction series."
I do, especially since what is labelled as "women's fiction" is generally
worthless fluff.
Of course, the only romance novels I can tolerate are 19th century British
ones...
LaNelle Ohlhausen
'.sig file under mental construction'
Rita Marie Rouvalis
>Rita Marie Rouvalis writes:
> No. I've never noticed a gender issue in most of the fiction
> I read. Well, perhaps feminist literature . . .
>
>PERHAPS feminist literature? Doesn't it occur to Mizz Bouvalis that there
>is nothing more outrageously sexist than some -- perhaps most -- of the
>so-called feminist literature out there?
Yes, "perhaps." I was being understated, my dear. Charming
how you ignored the rest of my post to portray me as a sexist.
And it's *R*ouvalis, Fido. No need to desecrate a fine, old
Greek name.
Richard Caley
Rita Marie Rouvalis writes:
rr> No. I've never noticed a gender issue in most of the fiction
rr> I read. Well, perhaps feminist literature . . .
fm> PERHAPS feminist literature?
Oh dear, another one incapable of recognising irony.
fm> Doesn't it occur to Mizz Bouvalis that there is nothing more
fm> outrageously sexist than some -- perhaps most -- of the so-called
fm> feminist literature out there?
Care to back your pronouncements up with facts or do we just discount
you now?
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk _O_
|<
Mikhail Zeleny
>This is my question: do any of you women ever get P.O.-ed when
>you're reading a novel and somewhere in the back is an ad for "other
>titles in our men's fiction series"? Well, I sure do.
Some oil on the fire:
men's fiction --- Gustave Flaubert, ``Madame Bovary''
women's fiction --- Louise Colet, ``Lui''
> --Fiona Oceanstar
and, lest we forget: womyn's fiction --- Andrea Dworkin, ``Intercourse''...
French literary history will be supplied on request.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
| ``If there are no Platonic ideals, then what did we fight for?'' |
| (A Spanish Republican) |
| Mikhail Zeleny Harvard |
| 872 Massachusetts Ave., Apt. 707 doesn't |
| Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 think |
| (617) 661-8151 so |
| email zel...@math.harvard.edu or zel...@zariski.harvard.edu |
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Viktor Haag
>In article <1991Aug6.2...@leland.Stanford.EDU> fra...@hanauma.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
>>
>>PERHAPS feminist literature? Doesn't it occur to Mizz Bouvalis that there
>>is nothing more outrageously sexist than some -- perhaps most -- of the
>>so-called feminist literature out there?
>>
>> Fido
>
>We all pay attention to what affects us most deeply. I'm prepared to admit
>that I'm more likely to notice and be angered by what I see as a literary
>maltreatment of myself than the similar mauling of another. You should recon-
>sider the pronouncement that some feminist literature is more sexist than
>anything else out there. You may not have even noticed the routine misogyny
>in a lot of literature, but it's there, though it may not seem important to
>or worthy of notice to you.
>
>God, I can't believe how polite I'm being.
I applaud your politeness. I am, however, more willing to be less polite.
Fido you are full of shit. If you would take your head out from the sand hole
it currently inhabits, you might notice that there are plenty of pieces, even
long touted pieces, of literature that are eminently more "sexist" than most
current feminist literature. You're just getting your knickers in a knot
because, I assume, you feel threatened whenever someone does not explicitly
include you in their tea party (or rugger game, or whatever). Well grow up
and grab an objective point of view (or at least more objective than the
paranoid tinted specs you're wearing now) -- woof.
--
vik veh...@crocus.uwaterloo.ca
"I have the necessary qualifications to speak on behalf of Jesus"
Ted "Apotheosis Now" Kaldis
Francis Muir
...there is nothing more outrageously sexist than some --
perhaps most -- of the so-called feminist literature out
there?
Janet Lafler reasons:
We all pay attention to what affects us most deeply. You
should reconsider the pronouncement that some feminist
literature is more sexist than anything else out there.
God, I can't believe how polite I'm being.
Viktor Haag jumps in:
I applaud your politeness. I am, however, more willing to be
less polite. Fido you are full of shit, &c., &c.
Fido, keen to make a point, replies:
What fun it is to see a Knight Riding to the Rescue of a Damsel in
Distress! What a fine, old-fashioned sense of chivalry! I wonder,
though, how pleased the modern, emancipated woman is to receive
such condescending, paternalistic protection?
Fido
Mike Godwin
>In article <1991Aug6.2...@leland.Stanford.EDU> repn...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler) writes:
>>
>>God, I can't believe how polite I'm being.
>
>I applaud your politeness. I am, however, more willing to be less polite.
>Fido you are full of shit.
Have Janet and Fido become the same person?
--Mike
--
Mike Godwin, | "Someday, some way."
mnem...@eff.org |
(617) 864-1550 | --Marshall Crenshaw
EFF, Cambridge, MA |
Duncan Peter G. Thornton
>Viktor Haag jumps in:
> I applaud your [Janet's] politeness. I am, however, more willing to be
> less polite. Fido you are full of shit, &c., &c.
>Fido, keen to make a point, replies:
>What fun it is to see a Knight Riding to the Rescue of a Damsel in
>Distress! What a fine, old-fashioned sense of chivalry! I wonder,
>though, how pleased the modern, emancipated woman is to receive
>such condescending, paternalistic protection?
Cool trick, Fido; any male who thinks you're full of shit on this
one must by the very act of communicating this be deconstructing
his position.
- Duncan
Duncan Thornton | An odd thought strikes me - we shall receive no
tho...@ccu.umanitoba.ca | email in the grave.
vivek.kalra
by fra...@hanauma.stanford.edu (Francis Muir):
> Francis Muir writes:
>
> ...there is nothing more outrageously sexist than some --
> perhaps most -- of the so-called feminist literature out
> there?
>
> Janet Lafler reasons:
>
> We all pay attention to what affects us most deeply. You
> should reconsider the pronouncement that some feminist
> literature is more sexist than anything else out there.
>
> God, I can't believe how polite I'm being.
>
> Viktor Haag jumps in:
>
> I applaud your politeness. I am, however, more willing to be
> less polite. Fido you are full of shit, &c., &c.
>
> Distress! What a fine, old-fashioned sense of chivalry! I wonder,
> though, how pleased the modern, emancipated woman is to receive
> such condescending, paternalistic protection?
>
Viktor was speaking for himself...
Vivek
--
v...@honasa.att.com |
:r ~/.disclaimer | Who's John Galt?
James Davis Nicoll
How perceptions differ. I didn't see this as Mr Haag riding to
Ms Lafler's rescue, so much as deciding that the peasant she had just
knocked to the ground really needed a more thorough trampling under
the hooves of a large warhorse (to stick with the feudal phrasing).
To use a different image, he merely noted she had tied someone to
a stake, and decided to supply wood, gasoline and a flaming match.
James Nicoll
Lisa Paul
in my kill file, which is a shame, since there were some intelligent
discussions at first.
--
--Rowan Now this religion happens to prevail
I am not responsible, My > Until by that one it is overthrown, -
cat is the one with the > Because men dare not live with men alone,
opinions here. > But always with another fairy tale.
Janet M. Lafler
>In article <1991Aug8.1...@watdragon.waterloo.edu> veh...@crocus.waterloo.edu (Viktor Haag) writes:
>>In article <1991Aug6.2...@leland.Stanford.EDU> repn...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler) writes:
>>>
>>>God, I can't believe how polite I'm being.
>>
>>I applaud your politeness. I am, however, more willing to be less polite.
>>Fido you are full of shit.
>
>
>Have Janet and Fido become the same person?
Well, I was sure I wasn't Fido, but then I tried to repeat the opening para-
graph of _Sexual Politics_ and it came out all wrong, so I decided that I
must be Fido after all...and I shall have to go and live in that poky little
house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh, ever so many lessons to
learn! No, I've made up my mind about it: if I'm Fido, I'll stay logged off!
It'll be no use their calling me up and saying "Log on again, dear!" I shall
only say "Who am I then? Tell me that first, and if I like being that person,
I'll log on: if not, I'll stay logged off till I'm somebody else."
Joe Gillon
it "virile" stuff, like Hemingway? Would _War and Peace_ be men's, and
_Anna Karenina_ women's? The only sexist sort of thing I've seen in
literature or near-literature (like near-beer?) has been _women's_
novels. Which reminds me, why do women need a break in this field?
Didn't Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Simone de Beauvoir,
Agatha Christy, etc. etc. etc. do all right? Or were there fewer Antigones,
Hester Prynnes, Emma Bovarys, and Anna Kareninas than there were male
protagonists? Gee, I've always been kinda proud of literature's record
in this area.
M.H. Nadel
>. Which reminds me, why do women need a break in this field?
>Didn't Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Simone de Beauvoir,
>Agatha Christy, etc. etc. etc. do all right? Or were there fewer Antigones,
>Hester Prynnes, Emma Bovarys, and Anna Kareninas than there were male
>protagonists? Gee, I've always been kinda proud of literature's record
>in this area.
I would suggest that you note that it is only within the past decade or so
that Austen and the Brontes have really been admitted to the literary canon
and widely taught in English lit classes.
And then you might go out and read Virginia Woolf's _A Room of One's Own_ and
see if it answers your question.
(It isn't that women need a break but that they have often had extra
obstacles put in their way. While you note Agatha Christie, I might point
out that while the membership of the Mystery Writers of America is more
than 50% female and that women get mysteries published about as often as
men do, less than 20% of the mysteries reviewed in major newspapers are by
women.)
Miriam Nadel
--
"Lots of people have left here incredibly confused."
- David Wilson, curator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology
Francis Muir
Joe Gillon writes:
...why do women need a break in this field? Didn't
Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Simone de
Beauvoir, Agatha Christy, etc. etc. etc. do all right?
I would suggest that you note that it is only within the past
decade or so that Austen and the Brontes have really been
admitted to the literary canon and widely taught in English
lit classes.
I cannot imagine what Eng Lit classes are in your experience. In
England, Austen and the Brontes have been standard fare in schools
for many, many decades. It may be, of course, that things are different
in the States where there may be some bias against English as opposed
to women authors.
And then you might go out and read Virginia Woolf's _A Room
of One's Own_ and see if it answers your question.
How is *A Room of one's Own* a propos? It was a talk given by Virginia
Woolf to an audience limited to young women (Girton? Newnham?) and more
than 60 years ago. It was by its nature insprirational and pedagogic,
and not necessarily what Woolf would have said to a more mature mixed
audience. in any case, 1930 was a long, long time ago. Believe me!
Fido
Vince Gibboni; x6220
>>
>> PERHAPS feminist literature? Doesn't it occur to Mizz Bouvalis that there
>> so-called feminist literature out there?
>>
>
>We all pay attention to what affects us most deeply. I'm prepared to admit
>that I'm more likely to notice and be angered by what I see as a literary
>maltreatment of myself than the similar mauling of another. You should recon-
>in a lot of literature, but it's there, though it may not seem important to
>or worthy of notice to you.
>
In the defense of Fido, literature and the American Way, and at the risk
of being impolite (or impolitic), or, worse yet, starting another of those
PC discussions, I ask you (quite nicely) to please withdraw your
mysogyny charges (or at least downgrade them to sexism), or you shall,
I'm afraid, leave me no choice but to ask for an example. (Misogyny, as
you no doubt know - despite widespread misuse - continues to mean "hatred
of women"; this is a far, far different things than sexism). I cannot
think of any serious work of literature (or for that matter any otherwise
good book) which could accurately be labeled misogynous. Can you ?
- Vince
--
vi...@gda.cadence.com
I was gambling in Havanna, I took a little risk.
Send lawyers, guns and money. Dad get me out of this.
- Warren Zevon
Roger Lustig
>In article <1991Aug7.1...@terminator.cc.umich.edu> j...@bach.cd.med.umich.edu (Joe Gillon) writes:
>>. Which reminds me, why do women need a break in this field?
>>Didn't Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Simone de Beauvoir,
>>Agatha Christy, etc. etc. etc. do all right? Or were there fewer Antigones,
>>Hester Prynnes, Emma Bovarys, and Anna Kareninas than there were male
>>protagonists? Gee, I've always been kinda proud of literature's record
>>in this area.
>I would suggest that you note that it is only within the past decade or so
>that Austen and the Brontes have really been admitted to the literary canon
>and widely taught in English lit classes.
WHAT? Austen studies have been widely accepted as central for a while
now. And both JE and WH have been high-school "classics" for
generations.
Far longer than, say, Moby-Dick.
What do you base this on, Miriam?
>And then you might go out and read Virginia Woolf's _A Room of One's Own_ and
>see if it answers your question.
Well, that's a good answer to the first half of the question, but do
remember that it's been SEVERAL decades since it came out, and since the
canon started taking the Brontes and Austen (and Mary Shelley, even!)
more seriously, along with George Eliot.
>(It isn't that women need a break but that they have often had extra
>obstacles put in their way. While you note Agatha Christie, I might point
>out that while the membership of the Mystery Writers of America is more
>than 50% female and that women get mysteries published about as often as
>men do, less than 20% of the mysteries reviewed in major newspapers are by
>women.)
Interesting point. Source? I suspect that this has to do with the
relatively large audience for the blockbuster thrillers, which get filed
under "Mystery," and which are predominantly by men: Ludlum, Deighton,
Clancy, Le Carre, Trevanian, Lustbader.
Was there an article on the stat you quote? I'd like to read it.
Roger
fielden j.a.
The Great books series announced earlier this year that 4 authors would be
dropped from their series and four added. Among the four added were
Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. Mortimer Adler has lectured here
several times as part of a class I took and when asked why there were
no women among the great books his response was basically becuase they
hadn't written anything having the depth etc. to be an enduring piece
of literature. He didn't have a response when asked several months later
about the change. He has some very set ideas anyway. But he was interesting
to listen to, even if I didn't agree with him.
In four semesters of a seminar class on humanities and literature we
read 2 things written by women. Both were essays and both in the last semester.
One was by Virginia Woolf and the other was by Mary Wollenstonecraft(the
mother of Mary Shelley). After I complained about it for 3 semesters
they finally changed the reading list and added Austen, Bronte and a
couple of others to the first year sequence. The typical response of
the director when I brought it up was "Well we would study female authors
also but there just isn't anything by them in the time periods we're
looking at." When I mentioned Sappho it was "too intricate for this class."
When we were looking at scientific writings I mentioned Marie Curie and
and it was "too difficult to understand, terrible to wade through."
After I gave him a copy of an article about a woman who was arrested at
her university graduation for draping a banner with the names of seven
women authors over the frieze on the library containing names of great
men authors I think he finally understood that this was not just me being
difficult but a legitimate gripe.
The reason I felt this was important was in this case the class
was created specifically for engineers in order to expose them to
a greater variety of ideas outside of engineering. Since engineering
is very male dominated anyway I wasn't real thrilled with 4 semesters
strictly of material that was liberally laced with misogynism, no matter how
worthy or reedeming it was otherwise. I just wanted some material with
alternative viewpoints that didn't strictly follow the classic western
view of the world.
So I guess this is a long way to make the point that it still isn't
automatic that female authors get the credit they deserve.
-jf
Jeff Davis
[ a discussion of women included into the literary canon deleted ]
>When I mentioned Sappho it was "too intricate for this class."
Sappho is an interesting choice. What kind of students taking this as an
introductory course have the sophistication to deal with the fact that
Sappho exists more or less as a compedium of guesswork surrounding
eensy-teensy bits of scavenged texts, made all the more difficult by
the fact that the dictionary entries for meanings of her work are
also guesswork. True, the same could be said for some other male
writers of the time, but the degree of fragmentation of her work would
make a study of her either extraordinarily brief or rather exhausting.
The fact that so many people across a long stretch of time have made
the effort, point out her value, but she is a special case.
--
Jeff Davis <da...@keats.ca.uky.edu>
I'm just winking happy thoughts into my little tiddle cup
soren--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty
>The Taming of the Shrew.
>I know that the play is sometimes interpreted in performance such that Kate
>is only putting on an act for the benefit of Petruchio's friends at the end,
>but I don't think that's any better than a more straight-forward portrayal.
I saw a performance of the play where the foot-kissing scene ends with
the "Shrew" (I'm so bad with names) giving whatsizname's legs a real
good yank, and sending him tumbling on his ass. I thought that was
a very good way to do it. No violence is done to Shakespeare's words,
yet it is made very clear that the happy couple's relationship will
procede on lines that are rather more palatable to a modern audience.
--
"How could I dance with another/When I saw him standing there" --Tiffany
soren f petersen : i AM NOT
spet...@peruvian.utah.edu : THE university OF utah
Dang. Utah always gets everything first. -- Rod Johnson
Janet M. Lafler
>In article <1991Aug12....@aero.org> na...@aero.org (M.H. Nadel) writes:
>>In article <1991Aug7.1...@terminator.cc.umich.edu> j...@bach.cd.med.umich.edu (Joe Gillon) writes:
>>>. Which reminds me, why do women need a break in this field?
