We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we work, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations. We pay respect to their elders past, present, and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded and this always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
Charlotte Allan Maija Drezins
Sunnie Habgood Julia Richards
Alice Wallis Elena Murphy Emerson Hurley Honor Rush Molly Lidgerwood Pamela Piechowicz Tahlia Antrobus
Allegra McCormack Molly Lidgerwood Pavani Athukorala Sunnie Habgood Lachlan Forster Dominique Jones
Charlotte Allan Julia Richards Honor Rush Isabella Sweeney Maija Drezins Daniel Bird
GenderFluidityintheLateMiddleAges:Acasestudyof SaintWilgefortis(AllegraMcCormack)
GenderPerformativityinEarlyModernEnglishTheatre (MollyLidgerwood)
HerProperty:WhiteWomenasSlaveMistressesinthe AntebellumSouth (PavaniAthukorala)
EloquenceandSilence:LeaningSocietalRolesofWomenin RenaissanceItaly(SunnieHabgood)
AmnestyforAll,SatisfactionforFew:ThePlanto'drawa line'beneathNorthernIreland'sTroubles(LachlanForster) Darkundark(AkankshaAgarwall)
UnderstandingtheSino-SovietSplit:TheGreatLeap Forward(DominiqueJones)
TheRelationshipBetweenMarriage,Reproduction,and FemalePowerinAncientGreeceandEgypt(Charlotte Allan)
LaughingattheMedieval:ArthurianLegends,Monty PythonandaKnight'sTale(JuliaRichards)
WhentheStarsSpeak:AComparisonBetweenQueen ElizabethI'sNatalCharttotheHoroscopeofherCoronation Chart(HonorRush)
ThePursuitofUnity:KantianMetaphysics, NaturphilosophieandHansChristianØrsted'sDiscoveryof Electromagnetism(IsabellaSweeney)
MusicintheDomesticSphere:MusicalWomenin Nineteenth CenturyLiteratureandMusic'sInfluenceonthe Domestic(MaijaDrezins)
HeartonSleeve:TheNude,Morality,andtheGazeinthe Long19thCentury(DanielBird)
The Chariot Journal has had another fantastic year in 2022 and we are very excited to share with you Volume V of our annual edition titled: Gender, Power and Culture. It has been a very exciting year for Chariot, particularly because we became an UMSU affiliated Club and have therefore been able to increase our membership, events and presence throughout the University of Melbourne. We thank all of our wonderful executive members, sub editors and contributors for making this year as exciting, intriguing and explosive as it has been. 2022 also provided the opportunity for Chariot to launch various in person events which reinvigorated our sense of community, spirit, and our shared love for history. We are also very thankful for the support of Dr. Julia Bowes and the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies in supporting us in all the work we do throughout the university.
Volume V of the Chariot Journal deals with some intriguing topics and issues relating to the themes of gender, power and culture within historical studies. This edition contains a diverse range of topics and include both academic essays and creative pieces, ranging from Allegra McCormack’s analysis of Gender Fluidity in the Late Middle Ages: a case study of Saint Wilgefortis to Honor Rush’s article When The Stars Speak: A Comparison Between Queen Elizabeth I’s Natal Chart to the Horoscope of her Coronation Chart. The themes of gender, power and culture are profoundly relevant and topical and we think that you will enjoy the marvellou tributors have produced. Turn the page al has to offer!
Allegra McCormack
Women were naturally colder and wetter than men, “whereas men were hot and contained.”
The growth of body hair was a physical manifestation of this two sex model as well as a symbol of masculinity. Indeed, the production of body hair was attributed to the balancing of male humours, as excess heat escaped through pores and facilitated hair growth. Within both models, as well as many theological constructions, the male was the ideal form, at the top of the sex hierarchy, whereas the female was considered an imperfect male. Physical transgressions, a visual crossing of the sex difference, were largely understood through the lens of disfigurement, and were subject to fascination and repulsion.
Fig 1: Adam Petri, Representation: Saint Wilgefortis, 1517, woodcut print, 44 x 32 mm, The British Museum, London Indeed, these observable occurrences were marked as an “unacceptable hybridity” belonging to the realm of the monstrous.
The legends of female bearded saints do, however, suggest that there could be a relationship between excess hair and female holiness. Gender fluidity within miracle stories could be understood symbolically and even uphold religious ideals of gender. Within late medieval Europe, the bearded St. Wilgefortis was a popular religious figure whose miracle story revolved around a divine act of gender fluidity. The image of Wilgefortis first appeared around 1400 as a ‘female crucifix’ and developed throughout the fifteenth century. The figure was usually depicted “ on a cross, wearing a crown, and often with a fiddler who serenades her from below.” Isle Friesen identifies the origin of St. Wilgefortis to a misinterpretation of a copy of Volto Santo. The image of a robed Christ was misperceived as a crucified, bearded female saint. Equally, Lewis Wallace argues St. Wilgefortis as a continuation of a series of “deformed” female saints which emerged in the thirteenth century. The later miracles stories of Wilgefortis had several common details:
A girl born to the pagan royal family of Portugal converts to Christianity and refuses to take a husband … Her father tries to force her into marriage and, upon her refusal has her imprisoned … [She] prays to God to be transformed to become physically unattractive to her would be husband so that she might remain a virgin bride of Christ alone. When Wilgefortis miraculously grows a full beard, her father has her crucified in a fit of rage.
For Wilgefortis, her beard is both a mark of disfigurement and symbol of divine protection. It is an intentionally monstrous, yet also miraculous phenomenon created by God that remains one of her most prominent features across varying depictions throughout the medieval and early modern period. As an example of divinely enabled gender fluidity within late medieval Europe, St. Wilgefortis encapsulates the complexity of sex difference as interpreted through a religious lens.
The legend of Wilgefortis, and the centrality of her act of gender fluidity, demonstrates the tension between medieval constructions of a gender hierarchy and the miracle stories of holy women. Gender was understood on both physical and moral terms, with female inferiority expressed within both Galenic and Aristotelian models of sex. Holy women, in achieving transcendence and overt divine favour, posed a challenge to this hierarchy. This theological problem could be remedied if holy women were understood as having ascended into the masculine side of the sex/gender continuum as personified through physiological characteristics. As such, Wilgefortis’ beard was perhaps an exhortation intended to portray masculine qualities, thus explaining her role within the gender hierarchy as well as visually bringing her closer to Christ. Several other saints also received the “divine gift of a beard” including St. Paula of Avila and St. Galla of Rome, while St. Mary Magdalene and St. Mary of Egypt were similarly described as having grown “fleeces of body hair.” Wilgefortis’ gender fluidity is also expressed within her actions as she seeks to protect her virginity and avoid the traditional social function of marriage through the protection of God accessible within a pagan court. These transgressions were similarly justified by constructing Wilgefortis as a more masculine figure. Some legends describe her as part of a set of septuplets and, being in the centre of the womb, having been exposed to “ a balance of heat and cold, which resulted in her having male attributes, such as the beard, and masculine qualities, such as distaste for marriage.” The de feminisation
Fig. 2: Jasper Isaac, Young Figure playing in front of the crucified body of Saint Wilgefortis, engraving, 1662 182 x 119 mm, The British Museum, London
of holy women, demonstrated through Wilgefortis’ gender fluidity, is a possible consequence of the conception of women as “ an afterthought of the creator” and theologically inferior to men.
Within the legend of St. Wilgefortis, this de feminisation was also conceived as a form of Christlike suffering. Rather than a painless, or even liberating expression of gender fluidity, her beard is intended to be repulsive and becomes the catalyst for Wilgefortis’ crucifixion. The beard of Wilgefortis is both a disfigurement and a divine gift from God. The radically transformative powers of Christianity are prominent throughout Christian doctrine; however, Wilgefortis’ transformation seemingly only increases her suffering. This paradox is reflective of the fifteenth century ideals popularised through the Imitatio Christi, a text that emphasised the importance of suffering as a means of spiritual purification. The text argues “the higher a person advances in spirit, the heavier crosses shall he often meet with.” The increasing suffering of Wilgefortis is a vital step for her eventual transcendence. While the prominence of the beard does vary between depictions, the crucifixion remains constant. This motif, in which Wilgefortis suffers “in cosmic unison with Christ on the cross,” reflects a common theme in which religious women’s bodies are directly associated with Christ’s. Wilgefortis’ body is, however, neither fully masculinised nor fully feminised. Her appearance and crucifixion tie her to the physicality of Christ, yet she is described as a woman, resulting in a blurring of her figure as a saint. Wallace argues Saint Wilgefortis embodies a multitude of characteristics from across the gender/sex spectrum: feminine yet virile, divine yet monstrous, Christlike and still a woman. This reveals the “fluidity and paradox common to late medieval religious symbols.” The gender fluidity central to her sainthood furthers Wilgefortis’ suffering as well as binding her closer to Christ.
In practice, St. Wilgefortis enjoyed considerable popularity as a saintly figure across Western Europe. Regardless of her legend’s origin it has been argued that her continued depictions were part of a deliberate effort to “transcend the ‘gender gap’ inherent to the crucifix.” Effectively, Wilgefortis’ gender fluidity could perhaps be utilised to promote a more universally applicable symbol of divine healing. Indeed, Wilgefortis assumed the role of compassionate protector. Sometimes referred to as St. Uncumber, she “would assist her faithful protégés in their final hour, so that they could die ‘ un encumbered’ by grief and anxiety.” Friesen argues that this role explains Wilgefortis’ inclusion as a
saintly protector within Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Perhaps due to her highly visible gender fluidity, Wilgefortis’ role as a saint was not always described positively. Within post reformation Britain, a growing connection between Wilgefortis’ patronage and women unhappy within their marriages was observed. In his Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Thomas More claimed that women referred to Wilgefortis as St. Uncumber “because they reckon that for a peck of oats she will not fail to uncumber them of their husbands.” Here, Wilgefortis becomes a threatening figure, her gender fluidity signalling her potential to allow other women to similarly destabilise the social order. Wilgefortis’ gender fluidity was both the driving force of her popularity as well a cause of growing suspicion. Miraculous gender fluidity was a complex act. Its divinity allowed for broad, often favourable, interpretations that reflected theological understandings of the sex hierarchy and divine favour. Like any depiction of social subversion, however, the ambiguity of Wilgefortis could be perceived as dangerous. The gender fluidity of Wilgefortis suggests that gender binaries were complex and multifaceted within late medieval miracle stories. While the prevailing sex models did enforce a relatively clear binary of gender roles, it is evident that there was space, albeit through legends, for some fluidity. It is crucial that Wilgefortis existed through symbolic representation, creating the possibility for varying interpretations as to the meaning of her beard. Gender fluidity is arguably defined through ambiguity, effectively informed by what it is not. Indeed, Wilgefortis was neither fully feminine nor fully masculine. This universality was possibly interpreted as purely metaphorical or understood as a more threatening transgression. Regardless, the legend of Wilgefortis reflects the stories of many holy women who adopted various forms of gender fluidity and ambiguity as central to their transcendence to sainthood.
Kempis, Thomas A Imitation of Christ: In Four Books Edited by John Hodges Frome, England: Simpkin, Marshall and Co , 1868
More, Thomas A Dialogue Concerning Heresies: The Complete Works of St Thomas More Edited by Mary Gottschalk Connecticut, USA: Yale University Press, 1981
Isaac, Jaspar Young fiddler playing in front of the crucified body of St Wilgefortis Engraving 1662 182 x 119 mm The British Museum, London, https://www britishmuseum org/collection/object/P 1880 1009 1
Petri, Adam Representation: Saint Wilgefortis 1517 Woodcut print, 44 x 32 mm The British Museum, London, https://www britishmuseum org/collection/object/P 1932 0229 14
Westminster Abbey Untitled Twitter Post in Twitter Post January 10, 2019, 8:39pm https://twitter com/wabbey/status/1083297210861785088/photo/1
Wierix, Hieronymus Pietà with crucified female martyrs Etching on paper, 1609, 161 x 103 mm The British Museum, London, https://www britishmuseum org/collection/object/P 1863 0509 641
Bailey, Anne E “The Female Condition: Gender and Deformity in High Medieval Miracle Narratives ” Gender & History 33, no 2 (2021): 427 447
Butler, Judith “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory ” Theatre Journal 40, no 4 (1988): 519 531
Cadden, Joan The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1993
Friesen, Ilse E The Female Crucifix: Images of St Wilgefortis since the Middle Ages Ontario, Canada: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2001
Gardener, Arthur English Medieval Sculpture Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2011
Hotchkiss, Valerie Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe New York, Routledge, 2012
Jasper, Alison “Theology at the Freak Show: St Uncumber and the Discourse of Liberation ” Theology & Sexuality 11, no 2 (2005): 43 54
Katritzky, M A “‘A Wonderful Monster Borne in Germany’: Hairy Girls in Medieval and Early Modern German Book, Court and Performance Culture ” German Life and Letters 67, no 4 (2014): 467 480
Kłosowska, Anna. “Premodern trans and queer in French manuscripts and early printed texts.” Postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 9, no. 4 (2018): 349 366.
Knippel, Jessi. “Queers Nuns and Genderbending Saints.” CrossCurrents 69, no. 4 (2019): 402 414.
Lacquer, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992
Murray, Jacqueline. “One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?” In Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives. Edited by Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz, 34 51. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 2008
Wallace, Lewis. “Bearded Woman, Female Christ: Gendered Transformations in the Legends and Cult of Saint Wilgefortis.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30, no.1 (2014): 43 63.
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the widely understood expectations of how people had ought to confine themselves to their respective genders.
The controversial pamphlets Hic Mulier and Haec Vir published anonymously in 1620 (but now assumed to be the work of John Trundle, an English publisher) epitomised the attitudes towards gender in early modern England. Hic Mulier condemned cross dressing as the “masculine women” were accused of making “ an asse” of the nation due to the connotations of “deformity” associated with gender ambiguity. For example, its title page displayed women getting their long hair cut off, destroying a symbol of modesty and inferiority (Figure 2). Short hair denoted masculinity in early modern England and consequently a woman with short hair elicited " a sense of shame", acc ording to Sandra Clark, as their needles were replaced with swords. Haec Vir similarly highlights the dangers of gender ambiguity as a couple in the opening scene meet and misidentified each other’s gender. The pamphlet ultimately argues that “shame…is a concept framed by men to subordinate women to the dictates of arbitrary custom.” Clark suggests that Trundle’s publications of these controversial pamphlets were an attempt to cause controversy by presenting a range of varying attitudes regarding gender in a way that mirrors the reality of gender performances which were fluid in the early modern period.
While cross dressing is explicitly condemned in the Old Testament of the Bible widely read in the early modern period, the theatre resisted gender binaries through their performances of ambiguous genders. English theatres employed all male casts unlike their European counterparts. This unique casting approach ascribed significance to the masculinity of the male bodies
Fig 1: The English Gentlewoman, Richard Brathwaite, 1631
Fig. 2: Opening Page to Hic Mulier, John Trundle, 1620.
and voices which performed a variety of genders in their plays. Playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe specifically employed young boys to perform their roles. For example, Nathan Field and Thomas Clifton were kidnapped and adopted into the theatrical world at only thirteen years of age, signifying the importance in finding young males with pre pubescent voices in order to signify the femininity of particular characters. Marlowe and Shakespeare wrote male and female roles for his boy actors, creating “simulated performances of women” which explored gendered relationships on the stage for the audience to witness. Henry Peacham’s drawing of a performance of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus reveals the subversive gender dynamics inherent in the performance as Tamora was taller than her Roman counterparts, even as she knelt submissively before the powerful Titus. Alison Findlay’s argument that the spectators of Titus “ were admitted to a hall of mirrors in which appearances, [and] gender identities…could be grotesquely distorted” reinforces that gender performances within early modern theatre were never stable and frequently subversive. Shakespeare often wrote “restricted” female roles for a small pool of his male actors. For example, Othello’s Desdemona was restricted to a limited number of male actors which ensured that the boys performing the role could master the performance of femininity in the tragedy. The example of Desdemona’s role also reveals the submissive nature of these female roles performed by male actors. For example, Henry Jackson’s recollection of an Othello performance notes how the murder of Desdemona “begged the spectators’ pity with her very facial expression,” highlighting the ability of these male actors to skilfully ingrain the patriarchal value of obedience into the memory of early modern audiences. Ultimately, these performances of femininity, led by young men, highlight the multifaceted and ambiguous representations of gender on the early modern stage.
The key signifier of fluid masculinity within early modern theatre was the voice of the actor. A squeaking voice demonstrated the boy actor’s transformation to developed man, which influenced the roles he played and the extent to which the performance of femininity was successful. In both female and male roles, the oscillating voice of the male actor was significant in igniting a sense of anxiety in an audience as the signs of masculinity became diminished, thus revealing the unstable gender boundaries in early modern England. While there have been minimal complaints recorded in this period regarding the physical appearance of male actors performing female roles, there have been recorded complaints related to these unstable voices. The voice of the male actor denoted the instability of gender and also connected their gender identities with a form of homoeroticism. Stephen Orgel’s contention that the dominant manifestation of eroticism in the early modern period was homosexuality is useful in analysing the performances of
gender by male actors. For example, the boy actors often were made sexually available by the theatre through a form of prostitution. As a result of this sexual indenture, the theatrical performances of the actors become linked to their roles as passive and available sexual partners for early modern spectators. Essentially, a boy actor who dramatised his identity through a female part constructed himself as a submissive, sexual, and consumable person, signifying the fluid gender and sexual identities in early modern England.
