Retold Feminine Memoirs: Our Collective Past and Present [1 ed.] 1848881924, 9781848881921

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Inside Front Matter
Advisory Board
ISBN
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART 1
1Ayers
2Malhotra
PART 2
3Saltzman
4Porter
5Lopes
6Burton
PART 3
7Kovar
8Louise
PART 4
9Stante
10Hernandez Perez
11Gad
12Holubowicz
PART 5
13Madlo
14Thompson
15Castellini
16Fernando
Back Cover

Citation preview

Re-Told Feminine Memoirs

At the Interface Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Dr Ken Monteith

Lisa Howard Dr Daniel Riha

Advisory Board James Arvanitakis Katarzyna Bronk Jo Chipperfield Ann-Marie Cook Peter Mario Kreuter S Ram Vemuri

Simon Bacon Stephen Morris John Parry Karl Spracklen Peter Twohig Kenneth Wilson

An At the Interface research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/ The Evil Hub ‘Evil, Women and the Feminine’

2013

Re-Told Feminine Memoirs: Our Collective Past and Present

Edited by

Gabriela Mádlo

Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087

ISBN: 978-1-84888-192-1 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2013. First Edition.

Table of Contents Introduction Gabriela Mádlo Part 1

The Terrible Mother Goddess Lilith: Repository for Masculine Shame Mary Y. Ayers The Dark Goddess and the Nation: The Political Uses of Religious Symbolism Meenakshi Malhotra

Part 2

Part 3

vii

3

11

The Monstrous Mother(hood) Graphic, but not Comic: Lady Macbeth as Early Modern Mother Esther Bendit Saltzman

23

The Wicked Stepmother: Fairy Tales, Child Abuse and Historical Epidemiology Theresa Porter

39

Bats Flying off My Womb: Monstrous Maternity in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry Elisabete Lopes

51

Abject Appeal and the Monstrous Feminine in Lady Gaga’s Self-Fashioned Persona ‘Mother Monster’ Laini Burton

63

The Feminine Aspect within the Space and the Image Abject(ion): The Feminine and the Masculine Zuzana Kovar

77

Dead Girl Walking: Feminine Death and the Self-Portrait Rebecca Louise

89

Part 4

The Feminine Power in Literature Women’s Impurity, Menstrual Blood and the Creation of Taboo: Perspectives from the Field of Christian Feminist Theology Nadja Furlan Štante From the Street to the Brothel: Following the Go-Between María Beatriz Hernández Pérez The Abode of Evil: The Female Body as a Symbol in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks Fadwa Mahmoud Hassan Gad Evil or Not? How Women Conventionally Deemed Evil are De-Eviled: An Analysis Based on Selected Works by Ana Castillo and Cristina Garcia Aleksandra Holubowicz

Part 5

101 111

123

133

The Rejected Women or Female Monsters/Nutcases? Bathory, the Bloody Countess as an Inspiration for Fiction and Cinema Gabriela Mádlo

145

On Tonight’s Menu: Corporeality, Food and Female Monstrosity in Two True Crime Texts Jay Daniel Thompson

155

Mothers Who Kill: The Rhetoric of the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1970s Japan Alessandro Castellini

169

Spurned Women Crying Rape in Philippine Jurisprudence Emmanuel Q. Fernando

181

Introduction Gabriela Mádlo The chapters collated in this volume reflect the discussions that developed during the 4th Global Conference on Evil, Women and the Feminine, held in Prague in the beginning of May 2012. The topics throughout those few days focused on our past and present, while delegates discussed countless aspects of women and evil. Within this volume are topics such as cinema and literature, both ancient and contemporary, Lady Gaga and the famous image of Cindy Sherman. Various discourses during the conference focused on the evil mothers in Japan, and cannibalistic murders in Australia. But discussions on these topics did not close with the question and answer follow-ups; they spilled over into session breaks and dominated dinner conversations. This volume, Re-Told Feminine Memoirs: Our Collective Past and Present, contains five thematic sections. Part 1: The Terrible Mother Goddess, opens with Mary Y. Ayers as she rediscovers the mythical power of Lilith and retells the story of the ‘Terrible Mother Goddess’ figure. Ayers takes the reader back in time, over 7000 years, to show different facets of ‘Queen of Succubi,’ in her chapter called, ‘Lilith: Repository for Masculine Shame.’ Lilith has been viewed as a femme fatale or the damned wife of Adam. The real face and character of the Great Mother is revealed and the subtle but consistent journey of the transformation into the Terrible Mother is unveiled. She has been known by many names in different cultures. She was Inanna, Goddess of Love in Sumer, and Lilith in the Old Testament. While the matriarchal civilisation slowly evolved into the patriarchal society, the image of this goddess of love faded. Warriors found a great use for her and she was transformed into a Goddess of the War, her loving eyes became the symbol of evil eyes. These ‘Terrible Mother’s Eyes’ were emblazoned on their shields. Ayers wraps up her chapter with a psychoanalytic explanation of Lilith and shame in human life and finishes with a question to be pondered: should we begin to see Lilith in a different light? Next, the reader is introduced to the ancient cult of the Indian Goddess, Kali. Meenakshi Malhotra reveals the iconographic and religious symbolism associated with this dark Hindu goddess. In her chapter, ‘The Dark Goddess and the Nation: The Political Uses of Religious Symbolism,’ Kali’s political mobilisation is discussed. Within this chapter, we also learn of Kali’s contribution for tantric texts such as Yogini-Tantra, Kamakhya-Tantra and Niruttara-Tantra. Next, Malhotra introduces us to the work of the first Bengali novelist, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, as he uses Kali’s symbolism for political mobilisation in his novel, Ananda-Math. Malhotra finishes with a reminder of the importance of Sarala Debi Choudhurani, who encouraged the practice of indigenous festivals, where Kali has centre-stage.

viii

Introduction

__________________________________________________________________ Part 2: The Monstrous Mother(hood), begins with the representation of the ‘mother’ within literature and popular culture. Esther Bendit Saltzman, in her article, ‘Graphic, but not Comic: Lady Macbeth as Early Modern Mother,’ examines two different approaches to Shakespeare’s main character in his wellknown tragedy. By comparing graphic novel adaptations, Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Manga Edition and the Classical Comics’ Macbeth: The Graphic Novel, Bendit Saltzman looks at the meaning of motherhood in early modern ages, comparing it to Lady Macbeth, often seen as an evil mother. Bendit Saltzman exposes two different images for Lady Macbeth, one in black and white and the other in full colour. Both graphic novels achieved well to illustrate the evil spirit within the character. In the next chapter, Theresa Porter discusses popular culture in the world of fairy tales, but this magical world is soon spoiled by unhappy endings. ‘The Wicked Stepmother: Fairy Tales, Child Abuse and Historical Epidemiology’ focuses on stepmothers and their stepchildren’s destiny. Porter compares this family model to epidemiological statistical data from the mid-19th century up to the present, including the views of Bruno Bettelheim, Carl Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz. Porter also researches evolutionary psychology while using the model of adaptation and the main human aim of survival. Porter uses this theory to explain the motives behind the stepmother’s rejection of her stepchildren. The third chapter in this section focuses on modern literature as it adapts to centuries-old fears linked to pregnancy and motherhood. Elisabete Lopes uncovers Sylvia Plath’s poetry which focused on her nightmares while pregnant. ‘Bats Flying off My Womb: Monstrous Maternity in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry’ carries strong messages of Plath’s view on pregnancy, motherhood and the female body. Lopes gives the reader examples of the writer’s nightmares which haunted her whilst pregnant; this dark experience is recorded in Sylvia’s diary on a few occasions during 1959. Lopes presents interesting evidence of negative beliefs about pregnancy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beliefs such as the moon, female imagination, desires and fantasies could cause child’s deformation. The Bell Jar (1963), Plath’s autobiographical novel, describes the nightmares of the female protagonist Esther Greenwood. Because popular culture includes in its category music and music’s idols, the final chapter in this section fits perfectly by demonstrating the ‘mother monster’ persona of pop music icon Lady Gaga. Laini Burton’s chapter, ‘Abject Appeal and the Monstrous Feminine in Lady Gaga’s Self-Fashioned Persona “Mother Monster,”’ unveils to the reader various symbols of Lady Gaga’s image. In the beginning of the song Born This Way, Burton argues Kristevian terms of the abject, ‘disturbing identity, system, order’ and applies Mikhail Bakthin’s and Marsha Meskimmon’s views. Lady Gaga’s unique and genius interpretation and performance of the monstrous feminine is very compelling and ambiguous. Burton also shows the link between the monstrous and the grotesque. Lady Gaga goes