>>>Didn't Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Simone de Beauvoir,
>>>Agatha Christy, etc. etc. etc. do all right? Or were there fewer Antigones,
>>>Hester Prynnes, Emma Bovarys, and Anna Kareninas than there were male
>>>protagonists? Gee, I've always been kinda proud of literature's record
>>>in this area.
>
>>I would suggest that you note that it is only within the past decade or so
>>that Austen and the Brontes have really been admitted to the literary canon
>>and widely taught in English lit classes.
>
>WHAT? Austen studies have been widely accepted as central for a while
>now. And both JE and WH have been high-school "classics" for
>generations.
>
>Far longer than, say, Moby-Dick.
While both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have been considered classics
for generations, Charlotte Bronte's other novels were out of print in the
US for many years. (I've read a descriptions by several women who had a
terrible time even finding a library copy of _Villette_ or _Shirley_ during
the mid-sixties.) This seems odd to me.
When I took a class on British modernism in college less than ten years
ago, we read all sorts of obscure modernist writers for the course, but
not a single woman. When we couldn't get hold of a book from the publisher
and had to substitute something else, I suggested we read something by
Virginia Woolf or Jean Rhys, but the professor decided that we ought to
read D.M. Thomas' _The White Hotel_, as an example of a contemporary writer
working in the modernist tradition. I thought that was stretching it.
Joe Green
> In the defense of Fido, literature and the American Way, and at the risk
> of being impolite (or impolitic), or, worse yet, starting another of those
> PC discussions, I ask you (quite nicely) to please withdraw your
> mysogyny charges (or at least downgrade them to sexism), or you shall,
> I'm afraid, leave me no choice but to ask for an example. (Misogyny, as
> you no doubt know - despite widespread misuse - continues to mean "hatred
> of women"; this is a far, far different things than sexism). I cannot
> think of any serious work of literature (or for that matter any otherwise
> good book) which could accurately be labeled misogynous. Can you ?
>
>
> - Vince
>
works of literature that do not display a hatred of woman. All you
have to do is realize that the equation woman=nature=death has been
around ever since a certain personage in the Epic of Gilgamesh could
no longer screw gazelles once he met woman. In my own field of
speciality, Jacobean drama, the slaughter of woman is general.
--
fielden j.a.
It was a junior and senior level, restricted enrollment seminar.
After wading through Aristotle's categories and some other
authors I'd definitely say the same is true of some male authors.
Makes it a rather artificial distinction to me. My eyes still
glaze over at the memory :-)
-jf
Janet M. Lafler
Well, I didn't specify serious or even good, but I'll do my best under those
restrictions.
I don't know if you consider him "serious," or "good," but how about
Jack Kerouac's work? No limit to the misogyny there.
Not good enough or classic enough? I must have a death wish, but I'm going
to say this anyway.
The Taming of the Shrew.
Now, before anyone gets out a blowtorch, please read the following:
1) Yes, Shakespeare was a product of his age.
2) I'm not calling good ol' Bill a misogynist. He created some of the most
admirable, complex, intruiguing, witty, sympathetic female characters in the
English language. God bless 'im. Really. Furthermore, when I describe
something a person has written or said as misogynist, that doesn't amount
to an accusation that the person is misogynist. We all express things that
are bigoted in one way or another at times; that doesn't mean we are Bad
People and ought to be burned at the stake, but it also doesn't mean that no-
body should point out these lapses when they occur.
Having said that, I am now willing to admit that I consider a play in which
the hero calculatedly browbeats his wife into complete subservience misogynist.
I know that the play is sometimes interpreted in performance such that Kate
is only putting on an act for the benefit of Petruchio's friends at the end,
but I don't think that's any better than a more straight-forward portrayal.
I'm now prepared to die.
Mary Ellen Foley
accurately be labeled misogynous"]
How about Walker Percy's "Lancelot"? The main character is something of
a misogynist, since he states more than once that he's found the meaning
of life, which is that we're all put on the planet to either be rapists
or to be raped, and says that someday, the women will stop fighting this
and realize he's right and that they like it. I'd say he qualifies.
I'm not saying Percy believed this himself, but his (insane) character does,
and since this character is the ONLY person to speak (except for 12 words
spoken by somebody else at the end) (weird book, this), you get rather a lot
of this point of view.
I found this AWFULLY hard going, and if I wasn't reading it for a class,
wouldn't have ploughed all the way through to the end.
So what makes a book "misogynous"? Is the point of view of the main character
enough?
--
WARNING!! Opinions in posting are farther away than they appear
^^^^^^^^^
Mary Ellen Foley (m...@netcom.com)
Duncan Peter G. Thornton
>When I took a class on British modernism in college less than ten years
>ago, we read all sorts of obscure modernist writers for the course, but
>not a single woman. When we couldn't get hold of a book from the publisher
>and had to substitute something else, I suggested we read something by
>Virginia Woolf or Jean Rhys, but the professor decided that we ought to
>read D.M. Thomas' _The White Hotel_, as an example of a contemporary writer
>working in the modernist tradition. I thought that was stretching it.
When I took a full-year course in modern British fiction just four
years ago (from a guy who was pretty enlightened) we took only
two women: Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf - or three of
of about 16 books. Including _The White Hotel_. (I found it was
very hard taking D.H. Lawrence seriously after reading Mansfield.)
soren--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty
>While both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have been considered classics
>for generations, Charlotte Bronte's other novels were out of print in the
>US for many years. (I've read a descriptions by several women who had a
>terrible time even finding a library copy of _Villette_ or _Shirley_ during
>the mid-sixties.) This seems odd to me.
*Shirley* is in print. In fact, we've just finished reading it in my
19th Century novel class. We used a Penguin edition. According to
the back of the book, Penguin also has an edition of *Villette*.
Richard Caley
jg> Well, Vince, sorry to butt in but I can't think of too many serious
jg> works of literature that do not display a hatred of woman.
The Golden Notebook
Wuthering Heights
The Handmaiden's Tale
etc.
Oh, what? Men? Maybe you think a `serious' work of literature must be
written by someone who is, erm, genitally convex.
The Crying of Lot 49
Foucult's Pendulum
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
etc.
Remembering here that we are supposed to see hatred, not simply
stereotyping. Now, I'm sure you can come up with some reading which
extracts mysogyny from them kicking and screaming; for instance:
jg> All you have to do is realize that the equation woman=nature=death
jg> has been around ever since a certain personage in the Epic of
jg> Gilgamesh could no longer screw gazelles once he met woman.
That is a _really_ strange reading of Gilgamesh. For one thing the
woman draws him _away_ from nature. Also it seems clear from the
translations I have read that she is seen to be doing him a favour (in
more than the sexual sense) since she is raising him from being an
animal to become fully human.
I think you have been reading too many victorian romantics. :-)
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk _O_
|<
Joe Green
>
> jg> Well, Vince, sorry to butt in but I can't think of too many serious
> jg> works of literature that do not display a hatred of woman.
>
> The Golden Notebook
> Wuthering Heights
> The Handmaiden's Tale
> etc.
Etc? Let's just say that I can name 5 to your 1.
You should also take Wuthering Heights off your list.
>
> Oh, what? Men? Maybe you think a `serious' work of literature must be
> written by someone who is, erm, genitally convex.
>
> The Crying of Lot 49
> Foucult's Pendulum
> The Castle of Crossed Destinies
> etc.
>
> Remembering here that we are supposed to see hatred, not simply
> stereotyping. Now, I'm sure you can come up with some reading which
> extracts mysogyny from them kicking and screaming; for instance:
>
> jg> All you have to do is realize that the equation woman=nature=death
> jg> has been around ever since a certain personage in the Epic of
> jg> Gilgamesh could no longer screw gazelles once he met woman.
>
> That is a _really_ strange reading of Gilgamesh. For one thing the
> woman draws him _away_ from nature. Also it seems clear from the
> translations I have read that she is seen to be doing him a favour (in
> more than the sexual sense) since she is raising him from being an
> animal to become fully human.
>
Hardly a strange reading. What it looks like you'll have to do, Vince
is to see that the other side of the equation is woman=nature=life-in-time
but that life-in-time=death. Also, you might brush up on being and
becoming. Maybe you might also brush up on the Fall. There is an
imagined "Nature" which is Nature denatured. This Nature is the
unsyllabled poontang that is imagined to exist before the Fall. In
this or that mythos this Nature is Nature without time and therefore
nature without death. In another mythos this Nature can mean
life without consciousness of death, oneness with Nature and so on.
To be fully human is to be aware of death. Of course she raises him
from being an animal to be fully human. She gives him the "gift"
of the consciousness of death -- just as woman confers both life and
death on her children. This is how she acquires her sacred status.
As she who give life she is worshipped but as she who confers death
she is abominated.
Now, read Rene Girard on violence and sacrifice or ask yourself why
Quentin Compson's sister means so very much to him and why he is obsessed
with time, or why there is a certain power in chastity, or who sin
is that brought death into the world and all our woe, or why
Jacobean comedy (as just one example) begins in a world of dearth,
moves to carnival and then punishes its celebrants, or why one could
write a history of the meaning of shit in literature that would be
essentially the same as the history of woman in literature, or
why that ending of endings -- the apocalypse -- is the destruction
of Nature as woman which means the death of death (check out
Northrop Frye's _The Great Code_ for apocalypse as pure and total
identification and try to relate that to oneness with Nature
in Gilgamesh), or try to determine what going upriver really means
in _Heart of Darkness_ (up the hairy river where the old mill
streams), or why certain Australians (as reported by Mr. Infidel)
use the word "cunt" so that it is merely phatic and then you might
try to relate the "phatic" to meaninglessness, or try to discover
why the guys who hung around in Shakespeare times used the word
"nothing" as a synonym for vagina and "die" for intercourse, or even
try to discover that Nature means more than Serutan spelled backwards.
> |<
--
Janet M. Lafler
>When I took a full-year course in modern British fiction just four
>years ago (from a guy who was pretty enlightened) we took only
>two women: Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf - or three of
>of about 16 books. Including _The White Hotel_. (I found it was
>very hard taking D.H. Lawrence seriously after reading Mansfield.)
The professor I took the British Modernism course from didn't think much
of Lawrence; I've never quite seen the appeal of Lawrence, myself, though
it's hard to appreciate how daring he was at the time. My favorite of the
works we read was Ford Maddox Ford's _No More Parades_. I think Ford is
a very underrated writer.
What did you think of _The White Hotel_? I couldn't stand it.
Duncan Peter G. Thornton
>>When I took a full-year course in modern British fiction just four
>>years ago (from a guy who was pretty enlightened) we took only
>>two women: Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf - or three of
>>of about 16 books. Including _The White Hotel_. (I found it was
>>very hard taking D.H. Lawrence seriously after reading Mansfield.)
>The professor I took the British Modernism course from didn't think much
>of Lawrence; I've never quite seen the appeal of Lawrence, myself, though
>it's hard to appreciate how daring he was at the time. My favorite of the
>works we read was Ford Maddox Ford's _No More Parades_. I think Ford is
>a very underrated writer.
>What did you think of _The White Hotel_? I couldn't stand it.
My professor said that what had changed since the sixties was that
in the sixties, he had to struggle to get people to dislike Lawrence;
more recently he had to struggle to get them to give Lawrence a fair
chance before they damned him. I haven't read any Ford; maybe I should
expand myself.
I think _The White Hotel_ is one of those love it or hate it things -
I did like a lot, and thought it was an interesting anti-patriarchal
sort of piece to have been written by a man (I've heard that Thomas
has been accused of being a bit a misogynist himself, though I'm not
sure on what grounds). What did you dislike so much about it?
It was really reading the Mansfield that I appreciated about the
class. After I read the first story I thought it was sort of
sentimental tripe, but after half a dozen I thought she was maybe
the best short-story writer I'd ever read.
Janet M. Lafler
>In article <RJC.91Au...@brodie.cstr.ed.ac.uk>, r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes:
>>
>> jg> Well, Vince, sorry to butt in but I can't think of too many serious
>> jg> works of literature that do not display a hatred of woman.
>>
>> The Golden Notebook
>> Wuthering Heights
>> The Handmaiden's Tale
>> etc.
>
>Etc? Let's just say that I can name 5 to your 1.
>You should also take Wuthering Heights off your list.
And The Golden Notebook. Lots of people will disagree with me, I know, but
I think that book is full of self-hatred.
>or try to discover
>why the guys who hung around in Shakespeare times used the word
>"nothing" as a synonym for vagina and "die" for intercourse
And if you look at the lyrics of Elizabethan love songs, they're often about
how cruel and unkind the lady love is, and how if the singer can't get this
kind of "death" he's going to literally die...
Not necessarily to the point, perhaps, but it's always intrigued me.
Janet M. Lafler
>In <1991Aug13.0...@leland.Stanford.EDU> repn...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler) writes:
>>What did you think of _The White Hotel_? I couldn't stand it.
>I think _The White Hotel_ is one of those love it or hate it things -
>I did like a lot, and thought it was an interesting anti-patriarchal
>sort of piece to have been written by a man (I've heard that Thomas
>has been accused of being a bit a misogynist himself, though I'm not
>sure on what grounds). What did you dislike so much about it?
I just found it a really grotesque read, from the very beginning. I remember
feeling actually bombarded by really disgusting representations of sexuality
in general and the female body in particular, and I also, in retrospect, am
irritated by the "woman's life story as sexual history" subtext. Maybe I over-
reacted at the time because of my resentment at being made to read the book in
the first place. I can see that it's in some senses an anti-patriarchal book,
but all the same it left a bad taste in my mouth.
BTW, I'm beginning to feel like the Resident Feminist around here, which
is not a role I'm comfortable with. I do think about other things, really.
Such as science fiction....Sometimes I even think of them together!
>It was really reading the Mansfield that I appreciated about the
>class. After I read the first story I thought it was sort of
>sentimental tripe, but after half a dozen I thought she was maybe
>the best short-story writer I'd ever read.
Wow. I've never read any Mansfield, but I think my sister lent me a book
of her short stories a while ago and it's sitting somewhere in one of the
piles of books in my room. Maybe it's time to dig it out.
Mike Godwin
>I would suggest that you note that it is only within the past decade or so
>that Austen and the Brontes have really been admitted to the literary canon
>and widely taught in English lit classes.
I must differ. They were widely taught longer than a decade ago. In
addition to my own experience of having studied them that far back, I note
that Zapp of David Lodge's excellent comic novels was a Jane Austen
specialist back in the late '60s.
--Mike
--
Mike Godwin, | "Someday, some way."
mnem...@eff.org |
(617) 864-1550 | --Marshall Crenshaw
EFF, Cambridge, MA |
Mike Godwin
>Having said that, I am now willing to admit that I consider a play in which
>the hero calculatedly browbeats his wife into complete subservience misogynist.
>I know that the play is sometimes interpreted in performance such that Kate
>is only putting on an act for the benefit of Petruchio's friends at the end,
>but I don't think that's any better than a more straight-forward portrayal.
I don't think either interpretation is required by the text, actually.
It's worth noting that the only woman WS thought worth loving is Kate, who
is clearly the strongest one.
Is "Taming" misogynist because of what "the hero" manages to pull off?
Do the men in "Taming" come across as being better or nobler than the
women? Hardly so, it seems to me. Petruchio comes across as being only the
least shallow of a venal, self-centered lot.
I think this is a subtler play than you give it credit for, Janet.
Janet M. Lafler
>In article <1991Aug12.2...@leland.Stanford.EDU> repn...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler) writes:
>
>>Having said that, I am now willing to admit that I consider a play in which
>>the hero calculatedly browbeats his wife into complete subservience misogynist.
>>I know that the play is sometimes interpreted in performance such that Kate
>>is only putting on an act for the benefit of Petruchio's friends at the end,
>>but I don't think that's any better than a more straight-forward portrayal.
>
>I don't think either interpretation is required by the text, actually.
>It's worth noting that the only woman WS thought worth loving is Kate, who
>is clearly the strongest one.
>
>Is "Taming" misogynist because of what "the hero" manages to pull off?
>Do the men in "Taming" come across as being better or nobler than the
>women? Hardly so, it seems to me. Petruchio comes across as being only the
>least shallow of a venal, self-centered lot.
>
>I think this is a subtler play than you give it credit for, Janet.
Probably, especially since I haven't read it since I was in high school,
over ten years ago.
Still, I would say that yes, since Petruchio manages to "pull off" his
taming of Kate, it indicates at the very least that what Petruchio has
done is acceptable within the general order, that is if you subscribe to
the idea that comedies end with the restoration of order (which is why
they usually end in marriage, often multiple marriages).