While male crossdressing and performances of gender blurred social conventions, female cross dressing, of both actors and characters, performed a similar function but was accused more frequently during the later years of King James’ reign in England. It is important to acknowledge the distinction between social cross dressing and cross dressing within the theatrical context; while the pair are connected, they are not the same. Cross dressing within plays provided an opportunity for playwrights, actors, and audiences alike to explore the fluidity of femininity within the confines of the theatre. For example, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a play which provided female spectators the opportunity to witness layered gender disguise, as a male character would play the role of Viola who deceptively performed the role of Cesario. These complex performances of gender on the stage allowed actors to explore gender binaries but also explore the sexed female body. Viola/Cesario introduces herself to the Duke as “ an eunuch,” representing the lack of genitalia on the stage. This absence of female genitals in Twelfth Night suggests that Shakespeare used the one sex model which as a result solidifies the androcentricity of the early modern period. Twelfth Night therefore represents the early modern theatre’s preoccupation with blurred genders and associated sexed bodies. Contrastingly, The Merchant of Venice displays cross dressing that is socially disruptive as it resists “feminine subjectivity.” While The Lawe’s Resolution of Women’s Rights reminds us that “ women [had] no voice in parliament,” Portia’s manly disguise within the play’s courtroom is a powerful attempt of the character to assume control within the public and masculine sphere of the legal system. However, it would be false to argue that Viola or Portia’s cross dressing successfully resisted patriarchal hegemony in the early modern period. This failure is because firstly, the gender of the roles were performed by men which serves as a distancing mechanism; the power of the female characters was only a masculine façade. Secondly, as Orgel argues, the consequence of these subversive roles was not the deconstruction of patriarchy but rather, the arousal of male spectators whose reasoning became blurred and they consequently lusted after the men disguised in the cross dressing female’s costume. However, it is also important to consider that there were many female spectators in early modern theatres between 1567 and 1642. The early modern theatre provided an opportunity for women to see their flexible femininity
represented on stage, while also engaging with the erotic practices of the theatre possibly even including prostitution and intercourse. Thus, representations of femininity in early modern theatre were even more deceptive and fluid than their male counterparts.
Ultimately, performances of gender in early modern England were never stable. While the expected attitudes towards gender were made clear through Biblical texts and political pamphlets, the theatre provided an opportunity to blur gender binaries as actors and spectators engaged in a way that often resisted gender and sexual conventions. For example, the unstable voice and young age of male actors signified masculinity, or lack thereof, which resulted in fluid performances of constructed femininity. The mirror of disguises in Shakespeare’s plays revealed the messy performances of layered genders which resulted in the deception of early modern spectators and subsequently their fascination and eroticism of fluid genders.
Brathwaite, Richard “The English Gentlewoman,” 1631 In Aughterson, Kate Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook London: Routledge, 1995, p xvii
Edgar, Thomas “The Lawe’s Resolution of Women’s Rights ” Digital Library, 1632 https://digital library lse ac uk/objects/lse:sor474mew
Jackson, Henry “Excerpts from Henry Jackson’s letter recording a performance of Othello at Oxford ” Shakespeare Documented, 1610 https://shakespearedocumented folger edu/file/ms 304 folio 83 verso and 84 recto
Peacham, Henry Titus Andronicus illustration, 1595 In Callaghan, Dympna Shakespeare Without Women: Representing Gender and Race on the Renaissance Stage London and New York: Routledge, 1999, p 3
Shakespeare, William “Othello ” In William Shakespeare Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, 2081 2157 London: The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2007
Shakespeare, William “The Merchant of Venice ” In William Shakespeare Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, 413 471 London: The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2007
Shakespeare, William. “Twelfth Night, Or What You Will.” In William Shakespeare Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, 645 697. London: The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2007.
Trundle, John. “Hic Mulier: or the man woman and Haec Vir: or the womanish man. ” Internet Archive.1620. https://archive.org/details/hicmulierormanwo00exetuoft/page/n9/mode/2up.
Bartels Emily C , and Emma Smith Christopher Marlowe in Context New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013
Bloom, Gina Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007
Butler, Judith “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory ” Theatre Journal 40, no 2 (Dec 1988): 519 531
Butler, Judith Gender Trouble London: Routledge, 1990
Callaghan, Dympna Shakespeare Without Women: Representing Gender and Race on the Renaissance Stage London and New York: Routledge, 1999
Clark, Sandra “‘Hic Mulier,’ ‘Haec Vir,’ and the Controversy over Masculine Women ” Studies in Philology 82, no 2 (Spring 1985): 157 183
Findlay, Alison A Feminist Perspective on Renaissance Drama Oxford: Blackwell, 1998
Gurr Andrew Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987
Howard, Jean E “Crossdressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England ” Shakespeare Quarterly 39, no 4 (Winter, 1988): 418 440
McMillin, Scott “The Sharer and His Boy: Rehearsing Shakespeare’s Women ” In From Script to Stage in Early Modern England, edited by Peter Holland and Stephen Orgel, 231 245 London: Palgrave, 2004
Orgel, Stephen “Nobody’s Perfect, Or Why Did the English Stage Take Boys for Women?” South Atlantic Quarterly 88 (1989): 7 29
Orgel, Stephen Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996
Tribble, Evelyn “Marlow’s Boy Actors ” Shakespeare Bulletin 27, no 1 (2009): 5 17
That the Antebellum Southern belle, long mythologised as a wisp of delicate submission and refined piety, could bear witness and contribute to the barbarities of slavery seems unfathomable. Many scholars have, in fact, been loath to consider it. This essay, however, adopts a position favoured by more recent works in arguing that white women were slave mistresses in fullest sense of the word, whose relationships to enslaved persons were primarily ones of power and property, where their own privileged statuses depended upon the other’s oppression. Firstly, I summarise prior scholarship and outline how this essay departs from their methodology. I then focus on mistresses’ economic involvement in slavery, deconstructing the notion of slave ownership and mastery as masculine or patriarchal. I then outline the gendered ways in which white women exploited enslaved bodies, both for reproductive labour and sexual purposes. Finally, I consider the reasons why mistresses upheld a system that contributed to their own oppression, but also why many contemporary scholars have difficulty believing they did.
When not entirely ignoring their role within the ‘peculiar institution,’ twentieth century scholars generally depicted white mistresses as benevolent ‘closet abolitionist’ figures whose oppression under the Southern patriarchy they often equated with the sufferings of (particularly female) slaves. Marli F. Weiner argues that Southern paternalism tasked white women with providing slaves both material and moral ‘ care and guidance’ (that is, attending to enslaved people’s bodily needs and spiritual health), a responsibility most took seriously. She concludes that this resulted in some mistresses empathising with their slaves in ‘radical’ ways, humanising an inhuman institution. Vera Lynn Kennedy similarly argues that ‘shared female experiences’ such as childbirth and motherhood
brought mistresses and slaves together with ‘subversive, even radical implications.’ Even more recent scholars who are more cognizant of white women’s complicity in slavery espoused similar rhetoric. For example, Elizabeth Fox Genovese admits that mistresses were often ‘ more crudely racist’ than masters and shared little sisterly solidarity with female slaves. Immediately however, she undercuts this by rhapsodising about the ‘genuine personal concern and grief’ mistresses felt for slaves in a well intentioned but misguided attempt to depict them complexly. Mistresses’ personal writings (which the aforementioned scholars use extensively and almost exclusively) do reveal that many considered their relationships with slaves as mutually loyal and affectionate. But as bell hooks writes, allowing privileged persons like slaveholding women to interpret ‘the reality of…a less powerful, exploited and oppressed group’ such as their slaves is problematic for obvious reasons. If one instead uses evidence from slave narratives and the testimonies of former slaves, mistresses emerge (in striking contrast to their self characterisations) as calculating, authoritative and occasionally tyrannical figures. For these reasons, I too prioritise sources that allow the enslaved to define their own realities, against which I critically compare mistresses’ claims.
Firstly, as Glymph notes, the false dichotomy some scholars create between the ‘masculine’ public world of auctions and ‘feminized’ or sheltered plantations conceals the extent of white women’s economic involvement in slavery. In reality, no such firm distinction existed. As Low Country slave codes demonstrate, female mastery was specifically inscribed into the colonies’ legislature from their earliest days. One 1701 South Carolina law stated that slaves castrated for fleeing their ‘master, mistress or owner’ would be further mutilated for repeat escapes, while another from 1740 warned owners failing to provide slaves ‘under his or her charge, sufficient cloathing, covering or food’ they would be held legally responsible. Georgia’s laws threatened to fine the ‘Master, Mistress, overseer’ of any slave who was hired without an approved ticket. Clauses detailing other civic responsibilities of slaveholders, including contributing the colony’s militia and sending slaves to build public works, used similarly gender neutral language, specifically taking into account female owners. Female slave ownership existed and was acknowledged; in fact, because so many male heads of households died prematurely amidst the instability of colonial life, some women gained ‘unprecedented economic autonomy’ through it. These women independently managed large plantations, and freely bought, sold, bequeathed and hired slaves, which gave them the financial status to play important public roles within their communities. Well-aware that the Southern patriarchy was generally hostile to female autonomy, such single slaveholding women protected their precarious privilege by replicating the same racist hierarchies that enabled Southern slavery.
Nevertheless, as Stephanie Jones Rogers emphasises, slave mastery was not limited to the unmarried. Wealthy women entered marriage with slaves gifted to them by parents, and though legally, wives’ persons and property, enslaved or otherwise, belonged to their husbands, the reality was more nuanced. Some mistresses distinguished between their own and husbands’ slaves; former slave Silas Glenn remembered his mistress being ‘good to the slaves that come into her from her daddy’ but ‘mean’ to those from her husband’s side. Many firmly resisted their husbands’ attempts at managing, disciplining, or selling their enslaved property. White women who had grown up commanding slaves gained an internalised understanding of themselves as slaveholders (replete with the associated rights and responsibilities) and did not hesitate to assert this sense of independent ownership within their marriages. Some, such as Mrs. Annie Poore who sold slaves for ‘big prices’ after she ‘done trained them’ in specialised skills like cooking and carpentry, were acute businesswomen: true ‘mistresses of the market.’ Such women studied slave prices, exploited market fluctuations, and (contrary to popular belief) personally attended auctions, or hired male representatives to conduct such business on their behalf. In sum, both single and married slaveholding women gained economic power and personal agency within a repressive patriarchal system through the ownership and oppression of enslaved persons, whom they considered, first and foremost, as their property.
Secondly, while sources do not suggest that witnessing the sexual abuse of female slaves turned mistresses into sympathetic allies, it was actually quite the contrary. Powerless to stop men’s transgressions and suffocated by the hypocritical ideals of female purity thrust upon them, most turned a complicit blind eye or further abused the victims. Diarist and slave mistress Mary Boykin Chestnut, for instance, could call slavery a ‘ wrong and an inequity’ for the sexual disorder it produced and characterise female slaves as ‘prostitutes’ in the same sentence. Mistresses such as Boykin Chestnut self pityingly casted themselves as the sole victims of white men’s actions while extending little sympathy towards the enslaved victims. Instead, many reproduced racist stereotypes of Black women as animalistic, hypersexual, and complicit in their own abuse. Boykin Chestnut felt ‘faint, seasick’ witnessing a mulatto woman being sold for sexual purposes but described the woman as lasciviously ‘ogling the bidders’ with an ‘expanded grin of excitement.’ Others, especially on smaller plantations where mistresses were constantly confronted with evidence of their husbands’ infidelity, took their anger out on victims. In his famed autobiographical narrative, Solomon Northup remembers witnessing an enslaved woman named Patsey being ‘literally flayed’ due to her mistress’ jealousy. The mistress often persuaded her husband or other
slaves to whip Patsey out of spite, and even attempted to bribe Northup to murder her. As Natalie Zacek notes, though some have framed such erratic, emotionally motivated violence as somehow less severe than the systematic abuse often associated with masters, its unpredictable nature likely terrorised and traumatised slaves. Thus, most mistresses’ reactions to sexual abuse ultimately perpetuated the larger culture of racialized violence inherent to Southern slavery.
Moreover, mistresses themselves exploited enslaved bodies in various ways. Emily West and Rosie J. Knight use the thriving market for enslaved wet nurses to highlight how mistresses manipulated and commodified enslaved women’s mothering to serve their own needs. Mistresses’ reasons for employing wet nurses ranged from illness to vanity the fear that feeding would make their ‘breast fall,’ and become less aesthetically pleasing. Unlike slaves, mistresses had the privilege of choice in the matter, and their decisions determined the nature of enslaved women’s mothering. Harriet Jacobs, for example, remembers her mother being ‘weaned at three months old, [so] that the babe of the mistress might obtain sufficient food.’ Thus, mistresses placed their own desires and their children’s nutritional needs above enslaved women’s bodily autonomy, a uniquely gendered form of maternal violence. Moreover, while many fretted in personal writings about their own nursing related worries, not one reflected on the physical or emotional toll of forcing an enslaved mother to set aside her child for theirs. Mistresses also continually interfered in enslaved women’s parenting. Some supervised pregnancies, ministering home remedies, designating certain slaves to act as midwives, and occasionally deciding where births would occur. While this could be considered benevolent assistance, we cannot know how enslaved women felt about such intrusions into their bodies and intimate experiences. Neither was their interest in slaves’ reproduction wholly altruistic; a healthy child was a valuable commodity who could later be separated from their family and sold for profit. In sum, as Jones Rogers argues, shared female experiences like motherhood did not cause mistresses to ‘radically’ transcend societal norms. These instead became arenas where mistresses reconstructed racialized hierarchies to enforce their own privilege and power.
Thirdly, some white women also participated in the sexual abuse of male slaves. According to Thomas Balcerski, the conditions that fostered abuse between white men and enslaved women the availability of enslaved bodies, sex as a means of maintaining hierarchies of race and power also led to similar contact between mistresses and enslaved men. He notes that contemporary observers remarked quite offhandedly about this, for example Harriet Jacobs, who claims that seeing how female slaves were ‘subject to their father’s authority in all
things’, some mistresses learned to ‘exercise the same authority.’ Jacobs remembers a woman who chose the ‘most brutalized’ slave on her plantation as a partner, knowing she could most completely exercise her power over him, and evade the risk of capture. Admittedly, such relationships were a minority, but this example displays how white women understood, strategically used and often re enacted the hierarchies of race, sex and power around them. Importantly, sexualised abuse did not necessarily entail rape; Morgan comments that even daily encounters possessed a perversely ‘sexual dimension’ in the South because some enslaved people were forced to wear ‘little or no clothing.’ The display of particularly Black male bodies in the presence of upper class white women drew startled remarks from Northern observers, like one William Harding, who noted seeing enslaved men wearing only a ‘loose shirt, descending half way down their thighs’ waiting on ladies who did not express any ‘apparent embarrassment.’ Other violations of privacy included mistresses beating unclothed slaves (much in the same way masters did), or ordering them to massage or perform other intimate ministrations on their bodies. Some white women secured silence afterwards by threatening to accuse enslaved men of having raped them if they revealed anything, indicating that like their menfolk, they recognised and manipulated social stereotypes associating blackness with sexual aggression. Taken together, such examples exhibit how white women gained a certain transgressive power in a society that denied them sexual agency through the domination and violation of enslaved bodies.
In conclusion, while mistresses could and did treat their human property with basic decency (a bare minimum that has often been extolled as uniquely benevolent), they also held the power of life and death over their slaves. Slavery was not just a passive reality for white women, but a system based on power structures they actively upheld. Mistresses profited from the trade of enslaved people. They suffered minimal or no repercussions for inflicting sometimes unspeakable violence upon them in response to personal whims and jealousies. Some exploited enslaved women’s maternal labour to ease their own mothering, and others subjected enslaved men’s bodies to sexual violence. Of course, mistresses were also capable of genuine benevolence. Yet to focus on individual kindnesses over the systemic cruelty and exploitation that white women participated in, to insinuate that benevolence was ‘representative’ of white Antebellum womanhood as a whole, and to forget that these ‘kindnesses’ occurred within a power dynamic where one party was the property of the other, is to perpetuate the same stereotypes that kept slavery alive.
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went against the ornament of silence that Barbaro mentions; hence, women must believe that eloquence and silence equate to each other eloquence therefore wasn’t seen as an achievable goal for Renaissance women. Women were, in On Wifely Duties, categorised as outside the learned class of society, as Barbaro enforces the contemporary attitude that women should be seen and not heard.