Gabriela Mádlo

ix

__________________________________________________________________ further, she does not argue the crisis of subjectivity, and she performs the clash of subjectivity and objectivity and openly performs abjection. Christine Ross questions this act of the Lady Gaga performance. Next to this is a video clip where Lady Gaga represents herself as the monster mother. Burton also reviews Barbara Cread’s cinematic analyses of evil mothers and focuses on the message beyond the pop star’s performance of the manifestation of the monster mother. Part 3: The Feminine Aspect within the Space and the Image The ‘abject’ was a popular term during conference discussions. As the beginning of third part of the volume, Zuzana Kovar rethinks Julia Kristeva’s term of abject(ion) in her chapter, ‘Abject(ion): The Feminine and the Masculine’. Within this term there are negative connotations that cross the disciplines, instituting abject(ion) as Feminine. This understanding of the term has proliferated within architecture too. Kovar offers a series of illustrative examples. The first part rediscovers the understanding of abject(ion) which is primarily our bodily process of natural management of waste. Kristeva insists on its link to the maternal and in the same meaning is it translated into architecture and reduced into negative connotations. Kovar rethinks the gender understanding of abject(ion) productively. The masculine abject(ion), by given examples, makes more sense than the common understanding with purely maternal meaning. Kovar then turns her attention to architecture by introducing both a direct and an indirect approach to the subject with good connotations for both. Kovar applies Masculine and Feminine understanding, relative to abject(ion), into her discussion on architecture, showing duality between body and space in architecture. Next, ‘Dead Girl Walking: Feminine Death and the Self-Portrait,’ studies the photographic image of Cindy Sherman. Rebecca Louise not only presents research on the picture, but she uses it to analyse other images of women and death. She debates the photographed object as the photographer, whilst investigating a unique photograph of Cindy Sherman called Untitled #153, the self-portrait which represents a dead body, possibly the victim of a crime. Louise examines the static presence of this young female body by using Freud’s points on the ‘uncanny’ regarding this representation of the dead woman. Louise argues that this selfportrait may be a representation of her double that speaks through the lens to the audience; or that this could be a fetishistic strategy of Cindy Sherman to strengthen the femininity of the image. Part 4: The Feminine Power in Literature The literary works of Juan Ruiz, Fernando de Roja, Louise Ercrich, Cristina Garcia, Ana Castillo, and The Old Testament’s Leviticus are discussed in this next section. As a theme, feminine power is highlighted within patriarchal society during the Renaissance in Europe, during the settlement of white men in America, as well as 20th-century America.

x

Introduction

__________________________________________________________________ Nadja Furlan Štante discusses the understanding of menstrual blood in oldertradition Judaism, Christianity and other religions, using the texts of the Bible, especially the interpretation of the book of Leviticus. ‘Women’s Impurity, Menstrual Blood and the Creation of Taboo: Perspectives from the Field of Christian Feminist Theology’ focuses on Judaism, firstly. Štante discusses several traditions in which women were seen as ritually polluted and impure. Further evidence of female impurity in Hinduism, as Štante shows, is especially visible in the lowest caste, the Sudras. Similar traditions are evident in Judaism, where women were, for example, forbidden to contact Holy men. The Islamic traditions and practices are similar still in the present day where women, during this period, are classified as unclean and are forbidden to visit the mosque. Also discussed is the passage in the book of Leviticus which discusses the impurity of women during her regular blood discharge, but this impurity is rather seen as an issue of hygiene and not as immortal or evil. Štante takes the reader on a historical journey to discover the Greco-Roman traditional concept of the female periodical discharge. From Aristotle to Jerome and Thomas Aquinas, a typical taboo portrays menstruation as a reprehensible fluidity. This belief has been used as the main argument against the ordination of women in many denominations throughout the centuries. ‘From the Street to the Brothel: Following the Go-Between’ is a chapter presented by María Beatriz Hernández Pérez that discusses the medieval female body in Juan Ruiz’s Libro de Buen Amor and Fernando de Roja’s La Celestina. In her chapter, Hernández Pérez shows evidence of the female go-between as a very strong link between private households and the public outer-world of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The worlds of both nunneries and brothels were affected by these women with the ‘go-between’ typically being an old woman who knew a lot of priests. Christian society found a place for them by using their go-between services and knowledge to arrange marriages or by helping to avoid domestic violence by introducing the prostitute to the husband. But as time passed go-betweens began to be seen as bawds. Hernández Pérez gives us some interesting examples with explanations on two figures, one known in Spanish literature as Celestina, and the other character known as Trotaconventos: ‘conventtrotter.’ Fadwa Mahmoud Hassan Gad investigates hidden meanings of two female characters, Pauline and Fleur in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks. In the chapter, titled ‘The Abode of Evil: The Female Body as a Symbol in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks,’ Hassan Gad researches the various reflections of the female body which can be seen as the political, religious and cultural norm of a certain part of society. In contrast, the chapter’s author shows the important relationship between the state and local community. These two different worlds meet - Catholic versus Native Indians - in North America. Fleur is believed to be possessed by a water monster and is therefore rejected by her native society, and Pauline, as a witness of Fleur’s rape by

Gabriela Mádlo

xi

__________________________________________________________________ the white man, transforms her vision of her own society and beliefs. In Pauline’s mind and heart, the conflict of patriarchal European culture - male dominance and mistreatment of women - resulted in the conflict. Both Fleur and Pauline represent evil from different angles and fulfil their desires in diverse ways. Hassan Gad explains Erdrich’s interpretation of non-western, postcolonial cultures and their different visions of evil and the female body. Aleksandra Holubowicz’s chapter, ‘Evil or Not? How Women Conventionally Deemed Evil are De-Eviled: An Analysis Based on Selected Works by Ana Castillo and Cristina Garcia,’ researches the main characters of Garcia’s novel, The Aguero Sisters, and Castillo’s novel, The Mixquihuala Letters. Holubowicz uses different characters from these literary words to demonstrate the ambiguity between Northern American and Latino American identities. Holubowicz investigates the female role in, and the views on evil of, Latino-American culture, especially those linked to women and sexuality. Using literary examples of four characters, this chapter takes us on a tour to explore the reasons, expectations and results of these character’s journeys. Part 5: The Rejected Women or Female Monsters/Nutcases? This closing section contains the final four chapters, which focus on real-life examples of evil women and femininity. The main protagonists could be called rejected women of the society in which they lived, or could be tagged as female monsters or even, nutcases. It is argued that perhaps society possibly did not understand their true feelings and failed to help them before these women committed their crimes. Or was wickedness their true nature? These women inspired novel-writers and filmmakers, and began movements of liberation and societal changes. ‘Bathory, the Bloody Countess as an Inspiration for Fiction and Cinema,’ the chapter by Gabriela Mádlo, discusses the infamous Elizabeth Bathory’s lust for blood and her notoriously-known murders of young virgins, the case which motivated writers to present many different angles on the life of this noble Hungarian woman. Mádlo looks at the different approaches of the two novels based on Bathory’s life - Jožo Nižnánsky’s novel, Lady of Čachtice and Andrei Codrescu’s The Blood Countess. Both novels mark the same story and characters while targeting a different audience. Although these stories have a sixty-two-year difference in their timelines, both expose the bloody murders in their own diverse way. Alongside these literary works, Mádlo introduces movies such as Báthory (2008) and The Countess (2009). ‘On Tonight’s Menu: Corporeality, Food and Female Monstrosity in Two True Crime Texts’, by Jay Daniel Thompson, focuses on two Australian true crimesturned-novels, Peter Lalor’s Blood Stain (2002) and Ron Hicks’ The Vampire Killer (1992). As the chapter’s title states, Thompson researches the cases of two monstrous females, Katherine Knight and Tracey Wigginton, both who were