In some ways, I think that Petruchio is just the foremost example of the
Shakespeare protagonist (of a comedy) who doesn't deserve his female counter-
part. About the only one who does is Benedict. And Orlando's okay. But in
general they're a pretty sorry lot, by my demanding standards.
Joann Zimmerman
>My professor said that what had changed since the sixties was that
>in the sixties, he had to struggle to get people to dislike Lawrence;
>more recently he had to struggle to get them to give Lawrence a fair
>chance before they damned him. I haven't read any Ford; maybe I should
>expand myself.
He may just have had something here; I spent much of late 1970 reading
Lawrence in an orgy of literary discovery. I wouldn't have read so
much if I hadn't thought I was enjoying it. A few years later, I had
to reread some of it for a seminar on the modern British novel, and
started feeling a little dubious. My latest attempt was a couple of
years ago, and I felt downright oppressed by what seemed now to be a
rather slimy ooze.
Ford's recommended.
--
"This is a rotten argument, but it should be good enough for their lordships
on a hot summer afternoon."
- anonymous comment on brief, inadvertently read aloud in the House of Lords
...!cs.utexas.edu!ccwf!jzimm
news
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: N.E.T., Redwood City, CA
Keywords:
From: he...@wolf.unet.com (Heidi Wolf)
Path: wolf!heidi
[Lots of interesting comments by various people, on the subject
of women and literature, deleted.]
Joanna Russ (author and college professor) wrote a book discussing
the very issues being addressed here. It's called HOW TO SUPPRESS
WOMEN'S WRITING. Russ is an articulate, witty writer and even when
I disagree with her opinions, I always enjoy reading her work. I
recommend this book to anyone interested in perceptions of women
authors and "women's literature" [sic] over the past few centuries,
especially if you like your literary discussions to be humorous.
(My favorite chapter is the epilogue, in which Russ describes her
realization that she'd left out an entire category of women writers,
and her subsequent attempts to correct her oversight before her
book went to print. I like people who can poke fun at themselves....)
Heidi Wolf
Richard Caley
jg> Well, Vince, sorry to butt in but I can't think of too many serious
jg> works of literature that do not display a hatred of woman.
rjc> The Golden Notebook
rjc> Wuthering Heights
rjc> The Handmaiden's Tale
rjc> etc.
jg> Etc? Let's just say that I can name 5 to your 1.
And I could list my entire library[*]. You wouldn't believe me, and
justly so. I reserve the same right to doubt your listing pending
argument.
jg> You should also take Wuthering Heights off your list.
I'd rather not. Care to say why I should.
I agree with Janet in another article. The Golden Notebook is a far
less secure member of the list.
jg> All you have to do is realize that the equation woman=nature=death
jg> has been around ever since a certain personage in the Epic of
jg> Gilgamesh could no longer screw gazelles once he met woman.
rjc> That is a _really_ strange reading of Gilgamesh.
jg> Hardly a strange reading. What it looks like you'll have to do,
jg> Vince is to see that the other side of the equation is
jg> woman=nature=life-in-time but that life-in-time=death.
First, I'm Richard, not Vince.
Second, Why should I apply either of these equations. The text lends
little support to either. In fact woman=mother=teacher would seem to
be more to the point.
Third, there is no idication that Enkidu is not mortal before he meets
the woman. In fact, given that Gilgamesh, who is `two thirds god', is
solidly mortal it seems unlikely in the extreme that Enkidu would be
immortal.
Fourth, even if we assume that the woman is used as a symbol for birth
and so of the start of death, that does not seem to me to bear any
realtion to mysogyny which is the point of the thread. To crowbar it
into such a shape you would have to assume that (a) death is hated
(rather than feared) in the society in which the poem was written and
(b) that death is being hated as an indirect way of hating women. The
latter looks expecially hard to me. If I were to write a poem using
blue to symbolise the current British government, would you infer from
that that my dislike of the governmnet meant that I disliked the
colour blue?
jg> Maybe you might also brush up on the Fall.
You have to be kidding. To use the Fall as a way of looking at
Gilgamesh is like using the Pickwick Papers as a way of looking at the
letters of Saint Paul. No, worse, it is like someone 2000 years from
now doing so. The Genesis story was written by a very different
society from that which produced Gilgamesh. The `Fall' as a concept is
a product of another, much more distant, society.
Before I get sniped at from the wings, I am not saying that such an
anachronistic reading is in any way invalid, just that it is rather
extreme.
jg> There is an imagined "Nature" which is Nature denatured. This
jg> Nature is the unsyllabled poontang that is imagined to exist
jg> before the Fall.
_By_who_
Not by the authors of Gilgamesh. Not by me. If you see such a Fall in
the epic then that is fine, but let's be clear where it is coming
from.
jg> Of course she raises him from being an animal to be fully human.
jg> She gives him the "gift" of the consciousness of death -- just as
jg> woman confers both life and death on her children. This is how
jg> she acquires her sacred status. As she who give life she is
jg> worshipped but as she who confers death she is abominated.
Ok, now you have eased off to _consciousness_ of death. Maybe she
does. Even if so, it doesn't seem to be other than incidental to the
passage which, to me, reads more as an alegory of the path from
savagery to civilisation with the woman playing the role of guide
because most people's guide down that path _is_ a woman. Enkidu is
created on the fly to be a companion and flywheel to Gilgamesh. He is
raw, unformed, barely more than the lump of clay he was drawn from. He
scares the witts out of the trapper who meets him because he is an
animal in human form. Naturally he has to be guided into the highly
developed society of a city state and naturally it is a woman who does
the guiding. This is hardly a mysogynistic view, it shows woman as the
civilising influence on animalistic men. Women as wise teachers not
bringers of death. I wouldn't be supprised to find such a passage in a
book by the most ardent feminist.
jg> [...] or who[se] sin is that brought death into the world and all our
jg> woe,
Yes, but all this is very christian. I would be the last to defend
christianity from charges of mysogyny. Again, not relevant to
Gilgamesh except to possibly explain why some readers might read a
Fall into it.
To broaden a little. Yes, the mysogyny of christian doctrine _has_
resulted in a good deal of potentially mysogynistic symbolism finding
its way into many works. However use of the symbolism doesn't imply
acceptence of the attitude. If an author uses an image of a woman and
an apple to symbolise a fall of some kind, do we really have to assume
that the author shares Saint Paul's view of women? Might he not be
referring to the _story_ of the fall and might the fact that the
person involved is a woman not be a (possibly unfortunate) side effect
of that reference?
jg> or why certain Australians (as reported by Mr. Infidel) use the
jg> word "cunt" so that it is merely phatic and then you might try to
jg> relate the "phatic" to meaninglessness,
To endulge in a little folk entymology here...
`Cunt' became a term of affection via being an insult. Now, `prick' is
also an insult as is `asshole' and any number of other taboo bits of
anatomy. As to why `cunt' became a term of affection while `prick', to
my knowledge, did not I would guess that it is closely related to why
`cunt' is only used between men. For someone to use `cunt' to a woman
would be to reduce her to her genitals, which I think could hardly be
taken as affectionate outside a very intimate relationship. Similarly
`prick' to a man would be, not a sign of affection, but a sneer. Now,
by symetry this argument would imply that women would use `prick', or
some synonym, to each other. As far as I know that is not the case. To
follow that up we'd get into difference between male and female
bonding in current British/Australian society and far beyond my
knowledge.
To relate phatic to meaningless, in any but the most literal terms,
would be extremely stupid, IMHO.
Here's one for you, why is it that you feel this overpowerring desire
to use `intercourse' and other such euphemisms when there are
perfectly good English words? Could it be you have inherited the fears
and mysogyny of Saint Paul? See how easy it is to read mysogyny into
everything?
[*] Actually, given my love of trashy space opera, sections of my library
barely notes that women exist. I don't think I'd class that
as hate, though it is certainly a warped outlook.
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk Then he called his band onto the stage,
And he looked at all the friends he'd made.
- Jethro Tull, `Minstral in the Gallary'
marc.colten
> >
> >I think [Taming of the Shrew] is a subtler play than you give it
> > credit for, Janet.
>
> Probably, especially since I haven't read it since I was in high school,
> over ten years ago.
>
> Still, I would say that yes, since Petruchio manages to "pull off" his
> taming of Kate, it indicates at the very least that what Petruchio has
> done is acceptable within the general order, that is if you subscribe to
> the idea that comedies end with the restoration of order (which is why
> they usually end in marriage, often multiple marriages).
>
> In some ways, I think that Petruchio is just the foremost example of the
> Shakespeare protagonist (of a comedy) who doesn't deserve his female counter-
> part. About the only one who does is Benedict. And Orlando's okay. But in
> general they're a pretty sorry lot, by my demanding standards.
WARNING .... WARNING ... WARNING ... English Major Alert !!!!!
Seriously, people are always trying to re-interprete Shakespeare to
fit modern sensibilities. When I was in college the intro to our
Shakespeare text marveled "no one was prejudiced against Othello
because he was black." Obviously they never read the part where
Iago goes running to Desdimona's father to tell her that a "black
rooster is on top of his white hen" (or something to that effect).
Yes, Petruchio "tamed" Kate and the audience loved it. Shylock was
beated by a cheap lawyers trick and the audience loved it. There's
a lot in these plays that rankles these days. I personally stick to
disliking the cannabilism, murder, betrayal, and stuff like that.
We're getting into a quaqmire if we start worrying too much about
17th century sensibilities and what they liked and didn't like.
PS: My apologies, in advance, to any English Majors with better
memories than mine.
marc colten
Joe Green
>
> jg> Well, Vince, sorry to butt in but I can't think of too many serious
> jg> works of literature that do not display a hatred of woman.
>
> rjc> The Golden Notebook
> rjc> Wuthering Heights
> rjc> The Handmaiden's Tale
> rjc> etc.
>
> jg> Etc? Let's just say that I can name 5 to your 1.
>
> And I could list my entire library[*]. You wouldn't believe me, and
> justly so. I reserve the same right to doubt your listing pending
> argument.
>
> jg> You should also take Wuthering Heights off your list.
>
> I'd rather not. Care to say why I should.
I might later. Watch for it.
>
> I agree with Janet in another article. The Golden Notebook is a far
> less secure member of the list.
>
> jg> All you have to do is realize that the equation woman=nature=death
> jg> has been around ever since a certain personage in the Epic of
> jg> Gilgamesh could no longer screw gazelles once he met woman.
>
> rjc> That is a _really_ strange reading of Gilgamesh.
>
> jg> Hardly a strange reading. What it looks like you'll have to do,
> jg> Vince is to see that the other side of the equation is
> jg> woman=nature=life-in-time but that life-in-time=death.
>
> First, I'm Richard, not Vince.
Howdy, Richard.
>
> Second, Why should I apply either of these equations. The text lends
> little support to either. In fact woman=mother=teacher would seem to
> be more to the point.
Of course it seems more to the point to you because you miss the point.
>
> Third, there is no idication that Enkidu is not mortal before he meets
> the woman. In fact, given that Gilgamesh, who is `two thirds god', is
> solidly mortal it seems unlikely in the extreme that Enkidu would be
> immortal.
You miss the point again. Enkidu is mortal, of course. Reread what
I wrote about pure and total identification, two concepts of Nature, etc.
>
> Fourth, even if we assume that the woman is used as a symbol for birth
> and so of the start of death, that does not seem to me to bear any
> realtion to mysogyny which is the point of the thread. To crowbar it
> into such a shape you would have to assume that (a) death is hated
> (rather than feared) in the society in which the poem was written and
> (b) that death is being hated as an indirect way of hating women. The
> latter looks expecially hard to me. If I were to write a poem using
> blue to symbolise the current British government, would you infer from
> that that my dislike of the governmnet meant that I disliked the
> colour blue?
My god, you don't do a lot of literary criticism, do you?
You need to start with what "woman" means in literature. My
original posting included some questions you might try to answer.
Get Klaus Thewelit's "Male Fantasies" and give it a read.
> jg> Maybe you might also brush up on the Fall.
>
> You have to be kidding. To use the Fall as a way of looking at
> Gilgamesh is like using the Pickwick Papers as a way of looking at the
> letters of Saint Paul. No, worse, it is like someone 2000 years from
> now doing so. The Genesis story was written by a very different
> society from that which produced Gilgamesh. The `Fall' as a concept is
> a product of another, much more distant, society.
What you don't understand is that "the Fall" occurs in more than one mythos and
somehow (one wonders why) means more or less the same thing.
> Before I get sniped at from the wings, I am not saying that such an
> anachronistic reading is in any way invalid, just that it is rather
> extreme.
Hardly extreme, Richard. Merely something you have not encountered.
>
> jg> There is an imagined "Nature" which is Nature denatured. This
> jg> Nature is the unsyllabled poontang that is imagined to exist
> jg> before the Fall.
>
> _By_who_
>
> Not by the authors of Gilgamesh. Not by me. If you see such a Fall in
> the epic then that is fine, but let's be clear where it is coming
> from.
>
By just about everybody.
Here, Richard, we are moving from Gilgamesh to good old "Western Civ."
>And, if you think that the idea that woman brought sin (understood in
a broad sense, etc.) into the world is particularly Christian, I'll
refuse to open that particular Pandora's box.
> To broaden a little. Yes, the mysogyny of christian doctrine _has_
> resulted in a good deal of potentially mysogynistic symbolism finding
> its way into many works. However use of the symbolism doesn't imply
> acceptence of the attitude. If an author uses an image of a woman and
> an apple to symbolise a fall of some kind, do we really have to assume
> that the author shares Saint Paul's view of women? Might he not be
> referring to the _story_ of the fall and might the fact that the
> person involved is a woman not be a (possibly unfortunate) side effect
> of that reference?
Yes, we would all like to believe this.
>
> jg> or why certain Australians (as reported by Mr. Infidel) use the
> jg> word "cunt" so that it is merely phatic and then you might try to
> jg> relate the "phatic" to meaninglessness,
>
> To endulge in a little folk entymology here...
>
> `Cunt' became a term of affection via being an insult. Now, `prick' is
> also an insult as is `asshole' and any number of other taboo bits of
> anatomy. As to why `cunt' became a term of affection while `prick', to
> my knowledge, did not I would guess that it is closely related to why
> `cunt' is only used between men. For someone to use `cunt' to a woman
> would be to reduce her to her genitals, which I think could hardly be
> taken as affectionate outside a very intimate relationship. Similarly
> `prick' to a man would be, not a sign of affection, but a sneer. Now,
> by symetry this argument would imply that women would use `prick', or
> some synonym, to each other. As far as I know that is not the case. To
> follow that up we'd get into difference between male and female
> bonding in current British/Australian society and far beyond my
> knowledge.
>
> To relate phatic to meaningless, in any but the most literal terms,
> would be extremely stupid, IMHO.
Yes, woman don't refer to each other as pricks. You might try to
discover why.
The phatic is meaningless and, at the same time, strangely meaningful.
> Here's one for you, why is it that you feel this overpowerring desire
> to use `intercourse' and other such euphemisms when there are
> perfectly good English words? Could it be you have inherited the fears
> and mysogyny of Saint Paul? See how easy it is to read mysogyny into
> everything?
Ah, what words would you have me use? Would you feel better if I said
fuck? Why?
>
> [*] Actually, given my love of trashy space opera, sections of my library
> barely notes that women exist. I don't think I'd class that
> as hate, though it is certainly a warped outlook.
>
The defense rests.
--
Bob Ingria
Here, Richard, we are moving from Gilgamesh to good old "Western Civ."
And, if you think that the idea that woman brought sin (understood in
a broad sense, etc.) into the world is particularly Christian, I'll
refuse to open that particular Pandora's box.
It may be worthwhile to point out that the Pandora story is even more
misogynistic in the Greek than it is in translation. In the original
(by Hesiod), Pandora, the ``beautiful evil'' is first described, then
the pithos jar (which turns into a box in English translation). The
actual description of the opening of the jar has a little preamble
running somewhat as follows: ``In those days, men lived in peace on
the earth, until woman brought evil into the world...'' Now, at the
time Hesiod wrote, the definite article in Greek was not yet stable,
so the word ``woman'', without definite article, could either mean
``the woman'' (i.e. Pandora) or woman in general. Given Hesiod's
misogyny elsewhere, it's not unlikely that this is an ambiguity he
enjoyed.
-30-
Bob
``Work with work upon work.''
Mike Godwin
>Probably, especially since I haven't read it since I was in high school,
>over ten years ago.
I think it bears rereading. Trust me on this.
>Still, I would say that yes, since Petruchio manages to "pull off" his
>taming of Kate, it indicates at the very least that what Petruchio has
>done is acceptable within the general order, that is if you subscribe to
>the idea that comedies end with the restoration of order (which is why
>they usually end in marriage, often multiple marriages).