Furthermore, we must define what period will be discussed and give context as to what was happening during the Renaissance. Barbaro’s contemporaries did not believe they were living in a “renaissance” that term wasn’t coined until the nineteenth century, with Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy published in 1860. The etymology of the word Renaissance invokes ideas of rebirth as stated before, the Renaissance in Italy was categorised by a revival of classical ideals, which were mainly manifested through art, scholarship, and architecture. Italy during this time was forming independent governments, with periods of “relative freedom from foreign influences” that would later be marred by a succession of European invasions in the late fifteenth century. Italy was moving power from the hands of the nobility into independent governments (though it would later shift back into the hands of monarchies and foreign powers). Tensions between classes had been rife since the mid thirteenth century so, at the time of Barbaro’s writing, Italy was experiencing a period of general stability. On top of governments, the Church’s “moral prescriptions were enforced” by the Church as well as the laws of the states religion was, at this time, seen as the primary authority. We can see that the class system was being altered, as power was shifting; breaks from foreign invasions meant relative peace and stability for all areas of society; and most importantly, the Church was the authority on all moral and social issues, as well as natural law.
The “ornament of silence” named was a trait associated with femininity and therefore women at the time of the Renaissance. Historically, femininity and masculinity both social traits were equated with biological sex. According to Kent in their chapter “Women in Renaissance Florence” from Virtue and Beauty, gender was a social construct as much as a biological given, where women were “universally constricted in accordance with […] male needs”. Female destiny was entirely in the hands of men, as femininity and the virtue of silence became associated with women. This wasn’t a new idea in the Renaissance and stemmed back to Biblical times where Eve was believed to be created from Adam’s rib. Females were second to men from the time of creation Eve was created after Adam, and natural law in the Renaissance (perpetrated by the Church) stated that a hierarchy of creatures was established through the order of which they were created. Furthermore, Eve was seduced by the serpent, and in doing so influenced
Adam; she was sentenced to pain during childbirth and “the labour of motherhood”, and from then on women were “weak, foolish, sensual and not to be trusted”. This ties back to the belief that women should “honor themselves” with silence Eve’s sins followed women into the Renaissance, as did her creation after Adam, and there was no place for second class citizens in the realm of eloquence. Women were believed to have motherhood thrust upon them as a punishment, speaking to how their social position was cast in society.
This aspect of Christian doctrine was so engrained into everyday life in the Renaissance that chastity became the foremost virtue a woman could aspire to uphold, as they were pushed to do what Eve could not. Virginity and chastity were continuously brought up as a reason why women shouldn’t engage in eloquence or broader studies, linking into both their educations and their role in society. Let us first focus on how attitudes towards women’s learning were centred around the idea of chastity. In his infamous letter to Battista Malatesta, Leonardo Bruni discusses his belief that to women, “the intricacies of debate or the oratorical artifices of action and delivery” would never be of any practical use. Rhetoric in all its forms, Bruni suggests that it was “absolutely outside the province of women”, and they should primarily subscribe to “the whole field of religion and morals” as well as Church literature. Here another Renaissance man believes eloquence was an unattainable virtue for women to uphold and/or possess; rhetoric and eloquence were closely linked in humanist studies, as humanists strived to reinvigorate medieval rhetoric through eloquence. Eloquence in women was viewed as not only going against their nature, also as a sign of corruption of character. The rationale for this was that eloquence was a public activity according to classical Aristotelian thought, women “ were passive, irrational, opinionative, and inferior to man”, and therefore must be confined to the private sphere. Young females were discouraged from learning even Latin or Greek, as it was believed this could expose them to “obscene or frivolous literature”; girls’ educations were always designed to protect their chastity and virtue. As learned women would be exposed to lude materials, it was believed they couldn’t remain chaste while analysing classical texts, which is a key fact that shows how important chastity was. An important perspective on objections surrounding the attitudes towards women’s learning comes from Laura Centra, a prominent female humanist, in her letter to Bibulus Sempronius. Cereta is exasperated with Sempronius, who has labelled her as a “female prodigy” she believes that women “have been able by nature to be exceptional” but have had their opportunities limited. She goes on to list the names of many learned and brilliant classical women, whose achievements show that “nature imparts equally to all the same freedom to learn”. We can see that women were suppressed by their social
circumstances, and that those who had access to education wished for it to be more readily available. Both Bruni and Barbaro, by encouraging women not to become schooled in rhetoric and eloquence, reflect a key Renaissance attitude that higher education for women would be unsuitable for a gender that was supposed to remain chaste.
The reason for higher education being unsuitable was because it didn’t fit into the idealised role for women in society. One constant that overlaps with both women’s learning and their role in society was that all females, regardless of their social standing, were educated in domestic chores such as sewing and needlework. A woman was only supposed to master as much rhetoric “which would serve her for domestic purposes”; she would teach her children the basics of grammar and religion and leave the rest up to tutors or their father/male guardian. It was truly believed that women had nothing to contribute to society except in their role as a mother. Tying back into education, eloquence was a virtue only suitable for the public sphere, and we can see that a woman’s place was only in the private, domestic sphere. Silence was also a very large part of a woman’s life, particularly in relation to her husband. If women took the initiative during sex, it was seen as socially unacceptable they were taught to remain chaste and modest, “in the bedroom as much as elsewhere”, and expressing any form of sexual desire was deemed inappropriate. This tied back into the idea of the ideal woman remaining chaste, even throughout marriage.
A case which exemplifies Barbaro’s views, and shows his attitudes towards both women’s learning and their place in society is that of Isotta Nogarola, a Veronese noblewoman who is recognised by twenty first century scholars to have been a prominent fifteenth century humanist. Isotta’s eloquence in Latin became renowned throughout Italy by the time she was eighteen as she wrote to prominent humanists, but a theme that emerged from her praise was that she wasn’t a great humanist, but instead great for a woman. Her achievements were consistently equated to her gender, and in her famous letter to Ermolao Barbaro she self deprecates, writing “it may be very difficult to find a silent woman” in reference to herself, and acknowledging that her writings may seem “too verbose”. In an attempt to be taken seriously, Isotta had to acknowledge she was going against the norm of her gender against the lack of eloquence and silence Barbaro preferred. She further referenced Cicero and Virgil in the letter, making it known she’s skilled in Latin, which was yet another rebellion against the norm of
her gender. Due to her eloquence and this skill, she was a standout in her society, an oddity which many learned men had never encountered before. As put by Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine in “Women Humanists”, a fallout was inevitable: “triumphant warrior women all too easily become voracious, men eating monsters”. Isotta could not be a triumphant, learned woman without facing public backlash. Furthermore, engaging in higher education wasn’t her only wrong, as Isotta swore herself to celibacy and refused to marry. This went against the social expectation for women to wed, and an anonymous accuser would make accusations of sexual deviancy against her. As we discussed previously, chastity was the utmost virtue which a woman could aspire to uphold, however, it was genuinely believed that women couldn’t engage in humanism and live chaste lives simultaneously; it was therefore assumed that Isotta must have been engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage. She would later retreat from the humanist scene, instead devoting herself to the study of religious texts, which was seen as a more appropriate pass time for noblewomen. While her motives for doing so aren’t known, male humanists had not accepted her and, as a woman, and she most likely “lost courage when faced with the monumental task” of being taken seriously. Isotta was unmarried, educated, and had a public voice, going against Barbaro’s ideals expressed in On Wifely Duties, and the outcome of her life highlights the attitudes towards women’s learning and their place in society.
To conclude, the relationship between women’s learning and their place in society meant that the education of young women was limited. Barbaro’s statement reflects that silence and chastity were the main virtues a woman could uphold, and this attitude had age old roots and was perpetrated by Christian doctrine. If a woman was skilled in eloquence, they were going against their nature and the silence that was key to their roles in society. Isotta Nogarola, who summarised a woman going completely against her gender norm, suffered due to her skills in eloquences and had silence forced upon her as she retreated from the humanist scene. Women’s learning was clearly designed to serve their societal roles as mothers and wives.
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Amnesty for All, Satisfaction for Few: The place to 'draw a line' beneath Northern Ireland's Troubles
Lachlan Forster
Proposals of amnesty for those who contributed their efforts towards violent struggle during periods of upheaval are not unfounded. The most famous and effective enactment of such legislature was the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ within South Africa, established by Nelson Mandela to record testimony and shed light on the crimes of the apartheid system. This commission had the ability to grant amnesty, and complete protection from prosecution for former political offences, to those who had propped up the apartheid system, as well as to those who had committed crimes whilst aiming to take down said governmental framework. While not entirely without blemish, this act of amnesty not only ‘generated a great deal of information if not truth’, but was also a massive contributor towards ‘reconciliation in South Africa’ , ‘moving the country towards a more democratic future.’ So, if such a proposal could work to heal the deep wounds left by the apartheid system within South Africa, what stands in the way of such a proposal working to put the troubles in the past once and for all?
South Africa’s reconciliation and subsequent amnesty grants centred on the fact that the system of apartheid and the majority of the groups that fought for it were a thing of the past. As Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress took power within the state, it was evident that his political faction had ‘won’ the apartheid struggle. But the troubles did not have such a definitive victory for any party. The Good Friday agreement was a negotiated settlement between every party, hashed out between the British crown, members of the republican Sinn Féin, and representatives from the Democratic Unionist Party. Each entity had to make concessions for peace, but none of them ceased to exist, continuing to campaign for their respective political ideals, but with an agreement that Northern Irish politics should centre on civility rather than violence. The struggle of amnesty with these conditions is that as each character from the troubles continues to exist in the modern day, they still maintain their actions within the conflict were unquestionably just, demanding justice for those who suffered on their side whilst also conveniently turning a blind eye to their own party’s poor conduct. A condition of amnesty in South Africa was an admission of guilt for crimes, asserting that in order to achieve forgiveness in the post minority rule nation, one had to admit fault. But this ask will not be met by any of the parties within Northern Irish politics, demonstrated by an overwhelming backlash to Westminster’s amnesty proposal from all five major political parties in Ulster, victim groups, families of the deceased and British servicemen. All of them have rightful cause to be angry and hurt by what happened during the troubles, but the notion that they need to be forgiven is completely foreign. Their justifications are as follows:
Republicans: The republican cause in Northern Ireland was the most passionately supported independence movement in the world due to widely publicised events of suppression that grabbed headlines, carried out against the minority Catholic community in Ulster. The aforementioned Bloody Sunday followed riots in 1969, that demanded civil rights for families being forcibly evicted by Protestant landlords and communities. Subsequent decades would also see hunger strikes within prisons by convicts who asserted that they had been denied proper trials and the human rights that detainees are entitled too, including mail from loved ones and time outside their cells. Maeve McLaughlin, manager of the Bloody Sunday Trust, explained that many Catholics in Northern Ireland ‘can’t just draw a line and forget’ the oppression they and their families experienced, and that ‘putting the truth out there’ was essential to promote the suffering of her community during this period. The latter quote refers to the legislation’s barring of legacy inquests, that would end the search for answers for the families of those who lost their lives in uncertain circumstances during the period, with said families being left to rely on the conscious of those who were granted amnesty to come forward and confess to their crimes. These points are backed by Sinn Féin, the Republican Party of Northern Ireland who wholeheartedly maintain that those who maligned Catholics should be prosecuted. Furthermore, Sinn Fèin successfully campaigned for Bloody Sunday to be recognised as an unlawful act of aggression, resulting in British Prime Minister David Cameron apologising for the event in 2010 on behalf of the crown, stating Great Britain was ‘deeply sorry’. But Sinn Féin was not a helpless victim throughout the troubles, and their passionate campaigning for the martyrdom of the republican cause is undermined by their paramilitaries own actions during the conflict.
Unionists:
Of the 3,500 murders during the troubles, 60% were committed by republican paramilitaries, the primary of which was the notorious Provisional Irish Republican Army, or IRA. The majority of the organisation’s targets were unionists and British military servicemen who had been stationed on the streets of Northern Ireland. Frequently however, their actual victims were innocents who had become unknowingly caught in the crossfire of the IRA’s campaign of terrorism. For example, the assassination of Lord Mountbatten in 1979, a member of the royal family and distinguished military serviceman, was further muddied by the deaths of the Lord’s 14 year old grandson and a 15 year old boy who had been caught up in the bombing. Whilst this case centres on the royal family, situations of this creed were common for unionists in Northern Ireland, who felt they had to protect their communities from the radical, and often messy IRA. Skepticism around paramilitaries seeking reunification of Ireland unfortunately
contributed to farther persecution towards Catholics, as the Protestant population of Northern Ireland turned the troubles into an issue of patriotism; the North was for protestants who wanted to maintain their joint Irishness and Britishness, and if the catholic population were not happy with the conditions of the region’s existence, they had an entire republic to the south they could populate. This segregationist logic underpins the unionist issues with the proposed amnesty legislator, namely that those seeking to cause political disruption within a purposefully autonomous region of Ireland, should be brought to justice for their murder of innocents, not excused on the grounds of having a political cause.
British Armed Forces: The sight of servicemen strolling the streets of Belfast and Londonderry was commonplace during the troubles, as the military was instructed to stay alert for threats from the IRA and keep the peace between the unionists and republicans. Of course, this often met with mixed results; some days the peace could be kept easily, and the people of Northern Ireland were free to go about their business, other days the negligence of the armed forces could result in a situation like Bloody Sunday. The primary issue that most armed forces personnel have with the amnesty legislature is that it implies wrongdoing on the part of the military, with most soldiers having simply been assigned to Northern Ireland and kept the peace effectively. This sentiment is backed by the group, ‘Families Acting for Innocent Relatives’, an organisation promoting the prosecution of terrorists for their murder of innocents, which stated they ‘do not wish to see the perpetrators of heinous crimes seen on an equal parallel as police officers and soldiers who were trying to maintain peace at a time of rioting and mayhem in Northern Ireland’. However, the issue with this stance is not the perceived guilt of the average serviceman, but rather the culpability of the higher command in providing weapons and support to unionist paramilitary groups in an attempt to combat the IRA. In other terms, the commanders and generals of the British army lowered themselves to the IRA’s standard in combatting their messy form of rebellion with an equally hazardous and unfocused violent response, leading to the maiming and deaths of further innocent Northern Irish citizens.
To simplify this situation, it can be said that each party from the troubles wants to see justice for their own that had been harmed or killed during the conflict, but do not want to admit to any wrongdoing on their part and believe that their own violence should be excused on account of their perceived politically valid cause. All parties take issue with the legislature, none want to forgive, and all want justice. As most things in politics are, the answer to what should happen with this issue of the continuing legal status of the troubles is wrapped in a paradox.
The notion of amnesty is a frustrating one, as most of us would maintain that people should be punished for their crimes and said punishment should not be beholden to a ‘ use by’ date. Furthermore, some courts have found that amnesty laws violate fundamental constitutional rights within most first world nations, including ‘the rights to life, liberty and judicial protection’, and imply that crime is allowed so long as it is done for politically murky reasons, and you keep your guilt a secret past the statute of limitations. But, as the troubles pass further into history, and those with a firsthand memory of the conflict grow older, it becomes evident that something must be done to put the rivalry between Protestants and Catholics into the past, continuing towards a united Northern Irish community. No one is asking victims’ families or veterans of the conflict to forgive those responsible for heinous crimes, but the blanket amnesty agreement instead seeks to create a level playing field. This acknowledges that the prospect of innocence will likely bring about answers to the unsolved cases of death and violence through convenient means, and place both communities on an even level within society, delivering the statement that no one in the modern day is any longer responsible for the atrocities of the past, and the era of the troubles.
To acquit each side of this conflict is not to deny justice and proper remembrance to those lost, but an effort to rebuild Northern Irish society. This would free the two communities, separated for so long by mutual blame and prejudice, from the branding of being responsible for the atrocities of the troubles. Perhaps this deal is not the proper manner of going about this, and all interested parties certainly need to be consulted on the matter. But with nearly a quarter of a century passed from the end of the conflict, it is certainly time to draw a line beneath the troubles, and that will require forgiveness in any manifestation.
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ApoemabouttheRadiumgirls. eyesfallonbreath’sbeat, time. sun dialshines, awomaninside. thatradiumglow silence. stickyglow splashedacross nails teeth lips two fiftywatchfaces until jawssplit, bonerots, bodiesend. theyknew. syphilis dignity’sdownfall. fiftylivesforadollar aman’sdeathforaverdict thefireinfive women insuredawildfire. ilookup underalostepitaph, nightsstillglowinthedark.
Russia China relations have undergone many ebbs and flows. One of the most contentious periods of Sino Soviet relations began at the introduction of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Great Leap Forward in 1958. The Soviets’ disapproval of the Great Leap Forward initiated discontent with the Chinese Communist Party which precipitated the Sino Soviet split. This article will examine the reasons which underpinned the Soviet Union’s dismissal of the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward thrust the Sino Soviet relationship into an antagonistic standstill where jabs were delivered by both leaders in a bid to undermine the other.