xii

Introduction

__________________________________________________________________ convicted of killing men in a cannibalistic fashion. Thompson challengingly argues the societal views of female killers as unfeminine. Thompson engages Maggie Kilgour and her study on cannibalism as well as the studies of Rosalind Smith, Rosemary Pringle and Susan Collings. The firstly named, Maggie Kilgour, stresses the fact that the ‘eating’ can be metaphorically seen as a form of ‘incorporation,’ whilst speaking about sexual intercourse, where, symbolically, two become one. Thompson then applies Kilgour’s thoughts on cannibalism to the details of these crimes, comparing them with the infamous Hannibal Lecter in the fictional novel, The Silence of the Lambs. This chapter concentrates on the contemporary era, where Alessandro Castellini engages the reader in evidence of monstrous mothers in everyday life in 1970’s Japan. Castellini’s chapter, ‘Mothers Who Kill: The Rhetoric of the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1970s Japan,’ researches the murders of children by their own mothers during the women’s liberation movement of the same time-period. His chapter reflects various ideas and opinions of the act of killing, and the women’s liberation movement’s engagement with this problem. Catellini exposes the opinions and interpretations of the movement on maternal filicide in Japanese society during that period. The author demonstrates the significant battle against the movement’s values and the ‘right’ for a woman to become a wife and mother. Castellini also explores the female condition of the ‘starvation of not living’ while being wife and mother by researching relevant materials and connecting them with the complete opposite of that opinion. He explores the thought of children as a woman’s life purpose and as proof of womanhood, versus maternal filicide as the only, but also abnormal, way in which a woman is able to cope with her situation. The final chapter in this volume focuses upon the contemporary Philippines. Emmanuel Q. Fernando’s chapter researches yet another dark side of women. ‘Spurned Women Crying Rape in Philippine Jurisprudence’ shows evidence of a common case of female revenge. The author introduces the historical and diverse cultural roles of Filipino women and men up to the 21st century. Fernando also explains the close link between revenge as an act of jealousy whilst bringing to life the cases of Sia, Bernat, Bihasa, Gabilan, de la Cruz, Velasquez, Antonio, Tagle and Villarin, all claiming rape by their former sexual partners.

Part 1 The Terrible Mother Goddess

Lilith: Repository for Masculine Shame Mary Y. Ayers Abstract The succubus is an image created out of the oppression of the Great Mother which began with the institution of patriarchal values over 7000 years ago. Patriarchal culture split off the maternal feminine, accomplished through the diabolisation of the Goddess. This aspect of the Great Mother is named Lilith, Queen of the Succubi, a blood sucking, evil demon full of revenge. Behind all the demonic revenge of the succubus, however, is the weakness of the hero. As a repository for masculine shame, the succubus symbolises mankind’s most fundamental source of powerlessness, fear, disrespect, and loss of self - all the places he feels the deepest kind of shame. Shame entered world history as the tragic flaw of patriarchy, and as civilisation developed, it was repressed and split-off into the deepest recesses of our being. The dynamics resulting from its denial lies at the heart of why humankind is presently threatened with loosing its humanity. What the demonisation of the maternal feminine combines to create for all of us an untenable and dangerous psychic and social situation. Staring into the evil eyes of Lilith, we are falling headlong towards forces that have the potential to destroy both natural and civilised life on our planet today. The ‘return of the repressed,’ therefore, means that Lilith will lead the way in raising consciousness to a new level if humanity is to survive as our patriarchal world comes apart. Key Words: Shame, succubus, Lilith, patriarchal, demonisation, Goddess, evil, maternal feminine, Evil Eyes, Virgin Mary. ***** Shame is the hidden affect that inspires oppression. Woman, once the site of fertility and birth, is oppressed and recast in the image of the succubus with the shift from matriarchal to patriarchal values which began over 7000 years ago. Symbols grow out of changing communal situations and experience, and are reflected in myth; the emerging image during this transition - and the means by which collective cultural forces ultimately deposed the Goddess and subjugated women - is the archetypal symbol of the succubus. She plays a pivotal role, for it is through her that a deliberate reversal of reality as it has formerly been perceived is effected: the Great Mother is transformed from a nurturing goddess symbolic of the regenerating powers of the earth into an image of pure evil. The succubus is a castrating dimension of the Terrible Mother Goddess, and the image behind the idea that masculinity and power has to be devoid of shame. She is one of the most crudely dehumanising images of woman, a despoiler of all human decency, a blood-sucking, evil demon who seduces a man in order to

4

Lilith

__________________________________________________________________ possess his phallic power, and murders infants and mothers. Struck by the gaze of the succubus, a man is weakened and led by hell’s delusions to take her to his bed. Her cruel orgasm embodies the castration of man. As the devouring mother she attempts to harm pregnant women, and drinks the blood and sucks the marrow from the bones of infants. Although strikingly little has been written about her given her 7000 year history, the succubus is a universal image that has acquired a multiplicity of faces and come to be known under many names. She is the dark feminine inspiration for the femme fatale, castrator, dominatrix, vixen bogey, witch, enchantress, blood sucker, seductress, villainess, scarlet woman, beguiling abomination, preening temptress, predator, demon bride, impure female, Hell’s rose, or black widow. More recent names might be bimbo, eye candy, career bitch or feminist, and you can see her in a new incarnation of female killer, the suicide bombers of Al Queda or the ‘black widows’ of Chechnya - women who want to live only long enough to take revenge for the loss of husbands and sons. She is a symbol of our age, the centerpiece on such American reality television shows as Deadly Sins, Scorned: Love Kills, and Revenge. Despite her multiple manifestations, some might know her best simply by her proper Biblical name - Lilith, otherwise known as Queen of the Succubi. She is the first wife of Adam and even worse than Eve, demonic from the moment of her creation. Here is her story: When the Almighty - may his name be praised - created the first, solitary man, He said: It is not good for man to be alone. And He fashioned for man a woman from the earth, like him (Adam), and called her Lilith. Soon, they began to quarrel with each other. She said to him: I will not lie underneath, and he said: I will not lie underneath but above, for you are meant to lie underneath and I to lie above. She said to him: We are both equal, because we are both (created) from the earth. But they didn’t listen to each other. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced God’s avowed name and flew into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Creator and said: Lord of the World! The woman you have given me has gone away from me. Immediately, the Almighty - may His name be praised - sent three angels after her, to bring her back. The Almighty - may His name be praised - said to him (Adam): If she decides to return, it is good, but if not, then she must take it upon herself to ensure that a hundred of her children die each day. They went to her and found her in the middle of the sea, in the raging water in which one day the Egyptians would drown. And they told her the word of God. But she refused to return. They said to her: We must drown you in the sea. She said to them:

Mary Y. Ayers

5

__________________________________________________________________ Leave me! I was created for no other purpose than to harm children, eight days (after birth) for boys and twenty for girls… 1 Spawned in the human imagination deep in the collective unconscious and sustained as plausible by the patriarchy, the succubus legitimised male control of society and justified the oppression of women. She is the means by which the patriarchy has maintained power for the last seven thousand years, and it is precisely for this reason that the succubus is so embedded in our world as a repository for masculine shame - meaning repressed shame. This image, and the idea that the burden of shame should be heaped upon the maternal feminine, has had a compelling hold on the psyches of so many people for thousands of years. The Demonisation of the Maternal Feminine The transition from matriarchy to patriarchy was accomplished through violent aggression, brutal massacres and the conquering of territories (and this is how institutionalised violence became the shadow of the Neolithic revolution). From about 4300 BC to 2800 B.C., the ancient world was battered by wave after wave of barbarian invasion. The warriors conquered the people and brought with them their powerful priests and angry male gods of war. The both monotheistic and polytheistic mother goddess was displaced by a single and all powerful father god. Through a subtle but consistent erasing process, the goddess was demythologised so that the numinosity that once belonged to her imbues male deities. Golden figurines are melted down and fashioned into chariots. Their precious stones are embedded in the hilts of shields and swords. The Terrible Mothers’ Evil Eyes appear on helmets to strike fear into the enemy through the power of this vengeful being. It is in this psychological climate that humanity opts for violence and rigid order over egalitarianism and the creative powers of nature, and the Great Mother is diabolised through her eyes. Figurines are first depicted without facial features to focus concentration on her body, the sacred portal through which life enters the world; in the transition to patriarchy she becomes the Terrible Mother with the Evil Eyes, or even just eyes. One example is Hathor, an Egyptian Winged Cow of Creation who is now sent out in the form of a large all-seeing eye by the sun god to spy on the human race. Fiercely aroused, she becomes savage and begins to destroy humanity. Take another example: Inanna was a Goddess revered in the city of Sumer as the Queen of Heaven and Earth, the Goddess of Love. Her awesome facial features loomed large over her temple, which was full of statues with startling, staring eyes. The most beloved of Mother Goddesses whose eyes of love adorned her temple was transformed into a goddess of war whose glance could kill. Her rage was then co-opted by mankind to ensure victories. Even today, defence departments use the powers of the Terrible Mother for military might. The largest and most powerful

6

Lilith

__________________________________________________________________ high explosive ever built by the U.S. has been named the MOAB, the ‘Mother Of All Bombs,’ described as ‘9.5 tons of sheer hell,’ and is also called the mother of all damage or a man-made earthquake. Lilith, or the dark, sexual side of Inanna, was once addressed in prayer on a four thousand-year-old tablet, but the mere mention of her name was enough turn her into a she-demon of the succubus variety. Embodied in the owl-eyed ‘Eye Goddess’ statuettes of the House of Inanna, by 700 B.C. she was diabolised in the Old Testament Book of Isaiah as a night or screech owl. Lilith’s diabolisation into a she demon, however, is no small matter; it will echo throughout history up through the present. Her demonisation precipitates a great theme of division between male and female, and this rupture reverberates throughout all of humanity, which has become separated from nature by dominating it with civilisation; this divides subject and object, splits value from analysis and knowledge from myth, dominates nature with culture, feeling with reason, intellect replaces heart, and the whole psyche is lost to an ego that creates a world with magic power. As humanity moves forward in a process of increasing individuation we pay a high price: the repression of shame - hence, a great divorce between the ego and the soul, and this is the place where evil gets in. Our collective situation contributes to the formation of consciousness and of an ego we designate patriarchal, meaning the emphasis on the development of masculinity and its characteristic traits and values. From infancy on patriarchal culture teaches a boy to forget the mother of his beginnings. Male development and socialisation is founded upon the concept of separation from the mother, the ‘act of matricide’ theorised by Freud and Jung, which derails the development of the masculine self in a number of ways. Boys are expected to mature out of their infantile needs very early, and the devaluation of his dependency becomes the male’s way of maintaining his heroisms. There can be no weakness, and so the boy must focus on power in one form or another. Male development becomes a relentless repudiation of the feminine - one of the most important things about being a boy is not being a girl, and being a man is not being a woman. But above all, the highest expectation of masculine development is to destroy any vulnerability to shame - and this is the way the succubus becomes the repository for it. In other words, behind all the demonic revenge of the succubus is the weakness of the hero, the fundamental source of powerlessness, fear, disrespect, and loss of self - all the places he feels the deepest kind of shame. The tragedy here is that the maternal feminine - hence woman - becomes victim in the masculine attempt to replace shame with pride, an ideology which has taken a profound toll on human life. The masculine repression of shame creates a tragic distortion: it is shameful to suffer violence, yet it is a source of honour to be the one who dispenses violence to others. The victim is to blame. There is good in harming others. Domination is superior to submission, yet this becomes the means through which violence becomes a noble crime that co-opts the higher self and its

Mary Y. Ayers

7

__________________________________________________________________ conscience. Exterminating helplessness through the victim remains a magnetising fact of masculine shame, even if momentarily obscured by the individual’s fraudulent superiority maintained by brute acts of power: not even killing someone or having all the money in the universe can eradicate shame. Shame and dependency remains hidden in the bond between those who inflict violence and those who endure it, as well as the level of aggression needed to deploy against the self to deny shame. In other words, the repression of shame requires a fundamental distortion of reality around man’s relationship to nature. Evil wrought through mankind derives its powers of temptation from shame sensitivity. When weakness is denied, when a man avoids facing his humanity with all its limitations, evil in some form is committed. In other words, powerlessness is always the reason for a pact with the devil. In the self, evil becomes a callous that ceases to feel, growing increasingly demonic due to shame’s denial. It is this form of conscienceless power that is dominating our world today, and there seems little doubt we can no longer master the disruption. The image of Lilith is a cultural programme for the unfolding of being, and as such facilitates the creation of a succubus world, meaning a world of limitation and death, a world where misogyny presses on relentlessly - just look at the current spate of misogyny in the American political scene - physical acts are being taken to repress women’s reproductive freedom. Opening our eyes to contemporary conditions reveals that we are inundated with archetypal manifestations of Lilith’s decimation. Under her evil spell conscience and conviction has been lost. Our value systems have disintegrated into shamelessness. Many people have lost their roots in soul and feel alienated in the world which devalues the invisible in favour of the more concrete markers for success. People mistake this for reality, and so narcissism constitutes our world of individual and private property, our ego ownership of objects that become containers for our identity. The fall out of civilisation is selfishness, shameless greed, a denial of death and destruction, craving for power, and a maternal deprivation that creates deeply pathological disorders. The power of the masculine over the feminine, Adam over Lilith, is the power of the denial of shame over humanity. When shame is repressed, the maternal feminine is being demonised. What this creates for all of us is an untenable and dangerous psychic and social situation. Lilith’s life-giving forces are turned towards annihilation, and we live in destruction and condemnation without end manifestations of Lilith and her grandchildren, the seven deadly sins. When the highest value is placed on a masculine sense of achievement and power, it is the kind of power that gets generated out of the driving force of the succubus, conscienceless due to the dissociation from the self that is internally required to project shame onto woman. When one is alienated from self, one is ripe to fall into evil when a situation provides the temptation. It is precisely when the masculine ego presumes to heroically conquer the succubus that he rides sin proudly only to be taken over by all he does not see.