I think this is a cause of the theory dictating the interpretation, rather
than the play giving rise to it. I think there's a strong argument that
the "restored order" in "Taming" is one in which Kate and Petruchio are
equal partners, albeit playing different roles.
>In some ways, I think that Petruchio is just the foremost example of the
>Shakespeare protagonist (of a comedy) who doesn't deserve his female counter-
>part. About the only one who does is Benedict.
It's worth thinking about what similarities there might be between
the Beatrice/Benedick pair and Petruchio/Kate.
I think Kate's lines in the final scenes of the play signify a
conscious choice, not a brainwashed submission. Try reading her lines
out loud, and see whether she sounds self-possessed or not.
> And Orlando's okay. But in
>general they're a pretty sorry lot, by my demanding standards.
Orlando's more or less a drip.
Janet M. Lafler
>In article <1991Aug14....@leland.Stanford.EDU> repn...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler) writes:
>
>>Probably, especially since I haven't read it since I was in high school,
>>over ten years ago.
>
>I think it bears rereading. Trust me on this.
Well, since I've been spouting off about this, I kind of have to now, don't I?
>>Still, I would say that yes, since Petruchio manages to "pull off" his
>>taming of Kate, it indicates at the very least that what Petruchio has
>>done is acceptable within the general order, that is if you subscribe to
>>the idea that comedies end with the restoration of order (which is why
>>they usually end in marriage, often multiple marriages).
>
>I think this is a cause of the theory dictating the interpretation, rather
>than the play giving rise to it. I think there's a strong argument that
>the "restored order" in "Taming" is one in which Kate and Petruchio are
>equal partners, albeit playing different roles.
Not to accuse you of this, Mike, but I have trouble with the idea of
"equal partners playing different roles," especially when her role is to
defer to him in public, since it's often used as an excuse for subordi-
nating women (and other classes of people). Equal how? What rights does
she have?
>>In some ways, I think that Petruchio is just the foremost example of the
>>Shakespeare protagonist (of a comedy) who doesn't deserve his female counter-
>>part. About the only one who does is Benedict.
>
>It's worth thinking about what similarities there might be between
>the Beatrice/Benedick pair and Petruchio/Kate.
They start out very similar. The same kind of competition and witty banter.
But then it's the other male protagonist of the play (his name escapes me at
the moment) who gets to act like a jerk. (Gotta have at least one.)
>I think Kate's lines in the final scenes of the play signify a
>conscious choice, not a brainwashed submission. Try reading her lines
>out loud, and see whether she sounds self-possessed or not.
Well, as I've said before, I don't think this is much better than a brain-
washed submission. And if it isn't one, then what's the point of the stuff
that Petruchio puts her through? At some level, we have to assume that it
worked, even if it's just that she's decided that she's going to have to
oppose him more deviously in the future. So he's cowed her into playing by
his rules, at the very least.
>> And Orlando's okay. But in
>>general they're a pretty sorry lot, by my demanding standards.
>
>Orlando's more or less a drip.
More or less. But I've seen him played so that he's at least somewhat
attractive, whereas I've never seen an actor that could redeem Orsino.
Francis Muir
Mike Godwin writes:
I think Kate's lines in the final scenes of the play
signify a conscious choice, not a brainwashed submission.
Try reading her lines out loud, and see whether she sounds
self-possessed or not.
Well, as I've said before, I don't think this is much better than
a brain- washed submission. And if it isn't one, then what's the
point of the stuff that Petruchio puts her through? At some level,
we have to assume that it worked, even if it's just that she's
decided that she's going to have to oppose him more deviously in
the future. So he's cowed her into playing by is rules, at the
very least.
Aren't we forgetting that the Shrew was not written as a book, but as a
play. To be performed. And Kate to be performed by a man? Is Kate much
more than a Drag Queen? Isn't there a real difference between real people
taking real positions in novels, and situations acted out on a stage? At
the theater we are asked to suspend our disbelief, in a book there is
nothing not to disbelieve. It is there. Real.
Fido
Francis Muir
Francis Muir writes:
Aren't we forgetting that the Shrew was not written as a
book, but as a play. To be performed. And Kate to be
performed by a man? Is Kate much more than a Drag Queen?
Probably by a boy, actually. My mind always boggles (oh no, not
again) at the idea of Lady MacBeth being played by a boy. Kate's
a little easier to imagine.
Where do you get the idea that all female roles were played by boys,
actually?
And yes, this changes the nature of the play for the audience.
To take your comment a little more seriously than it was intended,
however, I wouldn't say that in Shakespeare's time the boy actors
who played female parts were drag queens.
Your condescension does you no favor; please don't suppose to know the
seriousness of my intentions. I never said "boy actors who played female
roles were drag queens", nor can my words be reasonably interpreted that
way. I was talking specifically about Kate in *The Taming of the Shrew*,
as was everyone else.
Drag queens are traditionally campy; Shakespearian actors who
played female parts most probably were not (unless they were
playing Juliet's Nurse or something).
"Most probably were not"? Your source for this? Is it not possible that
WS and his fellow owner-actor-managers of The Globe chose actors for
parts partly by age, just as we do today? Is it just fortuity that Ophelia
is a pretty simple role, or is it, perhaps, because apprentice actors were
going to play the part? You allow Juliet's Nurse to be played by an older
man, then why not Kate? I find it not difficult to look at *The Taming of
the Shrew* much as I would look at a Punch-and-Judy Show: an "acting out"
of marital and other tensions for the katharsis that it offers.
It's interesting to consider the change in English theater
when actresses first began performing; it must have been strange
for the audiences of the time.
No stranger than present day visitors to the English Theatre discovering
that the practise od men playing women's roles has not died out, and is
alive and well in Christmas Pantomime (and in TV's Benny Hill Show).
Fido
Sandra Loosemore
It's worth thinking about what similarities there might be between
the Beatrice/Benedick pair and Petruchio/Kate.
I don't think there are *that* many similarities. It's obvious that
Beatrice and Benedick have a long-standing relationship when the play
opens, and that they don't really bear each other any ill-will in
spite of their bickering. My interpretation has always been that
Beatrice had a soft spot for Benedick all along and her prickliness
was mostly just a defensive reaction to his lack of romantic interest
in her. For his part, Benedick was just too thick-skulled to notice
what was going on.
On the other hand, I do think Kate actively disliked being forced into
marrying Petruchio and her resulting bitchiness was genuine.
-Sandra
Hans Rancke-Madsen
>In article <RJC.91Au...@brodie.cstr.ed.ac.uk>, r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes:
>> In article <12383...@timbuk.cray.com>, Joe Green (jg) writes:
>>
>> jg> All you have to do is realize that the equation woman=nature=death
>> jg> has been around ever since a certain personage in the Epic of
>> jg> Gilgamesh could no longer screw gazelles once he met woman.
>>
>> rjc> That is a _really_ strange reading of Gilgamesh.
>>
>> jg> Hardly a strange reading. What it looks like you'll have to do,
>> jg> [Richard] is to see that the other side of the equation is
>> jg> woman=nature=life-in-time but that life-in-time=death.
>>
>> Second, Why should I apply either of these equations. The text lends
>> little support to either. In fact woman=mother=teacher would seem to
>> be more to the point.
>Of course it seems more to the point to you because you miss the point.
What a lovely argument. But it could be improved quite a bit by
elucidating the point you claim Richard has missed. Until you do,
your argument falls squarely in the 'Ain't so! Is too!' school.
By the way, your interpretation of the woman who lies with Enkidu being
equal to nature is IMO totally off. If you reread the epos you'll note that
she, in addition to lieing with him, she feeds him bread and gives him
wine - two obvious products of human civilization.
>> jg> Maybe you might also brush up on the Fall.
>>
>> You have to be kidding. To use the Fall as a way of looking at
>> Gilgamesh is like using the Pickwick Papers as a way of looking at the
>> letters of Saint Paul. No, worse, it is like someone 2000 years from
>> now doing so. The Genesis story was written by a very different
>> society from that which produced Gilgamesh. The `Fall' as a concept is
>> a product of another, much more distant, society.
>What you don't understand is that "the Fall" occurs in more than one mythos
Name three more. The Bible I grant you. In the case of Gilgamesh I think
you're wrong. In the two other that I know fairly well (Norse and Greek)
I fail to recall anything that could concievably be interpreted thus.
>and somehow (one wonders why) means more or less the same thing.
>> jg> There is an imagined "Nature" which is Nature denatured. This
>> jg> Nature is the unsyllabled poontang that is imagined to exist
>> jg> before the Fall.
>>
>> _By_who_
>>
>> Not by the authors of Gilgamesh. Not by me. If you see such a Fall in
>> the epic then that is fine, but let's be clear where it is coming
>> from.
>>
>By just about everybody.
Ah, the good old trick of quoting the anonymous 'everybody' as support.
How about some names? After seeing some of the opinions 'everybody'
allegdedly holds, I don't consider him much of an authority.
>> jg> [...] or who[se] sin is that brought death into the world and all our
>> jg> woe,
>>
>> Yes, but all this is very christian. I would be the last to defend
>> christianity from charges of mysogyny. Again, not relevant to
>> Gilgamesh except to possibly explain why some readers might read a
>> Fall into it.
>Here, Richard, we are moving from Gilgamesh to good old "Western Civ."
>>And, if you think that the idea that woman brought sin (understood in
>a broad sense, etc.) into the world is particularly Christian, I'll
>refuse to open that particular Pandora's box.
Ooops! :-) Touche! Yes, I'd forgotten about Pandora. OK, I'll grant you
the greek mythology too, although the Pandora story is not IMO as serious
an indictment of woman as the Fall. I still can't recall any parallel in
norse mythology though.
Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
ran...@diku.dk
------------
"Free speech gives a man the right to talk about the
'psycology' of an amoeba, but I don't have to listen".
Elihu Nivens in 'The Puppet Masters'
Janet M. Lafler
>Aren't we forgetting that the Shrew was not written as a book, but as a
>play. To be performed. And Kate to be performed by a man? Is Kate much
>more than a Drag Queen?
Probably by a boy, actually. My mind always boggles (oh no, not again) at
the idea of Lady MacBeth being played by a boy. Kate's a little easier to
imagine.
And yes, this changes the nature of the play for the audience. To take your
comment a little more seriously than it was intended, however, I wouldn't say
that in Shakespeare's time the boy actors who played female parts were drag
queens. Drag queens are traditionally campy; Shakespearian actors who played
female parts most probably were not (unless they were playing Juliet's Nurse
or something). It's interesting to consider the change in English theater
when actresses first began performing; it must have been strange for the au-
diences of the time. (Of course, this happened after the Restoration, and
there had been no theater at all in England during Cromwell's rule, so the
theater was pretty topsy turvey at the time anyway.)
>Isn't there a real difference between real people
>taking real positions in novels, and situations acted out on a stage? At
>the theater we are asked to suspend our disbelief, in a book there is
>nothing not to disbelieve. It is there. Real.
Yes, and I think this difference is part of what makes Shakespeare not only
Great according to academics, but still popular art.
But, getting back to the original point, I don't like productions of WS's
plays in which the play gets *really* bent out of shape. (You know, the
Director, 10: Shakespeare, 0 productions.) I'm all for experimental and
modern dress Shakespeare, but a production of Shrew which tries to make it
somehow egalitarian or even "feminist" strikes me as stretching it to the
breaking point.
I don't know if I've made it clear, but I don't feel that I *have* to like
every one of WS's plays. I find Shrew unpalatable, but that's okay. I
really don't think it's that big a deal. I only mentioned it because some-
one asked, okay?
Joan Shields
>But, getting back to the original point, I don't like productions of WS's
>plays in which the play gets *really* bent out of shape. (You know, the
>Director, 10: Shakespeare, 0 productions.) I'm all for experimental and
>modern dress Shakespeare, but a production of Shrew which tries to make it
>somehow egalitarian or even "feminist" strikes me as stretching it to the
>breaking point.
>
>I don't know if I've made it clear, but I don't feel that I *have* to like
>every one of WS's plays. I find Shrew unpalatable, but that's okay. I
>really don't think it's that big a deal. I only mentioned it because some-
>one asked, okay?
I agree with Janet. I too get a bad taste in my mouth and find myself
squirming a bit at the end of _...Shrew_ - even when I've read the part
aloud. _...Shrew is not a feminist work - it never will be unless you
completely turn the story upside down and give a good shake and even then
one gender will still end up getting bashed by the other. But, you know,
that's ok - as Janet said, none of us have to *like* all of Shakespeare's
plays.
Then again, Janet and I are only women and therefore may very well be
missing the point of _...Shrew_ entirely :) - but I don't think so.
Joan
Shakespeare wasn't a feminist - but then again, he didn't have to be :).
M.H. Nadel
>In article <1991Aug12....@aero.org> na...@aero.org (M.H. Nadel) writes:
>>I would suggest that you note that it is only within the past decade or so
>>that Austen and the Brontes have really been admitted to the literary canon
>>and widely taught in English lit classes.
>
>now. And both JE and WH have been high-school "classics" for
>generations.
>
My statement was based on a few things:
1) I looked through some editions of the "what classics should I read" books
and noted when Austen and the Brontes got in.
2) I looked at some old college catalogs in the library and saw that all of
the descriptions of courses were heavy on Hardy and Dickens and pretty much
ignored everyone else from the 19th century at all.
3) I asked everyone I could think of (off the net) and we compared notes and
I still haven't found anyone who read Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights or any
of Austen's books in high school. I did find two people who had read
George Eliot's _Silas Marner_ but only one of them knew George was a woman.
4) The only prose work by a woman I read in high school English classes was
Lillian Hellman's _The Little Foxes_.
5) In 4 lit classes in college, reading roughly 60 prose works, not a single
one of those was by a woman. Women fared somewhat better in poetry - we
even read some of Anna Akhmatova in a class on the history of Russian
literature and English profs seem to be enthralled with Emily Dickenson.
6) I talked to all of the people I know who were English majors (since they
would have taken more lit classes than I did) and they told me that
outside of classes specifically on women's literature, they never read works
by women in their classes.
>>And then you might go out and read Virginia Woolf's _A Room of One's Own_ and
>>see if it answers your question.
>
>Well, that's a good answer to the first half of the question, but do
>remember that it's been SEVERAL decades since it came out, and since the
>canon started taking the Brontes and Austen (and Mary Shelley, even!)
>more seriously, along with George Eliot.
>
Actually, what I was getting at more is that the major reason given for
not teaching more works by women is that there aren't enough women in
appropriate historical periods. And Woolf does a good job of explaining
why there wasn't a "Judith Shakespeare."
>>(It isn't that women need a break but that they have often had extra
>>obstacles put in their way. While you note Agatha Christie, I might point
>>out that while the membership of the Mystery Writers of America is more
>>than 50% female and that women get mysteries published about as often as
>>men do, less than 20% of the mysteries reviewed in major newspapers are by
>>women.)
>
>Interesting point. Source? I suspect that this has to do with the
>relatively large audience for the blockbuster thrillers, which get filed
>under "Mystery," and which are predominantly by men: Ludlum, Deighton,
>Clancy, Le Carre, Trevanian, Lustbader.
My source on this was an article by Sarah Paretsky, explaining why she founded
Sisters in Crime. I admit I was skeptical but then I started counting
the breakdown in reviews and the numbers seem about right for the L.A. Times,
the San Francisco Chronicle, the Denver Post and even the NY Times. The
mystery publications do somewhat better - EQMM has upped the percentage of
books by women in its reviews but I suspect that is largely because Jon
Breen (who writes their reviews) is friendly with Sue Grafton.
Miriam Nadel
--
"Lots of people have left here incredibly confused."
- David Wilson, curator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology
Joe Green
> n2...@cray.com (Joe Green) writes:
>
> >In article <RJC.91Au...@brodie.cstr.ed.ac.uk>, r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes:
> >> In article <12383...@timbuk.cray.com>, Joe Green (jg) writes:
> >>
> >> jg> All you have to do is realize that the equation woman=nature=death
> >> jg> has been around ever since a certain personage in the Epic of
> >> jg> Gilgamesh could no longer screw gazelles once he met woman.
> >>
> >> rjc> That is a _really_ strange reading of Gilgamesh.
> >>
> >> jg> Hardly a strange reading. What it looks like you'll have to do,
> >> jg> [Richard] is to see that the other side of the equation is
> >> jg> woman=nature=life-in-time but that life-in-time=death.
> >>
> >> Second, Why should I apply either of these equations. The text lends
> >> little support to either. In fact woman=mother=teacher would seem to
> >> be more to the point.
>
> >Of course it seems more to the point to you because you miss the point.
>
> What a lovely argument. But it could be improved quite a bit by
> elucidating the point you claim Richard has missed. Until you do,
> your argument falls squarely in the 'Ain't so! Is too!' school.