It must first be acknowledged that the Soviet Union’s disapproval of the Great Leap Forward was not immediate. The Soviets expressed praise for the contributions the Great Leap made to socialist theory and practice. During a visit to China in the Summer of 1958, Khrushchev commented that the Soviet Union had ‘ no doubts’ about China’s ‘ability to fulfil these plans.’ Thus, at the outset, the Soviets eagerly validated the Great Leap Forward and the ‘enthusiasm and vigour’ of the Chinese people in pursuing the advancement of socialism. Such approval was maintained by the Soviets until as late as June 1958. Whilst the sincerity of Khrushchev’s remarks has been questioned, with some claiming his compliments were given blindly, it remains that the Soviets did not publicly disapprove of the Great Leap immediately. It was only until late 1958, when concerns regarding the people’s communes grew, that the Soviet Union’s accolades dissipated.
However, the end of Soviet public praise did not necessarily result in the outright criticism that would later transpire. In late 1958 the Soviet Union recognised the need to maintain the socialist bloc’s image of unity, leading to the decision to conceal its concerns regarding the Great Leap. A politburo study group
attests to this, outlining that the USSR’s publication of its concerns regarding the leftism of the communes would ‘widen the divergence between the two parties.’ A disunified socialist camp would be vulnerable to the polemics of Western powers. Therefore, even as doubts grew among the Soviet Union’s leadership about the feasibility of the Great Leap Forward, these remained private. The USSR only then publicly and explicitly voiced its disapproval of the Great Leap Forward after the PRC began to acknowledge problems itself in the last few months of 1958.
The Soviet Union, under Khrushchev, was disgruntled by the Great Leap Forward’s rejection of orthodox Marxism. Mao’s goal of bypassing socialism to enter communism through a concentrated period of accelerated production violated what the Soviets considered the immutable laws of Marxism. These immutable laws were reiterated in Khrushchev’s 1957 Moscow Declaration which pronounced socialist construction must be ‘gradual’ and that ‘national development should be planned.’ The rash advancement of surpassing the greatest economic powers Mao sought to achieve through the Great Leap was diametrically opposed to Khrushchev’s ‘basic laws.’ Khrushchev despised Mao’s belief that historical materialism was negotiable and should be ‘rewritten,’ noting that under Mao ‘the Chinese interpret Marxism Leninism any way they please.’ The ambitions of the Great Leap sought to reconstitute Marxist theory on socialist construction, much to the dismay of the Soviet Union. Thus, the Soviet Union categorically rejected the Great Leap Forward as being unfounded in the pure Marxist tradition.
The Great Leap Forward’s resurgence of a Stalinist model of economic development also unsettled the Soviet Union. The collectivisation of domestic items and consumption was received negatively by the Soviets. They saw the act as an abominable and unnecessary repeat of the mistakes of Stalin’s commune experiment. Mao’s unforgiving Stalinist posture was growingly irreconcilable with Khrushchev’s policy agenda of de Stalinisation and peaceful co existence. The Great Leap Forward exemplified Mao’s discontent with what he believed was Khrushchev’s bourgeois back sliding thathad led the USSR to become complacent. Such complacency, for Mao, was vested in the USSR’s relatively unambitious industrial targets which Khrushchev estimated would see the Soviet Union reach communism by 1980 at the latest. Thus, Mao’s scheme to hasten the path to communism was antithetical to the USSR’s adherence to gradual growth. Whilst Khrushchev attempted to remove the Stalinist legacy from the socialist movement, Mao sought to reinvigorate Stalinism through the labour intensive methods of the Great Leap. The Great Leap Forward’s attempt to ‘out Stalin Stalin’s economic policies’ was in direct contradiction to the new conciliatory
path Khrushchev sought to pursue.
Moreover, the Great Leap Forward represented Mao’s challenge to the USSR’s hegemonic leadership of the socialist bloc. The Soviet Union enjoyed sole leadership of the socialist camp as the first socialist state. However, the Great Leap Forward bolstered the PRC into leadership contention through its potential of realising communism in China. The Great Leap Forward provided an alternate model of achieving communism from the traditional Soviet model. In doing so, Mao broke China’s trend of merely imitating the Soviet Union with the intent of eclipsing it as the first truly communist state. In private Mao proclaimed that the USSR’s assertions of entering communism were only ‘noise on the staircase’ as ‘ you don’t see anyone coming down.’ It was through the Great Leap that Mao believed China would be the first to come down the staircase and successfully arrive at the Marxist utopia. The Great Leap represented a shift in Sino Soviet relations that indicated China was no longer content with being the Soviet Union’s apprentice.
By revisiting communes as a method of collectivisation, the potential success of the Great Leap Forward would have meant that Mao had resolved the issues that paralysed the Soviets decades earlier. Khrushchev acknowledged Mao’s resurgence of the commune project as evidence of his intent to ‘outdistance the Party of Lenin.’ The Leap’s success would serve to highlight Mao’s theoretical mastery which would inevitably have pigeon holed Khrushchev as a mere practitioner rather than a revolutionary leader. The Great Leap Forward dared to discredit the Soviet Union as the undisputed figurehead of the socialist bloc. To the alarm of the Soviets, this threat no longer remained abstract. Bulgaria and Albania both began to show a strong interest in the ideology of the Great Leap Forward and had conceptualised plans to implement similar systems.
Finally, the Great Leap Forward also threatened to uproot the Soviet Union’s authority in the developing world. The Great Leap Forward was purported by Mao to be uniquely applicable to colonial and semi colonial nations, highlighting their different socialist needs and capacities. In doing so, Mao sought to differentiate the Great Leap model from the Soviet model by positioning the Soviet model as disconnected and unsuitable for developing nations. The Great Leap’s ambition to reach communism in a ‘quicker and more effective way’ provided a blueprint for developing countries to follow that the USSR did not. As Clubb highlights, the GLF provided a ‘universal pattern for resolution’ to the agrarian nations of ‘Asia, Africa, and Latin America.’ Thus, the developing world was a route through which Mao could challenge the USSR’s leadership of the socialist bloc.
An analysis of the USSR’s reception of the Great Leap Forward indicates that the Soviets overwhelmingly disapproved of Mao’s scheme, spurring the beginning of the Sino Soviet split. For the Soviets, the Great Leap Forward botched Marxist lore, reinvigorated Stalinism and sought to oust the Soviet Union from its traditional seat as the figurehead of the international socialist camp. However, it is important to recognise that such disapproval was not immediately held and voiced in fact, since seemingly genuine support was given by Khrushchev. Ultimately, the Great Leap Forward was the PRC’s first defiance of the Soviet Union which would later culminate in the Sino Soviet split.
Primary Sources:
Current Intelligence Staff Study Indications of Soviet Awareness of Chinese Plans for the Communes, Spring Summer 1958. Sino Soviet Bloc Area: Office of Current Intelligence, 16 October 1959.
Zedong, Mao “Talks at the Wuchang Conference: 23 November 1958, Noon” In The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward, edited by Roderick Macfarquhar, Timothy Cheek and Eugene Wu, 499 517. Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: Harvard University Press, 1989
Zedong, Mao “Talks at The First Zhengzhou Conference: 6 November 1958 ” In The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward, edited by Roderick Macfarquhar, Timothy Cheek and Eugene Wu, 443 451. Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: Harvard University Press, 1989
Zedong, Mao. “Talks at the Beidaihe Conference: 19 August.” In The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward, edited by Roderick Macfarquhar, Timothy Cheek and Eugene Wu, 404 411 Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: Harvard University Press, 1989
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Ch’en, Jerome. Great Lives Observed: Mao. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1969. Chesneaux, Jean China: The People’s Republic, 1949 1976 New York: Pantheon Books, 1979
Clubb, Edmund O China & Russia: the “great game ” New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
Guillermaz, Jacques. The Chinese Communist Party in power, 1949 1976. Folkestone: Dawson, 1977 Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev remembers: the last testament Edited and translated by Strobe Talbott. London: Andre Deutsch, 1974.
Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich. Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Volume 3: Statesman, 1953 1964. Edited by Sergei Khrushchev Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004
Li, Mingjiang. Mao’s China and the Sino Soviet Split: Ideological Dilemma. Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012.
Lüthi, Lorenz M. The Sino Soviet split: Cold War in the communist world. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008
Mehnert, Klaus. Peking and Moscow. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963. Nelsen, Harvey W. Power and insecurity: Beijing, Moscow, and Washington, 1949 1988. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989
Quested,R K I Sino Russianrelations:ashorthistory Sydney:GeorgeAllen&Unwin,1984
Shen,Zhihua,andDanhuiLi Afterleaningtooneside:ChinaanditsalliesintheColdWar Washington,DC: WoodrowWilsonCenterPress,2011.
Shen, Zhihua, and Yafeng Xia. “The Great Leap Forward, the People’s Commune and the Sino Soviet Split”JournalofContemporaryChina20,no 72(2011):861 880 doi:101080/106705642011604505
Though unique to each ancient society, the relationship between marriage, reproduction, and female power coincides strongly in ancient Greece and Egypt, highlighting the “sociocultural differences,” present in these diverse societies. Despite these differences, it becomes clear that female status and agency is strongly determined by their roles as wives and mothers, illustrating a shared connection between women in various ancient societies. Examining female domestic power and agency, it can be argued that Egyptian women experienced more sexual freedom than Greek women, who “ were excluded from the public sphere.” Labelling Greek women as part of the “oikos,” meant her power was largely subordinated. However, as seen in ancient literary sources, pregnant women were often acknowledged for the hardship that they had undergone during gestation, resulting in limited forms of power. Furthermore, in relation to Egyptian women, it becomes explicit that they had levels of pre existing agency removed when they became pregnant. Similarly, in ancient Greece, marriage was characterised as a practical business arrangement, and men had a large amount of control over what happened during and after pregnancy, thus diminishing a Greek woman’s political and economic power in antiquity. The relationship between marriage, reproduction, and female power can also be conveyed through religious forms of power. While in Egypt childbirth was sacred, there was also a strong association between reproduction and men, focusing upon the importance of semen. Additionally, in ancient Greece, there was a gynocentric model of fertility throughout the city states, and activities such as chanting to goddesses equated to feminine power. However, evidence of rituals such as the public display of unmarried girls, subverts this agency. Ultimately, this essay will demonstrate the strong relationship between marriage, reproduction, and female power throughout ancient Greece and Egypt, arguing their differences and similarities across space and time.
Women in Egypt experienced more sexual freedom than Greek women, thus positioning them as having a stronger sense of agency in the domestic sphere. Marriage in Egypt was a “private affair,” and was not as heavily implicated with a religious or political contract like it was in ancient Greece. The construct of virginity was also not an essential element of an Egyptian marriage, which allowed Egyptian women to have a sense of power and agency over their bodies andintimatedesires.Asaresult,rolesinancientEgyptbetweenmenandwomen were more equal, with ancient literary sources, such as those by Herodotus, outlining the ordinary practices of men and women throughout an Egyptian society.Forexample,HerodotusdescribeshowinEgypt:
“The women buy and sell, the men abide at home and weave. Men carry burdensontheirheads,womenontheirshoulders.Womenmakewaterstanding, mensitting.”
Demonstrated through Herodotus’ observations of non traditional male and female life in ancient Egypt, it can be suggested through considerations such as maleweavingthatthestatusbetweenmenandwomenwasmoreequalthanthose in other ancient societies. This observation highlights how traditional feminine domestic roles such as weaving were also performed by men in Egypt, ascribing a senseofpowertomarriedwomenresidinginEgypt.Furthermore,statuessuchas ‘Nyakauinpu and his wife, Hemetradjet’ from the Old Kingdom (2700 2200 BCE), depict the married couple as equals, presenting each figure at a similar height, thus reinforcing observations made by Herodotus surrounding the balanced marital relationship (Fig. 1). Building on this, Hemetradjet’s “sheath dress functionedtoemphasisethesexualityofthefemalebody…draw[ing]attentionto her round belly and full thighs.” Serving as a symbolic embodiment of fertility, thisstatuereinforcesthestrongrelationshipbetweenmarriage,reproduction,and powerforancientEgyptianwomen.
Conversely, a woman’s purpose in ancient Greece was to produce heirs for her husband, serving as part of the Greek household oikos. For example, in Classical Greece, there was pressure put upon a woman to produce several children as her husband could face harsh penalties if this was not accomplished. If a wife had a childless family and died, “her dowry was to be returned to her family,” largely impacting her husband’s honour and pride.
Figure 1: Statue of Nyakauinpu and his wife Hemetradjet, from Old Kingdom, ca 2477 2466
BCE From Varadharajul u 2020
This example demonstrates a lack of agency towards an ancient Greek woman’s individual identity, preventing her ownership of her body and marital status. Furthermore, sections of The Hippocratic Corpus further reinforce an ancient Greek woman’s subordinate role within society, outlining the differences between male and female sperm. Explaining that if “both partners produce a stronger sperm, than a male is the result, whereas if they produce a weak form, then the female is the result,” females are stereotypically characterised as weaker and therefore inferior to men even from conception. Moreover, in the Corpus, blame is also placed upon a woman if she does not orgasm or feel the same sense of pleasure as a man. Stating that her lack of “pleasure terminates along with that of the man,” misconception is highlighted as the result. Unsurprisingly, scholars such as Edward M. Harris, have noted that “ a woman’s thwarted desire as the cause of trouble is also a powerful theme in [Greek] tragedy,” thus demonstrating the blame placed upon a woman for not being able to conceive and limiting her sense of agency. In contrast to this lack of agency, there are also some references to the physical sacrifices that women must endure during childbirth, offering small amounts of power in a domestic setting. For example, Hippocrates’ Diseases of Women outlines that:
“In fact, it requires careful attention and much skill to carry a child to full term, to nourish it properly in the womb, and to bring it forth at the time of birth without injury to herself.”
This acknowledgement of the difficulties of childbirth provides ancient Greek women with a glimmer of domestic power, thus recognising their efforts in undergoing these traditional domestic duties.
Additionally, ancient Egyptian women had pre existing forms of political power and economic agency removed when they fell pregnant. As mentioned earlier, within a married relationship, the legal status of women in Egypt was similar to that of a man, which allowed them to participate in activities such as buying and selling property, thus exercising their economic power in society. As Egypt “functioned as a theocratic monarchy,” the political power of the state was solely focussed upon the King and the royal family. This meant that it was difficult for any ordinary citizen to gain an advantage over the royal family, meaning that political power tended to be more evenly dispersed among the people. For example, the political and economic power of an ordinary Egyptian woman can be depicted through the statuette of Mut/Nekhbet dating to the Third Intermediate Period (1070 664 BC). Inscribed upon the statue of the mother goddess (Fig. 2),
reads “ ace excellently for our daughter… let her seize this property and kill anyone who will trespass against her!” This example reflects the political and economic power of an ordinary Egyptian woman, stating that it is so immense that she may ‘kill’ to assert it. However, this available power changes drastically when a woman falls pregnant. In the Teaching of Ptahotep, an ancient guide designed to teach the youth how to live a good life, it is stated that one should:
“Love your wife within reckoning. Fill her belly, clothe her back, It is a field of benefit for its lord. Distance her from power, restrain her.”
Ultimately labelling women as fertile ‘fields’ of benefit for her husband, this document indicates that women are only useful for their child bearing abilities, thus subverting the level of political and economic power she can access while pregnant. Moreover, Ptahhotep also encourages men to distance their wives from power by restraining them, hence clearly illustrating the relationship between pregnancy and a lack of political and economic power
Figure 2:
Statuette of Mut or Nekhbet, from Third Intermediate Period, ca. 1070 664 B.C. From The Metropolitan Museum Online Database.
Similarly in ancient Greece, female political and economic agency was also heavily impacted by the notion of marriage and pregnancy. Within antiquity, “marriage was viewed as a practical business arrangement, not a love match,” and a Greek woman’s father and husband had the final say. Unlike in Egypt, there was also an expectation that a Greek woman was a virgin before marriage, devoting herself
fully to her husband and his demand for offspring. This relationship is reinforced by The Hippocratic Corpus through cures suggesting that “if they have intercourse with men their health is better.” Using this example, the Corpus attempts to justify a woman’s subordinate role in ancient Greek society, encouraging her role as a childbearing domestic mother and stripping her from any political and economic power. Furthermore, it is highlighted that the only cure to virgin “visions” is to “cohabit with a man” and become pregnant. Attempting to push women into the traditional role of motherhood and marriage from a young age, Hippocrates evokes fear in younger women who are menstruating, arguing that a lack of blood flow will result in “insanity and madness,” thus serving as a warning for women to obey these roles. Moreover, the names chosen for baby girls were commonly “feminine forms of male names, or names embodying male military virtues.” This trend began from birth, characterising women as the property of men and limiting their political and economic power.