8

Lilith

__________________________________________________________________ Concealed within civilisation’s purportedly grand and glorious beginning was the flaw that has widened into the most dangerous of chasms in our time. Shame is the affect concealed in the chasm, erupting and splitting the crevice ever wider. The enormous increase in technological and military power that civilisation has brought with it joins with the enormous aggressiveness and violent impulses that develop to repress it. What we have here is a recipe for disaster. Staring into the evil eyes of Lilith, we are falling headlong towards forces that have the potential to destroy both natural and civilised life on our planet today; the enormity of our crises cannot afford the politics of masculine conquest and the garnering of power that has created them in the first place. We have been repeating the same societal plot of domination, power over, sadism, masochism, oppression and victimisation - the projection of masculine shame and the diabolisation of the maternal feminine - for many thousands of years. The stage is now set for the apocalyptic tragedies that the history of civilisation, religious thought, literary studies and mythology, art and science suggest can indeed happen. A basic psychoanalytic tenet is that repression always creates pathological potential. So, like any psychic content that is repressed and only grows more powerful, the demonic side of the Great Mother, a place that holds the massive collective repression of shame, only grows in negativity as she is silenced and banished from expression. This inevitably leads to the triggering of an apocalyptic, ego-shattering experience for humankind. Cultural historian William Irwin Thompson describes ‘the archangel of evolution’ inevitably created out of the deep collective repression of the feminine. If the feminine is totally repressed and blood, nature, and the esoteric dimension of the heavens totally wiped out, then a terrible situation is created which will necessitate the appearance of another avatar of evolution, a Lilith of transformation through destruction. 2 Power thinks that man’s ingenuity is stronger than Mother Nature’s, but we are living and ‘looking through the glass darkly’ to imagine that wielding any amount of force, whatever form it takes, will prevent the world as we know it from vanishing in one glance from her Evil Eyes. If released into consciousness, Lilith can lead the way in raising consciousness to a new level if humanity is to survive as our patriarchal world comes apart. We are so advanced in a state of entropy that Lilith is forcing us into this fix so that our evolution keeps moving. Lilith is the repository for shame which twists into evil, two strands that fell between the cracks in the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy synthesised into her being. She is rising up, so we need to open our eyes and take a closer look at shame and evil as a way of trying o feel our way through

Mary Y. Ayers

9

__________________________________________________________________ the darkness of our contemporary conditions. For mankind, the sting of shame may just be the antidote for the disease of power which is destroying civilisation. The ‘return of the repressed’ therefore, means that Lilith is leading the way in raising consciousness to a new level for humanity to survive as our patriarchal world comes apart. She is returning from repression as the ‘Maid of Desolation’ in order to effect reconciliation with her. If we seek to continue our domination of envisioning our shame, we may be able to turn destructive energies into a creative use. This is the portentous power of negativity, the creative energy contained in evil, the meaning of Lilith’s desolation. She will annihilate again and again in order to effect shame’s revelation and restore sight of her beneficence. If we can accept shame and love it into humanity, the energies of destruction can be transmuted and taken up into the creative destructuring of patriarchal civilisation. Lilith then becomes a cosmological principle working to restore faith and spirit. This aspect of the Great Mother has been emerging in the form of the Virgin Mary, whose appearances have been steadily increasing over the last two hundred years. She is closest to the heart of God, or whatever one names a Higher Spiritual Power, and urges us to start leading lives based on the idea that a Divine Reality exists, pulling us towards the deepest impulses of our hearts - and the only antidote to the evil that demonises the maternal feminine through the projection of shame.

Notes 1

M. Seeinschneider, ed., Alphabeta de’ben Sira (Berlin, 1858), 23. William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality, and the Origins of Culture (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 251.

2

Bibliography Ayers, Mary. Mother-Infant Attachment and Psychoanalysis: The Eyes of Shame. London: Routledge, 2003. Seeinschneider, M., ed. Alphabeta de’ben Sira. Berlin, 1858. Thompson, William I. The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981. Mary Y. Ayers, PhD, LCSW-C is a psychotherapist in private practice. She is the award winning author of Mother-Infant Attachment and Psychoanalysis: The Eyes of Shame and Masculine Shame: From Succubus to the Eternal Feminine.

The Dark Goddess and the Nation: The Political Uses of Religious Symbolism Meenakshi Malhotra Abstract Kali in the Hindu pantheon of numerous gods and goddesses has been represented as the dark goddess, created by powerful male gods to counter tremendous forces of evil that threatened to disrupt and destabilise the cosmos. According to Hindu sacred texts, at this critical juncture all the gods consolidated their unique powers to create the figure of Shakti, one of the most widely represented and recognisable icons of the Hindu pantheon. The figure of Shakti (which can be translated as force, energy and strength) sloughed off/bifurcated into two-one was the fair goddess Gauri, the other, Kali, armed with weapons and covered with a garland of severed human heads. Unclothed with disheveled hair and her tongue out (in shame/surprise?) as she realises that she has stepped on the great god Shiva, (who has been her consort in various incarnations) Kali seems to beyond the pale of canonical, institutionalised Hinduism and its icons. Characterised by Wendy Doniger as a “goddess of the tooth,” this figure has a complex iconography and associations with tantric worship and rites. How does this figure get generated? In other words, where does Kali come from Hinduism incorporates many modes of worship and can be called palimpsestic or multi-layered. Does the origin of this figure lie in earlier modes of worship like animism (worship of nature and animals like snakes which pose a threat to man). The proposed chapter will focus on the way Kali-worship was popularised in Bengal in the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century. The worship of Kali was especially common to certain social groups like the militant nationalists, outlaws and forest-dwellers fringe groups which were emerging at that time and discovered in the figure and symbolism of Kali, a powerful resource to articulate both their downtrodden, poverty-ridden state as well as their political aspirations of empowerment. How do we read this mobilisation and appropriation of the figure and iconography of Kali? Does it express something of our understanding of evil, divinity and femininity and its interlinkages? Or is it a Manichean vision of the divine and cosmic forces, that the darkness and evil of the world has to be understood-and countered-by a dark goddess? Key Words: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bengali nationalism movement, Kali, Ramakrishna, tantra worship. ***** The chapter focuses on the iconography and religious symbolism associated with the goddess Kali and its political mobilisation at a particular historical

12

The Dark Goddess and the Nation

__________________________________________________________________ juncture, in order to explore the multivalent and historically complex and variable nature of mythology and religious symbolism. It is part of an attempt to see myths and cultural symbols not as universal or eternal, but as resonating differently in different epochs. At the center of this exploration is the figure of Kali, so called presumably because of her dark skin (and also the associations with Kaliyuga or the dark age/epoch). As David Kinsley points out: ‘the goddess Kali is almost always described as having a terrible and frightening appearance.’ 1 She is dark in colour, is usually naked, and has long, disheveled hair. She is adorned with severed arms as a girdle, freshly cut heads as a necklace and serpents as bracelets. She has long, sharp fangs, is often depicted as having clawlike hands and long nails, and is often said to have blood smeared on her lips. Her usual haunts are battlefields and cremation grounds. In the former setting, she is depicted as a furious fighter and in the latter she is pictured in the company of lowly animals like the jackal. 2 Many texts and contexts treat Kali as an independent deity, unassociated with any male deity. However, she is usually shown as the consort or wife of Shiva, inciting him to destructive acts which threaten the stability of the cosmos. The earliest references to Kali in the Hindu tradition date to the early medieval period (around 600 A.D.) and locate Kali either on the battlefield or in situations on the fringes of Hindu society. The Representation of Kali in Ancient and Medieval Texts In the Agni and Garuda-Puranas, she is mentioned in invocations that aim for success in war and against one’s enemies. In the Bhagavata-Purana Kali is the patron deity of a band of thieves whose leader seeks to achieve Kali’s blessings in order to have a son. The thief kidnaps a saintly Brahmin youth with the intention of offering him as a blood sacrifice to Kali. The effulgence of the saintly and virtuous youth burns Kali herself when he is brought near her image. Emerging from her image, instead she kills the band of thieves in a fit of rage. She then proceeds to decapitate the corpses of the thieves, drink their blood and throw their heads about in sport. Banabhatta’s seventh-century drama Kadambari features a goddess named Chandi, an epithet used for both Durga and Kali, who is worshipped by the Sabaras, a tribe of primitive hunters. The worship takes place deep in the forest and blood offerings are made to propitiate the goddess. Vakpati’s Gaudavaho (late 7th early 8th century) portrays Kali as an aspect of Vindhyavasini (an epithet of Durga), portrayed as clothed in leaves and as a receiver of human sacrifices. 3 In Bhavabhuti’s Malatimadhava, a drama of the early 8th century, a female votee of Chamunda, who is often identified with Kali, captures the heroine, Malati, with the intention of sacrificing her to the goddess. Chamunda is depicted as a terrible goddess, as maternal dentata or goddess of the tooth, with a gaping mouth and bloody fangs. A hymn to the goddess describes her as dancing wildly and making the earth shake.