>
> By the way, your interpretation of the woman who lies with Enkidu being
> equal to nature is IMO totally off. If you reread the epos you'll note that
> she, in addition to lieing with him, she feeds him bread and gives him
> wine - two obvious products of human civilization.
Joe writes:
That's right and exactly my point. She "seduces" him into civilization
which is the consciousness of death which is the fall from unmediated
being. Nature as unmediated being is then destroyed and woman is
nature as the gibberish of generation. In Judeo- Christian myth the
fall is from the universe created by the masculine omnific word into
the world of becoming and death. Standing by the waters of Babylon
-- in either version -- woman loses.
Woman is always holy virgin and motorcycle black madonna two wheel
gypsy queen -- dearth conceived a plenitude and plenitude conceived
as dearth. Lamias, succubi, Circes. The Babylonians dreamt
an unmediated nature and oneness, woman destroys this and she is
now Nature. She is the Nature that denatured the old Nature.
The fall into "civilization" is a fall into death. This is
why woman must be expelled from civilization. And, it gets
a lot more complicated. She is only "purified" by her own death.
In fact, civilization is purified by her death. This is why
much of western literature is the death of woman. This is the
structure of comedy and tragedy.
You can begin anywhere. Read Milton's sonnet "On His Deceased Wife."
Jove's great son to her glad husband gave...
>
> >> jg> Maybe you might also brush up on the Fall.
> >>
> >> You have to be kidding. To use the Fall as a way of looking at
> >> Gilgamesh is like using the Pickwick Papers as a way of looking at the
> >> letters of Saint Paul. No, worse, it is like someone 2000 years from
> >> now doing so. The Genesis story was written by a very different
> >> society from that which produced Gilgamesh. The `Fall' as a concept is
> >> a product of another, much more distant, society.
>
>
> >What you don't understand is that "the Fall" occurs in more than one mythos
>
> Name three more. The Bible I grant you. In the case of Gilgamesh I think
> you're wrong. In the two other that I know fairly well (Norse and Greek)
> I fail to recall anything that could concievably be interpreted thus.
>
> >and somehow (one wonders why) means more or less the same thing.
>
> >> jg> There is an imagined "Nature" which is Nature denatured. This
> >> jg> Nature is the unsyllabled poontang that is imagined to exist
> >> jg> before the Fall.
> >>
> >> _By_who_
> >>
> >> Not by the authors of Gilgamesh. Not by me. If you see such a Fall in
> >> the epic then that is fine, but let's be clear where it is coming
> >> from.
> >>
>
> >By just about everybody.
>
> Ah, the good old trick of quoting the anonymous 'everybody' as support.
> How about some names? After seeing some of the opinions 'everybody'
> allegdedly holds, I don't consider him much of an authority.
Joe asserts:
"Just about everybody" is all this response deserved. What we are
talking about, guys, is the lost traveller's dream under the hill --
the dreams dreamt by a culture. For the dream that unmediated
Being (for that is what unsyllabled poontang is) existed before
a Fall see just about everybody -- Blake, Milton, Keats, Shelley,
Plato, Augustine, Aquinas.... See any neo-platonic poetry.
See any revenge tragedy. See Derrida on language. See Heidegger.
For the best explication of what all this means see Nietzsche.
> >> jg> [...] or who[se] sin is that brought death into the world and all our
> >> jg> woe,
> >>
> >> Yes, but all this is very christian. I would be the last to defend
> >> christianity from charges of mysogyny. Again, not relevant to
> >> Gilgamesh except to possibly explain why some readers might read a
> >> Fall into it.
>
> >Here, Richard, we are moving from Gilgamesh to good old "Western Civ."
> >>And, if you think that the idea that woman brought sin (understood in
> >a broad sense, etc.) into the world is particularly Christian, I'll
> >refuse to open that particular Pandora's box.
>
> Ooops! :-) Touche! Yes, I'd forgotten about Pandora. OK, I'll grant you
> the greek mythology too, although the Pandora story is not IMO as serious
> an indictment of woman as the Fall. I still can't recall any parallel in
> norse mythology though.
Joe sez:
Maybe. Odin as AllFather hanging on the windy tree. The gods play
with golden chessmen after Gotterdammerung. Look for a myth of
a golden age.
> Hans Rancke
> University of Copenhagen
> ran...@diku.dk
> ------------
--
Mike Godwin
>Not to accuse you of this, Mike, but I have trouble with the idea of
>"equal partners playing different roles," especially when her role is to
>defer to him in public, since it's often used as an excuse for subordi-
>nating women (and other classes of people). Equal how? What rights does
>she have?
They are equal in that they both violated social expectations, then
mastered them. As for rights--well, this seems to me to be a funny
question. What are Rosalind's rights? Viola's? I don't think these plays
are about rights.
>They start out very similar. The same kind of competition and witty banter.
>But then it's the other male protagonist of the play (his name escapes me at
>the moment) who gets to act like a jerk. (Gotta have at least one.)
Claudio, you're thinking of. Benedick doesn't act like much of a jerk at
any point in the play. He is definitely outwitted by Beatrice in
wordplay.
>Well, as I've said before, I don't think this is much better than a brain-
>washed submission.
And yet Kate is the most self-directed person in the final scene.
(Petruchio is rather passive in that scene.) I think it's
a mistake to read WS's portrayal of Kate as "misogynistic"--WS doesn't
hate women. Kate turns out to be the woman most worthy of love. Her
final speech is about what role she should play. What role should
Petruchio play?
It is a mistake to assume that equality means isomorphism, either in
Shakespeare's day or in ours. (Camille Paglia remarks about some
feminist writings that their goal is little more than allowing a
woman to be "a mommy with a briefcase.")
I think it is vital that the play be seen in performance rather than
merely read. Failing that, try reading Petruchio's and Kate's
speeches out loud. There's something funny about them: when you
hear them in your own voice, they don't seem to reduce to this
easy scheme of man-subdues-woman. There's something subtler going on
here.
What significance do you suppose it has that Petruchio's response to Kate
is to be shrewish himself? And if Kate is merely an independent woman
who's being brainwashed, how do you justify her treatment of Bianca
earlier in the play (Kate ties her up, pulls her hair, etc.)?
>And if it isn't one, then what's the point of the stuff
>that Petruchio puts her through?
What's the point of the stuff that Kate puts Bianca through?
>At some level, we have to assume that it
>worked, even if it's just that she's decided that she's going to have to
>oppose him more deviously in the future.
Uh, I disagree with any interpretation that assumes "she's going to have
to oppose him more deviously in the future." Such interpretations strike
me as misreadings. So, it would be a mistake to attribute such an
interpretation to me.
>So he's cowed her into playing by
>his rules, at the very least.
I think there's something a little deeper going on here than a playing out
of the Stockholm Syndrome.
Janet, why assume that the play can be read only as either a beating
of Kate into submission (as I recall, Kate is physically violent to
Petruchio, whereas he never strikes her, by the way) or a subversion
by Kate of Petruchio's strategy? WS rarely allows such clear, comic-book
plot resolutions, even in the comedies. (He does, of course, resolve plots
schematically, often with multiple marriages, but there are almost always
troubling aspects of the resolution: Don John must be dragged back and
punished, Malvolio says he'll be revenged, Touchstone's marriage (not to
mention Sylvius's) is headed for trouble, Bianca and the widow will raise
hell for their husbands, Shylock is reduced to an even worse social
station, Angelo will marry Marianna (the woman he rejected and dismissed)
... I could go on.)
What makes Shakespeare great is that his themes and handling of characters
almost always rise above the schematic plot structures: why take a
reductive view of "Taming"?
--Mike
Mike Godwin
>
>On the other hand, I do think Kate actively disliked being forced into
>marrying Petruchio and her resulting bitchiness was genuine.
Uh, Kate was in a bad mood (tying up and torturing Bianca, for
example) before Petruchio even showed up, Sandra.
What "results" of Petruchio's "taming" of Kate is not "bitchiness."
(Rather the opposite, one would think.)
Why is it that feminist criticisms of "Taming" so often ignore
what Kate was like before Petruchio ever met her?
--Mike
Mike Godwin
>I agree with Janet. I too get a bad taste in my mouth and find myself
>squirming a bit at the end of _...Shrew_ - even when I've read the part
>aloud. _...Shrew is not a feminist work - it never will be unless you
>completely turn the story upside down and give a good shake and even then
>one gender will still end up getting bashed by the other.
Uh, who's arguing that "Taming" is a feminist work? Is all the world
divisible into "feminist" and "anti-feminist"? One can argue that Kate
retains her autonomy (as I do) without claiming that the work is
"feminist."
>Then again, Janet and I are only women and therefore may very well be
>missing the point of _...Shrew_ entirely :) - but I don't think so.
This seems like a non sequitur. What significance does it have that you
and Janet are women? I wouldn't think your sex either privileges or
invalidates your interpretation.
Janet M. Lafler
>Janet M. Lafler writes:
>
> Francis Muir writes:
>
> Aren't we forgetting that the Shrew was not written as a
> book, but as a play. To be performed. And Kate to be
> performed by a man? Is Kate much more than a Drag Queen?
>
> Probably by a boy, actually. My mind always boggles (oh no, not
> again) at the idea of Lady MacBeth being played by a boy. Kate's
> a little easier to imagine.
>
>Where do you get the idea that all female roles were played by boys,
>actually?
Actually, I don't, but you were right to call me on this. As I understand
it, many of the adult female parts were probably played by older men; some,
like Juliet's Nurse, might have been played by one of the clowns. Others
would have been played by young men. Kate is a pretty young woman, so I
think it's reasonable to assume that she would have been played by a boy
actor; but you're right, Lady MacBeth could very well have been played by
a man, not a boy.
> And yes, this changes the nature of the play for the audience.
> To take your comment a little more seriously than it was intended,
> however, I wouldn't say that in Shakespeare's time the boy actors
> who played female parts were drag queens.
>
>Your condescension does you no favor; please don't suppose to know the
>seriousness of my intentions.
Sorry, I didn't mean to come off as condescending. I meant to say "more
seriously than you probably intended," but I forgot to change it when I
edited my post.
> Drag queens are traditionally campy; Shakespearian actors who
> played female parts most probably were not (unless they were
> playing Juliet's Nurse or something).
>
>"Most probably were not"? Your source for this? Is it not possible that
>WS and his fellow owner-actor-managers of The Globe chose actors for
>parts partly by age, just as we do today?
I meant "most probably were not campy," not "most probably were not played
by older actors."
As for my source, my mother is a historian of English theater, and she's
writing a series of essays on the history of female impersonation on the
stage, so I've picked up some stuff by osmosis. I don't claim that this
makes me an expert, however, and, as the academicians say in their acknow-
ledgement pages, my errors are my own.
>Is it just fortuity that Ophelia
>is a pretty simple role, or is it, perhaps, because apprentice actors were
>going to play the part? You allow Juliet's Nurse to be played by an older
>man, then why not Kate? I find it not difficult to look at *The Taming of
>the Shrew* much as I would look at a Punch-and-Judy Show: an "acting out"
>of marital and other tensions for the katharsis that it offers.
Well, again, Kate's a younger character than Juliet's Nurse, but there's
really no way of knowing.
> It's interesting to consider the change in English theater
> when actresses first began performing; it must have been strange
> for the audiences of the time.
>
>No stranger than present day visitors to the English Theatre discovering
>that the practise od men playing women's roles has not died out, and is
>alive and well in Christmas Pantomime (and in TV's Benny Hill Show).
I don't know about Christmas pantomime, but Benny Hill (and other comic
acts, like Monty Python) treat female impersonation in the "camp" tradi-
tion; they're not trying to *really* look like women, they're caricaturing
women. I think that's rather different from what would happen when an
actor of Shakespeare's time took on a non-comic female role. These days
the primary type of portrayal of women by men (on the Western stage, any-
way) is camp, because audiences are no longer used to suspending disbelief,
which is part of what makes serious portrayals of women by men possible.
Brian Hanafee
>My statement was based on a few things:
>3) I asked everyone I could think of (off the net) and we compared notes and
>I still haven't found anyone who read Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights or any
>of Austen's books in high school. I did find two people who had read
>George Eliot's _Silas Marner_ but only one of them knew George was a woman.
I read Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Pride and Prejudice in high
school. These were all required readings for my AP English class.
This was in 1982-1983, but I'm pretty sure at least some of these
books had been part of the curriculum for several years before that.
>Miriam Nadel
>--
>"Lots of people have left here incredibly confused."
> - David Wilson, curator of the Museum of Jurassic Technology
--
Brian Hanafee Advanced Decision Systems
bhan...@ads.com 1500 Plymouth Street
(415) 960-7300 Mountain View, CA 94043-1230
Joan Shields
>In article <52...@beguine.UUCP> jo...@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields) writes:
>
>>I agree with Janet. I too get a bad taste in my mouth and find myself
>>squirming a bit at the end of _...Shrew_ - even when I've read the part
>>aloud. _...Shrew is not a feminist work - it never will be unless you
>>completely turn the story upside down and give a good shake and even then
>>one gender will still end up getting bashed by the other.
>
>Uh, who's arguing that "Taming" is a feminist work? Is all the world
>divisible into "feminist" and "anti-feminist"? One can argue that Kate
>retains her autonomy (as I do) without claiming that the work is
>"feminist."
So sorry, I forgot - I should have said that _...Shrew_ is not a work that
protrays women in a realistic way. Kate is hardly a sympathetic or even
realistic character. Personally, I've always found her overly bitchy and
deserving of a swift kick in the ass. Her fate, becoming submissive to
Petruccio is easier to take because she wasn't a very nice person to begin
with. However, it still does not change the fact that Kate was submissive
at the end - ready to place her hands under her husband's feet. It may
very well be that Shakespeare was making subtle hints to his audience that
this was a ruse and that what actually was going on was that Kate and
Petruccio were equal. I doubt it, at the time _...Shrew_ was written
women had few, if any, rights. It's very unlikely that equality between
the sexes was a popular theme.
>>Then again, Janet and I are only women and therefore may very well be
>>missing the point of _...Shrew_ entirely :) - but I don't think so.
>
>This seems like a non sequitur. What significance does it have that you
>and Janet are women? I wouldn't think your sex either privileges or
>invalidates your interpretation.
It was a joke, Mike, a joke. Get it - Janet and I are women... oh forget
it - never mind.
Joan
Mike Godwin
>So sorry, I forgot - I should have said that _...Shrew_ is not a work that
>protrays women in a realistic way.
Of course not. The men aren't realistic, either. For one thing, people
keep speaking in *verse*!
>Kate is hardly a sympathetic or even
>realistic character.
I think she's rather sympathetic, actually.
> Personally, I've always found her overly bitchy and
>deserving of a swift kick in the ass.
Me too. Isn't that, in a nonphysical sense, what Petruchio gave her?
>However, it still does not change the fact that Kate was submissive
>at the end - ready to place her hands under her husband's feet.
Interestingly, she never does this, nor does Petruchio ask her to.
She's speaking metaphorically.
>It may
>very well be that Shakespeare was making subtle hints to his audience that
>this was a ruse and that what actually was going on was that Kate and
>Petruccio were equal.
I don't think anyone is claiming that WS is "making subtle hints to
his audience that this was a ruse." It wasn't a ruse.
>I doubt it, at the time _...Shrew_ was written
>women had few, if any, rights. It's very unlikely that equality between
>the sexes was a popular theme.
Not in the narrow sense you mean it, no. Fortunately, no one has claimed
that this play has "equality of the sexes" as a "theme," popular or
otherwise.
The whole notion of "rights" in the sense you mean is anachronistic
in a Shakespeare play, in any case.
>>This seems like a non sequitur. What significance does it have that you
>>and Janet are women? I wouldn't think your sex either privileges or
>>invalidates your interpretation.
>
>It was a joke, Mike, a joke. Get it - Janet and I are women... oh forget
>it - never mind.
It might have been funny if you and Janet were *not* women--sort of a
Monty Python riff.
Barbara Hlavin
>
> Then again, Janet and I are only women and therefore may very
> well be missing the point of _...Shrew_ entirely :) - but I don't
> think so.
>
>
> A Woman is only a Woman,
> But a Good Cigar is a Smoke
>
> Fido
Nor I of Sigmund's Testy Rebuke:
Sometimes a Cigar is just a Cigar.
Barbara
--
Barbara Hlavin "I only use my body to carry my brain
tw...@milton.u.washington.edu around." -Thomas Edison
Francis Muir
Janet M. Lafler
>Shakespeare wasn't a feminist - but then again, he didn't have to be :).
But if he were alive today, we'd make him.
