The legacy of Eve from the 19th century to the present

Clare Shilland's portrait of 'Merel'

The essence of the woman has been explored from time immemorial; to such an extent perhaps that it is difficult in our postmodern age to truly derive meaning about femininity and its relations with the other gender. Vulnerability, empowerment, sexuality, demonisation - these are common themes that continue to fascinate us, myself included.

Some have been quick to judge contemporary art and its alleged brash, zeitgeist-capturing polish - Tracey Emin's My Bed has come under much criticism from more classically inclined connoisseurs of art, for example. But our fascination with history does remind us of the riches of looking back into the past to create new stories. 'His-story' has been written by published peoples; this is my short attempt at a history of the female.

Judith Walkowitz's 'City of Dreadful Delight' is a useful starting point in whisking ourselves away to the Victorian Britain. The Jack the Ripper phenomenon which still breathes today represented a discourse centering on an imagined myth with overlapping representations of sexual danger. The conformity and stifling morality of London in the 19th century being challenged by social boundaries, which were regularly transgressed by illicit acts of sex and crime. That typical sense of British prudishness is challenged further by the paintings of William Etty, who is rather unfashionable these days in his depiction of sexual frankness, desire and shame. It is evidence, Howard Jacobson argues, of the Victorians being 'true masters of the erotic'.

William Etty's 'Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews His Wife by Stealth to Gyges', 1847

Although this painting references ancient Greece, Etty is seen to embody 'the moraliser who will tremble to greater artistic effect than the hedonist'. Furthermore, it raises the idea of the man's vulnerabilities in the face of the female image that they themselves were instrumental in creating:

'But what fires the idealisation, however crazed, is a longing to be in love, and behind the longing to be in love is a longing to lose one's head. And only the morally responsible with their troubled consciences, can measure the depths of pleasure waiting in the act of losing all sense of responsibility at last.' (Jacobson, 2010)

Another challenge to the form of the 'eternal feminine' comes from Paul Gauguin, in his rejection of conventional representations of the perfect, symbolic female, in his explicit introduction of awkward or grotesque elements in his painting. Beauty is wilfully distorted from its Western principles, although it would be wrong to say that paintings such as 'Words of the Devil' are merely esoteric narratives of Orientalism; Gauguin's icons of female identity are not just a simple rejection of 'Marianne'.

Paul Gauguin's Parau na te Varua ino ('Words of the Devil'), 1892

Let us transport ourselves fifty years or so to the intellectual hub of Vienna. Sigmund Freud has hit the intellectual scene with his novel ideas on human behaviour; he bases some of his research listening to the thoughts of Viennese society women - their vices, secrets, and illicit desires. The Oedipus complex shocks polite society but gradually becomes part of mainstream psychological studies. But it is rather odd that we say Freudian slip rather than Jungian slip - why did Carl Gustav Jung achieve less prominence, and why do we carry Freud's ideas so lightly on our skin?

Carolyn Steedman's 'Landscape for a Good Woman' , 1987

Carolyn Steedman's 'Landscape for a Good Woman' is an implicit rejection of these ideas, in her (auto)biographical account of her emotional relationship with her own mother in a cocktail mixing historical scholarship and personal family discovery. She railed against the litany of mother-daughter 'romantic' histories, arguing that established models of family relationships marginalise individual narratives in history; not everyone can identify with the weird and wonderful ideas of Viennese ladies. Nor can family relationships be categorised by class as Marxist academics had tried to do. 

I had the privilege of meeting Ms. Steedman, and told her I was enjoying reading her book. She replied, 'Oh that's very good, but I have written other books since then you know.' But right now, her book provides a fitting conclusion to my brief history of femininity. 

See relevant links:

Howard Jacobson's 'Flesh' on Channel 4 - broadcasting soon

goodreads.com review of Steedman's Landscape for a Good Woman - 3.75 stars

Clare Shilland portraits

Saatchi Gallery: Tracey Emin's My Bed