Meenakshi Malhotra

13

__________________________________________________________________ Another text in which Kali appears is Somadeva’s Yasatalika (11th-12th century) which contains a long description of a goddess called Candamari. 4 The description of this goddess comes very close to the description and iconography of Kali. The goddess adorns herself with pieces of human corpses, bathes in rivers of wine and blood, sports in cremation grounds and uses human skulls as drinking vessels. Bizarre and fanatical devotees gather at her temple and undertake forms of ascetic self-torture. In most of Kali’s literary reincarnations, she is associated with the periphery of Hindu society. Her devotees are mainly low-caste or tribal people and her temples are traditionally located far away from towns and villages, near cremation grounds and the dwellings of Chandalas (low caste which performs some death rites). One of Kali’s best known depictions within institutionalised contexts is found in the Devi-Mahatmya. In the third episode, which features Durga’s defeat of Sumbha and Nisumbha and their allies, Kali appears twice. The first time is when early in the battle, the demons Chanda and Munda approach Durga with their weapons. Durga becomes angry, her face darkens and the goddess kali springs from her forehead. She is black, wears a garland of human heads and a tiger skin. In the battle, she destroys the demons with her bare hands and crushes them in her jaws. She decimates the two demon generals and helps Durga defeat the demon Raktabija. This demon had the ability to multiply; the moment a drop of his blood fell on the ground, multiple versions of the same rose up and Durga found it hard to vanquish him. Kali defeats him by sucking the blood from his body and throwing the countless reproductions of Raktabija in her gaping mouth. Most iconographic representations replicate this image of Kali. Even in her relationship with Shiva, it is she who is portrayed usually as the dominant partner. She is depicted as standing or dancing on Shiva’s prone body. In the mythic dance contest where she is supposed to have been tamed by Shiva, she is only temporarily subdued. In the pantheon of Hindu goddesses, she represents an element, a force that is disruptive, wild, untamed, uncontrolled. She threatens stability and order and even when she kills and subdues demons and other negative figures on the battlefield, she becomes frenzied and drunk on the blood of her victims. She seems to represent an aspect of reality that is not amenable to human control-liminal and untamable. She is cast in the image of a mother goddess who resolutely resists domestication. Along with her centrality in Bengali Sakta devotionalism, the goddess Kali is also the central figure in Tantra-worship and tantric rites. According to Kinsley, ‘an underlying assumption in Tantric ideology is that reality is the result and expression of the symbiotic interaction of male and female, Siva and Sakti, the quiescent and the dynamic.’ 5 Kali is the goddess who dominates Tantric iconography, texts and rituals, especially in left handed Tantra. All the tantric texts like Yogini-Tantra, the Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra all name her as the greatest manifestation of Mahadevi. She is also called the formless featureless,

14

The Dark Goddess and the Nation

__________________________________________________________________ non-gendered and without attributes - imperishable, approximating to pure being. In the words of Ramakrishna Paramahansa: According to the tantric scriptures, the ultimate reality is chit(consciousness) which is identical to sat (being) and ananda (bliss). This ultimate reality is identical with the Vedic teachings. While man is identical to this reality, under the influence of maya or illusion, he has lost his true self. He has lost his identity between a world of subject and object and this error is solely responsible for his bondage and suffering. Therefore, the goal of spiritual discipline is the rediscovery of his true identity with the divine reality. 6 The goal of uniting the individual soul with the divine spirit necessitates austere methods of ‘discrimination and renunciation.’ This, according to Rajiv Mehrotra, is tough and rigorous to follow and therefore open to only a few. Tantra, in comparison, takes into consideration the natural weakness of human beings and their lower appetites. Further, it combines philosophy with rituals, meditation with ceremonies and renunciation with enjoyment. 7 Renunciation is not strictly prescribed as a necessity because the ultimate aim of tantra is to sublimate ‘bhoga’ or material enjoyment into yoga or union with consciousness. The discipline of tantra is graded to suit aspirants or students of all degrees. Exercises are prescribed for people with animal, heroic and divine outlooks. Some rites require the presence of women, who are looked upon as the embodiment of the goddess Kali, the Mother of the universe. 8 According to the tantra system, shakti is the creative force of the universe and all women are the symbols of the Divine Mother. Kali is one of the important manifestations of the divine mother. Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-1886) was a part of and also instrumental in effecting a hindu revivalism towards the end of the 19th century. The path that he chose to adopt in the course of his religious awakening/enlightenment encapsulated elements of institutionalised ‘high’ Hinduism as well as other practices derived from Tantrism, Dehavad (religious practices derived from body-centered and materialistic philosophies which questioned dualism) and the left-handed way (Bamachari). His religious practices ran the gamut of a wide spectrum of devotional trajectories, his ultimate aim in all these engagements was to prove that all paths were essentially the same, and what mattered is the quality of devotion or ‘bhakti’ that was involved. Ramakrishna assumed a very important role in the Bengali cultural imaginary and Sumit Sarkar argues that his teachings offered his devotees a space outside the domain of colonialism. The Bengali middle class was growing exponentially by mid-19th century, propelled by the proliferation of education and print culture. A number of newly-founded schools and college were enrolling an increasing number

Meenakshi Malhotra

15

__________________________________________________________________ of students, with both men and women receiving the benefits of institutionalised education. While women’s education was calibrated in a non-instrumental way to train them to be good wives and mothers (and therefore the preceptors of good citizens), increasing numbers of Bengali men were joining the lower echelons/ranks of colonial administrative service. This forced men into a nonhegemonic, somewhat servile role of ‘service-providers’ and came to be referred to as ‘chakri’ in Bengali or ‘naukri’ in Hindi (Chakar in Bengali refers to a servant). The devotional imagery of Ramakrishna offered the Bengali middle-class a space outside the domain of servility which could provide the possibility of autonomy, or its illusion. This thesis of a liberatory space provided by Ramakrishna is developed by Sarkar to explain the mystic’s hold over the Bengali middle classes at the turn of the century. This space is variously interpreted in terms of an inner space, one of spirituality and interiority. Thus, what appears as an internal contradiction of Bengali nationalism-the prevalence of goddess worship in a cultural setup which witnessed the valorisation of male-dominated Vedic structures, can be understood in terms of the symbolic valences and resonances of Kali worship, which gained a new meaning and significance at this time. Why this is germane to any thesis of political mobilisation is that Kali symbolically suggests a kind of power which was no longer available to Bengali men, who were increasingly characterised as cowardly and effeminate. 9 Moreover, Kali assumes a new significance in terms of the Bengali imagination which is given a political direction and dimension in the works of Bengali authors like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894). Can we speculate that she occupies a role akin to the Jungian ‘anima,’ to the developing masculine, rationalist culture sought to be imposed by the colonial rulers? Kali as a Signifier of Cultural Nationalism It was in the work of the author Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, known as the first Bengali novelist, that we find the iconography and symbolical imagery of Kali being used for purposes of political mobilisation. His novel, Ananda-Math, set during the dreadful Bengali famine of 1770, was serialised in ‘Bangadarshan’ and subsequently published as a full-length novel in 1882. In this novel, an ascetic tells Mahendra, the protagonist, about the state of the motherland. The beautiful form of the mother-goddess is identified with the country and its past glories. In its present, impoverished form, she is embodied as Kali, the dark mother. The ascetic narrates: Look, what the mother has come to…Kali, the dark mother. She is naked because the country is impoverished, the country is now been turned into the cremation ground, so the mother is garlanded with skulls. 10