Janet M. Lafler
>
>>Not to accuse you of this, Mike, but I have trouble with the idea of
>>"equal partners playing different roles," especially when her role is to
>>defer to him in public, since it's often used as an excuse for subordi-
>>nating women (and other classes of people). Equal how? What rights does
>>she have?
>
>They are equal in that they both violated social expectations, then
>mastered them. As for rights--well, this seems to me to be a funny
>question. What are Rosalind's rights? Viola's? I don't think these plays
>are about rights.
I don't either, but you were the one who brought up the idea that Kate and
Petruchio are equal partners. That's not a very Elizabethan idea of marriage;
women weren't considered equal in the eyes of the law or under God. Kate
likens the relation of wife to husband to that of subject to prince. Just
because a relationship is loving and consensual doesn't make it equal.
I still don't think that Kate has only "mastered" social expectations. Has
Petruchio? I agree that Kate is a bitch from the beginning, and that she
needs to be taken to task. Who's going to do the same for Petruchio? I
think you'd really have to stretch things to say it would be Kate. The im-
plication is that now that she's behaving he'll be less of a tyrant; but this
is up to his discretion.
>It is a mistake to assume that equality means isomorphism, either in
>Shakespeare's day or in ours. (Camille Paglia remarks about some
>feminist writings that their goal is little more than allowing a
>woman to be "a mommy with a briefcase.")
Paglia may think this is a new insight, but it's been a a topic within
feminism for at least ten years. I don't think that equality means iso-
morphism, but I deeply resent it when obviously unequal situations are
labelled "separate but equal."
>>And if it isn't one, then what's the point of the stuff
>>that Petruchio puts her through?
>
>What's the point of the stuff that Kate puts Bianca through?
Let's put it this way: if Kate's behavior in the final act isn't the result
of what Petruchio puts her through, then how does it come about? Why her
change of manner?
>Janet, why assume that the play can be read only as either a beating
>of Kate into submission (as I recall, Kate is physically violent to
>Petruchio, whereas he never strikes her, by the way) or a subversion
>by Kate of Petruchio's strategy? WS rarely allows such clear, comic-book
>plot resolutions, even in the comedies.
>
>What makes Shakespeare great is that his themes and handling of characters
>almost always rise above the schematic plot structures: why take a
>reductive view of "Taming"?
I don't intend to take a reductive view; I think I'm being forced to defend
one because we have a disagreement about whether the assumption and accep-
tance of unequal power relations in marriage is even *part* of what's going
on in this play.
Tell you what. Let's take a break while you give me a chance to reread the
play, and then get back to it. Okay?
Janet M. Lafler
>In article <52...@beguine.UUCP> jo...@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields) writes:
>
>>However, it still does not change the fact that Kate was submissive
>>at the end - ready to place her hands under her husband's feet.
>
>Interestingly, she never does this, nor does Petruchio ask her to.
>She's speaking metaphorically.
Since Shakespeare used only minimal stage directions, it's hard to say what
actually happened on stage at that moment.
Hans Rancke-Madsen
>In article <1991Aug16.1...@odin.diku.dk>, ran...@diku.dk (Hans Rancke-Madsen (me)) writes:
>>
>> By the way, your interpretation of the woman who lies with Enkidu being
>> equal to nature is IMO totally off. If you reread the epos you'll note that
>> she, in addition to lieing with him, feeds him bread and gives him
>> wine - two obvious products of human civilization.
Joe writes:
>That's right and exactly my point. She "seduces" him into civilization
>which is the consciousness of death which is the fall from unmediated
>being. Nature as unmediated being is then destroyed and woman is
>nature as the gibberish of generation.
But where, where, where do you get the equation civilization=conciousnes
of death? This assertation reminds me of that most hated sentence in my
high school mathematics text: "From this it follows that..." whenever the
book jumped a couple of steps in the chain of evidence. Yes, IF you can
demonstrate that civilization equals conciousness of death, THEN I'll
concede the misogynistic element of Gilgamesh. But just claiming that it
is so dosen't get any more convincing because you add one more step to your
claims.
>In Judeo- Christian myth the
>fall is from the universe created by the masculine omnific word into
>the world of becoming and death. Standing by the waters of Babylon
>-- in either version -- woman loses.
Sorry, Judeo-christian views are no support of earlier sumerian views.
I agree with you that Judeo-christian mythology contains strong
misogynistic elements. So, I admit, does greek. That's two out of how
many?
>Woman is always holy virgin and motorcycle black madonna two wheel
>gypsy queen -- dearth conceived a plenitude and plenitude conceived
>as dearth. Lamias, succubi, Circes.
Always?
> The Babylonians dreamt
>an unmediated nature and oneness, woman destroys this and she is
>now Nature. She is the Nature that denatured the old Nature.
Well, I don't know a whole lot about Babylonian views, but I've
yet to see evidence that you do either. I can't contradict you,
but I sure would like a few quotes.
>The fall into "civilization" is a fall into death. This is
>why woman must be expelled from civilization. And, it gets
>a lot more complicated. She is only "purified" by her own death.
>In fact, civilization is purified by her death. This is why
>much of western literature is the death of woman. This is the
>structure of comedy and tragedy.
'Much' is at least better than 'always'. I won't argue about
how great a part of western litterature is 'the death of
woman'. But I will point out, that since western civilization
is solidly based in Christian and Greek ideas, it is not so
surprising. Western civilization dosen't prove a whole lot
about sumerian, though.
>Joe asserts:
Piffle! Richard claimed that there is no such content in Gilgamesh
beyond what you (a product of western civilization) projects into
it. The proper way to refute that is to demonstrate, by qoutes
from the epos, that Richard is wrong. Not to claim that 'just
about everybody' agrees with you. Even if it was true - and I
see no reason why we should take your unsupported word that it
is - it wouldn't nescessarily mean that you were right.
>>
>> Ooops! :-) Touche! Yes, I'd forgotten about Pandora. OK, I'll grant you
>> the greek mythology too, although the Pandora story is not IMO as serious
>> an indictment of woman as the Fall. I still can't recall any parallel in
>> norse mythology though.
>Joe sez:
>Maybe. Odin as AllFather hanging on the windy tree. The gods play
>with golden chessmen after Gotterdammerung. Look for a myth of
>a golden age.
What's the smiley for complete and utter dumbfoundedness?
What, I ask you, is the connection between Odin hanging on the
tree for nine nights to learn wisdom with woman being equal to
civilization being equal to death? That Odin is a man? How do
you get from the one to the other? Much less the successor gods
playing with golden chessmen after Ragnarok? Or perhaps it just
follows?
Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
ran...@diku.dk
------------
"Free speech gives a man the right to talk about the
'psycology' of an amoeba, but I don't have to listen".
Elihu Nivens in 'The Puppet Masters'
>--
Mike Godwin
>I don't either, but you were the one who brought up the idea that Kate and
>Petruchio are equal partners. That's not a very Elizabethan idea of marriage;
>women weren't considered equal in the eyes of the law or under God.
I think it's a different kind of equality from what you mean here.
> Kate
>likens the relation of wife to husband to that of subject to prince. Just
>because a relationship is loving and consensual doesn't make it equal.
Do you recall the induction scene? What is Christopher Sly told that lords
call ladies?
Does the induction scene have any relevance to your interpretation of the
play? I think it's clear from the induction that there's some serious
role-playing going on in "Taming." Does it follow from a decision to play
a role that one is reduced to being no more than the role?
>Who's going to do the same for Petruchio? I
>think you'd really have to stretch things to say it would be Kate. The im-
>plication is that now that she's behaving he'll be less of a tyrant; but this
>is up to his discretion.
What makes you think Petruchio is a tyrant in everyday life? Is there
evidence in the play of this?
>Paglia may think this is a new insight, but it's been a a topic within
>feminism for at least ten years.
Paglia is not claiming it's a new insight.
> I don't think that equality means iso-
>morphism, but I deeply resent it when obviously unequal situations are
>labelled "separate but equal."
Who's doing this? What's wrong with "different but equal"? Aren't men and
women, after all, different?
>Let's put it this way: if Kate's behavior in the final act isn't the result
>of what Petruchio puts her through, then how does it come about? Why her
>change of manner?
Have you tried to answer this question in any other way but the way you
have already answered it? The play is utterly uninteresting if Kate is
merely a subdued slave at the end. WS, I think, would think so too.
>Tell you what. Let's take a break while you give me a chance to reread the
>play, and then get back to it. Okay?
That's fine. But I urge you to read at least some of it out loud.
Better yet: find or rent a performance. I wonder if John Cleese's "Taming"
(done for Jonathan Miller's BBS series) is around on tape.
Mike Godwin
>
>actually happened on stage at that moment.
I suspect you haven't performed Shakespeare. The language itself is a
guide to what happens on stage, and works as stage directions.
It is clear from the language that Kate strikes Petruchio, and nearly as
clear that he never strikes her back.
Marilyn French remarks about the latter in her excellent book
SHAKESPEARE'S DIVISION OF EXPERIENCE. (I hasten to
add that I don't agree with all points of French's
interpretation of "Taming," but her essay, which is more in line with
Janet's interpretation than with mine, is worth reading.)
A somewhat better take on the play, IMHO, appears in Richard Hosley's
introduction to the Pelican edition. Hosley also notes that Petruchio
refuses to use violence:
"The spanking he administers in most modern productions, like the whip he
is made to carry, has no authority in the text of the play; it is a
twentieth-century stage tradition, as the whip is a nineteenth-century
one. The difficulty with these titillating sadistic touches, each perhaps
innocent enough on the surface, is that they suggest, ultimately, a brutal
domination of wife by husband. Accordingly Kate's speech on the
subordination of wife to husband is sometimes misinterpreted as the
blueprint of a husband's tyranny. Most spectators know better, despite
what they are shown on the stage, for it is unlikely that THE SHREW would
be one of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays in the modern theater if
it really portrayed the subjugation of a wife through brutality.
Incidentally, Kate's speech on the subordinatin of the wife was probably,
without denial of the basic validity of the doctrine, as susceptible to
an ironic interpretation in Shakespeare's day as in ours."
fire...@oak.circa.ufl.edu
|>Janet M. Lafler writes:
|> Francis Muir writes:
|> Aren't we forgetting that the Shrew was not written as a
|> book, but as a play. To be performed. And Kate to be
|> performed by a man? Is Kate much more than a Drag Queen?
|> Probably by a boy, actually. My mind always boggles (oh no, not
|> again) at the idea of Lady MacBeth being played by a boy. Kate's
|> a little easier to imagine.
|>Where do you get the idea that all female roles were played by boys,
|>actually?
In several textbooks, and from a number of college professors who have spent
their lives studying Shakespeare, probably. That's where I heard it. Also, note
the "probably" in Janet's post. She did NOT say ALL female parts were played by
boys, just as you did not say that all the males acting female roles were drag
queens.
|> And yes, this changes the nature of the play for the audience.
|> To take your comment a little more seriously than it was intended,
|> however, I wouldn't say that in Shakespeare's time the boy actors
|> who played female parts were drag queens.
|>Your condescension does you no favor; please don't suppose to know the
|>seriousness of my intentions. I never said "boy actors who played female
|>roles were drag queens", nor can my words be reasonably interpreted that
|>way. I was talking specifically about Kate in *The Taming of the Shrew*,
|>as was everyone else.
Your condescention does YOU no favor; please don't suppose to know what
everyone else was intending to say. (about Kate or not) You err in the same
manner you accuse Janet of. Practice what you preach.
[...]
|>"Most probably were not"? Your source for this? Is it not possible that
|>WS and his fellow owner-actor-managers of The Globe chose actors for
|>parts partly by age, just as we do today? Is it just fortuity that Ophelia
|>is a pretty simple role, or is it, perhaps, because apprentice actors were
|>going to play the part? You allow Juliet's Nurse to be played by an older
|>man, then why not Kate? I find it not difficult to look at *The Taming of
|>the Shrew* much as I would look at a Punch-and-Judy Show: an "acting out"
|>of marital and other tensions for the katharsis that it offers.
Just because something is possible doesn't make it necessarily so. What are
your sources for your suppositions? If you prefer to view Shrew like you do a
Punch-and-Judy show, that's your privilege. If Janet does not, that is hers.
Why get hysterical and nasty about it? Who peed in your cornflakes today?
Shauna Iannone
University of Florida
Matt Austern
> Who's doing this? What's wrong with "different but equal"? Aren't men and
> women, after all, different?
What's wrong with "different but equal" is the same thing that is
wrong with "separate but equal": it is too often used by a member of a
privileged class as a euphamism for inequality. Not always, but
frequently enough so that I am always skeptical of such a claim.
I really don't see any way that you can call the marriage in The
Taming of the Shrew an equal relationship: one person had vast power
over the other. That just isn't equality.
When you say that men and women are different, by the way, do you mean
that they had different roles in Elizabethian society, or that they
have different roles in today's society, or are you postulating
intrinsic differences that would exist in any human society? (Surely
you don't just mean that they have different genitals. That's
scarcely an excuse for such a vast societal construct of gender.)
--
Matt Austern ma...@physics.berkeley.edu Lots of things worth saying
(415) 644-2618 aus...@lbl.bitnet can only be said loosely.
Matt Austern
> >Shakespeare wasn't a feminist - but then again, he didn't have to be :).
>
> But if he were alive today, we'd make him.
Either that, or else we would hail his sister as the great feminist
playwright of her age.
fire...@oak.circa.ufl.edu
|>In article <1991Aug17.1...@eff.org> mnem...@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
|>> Who's doing this? What's wrong with "different but equal"? Aren't men and
|>> women, after all, different?
|>What's wrong with "different but equal" is the same thing that is
|>wrong with "separate but equal": it is too often used by a member of a
|>privileged class as a euphamism for inequality. Not always, but
|>frequently enough so that I am always skeptical of such a claim.
*sigh*
Why am I reminded of _Harrison Bergeron_?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shauna Iannone / People are so eager to be equal,
University of Florida / they no longer wish to be the best
Gainesville, FL / they can be...why lower yourself to
fire...@maple.circa.ufl.edu / being "equal"?
Mike Godwin
>What's wrong with "different but equal" is the same thing that is
>wrong with "separate but equal": it is too often used by a member of a
>privileged class as a euphamism for inequality.
This seems unlikely, since I just thought it up, and have never heard
it used by a privileged class to justify any damned thing.
Perhaps you can quote some examples of "a privileged class" using
"different but equal"?
It takes no linguist to note that "different" does not mean the
same thing as "separate." Men and women clearly are different; it
doesn't follow from this that they are unequal.
Similarly, the Elizabethan conception of marriage is that the spousal
roles are different; it doesn't follow from this that husband and wife
cannot be equal partners, in a very real sense.
But the equality I was talking about was their equality as roleplayers,
not as spouses.
> Not always, but
>frequently enough so that I am always skeptical of such a claim.
Precisely what claim is it that you think you are being sceptical about?
>I really don't see any way that you can call the marriage in The
>Taming of the Shrew an equal relationship: one person had vast power
>over the other. That just isn't equality.
Best to quote me exactly; this is different from what I said.
I know it's easier to pigeonhole my argument into something that
you've already thought about, but I'm really talking about equality
in mastering the social roles, not equality of the roles themselves.
Does Petruchio love Kate? If so, why? Does Kate love Petruchio?
If your answer is "no" to either question, please explain how this
fits with WS's other comedies.
>When you say that men and women are different, by the way, do you mean
>that they had different roles in Elizabethian society, or that they
>have different roles in today's society, or are you postulating
>intrinsic differences that would exist in any human society?
Wait a minute: First you disagree with me, then you ask me what
I meant? Isn't this the wrong order?
I think there are intrinsic differences between men and women that
would exist in any society, yes.
>(Surely
>you don't just mean that they have different genitals.
Get your mind out of the gutter, Matthew.
>That's
>scarcely an excuse for such a vast societal construct of gender.)
Societal construct? Thanks, but I'll pass on the Foucault.
Mary Ellen Foley
Shakespeare wasn't a feminist - but then again, he didn't have to be :).
But if he were alive today, we'd make him.
Matt Austern said:
Either that, or else we would hail his sister as the great feminist
playwright of her age.
Reminds me of an episode of the British TV series Red Dwarf (which can be read
in the first book that goes with the series, titled _Red Dwarf_ I believe,
author is Grant Naylor (collaboration between two people with the last names
Grant and Naylor), the second book, _Better Than Life_ wasn't quite as good,
IMHO), where Our Heroes end up in a parallel universe where women are in
charge. So they run into female counterparts of themselves -- Dave finds Deb,
Arnold finds Arlene, unfortunately the Cat finds only a Dog. They're
astonished at the situation, and start quizzing the women on earth history in
this universe (apologies for memory faults):
Dave: "Who was the first person to walk on the moon"
Deb: "Nellie Armstrong"
Dave: "NELLIE Armstrong?! Okay, who wrote Macbeth?"