The relationship between marriage, reproduction, and female power is also demonstrated in the religious sphere. In ancient Egypt, childbirth was considered to be an “act of the gods,” and there were many magical objects used that were believed to physically support a woman during birth. For example, ancient Egyptian birth bricks were used during the birthing process to enable an Egyptian woman to deliver her baby in an effective squatting position (Fig. 3). Strongly associating the status of a pregnant woman with powerful female deities, such as Hathor, these bricks functioned as both practical and religious objects, demonstrating a distinct relationship between women’s reproduction and religiously acquired power. For example, a birth brick found in South Abydos by archaeologist Joe Wegner conveys the divine maternal status of a pregnant woman within ancient Egypt. Intentionally painting the mother’s hair blue, a common “symbol of godliness in Egyptian art,” associated her with the power of Hathor, who is also depicted with blue hair. This association identifies reproduction as a divine and sacred act (Fig. 4). It can also be noted that the son’s hair is black, separating the mother’s divine status from that of an ordinary human, thus reinforcing her religious autonomy. On the other hand, there was also a tendency in ancient Egypt to label fertility as a predominantly male process, as outlined in Akhenaton’s Hymn to the Aten. For example, the hymn paints the Aten as the one who has “placed the seed in woman, and made sperm into man,” largely characterising conception as a male process and diminishing religious power acquired by pregnant females.
Built upon a gynocentric model of fertility, marriage and reproduction in an ancient Greek society also impacted a woman’s ability to exercise religious power.
Figure 3:
An ancient Egyptian magical birth brick, 1750 1700 BCE.
From Penn Museum 2006.
For example, one of the many ways in which women could express religious power was through the act of ritual begging and chanting songs to induce “ easy labor among newly married women.” Socially banding women together in a religious context, this practice evoked deities to assist in childbearing, thus reinforcing feminine forms of agency by collectively assisting
birth efforts. Outlined in the Hymn to Artemis, Callimachus highlights Artemis as an important figure in the process of childbirth upon the Island of Delos, claiming that “Artemis goes down to the town… vex[ing] the sharp pangs of childbirth.” Furthermore, examples of “begging priestesses” serving Athena by “shaking her aegis,” highlight the power of Athena as a “mother goddess,” demonstrating how Greek women could embody the divinity of certain goddesses and exercise certain religious powers by this chanting. However, this religious power is largely subverted when considering the religious rituals of unmarried women, and their public display. For women of Classical Athens, the Brauronia was a festival held every four years in worship of Artemis Brauronia and featured rituals such as the Arkteia for young girls to participate in. The Arkteia (playing the bear), required young teenage girls “to act out their wildness in running and dancing,” and imitate the movements of a bear. This served to teach girls that they were “inherently wild and uncivilised,” and must undergo a process of domestication later in their married lives. Furthermore, Plutarch discusses the public display of unmarried women on the island of Ceos, highlighting that “it was a custom for the maidens to go to the public shrine and spend the day together, and their suitors watched their sports and dances.” Through this act of public display, it can be suggested that marriage and reproduction in ancient Greece had both an empowering and limiting effect on female power.
Ultimately, the relationship between marriage, reproduction, and female power throughout ancient Greece and Egypt largely intersect. While unique to each society, it can be argued that the ability to exercise agency is strongly dependent on a woman’s role within society, whether that be as a wife or a mother. Investigating domestic, political, and religious spheres, it becomes clear that instances of female power are subjective and are always likely to vary.
Figure 4:
A painted reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian magical birth brick, 1750 1700 BCE. From Penn Museum 2006.
Figure 1: Statue of Nyakauinpu and his wife Hemetradjet, ca. 2477 2466 BCE. In Varadharajulu, Sara Divija “The Burden of a Child: Examining the Effects of Pregnancy on Women’s Power in Ancient Egypt and Greece ” International Social Science Review 96, no 4 (November 2020): 1 17. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=bth&AN=148176420&site=eds live&scope=site.
Figure 2: Statue of Mut or Nekhbet 56 137 The Metropolitan Museum Database https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/550784.
Figure 3: An Ancient Egyptian magical birth brick, 1750 1700 BCE. In Wegner, Josef. “The Magical Birth Brick ” Expedition Magazine 48, no 2 (2006) https://www penn museum/sites/expedition/the magical birth brick/
Figure 4: A painted reconstruction of an Ancient Egyptian magical birth brick, 1750 1700 BCE. In Wegner, Josef. “The Magical Birth Brick.” Expedition Magazine 48, no.2 (2006). https://www penn museum/sites/expedition/the magical birth brick/
Primary Sources:
Callimachus, Lycophron, Aratus Hymns and Epigrams Lycophron: Alexandra Aratus: Phaenomena Translated by A W Mair, G R Mair Loeb Classical Library 129 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921.
Herodotus. The Persian Wars, Volume I: Books 1 2. Translated by A. D. Godley. Loeb Classical Library 117 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920
Hesiod. The Shield. Catalogue of Women. Other Fragments. Edited and translated by Glenn W. Most. Loeb Classical Library 503. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Hippocrates Diseases of Women Trans Ann Ellis Hanson 1996 Unpublished
Lefkowitz, Mary R , and Maureen B Fant ‘Hippocratic Corpus, Selections (from IX Medicine and Anatomy)’. In Women’s Life in Greece & Rome: A Source Book in Translation, 2ns ed., 230 32, 242 43. London: Duckworth, 1992. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=cat00006a&AN=melb b b1770362&site=eds live&scope=site
Plutarch Moralia, Volume III: Sayings of Kings and Commanders Sayings of Romans Sayings of Spartans. The Ancient Customs of the Spartans. Sayings of Spartan Women. Bravery of Women. Translated by Frank Cole Babbitt Loeb Classical Library 245 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931
Simpson, William K. “The Hymn to the Aten.” In The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, and Poetry, 29. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Statue of Mut or Nekhbet 56 137 The Metropolitan Museum Database https://www metmuseum org/art/collection/search/550784
Teaching of Ptahotep. London, UK: University College London, 2003. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums static/digitalegypt/literature/ptahhotep.html.
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Chamberlain,Geoffrey “ChildbirthinAncientEgypt”JournaloftheRoyalSocietyforthePromotionof Health124,no.6(2004):284 85.doi:10.1177/146642400412400618.
Demand,Nancy.“TheLivesofGreekWomen.”InBirth,Death,andMotherhoodinClassicalGreece,1 14. Baltimore:JohnHopkin’sUniversityPress,1994
Dillon,Matthew “FromAdolescentGirltoWoman,WifeandMother”InGirlsandWomeninClassical GreekReligion,211 33.London;NewYork:Routledge,2002.
Goff,BarbaraE.“RitualManagementofDesire:TheReproductionofSexuality.”InCitizenBacchae: women’sritualpracticeinAncientGreece,80 105 Berkeley:UniversityofCaliforniaPress,2004
Haimov Kochman,Ronit,YaelSciaky Tamir,andAryeHurwitz.“Reproductionconceptsandpracticesin AncientEgyptmirroredbymodernmedicine.”EuropeanJournalofObstetricsandGynecology123,no.1(Jan 2005):4 8 doi:101016/jejpgrb200503022
Harris,Edward M “‘Yes’and‘No’inWomen’sDesire”InSexinAntiquity:exploringgenderandsexualityin theancientworld,298 306.Oxfordshire;NewYork:Routledge,2014.
Robertson,Noel.“GreekRitualBegginginAidofWomen’sFertilityandChildbirth.”Transactionsofthe AmericanPhilologicalAssociation113(1974):143 64 doi:102307/284008
Varadharajulu,SaraDivija “TheBurdenofaChild:ExaminingtheEffectsofPregnancyonWomen’sPower inAncientEgyptandGreece.”InternationalSocialScienceReview96,no.4(November2020):1 17. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=bth&AN=148176420&site=eds live&scope=site
Wegner,Josef.“TheMagicalBirthBrick.”ExpeditionMagazine48,no.2(2006). https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the magical birth brick/
translation, it is made bizarre by eroding conventional narratives of history. On the other hand, A Knight’s Tale employs similar features, yet it relies on multi temporality to conjure laughter, thus drawing similarities between the past and the present. Whilst both films seek to ‘poke fun’ at the Medieval, they also engage in source texts such as The Canterbury Tales and Le Morte D’Arthur, demonstrating that comedy, particularly about Chaucer, was highly ingrained in medievalist text traditions. For instance, in Comic Medievalism, D’Arcens draws parallels between Chaucer’s The Tale of Sir Thopas, and Monty Python’s The Tale of Sir Robin. Both Sir Robin and Sir Thopas are humorous characters because they are presented as knightly, embodying chivalry, heroism, and loyalty. However, they are in fact ignoble, weak, and pathetic, both fleeing upon discovering ‘ …a geaunt with hevedes three’. This humour is epitomised by the comedic song ‘Brave Sir Robin’, where his squire laments the various ways Sir Robin was ‘not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways’, including having ‘his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken’, yet ‘when danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled’. This scene subverts historical notions of knighthood by mocking its ingrained historic value in medieval literature. Its farcical undercurrent softens the graphic violence a knight would have encountered to make it more palatable for audiences without detracting from its historical validity. Alternatively, Helgeland evokes comedy through the incorporation of modern aesthetics such as the Nike symbol ‘joust do it’ on William’s armour, within an incongruous time. As Hannah Wilkes acknowledges, this comedy is effective for its translation of the medieval into modern terms, increasing its ‘accessibility’ for a teenage audience.
Hence, medievalist texts not only mock the Medieval, but they also overtly parallel evocations of comedy in source texts such as Chaucer, generating a relationship between the past and the present.
D’Arcens explicates the significance of comedy in the medievalist tradition by challenging traditional perceptions of the Medieval and conjuring a temporal reality. According to Marcia Landy, Monty Python’s comedy is effective because they employ both ‘anarchic’ and ‘surreal’ elements to disrupt traditional impressions of history, presenting them as ‘strange through inverting, reversing and undermining traditional forms of storytelling’. Essentially, Monty Python contests normative historic views, questioning beliefs of the past through a mockery of gallant deeds, daring adventures, and romance. The Python team achieves this by presenting traditionally medieval circumstances like duelling, as being abnormal or uncanny which gives the scene its absurdist and bizarre comedic attributes. This is evident in the scene of ‘The Black Knight’, which bears similarities to the drama of the battle illustrated in the 1973 film and medieval
text: Gawain and the Green Knight. This moment is comedic because it distorts the audiences’ expectations of a duel, ultimately hyperbolising the situation to the ridiculous. Instead of relinquishing defeat after having all his limbs lashed from his body by King Arthur (Graham Chapman), the Black Knight (John Cleese) begs for more, exclaiming it’s ‘Tis but a scratch’, and it’s ‘just a flesh wound’. Notwithstanding the hilarity of this moment, this scene is extremely well informed. It is reminiscent of the Green Knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, who is epitomised by his fighting vigour and reluctance to give up as evident when he exclaims: ‘My head flew to my feet, and yet flinched I never / and you, before harm hits, at heart do shudder’. In employing comedy in this scene, the Monty Python team pays homage to the medieval fictional characters such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, whilst also mocking them through their extravagant and supernaturalist performances.
Similarly, A Knight’s Tale utilises comedy to reflect the relationship between the past and the present, particularly using music and dance. Louise D’Arcens, however, draws attention to the problematic nature of this film, as it raises concerns about the presentation of both Medieval and medievalism and their source texts.. For her, the film ‘privileges the medieval ‘original’’, thus dictating what is acceptable in medieval adaptations. On the contrary, I consider this film to galvanise a positive relationship between the past and present, between history and modernity, and between history and comedy. While it does deviate from historically accurate medieval dances, music, and costumes, and has been criticised for its ‘glam rock’ aesthetic, Kathleen Forni attests that it conjures humorous anachronisms to Medieval times. The ‘Golden Years’ dance sequence exemplifies this notion, particularly when the court performs a traditional ‘pavane’ dance sequence to music that supersedes Medieval dance moves with a more contemporary style. The comedy of this scene is epitomised by the incongruous nature of the music and dance with its period, employing tropes used by Monty Python that distorts the scene with something surprising to the audience. Similarly, music is fundamental in A Knight’s Tale’s comedic backdrop because a young audience will engage more with songs of which they’re familiar with. For instance, the ‘We Will Rock You’ tournament scene conjures imagery of a modern football game due to its reception as a sporting anthem, thus drawing a parallel between the Medieval obsession with jousting and our modern day preoccupation with sporting games. D’Arcens recognises that this film ‘has failed (however deliberately) to capture the historical past’, yet is fundamental for a young teenage audience’s engagement with medievalism. Ultimately, through the historical anachronisms of A Knight’s Tale, Helgeland incorporates comedy to generate discourse between the past and present as inspiration for a new
generation of medievalists.
The role of comedy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail juxtaposes the romanticisation of medieval texts, such as Le Morte Arthur, by mocking its representation through a comedic reimagination. In Comic Medievalism, D’Arcens explains that there are two main types of medievalist films. One seeks to romance the Medieval through music, costuming, or aesthetics like Logan’s 1967 film Camelot, while the second dramatises the Medieval through violence and gore, like Scott’s Robin Hood (2010). According to Landy, historians and literary scholarship have preferred a romanticised perception of the medieval (190) which makes Monty Python and the Holy Grail innovative in historical cinema because it disintegrates romanticism and transforms it into a farce to propagate different views of history ‘that runs against the grain of conventional wisdom’. For example, Monty Python exaggerates the romantic nature of Malory’s texts, both drawing similarities to ‘The Tale of Sir Galahad’, yet rendering it comical through innuendoes, absurdity, and situational comedy. In the film, ‘Sir Galahad the Chaste’, the knight enters the Castle, Anthrax, in a search for the Holy Grail, only to be greeted by Zoot (Carol Cleveland) and her companions begging him to indulge them, as punishment for deceiving him. Similarly, in Le Morte D’Arthur, Galahad who is ‘ a maid and [who had] sinned never’ is thrust into the ‘Castle of Maidens’ which is notorious for ‘ seven deadly sins’ until he is rescued by Sir Lancelot. The similarities between the texts imply that Monty Python had a profound understanding of Malory, choosing to employ comedy to mock the romance of the ‘Knights of the Round Table’. Not only do these comedic elements dissuade the text from taking itself seriously, but it also emphasises the humour that was already prevalent within the original text, which had been overlooked due to a preoccupation with being fastidious.
Similarly, Helgeland’s characterisation of Geoffrey Chaucer utilises comedy to dismantle his reputation as the ‘father of English poetry’ through a pastiche depiction deriding traditional costuming. Christopher Cannon asserts that Chaucer’s revered status in English literature is attributed to the perception that his works were exceptional, original, and ground breaking. On the contrary, Helgeland depicts Chaucer as a nude drunkard who gambles his life away, declaring ‘Geoffrey Chaucer’s the name, writing’s the game’. Through this, David Cowart argues that Helgeland galvanises an appreciation for ‘the historical and diachronic differences between the voice of one literary age to another’. While Chaucer’s reimagination within the film profoundly juxtaposes historical understandings of his character, it enables history to be interpreted with a modernist slant, fusing contemporary views and values with traditional
conceptions of historical figures. For instance, Chaucer’s hyperbolic introductions to Sir Ulrich von Liechtenstein directly opposes the mannerisms of Count Adhemar’s squire, who is presented as sophisticated, and serious. He laments that he met William ‘atop a mountain near Jerusalem’ and that he is the ‘Seeker of Serenity’, ‘Protector of Italian Virginity’ and ‘the Enforcer of our Lord God’. In this scene, dramatic irony is thus instrumental in evoking humour because the audience is aware that all of Chaucer’s laments are lies. The famous Sir Ulrich is suggested to be in fact, a peasant named William Thatcher. Stephanie Trigg asserts that Helgeland’s characterisation of Chaucer is essential both to the comedy of this film and to the convergence of art and history disciplines, suggesting that both subjects can coalesce to promote entertainment. However, it is also an ode to the role of comedy within the fabliau stories of The Canterbury Tales such as The Reeve’s Tale, subverting the romance trope normally associated with Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale. Helgeland’s subversion suggests that Chaucer should not only be attributed to the father of English literature but perhaps to the father of comedy. Ultimately, Helgeland employs comedy to conjure a new image of Chaucer, reversing common perceptions of him and therefore commodifying historical figures and reimagining them in absurdist depictions. Thus, the comedy in A Knight’s Tale seeks to ridicule the Medieval, yet it also facilitates a dialogue between modernity and the past, questioning the true nature of Geoffrey Chaucer
Likewise, D’Arcens highlights the prevalence of comedy as a ‘conceptual framework’ for both remembering and narrating the Medieval which propagates new historiography and perpetuates the metaphoric ‘death of the historian’. Judith Bennett laments that medievalist adaptations are problematic because modern theoretical backgrounds such as Marxism, Feminism, or Postcolonialism are incongruous with historical epochs. However, I argue that such frameworks are instrumental in evoking comedy because they generate an absurdity that makes people laugh. In The Holy Grail for instance, when King Arthur stumbles across Dennis the peasant, he is perplexed to hear him discussing Marxist ideals of governance in juxtaposition to the futility of the notion of the ‘divine right to rule’. Dennis remarks how it is ridiculous that Arthur treats him as ‘inferior’, when he is ‘hanging onto outdated imperialist dogma, which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society’, only to be brought back to his social position by Dennis’s wife who says while sitting in mud: ‘there is some lovely filth down here’. This moment is comedic because it transgresses a temporal boundary, implying that this medieval peasant has been enlightened by the Marxist theory that was relevant at the time this film was made, during the 1970s and in the context of the Cold War. According to Cheryl Glenn, this situation would of course
have been unlikely because most peasants during the Middle Ages were illiterate, and therefore highly unlikely to be discussing ;anarcho syndicalist communes’. But perhaps this is reflective of the 1215 Magna Carta, which insinuated similar discussions about the aristocracy concerning the divine rights of kings, and governance, notwithstanding the concerns it raises on its historical validity. Murrell laments that Monty Python rectifies this by conjuring their history, symbolically killing the ‘Famous Historian’ when a knight slices his head off with no warning, whilst also deconstructing boundaries between the Medieval and the present. Ultimately, this aims to ridicule the historiography that was present during the 20th century, which privileged the views of Oxford and Cambridge professors. Thus, this scene acknowledges the Python’s deviance from traditional history, aiming to rewrite a history of comedy, which is a theme that is profoundly ingrained within medievalist films.