16

The Dark Goddess and the Nation

__________________________________________________________________ This condition is however envisioned as a temporary one till the country/motherland is rescued by revolutionaries from the clutches of the foreign interlopers and restored to its pristine form and glory. What is interesting is how the iconography of Kali is welded with a new verbal economy, the vocabulary of economic depredation and colonial degradation. This idiom is interesting because a modern historical analysis is actually being metaphorically and metonymically suggested by the use of the figure of Kali here. Kali is etymologically related to ‘kala’ or time, and the two-fold dynamics underlying this trope can be understood. Bengal’s miserable state, it is suggested, is not a permanent one, and a historical epoch will come when the motherland is restored to its former glory by the efforts of the sons of the nation. In adopting this historical thesis, Bankim is encoding a warning to the colonial ruler that times (kala) will change, and Hindustan will be restored to its former, ancient glory. Bankim Chattopadhay was one of the first writers, chronologically, to use religious icons as a marker of Hindu nationalism and Hindu cultural identity but he was certainly not the last. In Women and the Hindu Right, Urvashi Butalia and Tanika Sarkar have commented on the use and deployment of religious imagery in the politics of the Hindu right in the 1990s. Detailed analysis of Bankim’s works offers sufficient proof of his historical consciousness which hinges on a modern, secular, rationalist sensibility. In her article on ‘Positivism and Nationalism: Womanhood and Crisis in Nationalist Fiction: Bankimchandra’s Anandamath,’ Jasodhara Bagchi opines that in the late novels of Bankimchandra, more particularly in Anandamath, ‘order and progress are not discussed in terms of social analysis, nor in naturalistic psychological terms.’ 11 Instead, ‘broad historical canvases are lit up by the lurid glow of a vengeful, often mythologized, order threatened from within and without.’ 12 She traces the centrality of womanhood in this parable of national confrontation to the influence of August Comte on Bankim. Thus, ‘consistent with the mood and temper of Comte’s writings, womanhood becomes the emblem of this threatened order of nationhood.’ 13 Bagchi traces the figure of the mother-goddess to Comte’s ‘goddess of humanity’ 14 who acquires a new dimension in militant Hindu nationalism, in the figure of the goddess (Devi) who is the motherland. In the adaptation of the mythology of Shakti, the ‘pouvoir Spirituel’ of Comte is converted into power conceived as a feminine force, ‘Bankim appropriated some of the folk practices into his elitist nationalist consciousness.’ 15 Further, Bankimchandra’s repertoire of feminine figures usually demonstrate a splitting of the social narrative into two-one side of the split is the refined ‘Victorian idea of womanhood’ or the companionate wife and the ‘other’ is the figure of the temptress who is morally and socially disruptive. However, in the last phase of his novel-writing, Bankim went further. Bagchi points out that in this phase, Bankim was distinctly preoccupied with the heroic obligation of preserving a Hindu order, he created images of women who have defied the normal canons of femininity in order to embody resistance against a state of crisis. Thus he has given an almost

Meenakshi Malhotra

17

__________________________________________________________________ ‘demonic power’ to women in his novels to convey the ‘heightened sense of crisis’ and the imagery and iconography of Kali manifests this idea: both the vagaries of history and ravages of time (kala). Thus the motherland’s resplendent past, her wretched present and her radiant future are all tropes of an ‘appeal for a rising nationalist consciousness.’ 16 As Ranajit Guha and others have shown, the enterprise of modern historiography developed in 19th century India, partly due to a new understanding of linear time. Earlier Indian/indigenous views on time often stressed its cyclical nature. Bankim’s historical consciousness seems to embrace both these ideas of history as well as the Comtean ideas of a progressive evolution of consciousness. Why this point is significant is that both history-writing and the novel as a genre unfold in time, are in fact made possible by a sense of temporality. 17 The invocation of Kali, with her morally ambivalent iconography, helped shape the contours of a newly-emergent cultural nationalism. It is notable that Sarala Debi Choudhurani (1875-1945) encouraged the practice of indigenous cultural rituals/festivals like Birashtami, in order to arouse a sense of nationalistic fervour in the people. Further, how does the revival of Kali-worship in certain cadres-initially ‘outlaws’ like robbers and then extremists and militant nationalists fit in with the question of evil, women and the feminine? The figure and worship of Kali does not only exist at the intersection of colonialism and religion but locates them both on the site of gender. We can only pose the question while citing its complexity. There is no easy way of recuperating the past so as to locate the Indian woman in the center of resistance. This is a complex issue and an ‘unproductive approach’ especially given that revivalism and communalism return with commercialised patriarchalism. 18 One has here to look at religious ideologies in their interaction with actual histories in order to wrest some spaces for the play of the feminine postcolonial. The feminist theorising that emerged in the context of the political mobilisation of women by the Hindu right in the 1990s offers two critiques of this ideology. One is that the use of the figure of Kali as representative of Hindu womanhood or female empowerment is problematic. Indian women are imaged typically as Lakshmi, the goddess of the household or Durga, the mother goddess. To use the ambivalent imagery of Kali as a marker of Hindu feminine identity and as representative of Indian womanhood is exclusionary and limiting. In a landmark speech by given by Flavia Agnes, feminist lawyer and activist, Agnes announced that the women’s movement in India, for all its ‘secular pretensions, was normatively Hindu.’ 19 She refers to the fact that she has been tagged as a ‘Christian Feminist.’ Does the use of Kali imagery and iconography to endorse the empowerment of Hindu women really work in the present context? Or is the use of these images-and organisations like Durgavahini-paradoxical and ambivalent in the (post) modern

18

The Dark Goddess and the Nation

__________________________________________________________________ scenario? In the way the Hindu right deployed this imagery to create indigenous ‘feminisms’ and to mobilise middle class Hindu women is politically problematic and hardly emancipatory. Not only is it majoritarian and therefore, exclusionary; it also seems to legitimate and endorse violence. Surely the way forward for a secular democratic Indian state is to eschew the unhappy marriage of religion and politics in the 21st century.

Notes 1

David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsi Das, 1986), 116. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 117. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 122. 6 Rajiv Mehrotra, Thakur Sri Ramakrishna: A Biography (New Delhi: Hay House Publishers, 2009), 76. 7 Ibid., 77. 8 Ibid., 77-78. 9 Read more in Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995) and Indra Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and Virile History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994) 10 Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Ananda-Math (New Delhi, 1882), 128. 11 Jasondhare Bagchi, ‘Positivism and Nationalism: Womanhood and Crisis in Nationalist Fiction: Bankim Chandra’s Anandamath’, in Women’s Studies in India: A Reader, ed. Mary John (New Delhi: Penguin, 2008), 129. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 130. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 See Paul Ricouer, Time and Narrative (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 18 For more details see Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London and New York: Routledge, 2005). 19 Raka Ray, Handbook of Gender (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 7.

Meenakshi Malhotra

19

__________________________________________________________________

Bibliography Bagchi, Jasondhara. ‘Positivism and Nationalism: Womanhood and Crisis in Nationalist Fiction: Bankim Chandra’s Anandamath’. In Women’s Studies in India: A Reader, edited by Mary John. New Delhi: Penguin, 2008. Butalia, Urvashi, and Tanika Sarkar, eds. Women and the Hindu Right. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1995. Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra. Ananda-Math,Bankim Rachanabali. New Delhi, 1882. Chowdhury, Indira. The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994. Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsi Das, 1986. Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism (The New Critical Idiom). London and New York: Routledge, 2005. Mehrotra, Rajiv. Thakur Sri Ramakrishna: A Biography. New Delhi: Hay House Publishers, 2009. Ray, Raka, ed. Handbook of Gender. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012. Ricouer, Paul. Time and Narrative. 3 vols. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin, et al. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Sarkar, Sumit. Writing Social History. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. Sinha, Mrinalini. Colonial Masculinity. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995. Meenakshi Malhotra, Deptartment of English, Hansraj College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007, India.