Deb: "That's easy, Will Shakespeare"
Dave: "Hey, hey, WILL Shakespeare, he was a bloke then"
Deb: "No she wasn't, silly, WILMA Shakespeare"
--
WARNING!! Opinions in posting are farther away than they appear
^^^^^^^^^
Mary Ellen Foley (m...@netcom.com)
Janet M. Lafler
>>
>>Since Shakespeare used only minimal stage directions, it's hard to say what
>>actually happened on stage at that moment.
>
>I suspect you haven't performed Shakespeare. The language itself is a
>guide to what happens on stage, and works as stage directions.
Actually, I have, though I've never been serious about acting. I've also
been able to discuss this question with various people who have directed
Shakespeare. I've also seen many performances of Shakespeare, often several
different productions of the same play. Sometimes the language makes it quite
clear what is happening on stage; at other times it's a matter for interpre-
tation. What happens to Isabella at the end of Measure for Measure? Does she
accept the Duke's offer of marriage? There's no simple answer in the text to
this rather important question.
>It is clear from the language that Kate strikes Petruchio, and nearly as
>clear that he never strikes her back.
I don't dispute this. I've never claimed that Petruchio strikes Kate; I did
use the word "browbeat," which doesn't imply physical violence, just psycholo-
gical domination. There are other ways of being cruel besides beating someone,
you know.
Janet M. Lafler
>In article <MATT.91Au...@physics.berkeley.edu> ma...@physics.berkeley.edu writes:
>
>>What's wrong with "different but equal" is the same thing that is
>>wrong with "separate but equal": it is too often used by a member of a
>>privileged class as a euphamism for inequality.
>
>This seems unlikely, since I just thought it up, and have never heard
>it used by a privileged class to justify any damned thing.
>Perhaps you can quote some examples of "a privileged class" using
>"different but equal"?
This has been the standard response for women who are unhappy with their
prescribed roles for at least the last couple of generations.
>Similarly, the Elizabethan conception of marriage is that the spousal
>roles are different; it doesn't follow from this that husband and wife
>cannot be equal partners, in a very real sense.
The Elizabethan conception of marriage is that the roles are unequal. I
really don't see any way of getting around this. When the two "partners"
are not equal under the law, or in the eyes of society or the church, it's
very hard (though not, I admit, impossible) to build and equal personal re-
lationship between them.
>But the equality I was talking about was their equality as roleplayers,
>not as spouses.
This makes more sense to me. Thanks for clarifying it.
Now, let's all calm down about this, shall we?
Richard Caley
rjc> Second, Why should I apply either of these equations. The text lends
rjc> little support to either. In fact woman=mother=teacher would seem to
rjc> be more to the point.
jg> Of course it seems more to the point to you because you miss the point.
Hardly a very convincing argument, is it.
rjc> Third, there is no idication that Enkidu is not mortal before he meets
rjc> the woman. In fact, given that Gilgamesh, who is `two thirds god', is
rjc> solidly mortal it seems unlikely in the extreme that Enkidu would be
rjc> immortal.
jg> You miss the point again. Enkidu is mortal, of course. Reread
jg> what I wrote about pure and total identification, two concepts of
jg> Nature, etc.
Very nice, very Romantic, very 19th/20th century. Now why should it
apply to a story created in the third millenium BC?
These people _knew_ what nature was. They didn't go on rambling
holidays to `get in touch with it' they built bloody great walls to
keep it out. I think that we can be pretty certain that if you walked
into whatever was the Uruk equivalent of a pub and started telling
them about two concepts of nature they would tell you that there is
only once concept of being eaten by a wolf or dieing of exposure.
rjc> Fourth, even if we assume that the woman is used as a symbol for
rjc> birth and so of the start of death, that does not seem to me to
rjc> bear any realtion to mysogyny which is the point of the thread.
rjc> [...]If I were to write a poem using blue to symbolise the
rjc> current British government, would you infer from that that my
rjc> dislike of the governmnet meant that I disliked the colour blue?
jg> My god, you don't do a lot of literary criticism, do you?
Let's say that I suspect that your definition of such is probably not
something I have much desire to do.
jg> You need to start with what "woman" means in literature.
No. And here, I think, is our basic disagreement. I think we need to
start with the text. Apart from the obvious reasons, we don't have
much literature of the culture of Gilgamesh to look at what `woman'
`means'. The text tells us we have a representitive of the patron
deity of Uruk summoned to help some poor trapper who is terrified of
the wild man in the woods. She does that by introducing him to the
joys of civilisation, bread, wine, company, clothing. The entire
evidence for this being some kind of fall is that there is a story
written down a couple of millenia later in which the ancient symbols
of the godess, the tree and the snake are twisted into a new form.
rjc> You have to be kidding. To use the Fall as a way of looking at
rjc> Gilgamesh is like using the Pickwick Papers as a way of looking at the
rjc> letters of Saint Paul.
jg> What you don't understand is that "the Fall" occurs in more than
jg> one mythos and somehow (one wonders why) means more or less the
jg> same thing.
The inevitable reply to this is `name three'. I assume here that you
mean the Fall, as that term is used in Christian myth. That doesn't
even exist in Judaism. If we broaden that out to include more general
images of past golden ages then, yes, it occurs almost universally,
people seem to be nostalgic by nature -- today is always `the ages of
chaos' and armagedden is just around the corner all the time. How that
relates to old Enkidu getting a taste for bread is unclear.
rjc> Before I get sniped at from the wings, I am not saying that such an
rjc> anachronistic reading is in any way invalid, just that it is rather
rjc> extreme.
jg> Hardly extreme, Richard. Merely something you have not
jg> encountered.
(a) it is anachronistic (I presume that is unargued?). (b) as far as
anachronism goes, it is about as extreme as one can get since it
applies ideas from the last couple of centuries to one of the earliest
existing literary texts.
rjc> Yes, but all this is very christian. I would be the last to defend
rjc> christianity from charges of mysogyny. Again, not relevant to
rjc> Gilgamesh except to possibly explain why some readers might read a
rjc> Fall into it.
jg> Here, Richard, we are moving from Gilgamesh to good old "Western Civ."
jg> And, if you think that the idea that woman brought sin (understood in
jg> a broad sense, etc.) into the world is particularly Christian, I'll
jg> refuse to open that particular Pandora's box.
Point taken. However, that you see `Western Civ' as a reasonable tool
to explore Gilgamesh is, I think, a very concise summing up of why we
disagree. I can't see why it should be. I think Persian and north
Indian Civ. is more likely to be relevant, and, on the whole, I'd
prefer to stickj to the known text and its context in what we know of
Summerian civilisation.
rjc> If an author uses an image of a woman and an apple to symbolise a
rjc> fall of some kind, do we really have to assume that the author
rjc> shares Saint Paul's view of women? Might he not be referring to
rjc> the _story_ of the fall and might the fact that the person
rjc> involved is a woman not be a (possibly unfortunate) side effect
rjc> of that reference?
[Ps, apologies for the use of `he' in there.]
jg> Yes, we would all like to believe this.
Especially since there are a lot of us who would be quite supprised at
a charge that, for instance, Laurie Anderson or Geoff Ryman are
feeding us the old christian mysogyny.
jg> Yes, woman don't refer to each other as pricks. You might try to
jg> discover why.
Search me, ask a woman. preferably a sociolinguist.
jg> The phatic is meaningless and, at the same time, strangely
jg> meaningful.
Not strange at all. The strange stuff is the language that pretends to
be directly meaningful.
rjc> Here's one for you, why is it that you feel this overpowerring desire
rjc> to use `intercourse' and other such euphemisms when there are
rjc> perfectly good English words? Could it be you have inherited the fears
rjc> and mysogyny of Saint Paul? See how easy it is to read mysogyny into
rjc> everything?
jg> Ah, what words would you have me use? Would you feel better if I said
jg> fuck? Why?
I'm happy either way. Re-read what I said. I was simply pointing out
the ease of reading an attitude into a text if one doesn't deign to
find detailed support.
rjc> Actually, given my love of trashy space opera, sections of my
rjc> library barely notes that women exist. I don't think I'd class
rjc> that as hate, though it is certainly a warped outlook.
jg> The defense rests.
In what way? That I read such stuff and you can discount what I say?
If so I suggest you grow up.
Or do you simply want to take those books as the examples of
`seriously meant litterary works' that were being asked for at the top
of this thread. If so, you have a seriously warped outlook and I
congratulate you on it.
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk _O_
|<
Mike Godwin
>
>Actually, I have, though I've never been serious about acting. I've also
>been able to discuss this question with various people who have directed
>Shakespeare. I've also seen many performances of Shakespeare, often several
>different productions of the same play. Sometimes the language makes it quite
>clear what is happening on stage; at other times it's a matter for interpre-
>tation. What happens to Isabella at the end of Measure for Measure? Does she
>accept the Duke's offer of marriage? There's no simple answer in the text to
>this rather important question.
This is aside from the main point: that it's clear from the language
that Kate strikes Petruchio, and that he doesn't strike her. The fact
that we can't tell what Isabella does precisely at the end of "Measure
for Measure" has no bearing on the issue of whether we can tell this
about "Taming."
Of the dozens of Shakespeare productions I have performed in, none can
be said to lack stage directions that are implicit in the text, although
all can be said to lack "complete" stage directions of the type Shaw was
so fond of providing.
>I don't dispute this.
Could you remind me again of what you *were* disputing in your comment
about stage directions?
>I've never claimed that Petruchio strikes Kate; I did
>use the word "browbeat," which doesn't imply physical violence, just psycholo-
>gical domination.
If the play is merely about an Elizabethan man's psychological domination
of an Elizabethan woman, it is utterly uninteresting, and one wonders why
Shakespeare would care enough to explore something so pat.
The induction scene and the Bianca subplot, among other things, suggest
that something more is going on here than you are willing to believe.
>There are other ways of being cruel besides beating someone,
>you know.
Thanks for the news flash.
Mike Godwin
>>[I wrote:]
>>Perhaps you can quote some examples of "a privileged class" using
>>"different but equal"?
>
>This has been the standard response for women who are unhappy with their
>prescribed roles for at least the last couple of generations.
Can you give any actual examples of a member of "a privileged class"
using "different but equal"? I'm not wholly unread in feminist literature,
but I seem to have missed this.
>The Elizabethan conception of marriage is that the roles are unequal. I
>really don't see any way of getting around this. When the two "partners"
>are not equal under the law, or in the eyes of society or the church, it's
>very hard (though not, I admit, impossible) to build and equal personal re-
>lationship between them.
Spouses can be equal precisely because we are more than our socially
prescribed roles.
>>But the equality I was talking about was their equality as roleplayers,
>>not as spouses.
>
>This makes more sense to me. Thanks for clarifying it.
You're welcome. It's worth noting, though, that this is similar to what
I said at the outset.
Bryan Solie
[all kinds of wonrous things about women in literature deleted]
To which ran...@diku.dk (Hans Rancke-Madsen) responds:
[With a great deal of skepticism, the part of interest follows:]
>
>Well, I don't know a whole lot about Babylonian views, but I've
>yet to see evidence that you do either. I can't contradict you,
>but I sure would like a few quotes.
Sweet Jesus in heaven! You want MORE QUOTES?
--
Bryan
Richard Caley
n2...@cray.com (Joe Green) writes:
hr> By the way, your interpretation of the woman who lies with Enkidu
hr> being equal to nature is IMO totally off. If you reread the epos
hr> you'll note that she, in addition to lieing with him, feeds him
hr> bread and gives him wine - two obvious products of human
hr> civilization.
jg> That's right and exactly my point. She "seduces" him into civilization
jg> which is the consciousness of death which is the fall from unmediated
jg> being. Nature as unmediated being is then destroyed and woman is
jg> nature as the gibberish of generation.
Here again you are assuming that this state of nature is something to
be seduced from and civilisation is somehow a fall. To a Summarian
scribe, I suggest the oposite is true. The `seduction' of Enkidu is
the education of the animal to a suitable consort for a king. The
latter is important, to read anything which happens to Enkidu without
remembering that the point of the story and the destiny being worked
out is not his but Gilgameshes, is to wander off into never never
land.
jg> In Judeo- Christian myth the fall is from the universe created by
jg> the masculine omnific word into the world of becoming and death.
jg> Standing by the waters of Babylon -- in either version -- woman
jg> loses.
hr> Sorry, Judeo-christian views are no support of earlier sumerian
hr> views.
Understatment of the week. Sumerian myth has humans created to be the
surfs of the gods. They are not a pinacle of creation which falls, but
the underdog who fights for any good that happens to them.
jg> Woman is always holy virgin and motorcycle black madonna two wheel
jg> gypsy queen -- dearth conceived a plenitude and plenitude conceived
jg> as dearth. Lamias, succubi, Circes.
Mother, teacher, protector.
All you are saying is that female deities have been used to symbolise
various powerful things, some of them bad. That is to be expected. If
this was not the case you'd be here pointing out that power was always
symbolised as male. For every Kali there is a Danu.
In the epic, the two major deities involved are Aruru, who is goddess
of creation and a fairly straight forward mother figure with a bit of
patron of crafts thrown in, and Innanna or Ishtar, goddess of love and
war. By far the most interesting of the sumerian pantheon, IMHO, and
about as far from a `holy virgin' as it is possible to get.
jg> The Babylonians dreamt an unmediated nature and oneness, woman
jg> destroys this and she is now Nature. She is the Nature that
jg> denatured the old Nature.
Reference for this?
jg> The fall into "civilization" is a fall into death. This is
jg> why woman must be expelled from civilization.
Which is why Uruk has a female patron deity. Yes, right, ok, sure,
keep taking the tablets.
jg> "Just about everybody" is all this response deserved. What we are
jg> talking about, guys, is the lost traveller's dream under the hill --
jg> the dreams dreamt by a culture.
Yes, exactly. And that culture existed in 3rd millenim BC Mesopotamia,
not in second millenium AD Europe, which makes the remainder of your
statment --
jg> For the dream that unmediated Being (for that is what unsyllabled
jg> poontang is) existed before a Fall see just about everybody --
jg> Blake, Milton, Keats, Shelley, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas.... See
jg> any neo-platonic poetry. See any revenge tragedy. See Derrida on
jg> language. See Heidegger. For the best explication of what all
jg> this means see Nietzsche.
-- a little odd. How many of them were Mesopotamian?
jg> [looking for a fall...] Odin as AllFather hanging on the windy
jg> tree. The gods play with golden chessmen after Gotterdammerung.
jg> Look for a myth of a golden age.
Odin/Wotan on the tree as a fall into civilisation and death? What an
imagination :-).
Now, Odin giving his eye for the gift of foresight might be a bit
closer. Here he does get the knowledge of death, but civilisation
never comes into it. And there is no fall here. There is not
unalianated nature to be cut loose from, if there ever was one it was
back with Ymir, not with Odin.
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk It's just a crust of a meaning
with realms underneath.
Never touched, never stired,
never even moved through.
- Suzanne Vega, `Language'
INFIDEL
>Sumerian myth has humans created to be the
>surfs of the gods. They are not a pinacle of creation which falls, but
>the underdog who fights for any good that happens to them.
See Ulysses and others in Greek mythology for more examples of humans
fighting nature (fickle gods) for the good that happens to them.
What is the earliest myth to have man as pinnacle of Creation , falling ?
Is it Genesis? Does this occur outside of Judeo-Christian mythology ?
Off-hand, I can't seem to recall any examples from elsewhere.
>jg> The fall into "civilization" is a fall into death.
This is of the modern (European) consciousness - entry into civilization as a
loss of innocence, for instance (cf. Camus, "The Outsider" will do).
Off-hand speculation has me conjecturing that such a mindset requires
an egocentric conciousness - Judeo-Christian myths in
one's formative years will do, as would (let me put the cat among the
pigeons) some rationalist myths (eg. that the world is understamdable).
But I won't dwell on this point.
>rjc> ..how many of them were Mesopotamian ?
John W
Perth.
Hans Rancke-Madsen
>Understatment of the week. Sumerian myth has humans created to be the
>surfs of the gods. They are not a pinacle of creation which falls, but
>the underdog who fights for any good that happens to them.
As a side note, I've always enjoyed the explanation given in the
Gilgamesh epos for the flood. The gods decide to exterminate man-
kind because man has grown so noisy that the gods can't sleep! :-D
Joan Shields
>>
>>Since Shakespeare used only minimal stage directions, it's hard to say what
>>actually happened on stage at that moment.
>
>I suspect you haven't performed Shakespeare. The language itself is a
>guide to what happens on stage, and works as stage directions.
>It is clear from the language that Kate strikes Petruchio, and nearly as
>clear that he never strikes her back.