Ultimately, as D’Arcens suggests, comedy is instrumental to the medievalist tradition, serving both to mock the romanticisation of the epoch, but to also pay homage to humour within medieval texts. Whilst the comedy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail explores historical anachronisms between the 1970s and the medieval era, it is also a well researched and intertextual film that draws upon source texts, summoning a history of its own. On the other hand, A Knight’s Tale deviates from The Canterbury Tales to twist conventional understandings of Chaucer, reimagining him as a comedic figure as an ode to his contribution to comedy within the medieval tradition. Both these films employ historical anachronisms, aesthetics, and temporalities for comedy to reflect the absurdity of modern views and values in a medieval context thereby drawing similarities between the past and present. Ultimately, both Monty Python and the Holy Grail and A Knight’s Tale have had a profound impact on the medievalist tradition, particularly through their use of comedy, purposed to both reimagine the Medieval by ‘laughing at the Middle Ages’, whilst also demonstrating the prevalence of humour within medieval legends.
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Camelot:ANewMusical.DirectedbyJoshuaLogan,WarnerBros.Pictures,1961.
Chaucer,Geoffrey.TheCanterburyTales.AlmaClassics,2019.
Malory,Thomas.LeMorteD’Arthur:KingArthurandtheKnightsoftheRoundTable.England:Canterbury Classics,2015
MontyPythonandtheHolyGrail.DirectedbyTerryJones,andTerryGilliam,Cinema5Distributing,1975.
RobinHood.DirectedbyRidleyScott,UniversalPictures,2010.
SirGawainandtheGreenKnight.EditedbyWilliamVantuono.UnitedStates:UniversityofNotreDame Press,1999
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Carpenter,David “MagnaCarta1215:ItsSocialandPoliticalContext”InMagnaCarta:History,Context andInfluence,editedbyLawrenceGoldman,17 24.England:UniversityofLondonPress,2018,JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv5136sc.8.
Cowart,David LiterarySymbiosis:TheReconfiguredTextinTwentieth CenturyWriting UnitedStates: UniversityofGeorgiaPress,1994 ProQuestEbookCentral, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unimelb/detail.action?docID=3039125.
D’Arcens,Louise.ComicMedievalism:LaughingattheMiddleAges.UnitedKingdom:Boydell&Brewer, 2014 JSTOR,http://wwwjstororg/stable/107722/jctt6wpbp8
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Delany,Sheila.“MarxistMedievalists:ATradition.”Science&Society68,no.2(2004):206 215.JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40404148.Accessed3June2021.
Finke,Laurie,andSusanAronstein “GotGrail?MontyPythonandtheBroadwayStage”TheatreSurvey48, no 2(2007):289 311 CambridgeUniversityPress,doi:101017/S0040557407000695
Forni,Kathleen.“ReinventingChaucer:Helgeland’s‘AKnight’sTale.’”TheChaucerReview37,no.3 (2003):253 264.JSTOR,https://www.jstor.org/stable/25096208.
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Heffernan,CarolFalvo.ComedyinChaucerandBoccaccio.UnitedKingdom:Boydell&Brewer,2009.JSTOR, wwwjstororg/stable/107722/jctt81gbb5
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Saul,Nigel.ChivalryinMedievalEngland.UnitedStates:HarvardUniversityPress,2011.JSTOR, http://wwwjstororg/stable/jctt2jbvtm4
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Trigg,Stephanie.“MedievalismandTheoriesofTemporality.”TheCambridgeCompaniontoMedievalism, editedbyLouiseD’Arcens,CambridgeUniversityPress,2016,pp 196 209
.“MedievalismandtheConvergenceofCulture:ResearchingtheMiddleAgesforFictionandFilm.” Parergon25,no.2(2008):99 118.GaleAcademicOneFile.
Vaszily,Scott “FabliauPlottingAgainstRomanceinChaucer’s‘Knight’sTale’”Style31,no 3(1997): 523 542 JSTOR,http://wwwjstororg/stable/42946387 Wilkes,Hannah.“ChaucerComestoHollywood:ChangingStarsandStayingAuthenticin‘AKnight’s Tale.’”StudiesinPopularCulture35,no.1(2012):91 107.JSTOR,http://www.jstor.org/stable/23416367.
As far back as the Babylonians, humans have looked to the stars to predict future outcomes. Yet, the conversation on whether the stars can determine an individual’s identity and purpose has remained contentious. For most, inferences between the planets and stars in zodiacal quadrants are a jumble of cosmic nonsense. However, astrology becomes more intelligible when the celestial configurations within a horoscope are defined. Astrology is described as a language of pattern synthesis that reflects worldly events but does not cause them. In this article, I wish to unpack the language of astrology to provide another perspective from which to explore the historical figure, Queen Elizabeth I. I will first trace the origins of astrology from its Babylonian conception to the Elizabethan period. Then, I will explain the fundamental concepts when reading a horoscope chart to compare Queen Elizabeth I’s natal chart to the horoscope chart on the day of her coronation. I intend to describe how she became one of the most formidable English monarchs based on the celestial alignments at the time of her birth and the fifteenth of January 1559. Although astrology is not a scientific discipline nor an art form, it can perhaps be a valid phenomenon in of itself. Its central premise is to analyse correlations to arrive at justifiable conclusions that explain why events unfolded the way they had. Thus, using astrology to examine historical figures can support the validity of historical facts.
During the third millennium B.C, ancient Mesopotamian astrologers looked to the stars to predict the occurrence of mundane events such as the weather and river tides. They had inferred signs from celestial bodies as a way for their deities to communicate with them. Omens were thus an integral part of ancient Mesopotamian understandings of the celestial realm, and they deduced these messages as direct warnings from their deities. In essence, the Babylonians perceived constellations as both the Gods’ domicile and a conduit to communicate with them. The Greeks would later modify this conception into their branch of astrology during the Hellenistic period (323 31 B.C.), unsurprisingly known as
Hellenistic astrology. The Greeks’ form of astrology was antithetical to the Babylonian’s because they had instead believed that the interactions between zodiacal constellations and celestial bodies produced tangible outcomes on Earth. Aristotle’s work was also influential on Hellenistic astrology. He combined his theory of celestial influence with mathematical representations of the heavens to gain insight into the past, present, and future. These diagrams were called horoscopes. Once astrology had disseminated well throughout the Mediterranean, the Greeks would rename the twelve Babylonian zodiacs after their Gods but with Latin terms. These zodiac names are what most are familiar with when referring to astrology. They are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. However, the Greeks were not the only people redefining astrology according to their beliefs. Almost every ancient culture practised astrology, including the Egyptians, Chinese, Hindus, Muslims, Persians, and the Mayans. Thus, astrology has evolved into various forms that continue to be practised to this day.
Although astrology differs in complexity across cultures, unpacking its fundamental components makes its central premise more comprehensible. In modern western astrology, the twelve zodiac signs are superimposed onto the celestial sphere surrounding the Earth, also known as the ecliptic. Each zodiac sign contributes 30 degrees to the ecliptic circle known as a ‘house’, and each house follows each other in a counter clockwise order as conventionally viewed from the north pole. Within the ecliptic are the seven traditional planets. They are the Sun and Moon, the two luminaries: Mercury, Venus, and Mars, the three faster moving planets and Jupiter and Saturn, the two slower moving planets. These seven traditional planets orbiting within the ecliptic invoke their deific archetype according to which house they are within at a specific moment. For example, if Venus is in Taurus, this can indicate an individual indulges in luxurious objects and sensual surroundings. If situated in the fourth house, the area that encompasses the home and family, this individual could have had a wealthy upbringing or a nurturing family life. Thus, reading a historical figure’s natal chart can provide deeper insight into their character, motivations, and desires based on the archetypal qualities symbolic of each planet within the elliptic. For Queen Elizabeth I, her cosmic storyline was markedly intricate.
During the Elizabethan period, when scientists and mathematicians were exploring the natural and secular world, they held astrology in high esteem. They questioned traditional evangelical beliefs and were less concerned about whether this conflicted with Christianity because they instead believed that probing the mysteries of the universe magnified the glory of God. Queen Elizabeth I was a
believer in astrology and had summoned the astronomer and mathematician, John Dee to calculate the most auspicious day for her coronation. Dee drew up the Queen’s horoscope chart and deduced that it should be on January the fifteenth, 1559 at midday. Given the circumstances in which Elizabeth ascended the throne: when England was at war with France and the country was divided by the Catholic and Protestant faith, she took all the necessary precautions to ensure her safety and fidelity to the throne. Elizabeth had known Dee from her captivity at Woodstock when he had allayed her fears of execution with his sage astrological prophecies. Recalling his service during her darkest hours, Elizabeth called upon Dee to predict the best day for her coronation. From that day forth, Dee would continue to console Elizabeth on his predictions throughout her reign.
Fig. 1. Henry Gillard Glindoni, John Dee Performing an Experiment before Elizabeth I, 1852 1913, Courtesy of the Welcome Collection.
A comparison between Elizabeth’s coronation and natal chart can explain why John Dee believed the fifteenth was the most favourable time. As previously stated, an astrology chart is a snapshot of the planets surrounding Earth at one specific moment. So when Dee was calculating the astrological pathway in the sky, he determined that Regulus and Fortuna, the stars that symbolise fame and glory, would be in a harmonious aspect with Elizabeth’s natal moon in her third house of Taurus. The third house concerns communication, while Taurus archetypally embodies grace and logic by virtue of being ruled by Venus. These placements imply that Elizabeth was a good communicator in both speeches, and writing, utilising emotive language to captivate and inspire her audiences. Elizabeth’s
skills with language is evident by her Tilbury Speech that she delivered to her troops in 1588 before their victory against the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth had nobly claimed she would ” live and die amongst [her people]; to lay down for [her] God, and for [her] kingdom…[despite having] the body of a weak and feeble woman, [she has] the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too.” The Queen was undeterred from ruling the country independently, and her people lauded her for her courage and diplomacy. Her coronation chart reflects her popularity, evident by the sun in Aquarius, overlapping the midheaven point, the highest point in a horoscope chart, representing a person’s public life and career. These placements meant that Elizabeth would be a revolutionary leader, resilient to any misfortunes on her coronation day and forthcoming. It isn’t surprising then that Elizabeth’s most prominent modality is cardinal, indicating that she was impulsive, driven, assertive, and individualistic. Indeed, Elizabeth was known to have prioritised her country and responsibilities over personal matters, especially marriage. Not only did her dedication to the monarchy lead England to victory over the Spanish, but she also reconciled the warring Catholic and Protestant faiths. Furthermore, Elizabeth remains documented as the ‘Virgin Queen’, which was highly controversial for the Tudor line because it would cease after her death if she produced no heir. Elizabeth defended her choice to remain unmarried by most famously proclaiming to have “already [been] bound unto a husband… the Kingdom of England”. This noble declaration conveys why Queen Elizabeth I is considered one of the most successful and capricious monarchs in English history, having remained an unmarried ruler until she died in 1603.
Further analysis of Queen Elizabeth I’s natal chart can elucidate the historical events that unfolded throughout her life. For instance, examining her natal 7th house the house which represents relationships and partnerships, and its aspects to other planets in her natal chart, can further illuminate why she chose to remain a sole monarch. Following this, a comparison to the known historical facts about her life can verify these planetary correlations. Ultimately, interpreting the natal charts of other historical figures can offer a different perspective on their character and their correlations to historical events. Although astrology is not considered a science, its credence should be re evaluated for its ability to reflect history and validate historical claims, like it did for Queen Elizabeth I.
Queen Elizabeth I’s Coronation Chart
Queen Elizabeth I’s Natal Chart
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The landmark discovery of electromagnetism in 1820 by Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted was completely at odds with the then widely held understanding that magnetism and electricity were two entirely unrelated phenomena. Since Ørsted’s discovery, an ongoing debate has evolved as to why Ørsted, among his contemporaries, sought to prove such a relationship. The discussion concerning Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism has primarily addressed two key figures: German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s dynamical philosophy and German Romantic Friedrich Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, and the respective roles they may have played in influencing Ørsted’s perception of electricity, magnetism, and the nature of chemistry. Here, I argue that Ørsted’s appreciation for Schelling’s Naturphilosophie was largely aesthetic and superficial in contrast to the more seminal influence of Kant’s metaphysics which Ørsted integrated into his own philosophy and provided him with the specific ideas concerning force and unity that set him on the path to discover electromagnetism.
Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism arose from a series of lectures he conducted in 1820 on electricity, galvanism, and magnetism during which Ørsted found the electrical current of a galvanic cell caused the movement of a nearby magnetic needle, thus discovering a previously unobserved relationship between electricity and magnetism. Following a subsequent set of experiments to confirm his discovery, Ørsted published a brief four page account detailing this new force: electromagnetism. Throughout the 18th Century and into the 19th, a number of natural philosophers posited various causes of phenomena such as magnetism and electricity. The most notable feature of these theories is that they considered electricity and magnetism to be entirely independent, meaning a force such as Ørsted’s electromagnetism was inconceivable. Hence, when Ørsted published his discovery it was widely assumed that he had stumbled upon it by chance.
Kant’s conceptualisation of force was integral in establishing a philosophical framework through which Ørsted could begin to investigate a relationship between electricity and magnetism. By the late 18th Century, Kant’s philosophy was spreading through Europe. Despite his Queries in the Opticks, Kant found Isaac Newton’s lack of explanation for the cause of gravity an inexcusable oversight which he attempted to rectify in his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science) published in 1786. For Kant, there were two possible approaches to natural science: a mechanical natural philosophy founded in Newton’s atomistic view of matter and a dynamical natural philosophy. Taking issue with Newton, Kant’s proposed dynamical philosophy considered all phenomena the product of two antagonising forces of attraction and repulsion, the empirical concept of matter being inconsequential. Kant described these two forces as Grundkräfte. Keld Nielsen and Hanne Andersen, who portray Ørsted as an eager young Kantian, detail how the proliferation of Kant’s dynamical philosophy in Copenhagen provoked a generational conflict with young students generally gravitating towards Kant’s new ideas. Having moved to Copenhagen for university in 1794, Ørsted was swiftly introduced to this dynamical philosophy and began to refer to it in 1798. Ørsted based his PhD on Kant’s Anfangsgründe and his concept of Grundkräfte. Dan Christensen argues that in reading Ørsted’s thesis his great interest in Kant’s philosophy is clear, particularly in his articulation of force and matter. Christensen proposes that Ørsted adopted Kant’s anti atomistic view of matter as having no empirical status itself, but as the product of two polar dynamical forces. Further to this, Dutch professor Harry Snelders argues that Ørsted perceived electricity and magnetism to be reiterations of the opposing forces of Kant’s Grundkräfte:
Throughout his literary career, he adhered to the opinion, that the magnetical effects are produced by the same powers as the electrical. He was not so much led to this, by the reasons commonly alleged for this opinion, as by the philosophical principle, that all phenomena are produced by the same original power.
Those who would argue for Kant’s seminal influence on Ørsted would concur that the inspiration for this “philosophical principle” Ørsted describes was Kant’s Grundkräfte and his force orientated metaphysics. While this is difficult to dispute given how explicitly Ørsted refers to an “original power”, there is some disagreement over Ørsted’s comprehension of Kantian philosophy. The argument has been made, most strongly by Barry Gower, that Ørsted did not have a firm grasp on a singular definition of force and was torn between Kant’s Grundkräfte and the complicated nonsensible entities commonly proposed in various subtle
fluids theories. Consequently, Gower argues Ørsted was not influenced by Kant more so than any other group of natural philosophers. This argument holds little merit as in examining the quote above from Ørsted himself in 1820, it is evident that however imperfectly he understood Kant, the direction of his own philosophy was indeed guided by the central theme of Kantian metaphysics. Further to this, some dispute remains between those who argue in favour of Kant’s impact on Ørsted. Timothy Shanahan describes Kant as a notable figure in Ørsted’s formative years but whose influence somewhat waned throughout his life whereas Snelders is quite forthright in describing the discovery of electromagnetism as the “direct consequence” of Ørsted’s belief in the harmony of all forces which he drew from Kant’s metaphysics.