I have preformed Shakespeare and there is a lot of leeway in stage
directions. I brought this up once before and though you ignored it then
perhaps you'll listen now, eh? Maybe not, oh, well. Anyway, rent
Olivier's HENRY V and Branagh's HENRY V. The same play done at two
different times - quite different in many ways although both use the same
script (or basically the same script). I'm sure there are other examples
as well.
As to Petruchio not using violence...
No, but he does refuse her food - gee, would I rather be beaten or
starved? Actually, Kate and Pertuchio's relationship kind of reminds me
of a disobedient dog and master, well, how some people would tame a dog.
You know, she gets fed when she's a good girl...
Joan
Joan Shields
>>I doubt it, at the time _...Shrew_ was written
>>women had few, if any, rights. It's very unlikely that equality between
>>the sexes was a popular theme.
>
>Not in the narrow sense you mean it, no. Fortunately, no one has claimed
>that this play has "equality of the sexes" as a "theme," popular or
>otherwise.
>
>The whole notion of "rights" in the sense you mean is anachronistic
>in a Shakespeare play, in any case.
You are the one who said they were equal, Mike. Just in case no one has
filled you in, Shakespeare was not writing for scholars in the late 20th
century - he was writing for the common folk of the early 17th. At that
time, women were little more than property - you could beat your wife to
near death and be perfectly within your legal rights. While this was not
always the norm it did occur more than just occassionally. There are many
other examples in Shakespeare where a woman's fate is decided by her
father/guardian and or husband. There is no way, except in perhaps very
enlightened homes (I hardly think _...Shrew_ is a shining example) every
once in a while a woman might be looked at as being equal in some ways it
was not very popular.
>>It was a joke, Mike, a joke. Get it - Janet and I are women... oh forget
>>it - never mind.
>
>It might have been funny if you and Janet were *not* women--sort of a
>Monty Python riff.
Don't worry about it Mike, it's been over your head and gone. My fault
really, you haven't gotten any of the other jokes yet...
Joan
Jolly C. Pancakes
I always had mixed feelings about this play, especially as the
versions of it I had seen performed seemed to be even more egregious
than the text (remember, remember, the play's text is a dead thing! it
has to be seen and heard to come to life.). Then I was surprised by the
BBC production with John Cleese as Petrucchio (have I spelt that
correctly?). In it, poor Kate is interpreted as a head-strong woman who
has not been taught self-control or discipline by her family and who is
frustrated and unhappy, not to mention jealous of her more astutely
manipulative sister. (Reminds me of kids with ADD, actually). Along
comes Petrucchio who sees in her the kind of strong person who would be
a good match for him, if she can learn to control herself. There's a
revealing scene after he brings her home to his cold house, where he
makes it clear to the audience that he has alterior motives, and that he
understands more about Kate than you might think.
The final scene was played in such a way, too, with a particular
twinkle, that you suspect these two now understand that they are in the
game together.
The value of Shakespeare's plays is that they bear this kind of
reinterpretation well. A play is definitely not solely dependant upon
the playwright's original intention, and human nature has not changed
over time. The play becomes a mirror to ourselves.
--
jcpatilla j...@decuac.dec.com
Otter, otter, floating light on the kelp beds of the night,
What tasty bits of squid or eel doth keep you on your even keel?
Joan Shields
>
>>What's wrong with "different but equal" is the same thing that is
>>wrong with "separate but equal": it is too often used by a member of a
>>privileged class as a euphamism for inequality.
>
>This seems unlikely, since I just thought it up, and have never heard
>it used by a privileged class to justify any damned thing.
>Perhaps you can quote some examples of "a privileged class" using
>"different but equal"?
The phrase "different but equal" has been used for years in the struggle
for equal rights between men and women - I really can't believe you made
it up back then.
>Similarly, the Elizabethan conception of marriage is that the spousal
>roles are different; it doesn't follow from this that husband and wife
>cannot be equal partners, in a very real sense.
How much do you know about marriage during the Elizabethan period? Equal?
Surely this is some kind of a sick joke. You've been reading too many
historical romances.
>But the equality I was talking about was their equality as roleplayers,
>not as spouses.
That's kind of a silly thing to say since their roles were so unequal,
unless you mean roles as in parts in the play. That may be true but that
still doesn't prove anything - the characters were still very unequal in
status and power.
>>(Surely
>>you don't just mean that they have different genitals.
>
>Get your mind out of the gutter, Matthew.
I don't think his mind was in the gutter as genitals have quite a lot to
do with the justification of women being forced into submission. ie: Women's
genitalia is such that they can bear children - there's the old saying,
"You always know who your mother is but your father...?" In keeping women
locked up and submissive you can be a little more certain about the parentage
of the children. Genitalia and hormones have a lot to do with equality
and lack thereof.
Joan
Mike Godwin
>I have preformed Shakespeare and there is a lot of leeway in stage
>directions.
Indeed there is. But this does not mean that what happens on
stage at any given moment cannot be known. It is easily determinable
from the language in many cases, and certainly during many scenes in
"Taming of the Shrew." For example, during Petruchio's first encounter
with Kate we know that Petruchio's strategy will be to sweet-talk her,
no matter how she "rails." That she strikes him during the scene is
apparent from his line about cuffing her if she strikes him "again."
We know from this that he hasn't struck her, and we know from the
remainder of the dialog that he sticks to his declared strategy of
complimenting her when she does not expect it.
> I brought this up once before and though you ignored it then
>perhaps you'll listen now, eh?
Maybe I just missed it. Its relevance to "Taming" has yet to be
established in any case.
> Maybe not, oh, well. Anyway, rent
>Olivier's HENRY V and Branagh's HENRY V. The same play done at two
>different times - quite different in many ways although both use the same
>script (or basically the same script). I'm sure there are other examples
>as well.
I've seen both films many times, and they are inapposite to your point.
No one is arguing that all productions are alike. What I *am* arguing,
of course, is that we can know something particular about implied
stage directions from Shakespeare's language.
>As to Petruchio not using violence...
>No, but he does refuse her food - gee, would I rather be beaten or
>starved?
What we know from the lines, of course, is that she ate no meat for a
day. (Act IV, sc. i.) This doesn't look a lot like torture. It looks
more like being sent to bed without supper. And the minute she thanks
Petruchio for meat, she gets to eat it--it was only her stubbornness
that kept her hungry. (Act IV, sc. iii.)
A better argument that Kate is being brainwashed/tortured/browbeaten
can be made on the basis of sleep-deprivation ... if you assume that
WS knew what we know about depriving people of sleep.
But a better choice than reducing this play to a story of an Elizabethan
man browbeating an Elizabethan woman is to imagine how the play could be a
teensy bit less simplistic. Does Shakespeare think it's interesting or
funny to beat up on women? Or is, perhaps, the theme of the play a littler
subtler than you give it credit for? What imaginable significance could it
have when Grumio remarks in IV, i that "By this reck'ning he is more
shrew than she"?
>Actually, Kate and Pertuchio's relationship kind of reminds me
>of a disobedient dog and master, well, how some people would tame a dog.
>You know, she gets fed when she's a good girl...
All this suggests to me is that you've chosen to blind yourself to what
the play is about. Want a hint of Kate's change of conscience? See
how she responds when Petruchio strikes a servant (IV i). Then
reread the scene in which she and Petruchio play tricks together
(IV, v).
Try reading some criticism of the play. I believe that there's a
Twentieth Century Interpretations of "The Taming of The Shrew" published
by Prentice-Hall. You can find it in your local library.
Your feminism is laudable, IMHO. But you shouldn't let it distort what
a play is about.
Mike Godwin
>You are the one who said they were equal, Mike.
I didn't, however, say that the role of husband and wife were equal.
Minus ten points for you, Joan.
>Just in case no one has
>filled you in, Shakespeare was not writing for scholars in the late 20th
>century - he was writing for the common folk of the early 17th.
Strictly speaking, he was writing for both the groundlings and the
nobles and rich bourgeoisie who attended plays at the Globe and elsewhere.
That his plays were more than common entertainment is apparent from
their evaluation by his contemporaries, e.g., Ben Jonson.
> At that
>time, women were little more than property - you could beat your wife to
>near death and be perfectly within your legal rights.
You make my point for me. If Petruchio could have done this, what
significance does it have that he does not?
> While this was not
>always the norm it did occur more than just occassionally.
How often does it occur in that misogynistic play, "Taming of the Shrew"?
>There are many
>other examples in Shakespeare where a woman's fate is decided by her
>father/guardian and or husband. There is no way, except in perhaps very
>enlightened homes (I hardly think _...Shrew_ is a shining example) every
>once in a while a woman might be looked at as being equal in some ways it
>was not very popular.
You still don't understand what I said. It might have been better if you
had tried to quote me rather than paraphrase. Suffice it to say that
there are ways in which husbands and wives can be equal regardless of what
the law says. And I've already quoted Richard Hosley's comments, which
undercut your characterization of the 16th century.
>Don't worry about it Mike, it's been over your head and gone. My fault
>really, you haven't gotten any of the other jokes yet...
I'm waiting until you tell a funny one.
Mike Godwin
>The phrase "different but equal" has been used for years in the struggle
>for equal rights between men and women - I really can't believe you made
>it up back then.
I didn't. Came up with it within the week. Now, please explain why you
can't give any examples of when this phrase "as been used for years in the
struggle for equal rights between men and women." Or are you just making
this up?
>How much do you know about marriage during the Elizabethan period?
Quite a bit. Studied in graduate school, then again during the years in
which I performed Shakespeare.
>Surely this is some kind of a sick joke.
No. Just a reading-comprehension error on your part.
Either that, or you genuinely believe that the relationship between a
husband and wife is solely a function of their legal status.
>You've been reading too many historical romances.
Not really. I can't read historical romances.
>That's kind of a silly thing to say since their roles were so unequal,
>unless you mean roles as in parts in the play.
It's not silly if you think there is a distinction between a person and
the social role he or she plays. I think there is. Apparently you think
it's silly to think so.
> That may be true but that
>still doesn't prove anything - the characters were still very unequal in
>status and power.
Absolutely right, if you mean *legal* status and power. The same goes for
Beatrice and Benedick. Yet in their verbal war of wit, Beatrice is almost
always the more powerful one.
>Genitalia and hormones have a lot to do with equality
>and lack thereof.
Quite right. I wouldn't dream of disputing this. Now please explain
how you're differing with what I posted?
What's kind of sad about all this is that you some locked into a certain
theory about men, women, and power. But the theory is a rather new one,
and doesn't shed any light on what "Taming of the Shrew" is about. For
that, you have to consult the play itself.
Do you really think that WS meant for Kate to be regarded as (brow)beaten
into submission at the close of the play? How little credit you give him!
James Davis Nicoll
>
> I always had mixed feelings about this play, especially as the
>versions of it I had seen performed seemed to be even more egregious
>than the text (remember, remember, the play's text is a dead thing! it
>has to be seen and heard to come to life.).
*Dead*? *Sniff* I think the use of the word 'dead' is a bit
of an overstatement, and a hair insulting to the writer of the play.
Granted, the play is written (one supposes) to be played on stage
(or wherever), but one can enjoy a play without seeing it on stage.
Hmmm. Perhaps that should be 'greatly insulting', instead.
<insert ob.rant re: directors and actors, egos thereof>
James Nicoll
Disclaimer: The above is *not* a statement that staging plays is an uneeded
or a bad activity, or that various productions of a play can't be seen as
'enriching' the experience of encountering the play.
I bet I get no support on this one...
R o d Johnson
>In article <52...@beguine.UUCP> jo...@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields) writes:
>>The phrase "different but equal" has been used for years in the struggle
>>for equal rights between men and women - I really can't believe you made
>>it up back then.
I'm with Mike. I've never heard it either. "Separate but equal", OK.
>>You've been reading too many historical romances.
>
>Not really. I can't read historical romances.
Sure you can. I hate to see this kind of defeatism. It's all a
matter of willpower. Just hold your metaphorical nose and read. :)
--
Rod Johnson * rjoh...@vela.acs.oakland.edu * (313) 650 2315
"Ya gotta evolve" --Muddy Mudskipper
Ohlhausen, Esther LaNelle
Well, I'll support you. I enjoy reading plays, sometimes as much as seeing
them performed. (In fact, considering some performances I've seen, *more*
at times.) Of course, I'm more reading- than hearing-oriented, so I
generally miss things when seeing a play that I catch when reading it.
It's also nice to have notes on unfamiliar words, etc., when experiencing
Shakespeare.
LaNelle Ohlhausen
Bharathi Jagadeesh
I want to add my two cents. I read this play in a "Woman in Literature"
class in an all girl school (yes it was high school and we were girls)
where the teacher (a woman) tried, I guess out of loyolty to Shakespeare to
convince us that the play was not incredibly sexist. She certainly didn't
convince me.
Petruchia starves and browbeats Kate into submission, but even worse, he
brainwashes her into believing that she has been done a favor. The scene at
the end of the play, where the men make bets about whose wife is the most
submissive is one of the most disgusting scenes in literature. Not only
does he treat her like a dog, but he then parades her before the town show
off the tricks he's starved her into learning.I can't get the pieces just
right, but I vaguely remember Kate submissively agreeing that day is night
and the sun the moon. Whatever has been done to her to get her to accept
that the statement of her "lord" must have greater significance than the
evidence of her own eyes is evil. Even if we interpret those statements as
the agreementbetween husband and wife to play their appropriate societal
roles (the most benign interpretation it can be given) it still points out
the ugliness of the husband/wife relationship in that era.
OK after that tirade, I still think that the play can be read and maybe
enjoyed for its aesthetic merit and the interpretation it gives us of
male/female relationships of the era.
Mike Godwin
>
>I'm with Mike. I've never heard it either. "Separate but equal", OK.
I think what's happening is that they're remembering "separate but
equal" and assuming that a phrase like "different but equal" must have
been used. But in all the feminist literature I've read, from Betty
Friedan to Marilyn French, I haven't run across it.
>>Not really. I can't read historical romances.
>
>Sure you can. I hate to see this kind of defeatism. It's all a
>matter of willpower. Just hold your metaphorical nose and read. :)
I was thinking that I might actually *want* to read a historical romance
if it were set in Elizabethan times. Then I realized that SHOGUN probably
counts.
Ian G Batten
> I think what's happening is that they're remembering "separate but
> equal" and assuming that a phrase like "different but equal" must have
> been used. But in all the feminist literature I've read, from Betty
> Friedan to Marilyn French, I haven't run across it.
The phrase ``different but equal'' is used as I recall in the English
translation of Mein Kampf to describe the role of women.
ian
Joan Shields
>In article <52...@beguine.UUCP> jo...@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields) writes:
>
>>The phrase "different but equal" has been used for years in the struggle
>>for equal rights between men and women - I really can't believe you made
>>it up back then.
>
>I didn't. Came up with it within the week. Now, please explain why you
>can't give any examples of when this phrase "as been used for years in the
>struggle for equal rights between men and women." Or are you just making
>this up?
Well, the US Military uses it to keep women out of combat and certain
other "dangerous" jobs. It's a justification now that out and out
discrimination is considered a no no. As an example, I was told that I
really shouldn't be in the sciences because even though women and men were
equal there were certain things that Y chromosome gave that women were
just not up to (those were a professor's words - got a bit confused with
the Y chromosome bit but, hey). Anyway, it's been a justification for
denying women opportunities to try.
>>Genitalia and hormones have a lot to do with equality
>>and lack thereof.
>
>Quite right. I wouldn't dream of disputing this. Now please explain
>how you're differing with what I posted?
You asked Matt to get his mind out of the gutter when he mentioned the
differences in genitalia and equality. Remember?
>What's kind of sad about all this is that you some locked into a certain
>theory about men, women, and power. But the theory is a rather new one,
>and doesn't shed any light on what "Taming of the Shrew" is about. For
>that, you have to consult the play itself.
Yes, that women are capable and perhaps even good at handling any degree
of power is relatively new (this is for women in general, not the
exceptions throughout history). For instance, we got the right to vote
less than 100 years ago - we still make, on average 60 or so cents for
every dollar a man makes. Mike, I think you have a very romanticized view
of Elizabethan society and of Shakespeare's motivations. He was trying to
make a buck, put food on the table. He was very good at what he did - he
gave the public what they wanted. He took old legends and revamped them
for the Globe. I don't think he was interested in pleasing future
scholars.
>Do you really think that WS meant for Kate to be regarded as (brow)beaten
>into submission at the close of the play? How little credit you give him!
Ok, Mike, what is Kate's role at the end of the play and when did this
change of heart occur. Do you have evidence that Kate and Petruchio are
putting on a ruse and that Kate is merely mouthing lies in order to fool
his friends? Please quote (after all you do have a copy of Shakespeare's
works by your desk, right?) from the text the relevant passages.
Joan