The distinct lack of effort by historians to situate Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism and his relationship to Kant’s philosophy within the broader context of his life severely restricts an evaluation of Kant’s influence on Ørsted’s electromagnetism. Andrew Wilson, one of the few to take the time to consider Ørsted’s early life, holds that it presents a limitation to Kant’s potential influence as much of his focus on unity is reflected in the theological teachings Ørsted received as a child. Born in 1777 Rudkøbing, Denmark, Ørsted grew up amidst the Dutch Golden Age. Ørsted’s wide variety of interests including physics, medicine, art, literature, and poetry can be considered a reflection of the culture at this time, when the disciplines of science and art were more intertwined. Ørsted’s early education was left to two German wigmakers and focused predominantly on religion and languages. Wilson highlights Ørsted’s early interactions with religion, inferring from them that Ørsted’s later interest in science was inextricably linked to the theological teachings on his youth, with science becoming a form of “religious worship”. Following his discovery of electromagnetism Ørsted commented that:
All the rules which one can give for the investigation of nature must spring from the fundamental truth: That all of nature is the revelation of an infinite rational Will, and it is the task of science… to know as much as possible about it.
Ørsted’s interpretation of science can be understood as an interrogation of nature and an investigation of this “infinite rational Will.” It must be emphasised that in accordance with the quotation above, Ørsted saw the relationship between religion and science as maintained by their common factor, nature. However, while Wilson would argue that Kant’s metaphysics attracted Ørsted because it was merely an extension of the theological ideas he absorbed as a child, it is
undeniable that Kant provided Ørsted with a more sophisticated and better articulated philosophy with which he could begin to address electricity and magnetism.
Occupying a brief space in German history, German Romanticism was an intellectual movement emphasising the importance of nature which it characterised as an “active, dynamic and organic whole.” German philosopher Friedrich Schelling’s Naturphilosophie was a Romantic approach to science drawing partly on fellow German philosopher Kant’s philosophy as evident in its focus on the polarity of forces and duality in nature. During his 1801 02 tour of Europe Ørsted visited Jena, the centre of German Romanticism, and came into contact with Schelling’s Naturphilosophie. He did this most notably through befriending German physicist Johann Ritter, a Naturphilosoph, with whom he maintained correspondence for the rest of Ritter’s life. He wrote that:
In all productivity and in productivity alone, there is absolute continuity a statement of importance in the consideration of the whole of nature; inasmuch, for example, as the law that in nature there is no leap, there is continuity of forms in it… is confined to the original productivity of nature, in which certainly there must be continuity.
In an extrapolation of Kant’s metaphysics, Schelling argued nature should be understood as a single, integrated system and moreover, that it could be interrogated solely through drawing on knowledge a priori, presenting a system of entirely speculative physics. Though part of a minority perspective, Robert Stauffer resolutely maintains that Schelling’s Naturphilosophie was the primary motivator in Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism. Granted, Schelling’s focus on the “absolute continuity” of nature and the concept of unity is perhaps more explicit than Kant’s, however unlike Kant’s Anfangsgründe, there is a distinct lack of clear engagement by Ørsted with the finer points of Naturphilosophie beyond his interactions with Ritter. Involving himself only with the vague outlines of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, it is difficult to declare Ørsted a Naturphilosoph or that the philosophy held particular significance for him. Moreover, having declared empirical science “ a mongrel notion,” Schelling’s commitment to speculative physics is entirely at odds with Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism.
Drawing all conclusions a priori, Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is too incongruous in its philosophy with Ørsted’s commitment to empirical investigation to have significantly influenced his discovery of electromagnetism. In an examination of
Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, John Esposito supports the argument that Schelling’s denunciation of empirical investigation would have deterred Ørsted from taking on Schelling’s philosophy as he was a keen supporter of rigorous experimentation. Ørsted’s affinity for experimentation is well documented; having first gained experience working as a pharmacist in his father’s apothecary he went on to win prizes at university in which praise was specifically given for his meticulous experimentation. Furthermore, Shanahan, in keeping with his argument supporting the influence of Kant, maintains that Ørsted’s early interactions with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason shaped the entirety of his subsequent approach to science. In the appendices of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant highlights that ideas only hold merit insofar as they are based in and applied to what we can possibly experience. Thus, those concepts that move beyond this ‘transcendental ideas’ are severely limited as they extend themselves beyond the sensible world. Schelling’s Naturphilosophie a priori is comprised entirely of transcendental ideas. Hence, Ørsted in keeping with Kant’s Critique was most likely skeptical of Schelling’s philosophy notwithstanding his own formative experiences with experiment. Therefore, considering the indisputably significant role that experimentation played in Ørsted’s discovery of electromagnetism, it is doubtful that Ørsted would have arrived where he did in 1820 had he been a Naturphilosoph given Schelling’s disregard for any true devotion to experiment.
Despite Schelling’s dismissal of empirical investigation, a number of historians present a more nuanced perspective proposing that Ørsted as a lover of poetry, art, religion, and nature may have found an aesthetic appeal in Schelling’s Naturphilosophie which corresponded well with his reasoning in seeking a connection between electricity and magnetism. In 1799 Ørsted came across two of Schelling’s works concerning Naturphilosophie and while he criticised Schelling’s “not very rigorous method” of science, he clearly held some affection for the nature of Schelling’s ideas, describing them as “beautiful.” In an unpublished manuscript, Ørsted made the following observation regarding his own philosophy:
Science and art at their highest point meet each other… When the nature of things is presented in the most perfect mode, i.e., for the entire soul, then art and science are merged together.
Esposito holds that the goal of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie was an entirely Romantic sentiment to, through the investigation of natural phenomena, reconcile the disciplines of science and art – to “bring about a unity of nature and culture.” Ørsted’s interest in the relationship between art and science was nurtured through his interactions with German Romanticism of which
Naturphilosophie was a part. Therefore, it is possible that similar to the aesthetically satisfying idea of art and science converging, Ørsted may have been inspired in this to pursue equally appealing connections in the field of chemistry. The only limitation to this argument may be how significantly Ørsted and Schelling’s respective views overlap. It is difficult to discern the extent to which Naturphilosophie truly imbued Ørsted with a new philosophy aiding in his discovery of electromagnetism or whether Ørsted was drawn to a philosophy characteristic of ideas he already possessed.
Ørsted’s interactions with Kantian metaphysics, specifically Grundkräfte, left Ørsted with a well established appreciation for the notion that all forces are of a single origin and an interest in apparent opposites which he continued to apply throughout his life and undoubtedly saw reflected in the phenomena of electricity and magnetism. Conversely, as Schelling’s Naturphilosophie contradicted Ørsted’s commitment to empirical investigation it is unlikely he was significantly influenced by Schelling’s work in his discovery. It is possible Ørsted maintained some appreciation for the aesthetics of Naturphilosophie and its desire to elevate science and art together, however, this likely would not have had a notably significant impact on Ørsted’s discovery.
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Music was a vital part of the lives of women in the nineteenth century, as it was played and practiced in the homes of middle class women throughout the century. Music was used both in courtship and for personal entertainment, and was recommended as a form of female education which reflected the wanted characteristics found in an ideal woman. These characteristics and qualities were demonstrated through various mediums of literature which all worked to represent the woman and her place in society in its own way. Such forms include conduct literature, Lady’s magazines, and fiction novels. One such novel is Jane Austen’s Emma, with its representation of music and musical women in the act of courtship and the freedom that music allows to its player. As in the novel, the Lady’s magazines also contained short fictions about the ways in which music can be used to seduce a man. Conduct literature, on the other hand, as the name suggests, focused on the education of women, therefore any mentions of music are tied into the prescribed actions of the “perfect” nineteenth century woman. Music allowed women to express their thoughts and feelings and allowed them a little more freedom in the oppressive domestic sphere in which they resided throughout the century. Some women began to push against the rigid divide of the public and private, as both female composers and novelists blurred the boundaries between these spheres as their works began to enter the public domain.
There are many types of literature during the nineteenth century that include and reference music in the lives of women; chief among them being the magazines and periodicals, conduct literature, as well as the domestic novel. All three forms of literature are in some way reflective of society, some more explicitly than others. The purpose of a lady’s magazine or periodical during the nineteenth century was for ‘instruction and entertainment,’ a way to educate women in the ways of the home. It would contain works such as travel accounts, essays, and biographies, all meant for the entertainment of the household, as well
as stories, serialised novels, and further essays all encoded to explore the proper conduct and morals of the nineteenth century woman. Two such magazines are the Lady’s Magazine which began in 1770, and Godey’s Lady’s Book, an American monthly magazine from 1830 1898. Both of these publications included music as a predominant topic of their writings; each printing a new set of sheet music or song with every publication. The Lady’s Magazine was widely influential in London and, at its highest point, had fifteen thousand subscribers, coming close to that of the Gentleman’s Magazine. It was made up of so called “polite literature,” which were works deemed appropriate for the woman and for home display, such as ‘chaste love songs,’ and ‘favo[u]rite airs and duets from English Operas.’ The careful selection of music that was included indicates that they are seen as influential to their audience, and were picked to reflect the morals of the period. Women should not be exposed to all types of music, but rather those of a polite and sensible tone. This ‘magazine music’ is not a new phenomenon, but was seen as early as the periodicals published well before the eighteenth century, indicating that music had long been linked to the education and presentation of women.
As well as the monthly sheet music of the Godey’s Lady’s Book, music was also presented through fictious stories and letters, as well as in non fiction articles. Music was often coded in these magazines as feminine, with short stories writing of music as a ‘ young lady like acquirement’ and ‘charmingly feminine,’ thus making music intrinsic to the women of the nineteenth century. Further, within the fictions published in Godey’s Lady’s Book, one stand out feature is the relationship between music and the courtship plot. A woman’s main focus in life was to become a good wife, and ‘the link between music and courtship meant that music was [a] serious business’ in the lives of young ladies because of this ultimate goal. Music was a great way to show off admirable skills and be noticed by potential suitors, without breaking the social distinctions between man and woman. Women were able to draw attention to themselves through performance but were prohibited from being the pursuers in the relationship, that being the role of the man, and women were meant to be passive. Contradictorily, performances in the domestic space by women were not always seen as a positive trait of a future wife. Godey’s also contained columns criticising ‘amateur music making’:
A party retires to the parlo[u]r to have a pleasant chat. In comes some idiot who thinks she can play, and has waited her opportunity for an audience. Down she sits and commences to drum, interfering with conversation, giving no pleasure, and simply inspiring disgust.
This exemplifies the fine line for musical women in the nineteenth century; one should aim to please with her playing, but if it is not of high enough quality, then she is ridiculed. Not only do women need to practice in order to please their guests, but she must not practice too much as to distract from her domestic duties and drift into the realm of virtuosity.
In the nineteenth century, the primary musical instrument relating to women was the piano. Unlike the harpsichord, the new technologies of the piano, such as the ability to easily change dynamics, allowed for more expression even for the amateur musician. The piano was seen as the woman’s instrument; it allowed for modesty, as there were no body movements and the woman was seated, no facial distortions were required, and the only part of the body that touched the instrument were the very tips of her finger and toes. In relation to the way female piano playing is represented in the literature of the time, Professor Elizabeth Morgan draws a link between conduct literature and the keyboard etudes. Conduct literature as a genre is meant to educate women and ‘regulate every element of female education.’ This form of literature is not defined by a single medium, it can appear as handbooks or even and fiction novels, yet the end goal is always the same; to educate women for a life of confinement within the domestic sphere ‘under the guise of enriching and even empowering them.’ Morgan argues that keyboard etudes work in the same way, both have a goal of education with physical control as one of the main objectives. However, as established earlier, musical woman walk on a double edged sword, they must be accomplished enough that their music is pleasing to the ear, thus the need for etudes and studies. Parents, teachers, and education literature all pushed for the woman to be proficient at the instrument, which led to many acquiring a high level of skill. Yet conduct books also cautioned against ‘studying overly complex works as well as physically demanding ones,’ which would stray into keyboard virtuosity. Women, in order to maintain the distinction between the public and the private, should not continue their learning to the point of mastery, which would pull them towards the public and masculine sphere, therefore leaving the ‘ easy, private, amateur and feminine sphere.’ This anxiety within the conduct books represents the societal need to keep women within the home. One such example is Alexis Soyer’s The Modern Housewife or, Ménagère which opens with a dialogue between two women about housework. When the husband is asked about his wife, he responds that ‘she speaks two or three languages tolerably well, and, as an amateur, is rather proficient in music’ yet more importantly, her parents ‘made her first acquainted with the keys of the store-room before those of the piano,’ indicating a common belief about female musicianship in the period; music and practice should not come before managing the household.
Another popular method of female music making is singing, which, along with the piano, are both explored in the domestic novel Emma (1815) by Jane Austen. Singing, like the piano, was a form of entertainment in the drawing rooms of nineteenth century homes and was also a method of attracting attention for courtship. In Emma, the characters appear at numerous dinner parties at various homes, and at each one they withdraw to the drawing room after dinner. These scenes are always filled with music, as both Emma Woodhouse and Jane Fairfax are proficient at the piano. The fine line of musical talent is also expressed in the drawing room scene of Chapter Twenty Six, as Emma carefully chooses her repertoire to entertain as ‘she knew the limitations of her own powers too well to attempt more than she could perform with credit.’ However, Emma also expresses her envy at the talent of Jane Fairfax and her ability to grab the attention of Mr. Knightly. Emma expresses her resignation at Jane’s ‘infinitely superior’ performance to her own, leading to ‘mixed feelings’ of both admiration for her talent as well as envy. The courtship element of music is also expressed in this novel, like those in the fictions of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Mrs. Weston gossips to Emma of Mr. Knightley’s admiration for Jane’s performances:
I have heard him express himself so warmly on those points! Such an admirer of her performance on the pianoforte and her voice! I have heard him say that he could listen to her for ever.
This exemplifies the importance of music to a courtship, the way it can attract a man’s attention and perhaps initiate a romantic interest, though this is not the ultimate end in Emma. These descriptions of music throughout the novel act as a representation of the real world’s view on the role of women in society and music’s importance to it. ‘Domestic music of the early nineteenth century reflected the characters of those who played it, much as novels mirrored the values of their readers,’ writes Elizabeth Morgan.
The reflection of society in the novel extends outwards to include the author, and in turn in relation to music the female composer. Both of these figures have similarities that marry not only their works but their views and position in society. Many of the authors of domestic novels in the nineteenth century were women, and the music played by their heroines was the dominant market for female composers. Both Victorian female novelists and composers drew on their immediate surroundings for their inspiration, therefore female authors predominantly wrote the domestic novel – fiction interacting with the home and its place in society and female composers turned to the drawing room ballad, which ‘allowed women full participation in their own homes both as performers
and creators.’ These women were also quite numerous; contemporary Dr. A.A. Harding stated that in 1900 there were ‘in existence four hundred and eighty nine women composers’ though his information is not cited. In regards to female authors, nine of the eleven best selling authors between 1800 and 1820, were women. This large group of women were entering the public sphere and breaking down the barriers of the domestic. No longer were they completely bound to their homes, thus changing their roles in society. This, however, was still not condoned for all women, only those that had to provide for their families were accepted at the time, and many female composers still found it difficult to get their works published. For example, Fanny Hensel, though a recognised talent was nonetheless discouraged from her publishing her works by her father and brother, believing she should still focus on her duties as a wife. These women were beginning to cross the boundary between the public and domestic spheres, yet still they came across difficulties and society still pushed them backwards into the home.
Women composers and musicians, however, could implement their music in order to express their own feelings of oppression and liberate themselves, if only for the moment of performance. Women were aware of their oppression and used music in order to voice their complaints. Another form of literature are the lyrics of the drawing room ballad, some of which were also written by women, thus allowing the ‘discontent felt by some women beneath the respectable Victorian veneer’ to be expressed. One such a case is of the lines written by Harriet Grote:
Full many a sorrowful and tragic tale Enfolded lies beneath the semblance frail Of wedded harmony and calm content. How oft the heart in aching bosom pent, And careworn thoughts are borne abroad unsees, Veiled in the aspect of a cheerful mien. By the sad mourner of a home unblest, A faith dishonoured, and a life opprest.
These words perfectly exemplify the way music can fight back against societal expectations in this explicit fashion. The ‘semblance frail’ describes the many ways in which music is used to contain the woman, through her education and firm placement in the domestic setting alongside the piano. Though underneath this thin veneer is instead a ‘life opprest’ and a ‘home unblest.’ Music could also be a form of escapism, as contemporary Rev. H. R. Haweis wrote in his work Music and Morals. He states that the piano ‘has probably done more to sweeten
existence…than all the homilies on the domestic virtues ever yet penned,’ and is able to lighten the ‘heavy burden’ of a young woman. Music does not only reflect society’s expectations of women, but also allows for the ‘liberation of countless women’ from their monotonous lives stuck in the domestic sphere’ through the performance of music.
Music is represented throughout the literature of the nineteenth century, expressing the role of music in education, as well as the musical woman and her place in the domestic and public spheres. Literature presenting these ideals included conduct literature, lady’s magazines and periodicals, as well the domestic novel and song lyrics. All of these forms explore the role and status of women in the nineteenth century and how music reinforces their positions and contradictorily also challenges them. Works such as keyboard etudes consolidate the instructional power of musical practice, and reinforces the messages of containment from the conduct literature. Lady’s magazines and the domestic novel both explore the nature of music in the woman’s goal of finding a husband through the courtship plot. These works and their authors and composers, while reinforcing the morals of women at the time, were simultaneously transgressing the boundaries between the domestic and public sphere through the publications of their works. Therefore, music in the domestic sphere engages with the roles of women, to both reinforce societal expectation and allows the women to simultaneously push back against the boundary of their containment.
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Charles Dickens in 1859 wrote of London and Paris in his A Tale of Two Cities, “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!” It is unsurprising then, that at a time in which the human body was in constant peril, it became the key host for the expression of uncertainties and ideologies over its rough course through the long 19th Century. The flesh has an aptitude for taking on an impressive spectrum of meaning, shaped by the subjectivity of the onlooker and by the predilections of the one doing the depicting. Resultantly, we are able to look on the body and see there inscribed like scars over the
span of decades and through pivotal social evolution, the signs of an everchanging notion of the self in all its trappings of gender and mortality in relation to a larger socius.
The ‘Nude’ as a convention has seen a long history in art circles and has attracted much attention and opinion from the elites of that arena. The Nude is first and foremost the reproduction of the human body in a consumable state, arranged in a fashion that makes it ideal for the artifice of the gaze. In Winckelmannian terms, this necessitates the depiction of the body in an idealised form drawn from a Platonic imitation of the ‘perfect’ consisting of “the elimination of details, in a process of exclusion, in a serene indolence”. The purity, the union of parts in service of the greater whole (of the nude) assisted both in the image’s capacity to act as a mirror to this ideal, as well as reach effectively into the viewer and make them comprehend its nature through an unobstructed glance.
Figure 1. William Aldophe Bouguereau, The Birth of Venus, 1879.
Where looking is concerned, desire follows soon after as an operative function. As T.J Clark would have it, “the burden of the nude was conflict… between propriety and sexual pleasure” and thus “the genre existed to reconcile those opposites”. Since desire could never be entirely excised from the nude body, the “ genre provided various figures in which it could be represented”. Such an endeavour went to great lengths to relegate such a desire to somewhere conceptually outside the nakedness of the female subject, ensuring that “her body [remains] separate from her sex” and that desire is a firmly male edifice. In Bouguereau (Fig.1), the female body appears on a converging point as those peripheral elements, those loitering, whispering or staring “fauns, bulls, falling coins, enfolding clouds, tritons, goats and putti which surround her” are suspended in space and fixated upon the principal nude. These characters are deployed “for the male viewer to read and accept as figures of his own feelings…as an animal demand arriving in a half man or as Eros, that infatuated guide who stood for man’s desire and woman’s desirability”. The panoply of gazes “within the picture space” compounds the viewer’s own vantage of the figure from outside, by granting an optic array of secondary vicarious lookers. Other systems supported the complete mapping of the body’s topography, most notably in the convention of the Three Graces. Here was an instance in which the artist “devise[d] strategies to present the human body through multiple views” to attain a panoramic “totality of information” where three distinct nudes could, with a “symmetry of movement” contribute to the “perception of a [quite Winckelmannian] generic ideal…in which each separate figure is seen to participate”. As a precondition for the nude’s success, “the woman’s body had to be arranged in precise and definite relation to the viewer’s eye” and all the vicissitudes of desire that eye denoted.
Figure
Such dynamics seem to situate the feminine form as the eternal subject of the looking masculine. Yet, this binary has very much been breached to remarkable effect in moments of ideological juncture. We see in works like The Sleep of Endymion (Fig.2), all the hallmarks of the ‘consumable nude’. The body is carefully angled, the lighting coaxing out the contours of the skin, however in the place of the female nude is an undeniably male subject. The myth prefaces the goddess of the moon, Selene as the voyeur of the sleeping ephebic Endymion, moonlight pouring down from above over the “limp and attenuated body” in its “languorous swoon of sleep”. These soft masculinities contrast “their immediate predecessors the virile and purposeful manhood of the revolutionary moment, which in turn must be considered as a departure from the cult of sentiment and sensibilite associated with pre revolutionary culture” ultimately scapegoating a (female) femininity as responsible for such a culture. Most notably we see a bipartite emerge in works like David’s Oath of the Horatti (Fig.4) which marvels at “the men’s rigid stoicism” against the “startling contrast..[of] the attitudes of grief stricken women”.
In The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles (Fig.3) we see the bipartite populated instead by male figures. On the right, the “sinewy…muscular and virile” ambassadors of Agamemnon: Ajax, Odysseus and Phoenix and on the left, Achilles and Patroclus “made of somewhat different stuff; smoother, lissome, graceful, less muscular and whiter skinned”, meanwhile the female character is near unseen “expelled to the dark margin of the veiled interior” on the far left where she is unable to impose on the affairs of the male actors. Here was a project which sought to “expel a femininity deemed inimical to the free and autonomous expression of masculine subjectivity” and assimilate the disassociated remnants into “the culture’s most exalted and prestigious representations” of the nude male. This ephebic turn produced a series of paintings showing “the dramatically isolated image of a beautiful annihilated male body” an ideal symbol of
martyrdom. In images like Joseph Bara, Endymion, Hyacinth and even Ingres’ permutation of Achilles and Patroclus, the young and passive ephebe “is frozen by the viewer’s foreknowledge of their fate:” early death which preserves their youth. In response to such types Modleski suggests the ephebe’s “manifest emasculation is not a signifier of impotence but a masculine appropriation of weakness and vulnerability…[that is] another ruse of power”. Far from undermining him, it is his death which makes him an icon of revenge, of supposed stewardship over those struck down by counter revolution, of the necessity for Terror as a legitimate means and crucially radical patriotism for the Committee of Public Safety.
Against the backdrop of an advancing colonial endeavour under Napoleon and in the aftermath of abounding revolutionary bloodshed in France, this image of the body in death took on an altogether different shade. As the French public gained new access to the vistas of North Africa, a whimsical imaginary rose to meet the influx of information, leading to the construction of a hybridised worldscape straddling reality and fantasy. The Orientalist vision became a hyper exotic one of heightened emotionality prolific ‘death and sex’ that resonated with themes of suffering and passion back in France. A striking icon of the North African campaign is Gros’ Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa (Fig.5). The piece exudes a mythical air, “the revelation of a new world” under the open air architecture of the mosque by the sea, with Napoleon Christ like, reaching boldly to a plague victim as nearby soldiers recoil. There is an explorative atmosphere of adventure and danger, all the while, the spectre of disease hangs over the place as if such a quality is immanent to this foreign stage. Those who remain too long in this land risk being changed into a corpse.
Figure 5. Antoine Jean Gros, Bonaparte Visiting the Plague victims of Jaffa, 1804.
Such a haunting death pervades Delacroix’s The Massacre at Chios (Fig.7) in the same way. The bearded man by the centre stares unseeingly into middle distance, while on the bottom right a mother lies heaped against the leg of a gaunt woman, behind her a faceless captive is pulled away by an Ottoman rider. The mounted warrior looks down disdainfully with one hand on his sabre, at the man attempting in vain to stop him. In the lead up to his painting of The Massacre
Delacroix wrote of his meeting with an M. Voutier, “ a fine looking Greek type” recently back from the field of battle in Greece and who spoke of the Greek soldiers who fought their oppressors, “trampling them underfoot, shouting Zito Eleutheria! (‘Long live Liberty!’). The obvious reference to make here is Delacroix’s later work in which ‘Liberty’ herself makes an appearance in the midst of the brave forward charge of a French militia, Liberty Leading the People (Fig.6), in a scene which almost perfectly matches the description Delacroix gives in his letter. However, in The Massacre, we do not witness a triumph against the odds like we do for Liberty Leading, but instead are invited to immerse ourselves in the ubiquitous hurt of an inactive (but also non ephebic or idealised) party. We see an indeterminate battle in the background and middle ground but the focalised cast is that of a crushing Greek defeat and despotic Ottoman victory.
The nakedness of the Greeks has none of the poise of the ephebes like Bara or Endymion, instead they crumple, joints arranged in awkward positions, wearing “haggard expression[s] accentuated by the bright red rings circling their eyes,” to the extent that we are unable to confidently know who in the scene is alive or dead. The figures here are not elegantly nude, rather the utter collapse of their spirit has rendered them hopelessly naked. Their bodies admit the cadaver into their frames. It was generally acknowledged that Delacroix indulged in “ an excess of sorrow and gloom” however the public had developed a taste for and perhaps resonated with, such a macabre subject.
Stendhal, a writer in the Journal de Paris et des Departements (1824) observed “the public is so bored…with the traditional academic style…that the visitors all tend stop in front of the spectacle of livid, unfinished corpses” exhibited by Delacroix in the
Salon of that year. Again, fascination with the Orient coincides with the spectacle of the cadaver. In The Massacre, this bareness stands in notable contrast to the only lit character in the composition to be entirely clothed, the soldier on horseback, retaining a measure of dignity.
Another of Delacroix’s paintings which appeared around the same moment makes an eerie analogy. The Barque of Dante (Fig.8) exhibited two years earlier in the 1822 salon takes for its subject the poet Dante and his Classical guide Virgil in the Inferno of the Divine Comedy. What do we make of the nude in the context of Dante’s Inferno? In this work, it is difficult not to draw comparison between the two poet voyagers, wrapped up in cloth above the naked sufferers of the Styx, to the prostrate wounded Greeks of The Massacre wallowing beneath the clothed and mounted horseman. The Orient is a place where cadavers proliferate, suffering is latent, naturalised to the magnitude of having to wade through the tide of bodies. In a later iteration by Bouguereau (Fig.9) the same attributes reappear. Dante and Virgil are again not nude but rather, they are heavily insulated by their layered clothing (Virgil’s mouth even is covered) against the bareness of the skirmishing damned. Here, the body has been invaded by the Orient, its dangers and mystery infecting the nude body while these naked souls clamour in a literal hell.
This is not to say France did not share in that mass grief of the Greek uprising or feature these themes in artworks interested in French subjects, only that the Oriental phantasm was a font from which these dreary energies could be siphoned and studied. In works like Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa (Fig.10) we bear witness to an acute and dramatic anxiety in the throes of a recent memory of French social chaos. The marooned crew of the Medusa are sprawled about what remains of an escape raft against a dark horizon. Their fate, we may recall from the very real story of the wreck, has been doomed by the neglect of an incompetent noble captain who abandons them, himself a living artefact of the ancient regime by which the common throng is made to struggle. The discourse seems clear: the underprivileged are forced to suffer the whims of an upper class who cares not for their survival, a tale of the disgrace of class difference. Yet the tragedy of the image is conversely evoked by the surroundings of the figures in the painting, hopeless against the sheer natural disaster that is the ocean storm in an abysmally dark sea. Such a scene speaks only tangentially to the crime of the aristocratic captain; rather it is the very cosmos, in its raw and uncaring cruelty not only a political but also a proposed cosmic turmoil which we take for the principal focus in The Medusa. We see a poignant tableau of emotional fatigue against an abstracted climate of violence and dread, coloured by the definitive pendulum swing (between monarchy/empire and republic) of the revolutionary century.
Most notoriously, it would seem Olympia’s insubordination is located in her stare which disturbs the paradise concocted by the homosocial clique. Absent is “that dreamy offering of self, that looking which was not quite looking” which addressed the anonymous spectator and invited him into the world of the frame. Conversely, Olympia’s gaze is
“
unreadable, perhaps deliberately so,” guarded in a manner that bars the male onlooker from complete and unobstructed comprehension over her interiority. She is not puppeteered by a male design into an instrumental shape for a particular end (consumption) but instead is “her composition of herself” and such a thing unnerved those who were accustomed to being the critic of the painted figure, not vice versa. Olympia shocked the spectator out of the mythic tantalisation of an abstract ‘ pagan ideal’, and back into his own political moment where his powers were steadily diminishing and where undercurrents of class discontentment reared up into full view.
Discourse around the nude often hinged on the idea of authorship over its fantasised image in whatever shape that might take. Throughout, Neoclassical and Romantic temperaments were always present, floating in a precarious coexistence and feuding endlessly over the topic of profanity and propriety. Such an enduring oscillation between academic and sensual arts, is perhaps what birthed the haptic Realist bent that captivated artists of the late century. What we might detect in this shift is an overwrought exhaustion with things of fantasy, be they of an intellectual purity or transcendent ecstasy. We come to the close of the 19th century after it has been wracked by an onslaught of whiplashing political turns, each taking with it a litany of human life and throwing into doubt time and again the moral and aesthetic standing of representations of the world and self.
That intense meditation can be seen in the face of Carpeaux’s Ugolino (Fig.12), his sons sharing in the proclivity for death that came all too easily to the ephebic model, all of them minimised by the sheer mass of the patriarch their father, rooted in the centre. Ugolino’s posture, stooped with feet crossed in a gesture of deep insularity, eyes affixed somewhere indiscernible, holds proto Expressionist notes that are acutely existentially worried where bodies become a thing of anxiety, awaiting destruction of both the thinker’s body and those surrounding him. The ‘Thinker’ archetype appears everywhere throughout this turbulent period, manifesting as the titular Thinker of Rodin atop the Gates of Hell (Fig.13), as a brooding cloaked man in the shadows of The Plague Victims (Fig.5), an elder on The Medusa (Fig.10) who drowns out the world around him in despondent meditation, in Stuck’s Luzifer (Fig.14) at the tail end of the century and assuredly Ugolino joins the ranks of these ruminating souls. The logical reply to a century like this one is a pensive, indeed, a reflectively tormented atmosphere of ennui in the wake of so much fundamental uncertainty where nothing is universal and all perhaps, could be false.
Clark,T.J.‘Olympia’sChoice’.InThePaintingofModernLife:ParisintheArtofManetandHisFollowers, 79 98,111 33,144 46 PrincetonUniversityPress,1984
Krauss,R ‘NarrativeTime:TheQuestionoftheGatesofHell’ InPassagesinModernSculpture,7 37 ThamesandHudson,London,1977.
Ockman,C.‘ProfilingHomoeroticism:AchillesReceivingtheAmbassadorsofAgamemnon’.InIngres’s EroticizedBodies:RetracingtheSerpentineLine,11 31 YaleUniversityPress,NewHaven,1995 Sérulaz,Maurice.‘DelaxroixandtheOrient’.InDelacroixinMorocco,30 53.Institutdumondearabe, 1994.
Solomon Godeau,Abigail ‘MaleTrouble:ACrisisinRepresentation’ ArtHistory16,no 2(1January 1993):286 312
Stafford,BarbaraMaria.‘BeautyoftheInvisible:WinckelmannandtheAestheticsofImperceptibility.’ ZeitschriftFürKunstgeschichte,43,no.1(1980):65 78.
Fig1 Bouguereau,William Adolphe TheBirthofVenus 1879 Oiloncanvas,300cm×218cm Musée d’Orsay,Paris.
Fig2.Girodet,Anne Louis.TheSleepofEndymion.1791.Oiloncanvas,1.98m,2.61m.Louvre,Paris.
Fig3 Ingres,Jean Auguste Dominique TheAmbassadorsofAgamemnoninthetentofAchilles 1801 Oilon canvas,113×146.1cm.EcoleNationaleSuperieuredesBeaux Arts,Paris.
Fig4.David,Jacques Louis.OathoftheHoratii.1784.Oiloncanvas,329.8cm×424.8cm.Louvre,Paris.
Fig5.Gros,Antoine Jean.BonaparteVisitingthePlagueVictimsofJaffa.1804.Oiloncanvas,532cm×720 cm Louvre,Paris
Fig6.Delacroix,Eugène.LibertyLeadingthePeople.1830.Oiloncanvas,260cm×325cm.Louvre,Paris.
Fig7.Delacroix,Eugène.TheMassacreatChios.1824.Oiloncanvas,419cm×354cm.Louvre,Paris.
Fig8.Delacroix,Eugène.TheBarqueofDante.1822.Oiloncanvas,189cm×246cm.Louvre,Paris.
Fig9 Bouguereau,William Adolphe DanteandVirgil 1850 Oiloncanvas,281cm×225cm Musée d’Orsay,Paris
Fig10.Géricault,Théodore.TheRaftoftheMedusa.1818 19.Oiloncanvas,490cm×716cm.Louvre,Paris.
Fig11.Manet,Édouard.Olympia.1863.Oiloncanvas,130.5cm×190cm.Muséed’Orsay,Paris.
Fig12 Carpeaux,Jean Baptiste UgolinoandHisSons 1865 67 Marble,1975×1499×1105cm The MetropolitanMuseumofArt,NewYork
Fig13.Rodin,Auguste.‘TheThinker’inTheGatesofHell.1880 1917.Bronze,19.7×13.1×3.3ft.Musée Rodin,Paris.
Fig14 Stuck,Franz Luzifer 1890 Oiloncanvas,161cm×1525cm NationalGalleryforForeignArt, Sofia.