Part 2 The Monstrous Mother(hood)

Graphic, but not Comic: Lady Macbeth as Early Modern Mother Esther Bendit Saltzman Abstract Can a graphic novel adaptation serve as evidence for early modern anxieties regarding womanhood? This chapter addresses whether graphic novel adaptations of Macbeth do just that; it explores whether graphic novel depictions of Lady Macbeth limit scholarly interpretations of her character by depicting a simplified figure of evil, rather than by characterising her as a complex character reflecting early modern ideas. Though graphic novel adaptations are becoming increasingly popular, they are not often recognised for their potential contributions to academia. Graphic novels do interpret their sources, but the visual images provide material that opens new avenues for the communication of ideas. Readers or spectators of Macbeth would readily agree that Lady Macbeth is notorious for her role in her husband’s descent from hero to serial murderer. We can, though, debate the degree of villainy in her character. Furthermore, we can question the importance of her motherhood in the assessment of that villainy. This chapter argues that graphic novel adaptations of Macbeth allow for scholarly interpretations of Lady Macbeth’s character that reflect early modern ideologies. The examination of two graphic novels, Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Manga Edition and Classical Comics’ Macbeth: The Graphic Novel, reveals evidence of Lady Macbeth as an early modern mother, and reveals characterisations of her that reflect early modern anxieties concerning motherhood and the feminine. This study begins with a review of scholarly research addressing the early modern linking of motherhood with perceived threats to patrilineal succession, fear of witchcraft, and concerns about maternal infanticide. It follows by analysing scenes 1.5 and 1.7 of Macbeth, and compares these findings with corresponding scenes in each of the graphic novels. The evidence in the graphic novels; including character appearance, gesture, framing, and artistic techniques; do indeed reveal complex depictions of early modern motherhood. Both graphic novels provide material for multiple interpretations of Lady Macbeth’s character. Key Words: Lady Macbeth, graphic novel adaptations, Early Modern motherhood, Early Modern infanticide, evil motherhood, Macbeth, gender. ***** 1. Introduction Can a graphic novel adaptation serve as evidence for early modern anxieties regarding womanhood? We can see evidence of these anxieties in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but do they come through in graphic novel depictions of the play?

24

Graphic, but not Comic

__________________________________________________________________ Stephen Greenblatt explains that ‘Macbeth is a tragedy of meltings, category confusions, and liminal states.’ 1 These category blendings create the ambiguities in Lady Macbeth’s character that allow for interpretation. Associations with witches and the supernatural provide the element of evil. Associations with masculine traits tie her to the acquisition of power, and associations with motherhood intersect with both. While Lady Macbeth is notorious for her role in Macbeth’s descent from hero to serial murderer, one can debate the degree of villainy in her character, and the importance of her motherhood in the assessment of it. Lady Macbeth may be the instigator of her husband’s treachery or his partner-in-crime. She may be evil or mad, driven by ambition, or even demonic. She may be a mother protecting a child, or an early modern hysteric. Shakespeare’s narrative elements, use of figurative language, and masterful use of ambiguity allow for alternative readings of her character. For this chapter, I will examine two graphic novels, Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Manga Edition, and Classical Comics’ Macbeth: The Graphic Novel, Original Text version, to argue that a graphic novel’s visual portrayal of Lady Macbeth, in conjunction with Shakespeare’s script, can maintain ambiguity that allows multiple interpretations of her character, and reflect early modern anxieties toward the feminine. Lady Macbeth’s motherhood will serve as a framework in which to examine her character in Scenes 1.5 and 1.7 of the play, and in its graphic novel adaptations. The Manga version is by Adam Sexton, Eve Grandt, and Candace Chow. 2 The Classical Comics’ version is adapted by John McDonald; the visual art team consists of Jon Haward on character designs and original artwork, Nigel Dobbyn on colouring and lettering, and Gary Erskine as inking assistant. Both versions express the creative teams’ narrative voices while allowing for reader interpretation. To evaluate the importance of Lady Macbeth’s motherhood in these adaptations, I will explain early modern beliefs that deal with motherhood and its ties to lineage, power, and the supernatural. I will then evaluate evidence in each version to demonstrate it maintains Shakespeare’s ambiguity, allows for multiple interpretations, and reflects early modern anxieties toward womanhood. 2. Early Modern Motherhood According to Stephanie Chamberlain: …maternity [is] an ambiguous, conflicted status in early modern England. Indeed, the images of nursing and infanticide that frame Lady Macbeth’s act one fantasy invoke a maternal agency...That patrilineage could be irreparably altered through marital infidelity, nursing, and infanticide rendered maternal agency a social and political concern… 3

Esther Bendit Saltzman

25

__________________________________________________________________ In Macbeth, the importance of lineage is manifest in the familial and monarchical successions. In threatening to kill the nursing child, Lady Macbeth threatens Macbeth’s control over his patriarchal lineage. In urging Macbeth to kill Duncan, she threatens the royal order of succession. The supernatural was also attributed to maternal infanticide. Ideas regarding female physiology and maternity influenced these associations as well. Jenijoy La Belle explains, ‘… functions and processes of the body were believed to have mental consequences,’ 4 and that women exhibiting ‘disorderly’ behaviour were considered influenced by the supernatural. 5 Contrasting images of saintly and evil motherhood produced anxieties about maternal physiology and motherhood itself. Even so, Joanna Levin explains that new ideas of physiology were challenging ‘traditional’ ideas of demonology. She cites the Mary Glover witchcraft case, 6 of which Edward Jorden wrote about Suffocation of the Mother, a disease crediting physiology for the supposed possessions. Levin explains: …Jorden’s etiology maintained that hysterica passio, or, as it was more popularly known, the “Mother,” was a natural disease that could mimic the signs of demonic vexation. The satanic force animating both the bewitched and witches alike could thereafter be relocated within the female body, especially within her sexual and reproductive functions. 7 Levin’s analysis merges ‘the [relations] between demonology, the etiology of hysteria, and concurrent patriarchal ideologies.’ 8 We have, therefore, a witches’ brew of ideologies in which the supernatural, patriarchal, and physiological concerns about motherhood blend. 3. Early Modern Motherhood and Lady Macbeth In Shakespeare’s script, Lady Macbeth exhibits behaviours similar to Glover’s. Kaara Peterson cites Michael Macdonald’s descriptions of these symptoms, which included a ‘constricted’ throat, difficulty swallowing, swelling of the neck and throat, episodes of being ‘dumb and blind,’ ‘unconsciousness,’ ‘trance-like states,’ and ‘more traditional manifestations of “the Mother,”’ which her first doctor called ‘hysterical passions’ before shifting to the opinion that Glover was possessed. 9 Linking a disease called ‘the Mother’ with supernatural and physical etiologies, then, would connect early modern motherhood with disease and evil. Christina Leon Alfar states that Lady Macbeth ‘… has become the epitome, in critical history, of evil motherhood.’ 10 Adam Sexton states that the women of Macbeth are ‘powerful’ and that they ‘drive the action’ of the play. 11 If the action is murder, we would expect the depiction of Lady Macbeth as evil. Conversely, John McDonald states that the historical inspiration for Lady Macbeth’s character had a son reputedly ‘simple-minded,’ and Lady Macbeth’s

26

Graphic, but not Comic

__________________________________________________________________ ‘suppression of conscience (femaleness) is necessary to ensure his safety in a savage world- the great maternal instinct taking precedence over everything else.’ 12 Since Sexton sees Lady Macbeth as powerful, and McDonald sees her as protective, it will be helpful to consult Shakespeare’s text. 4. Evidence from Scene 1.5 In scene 1.5, lines 36-52, Lady Macbeth calls on spirits to give her strength by removing her feminine characteristics: The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my embattlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood, Stop up th’access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Th’effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief. Come thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry ‘Hold, hold!’ 13 Stephanie Chamberlain explains, ‘Critics have traditionally read this scene as an attempt by Lady Macbeth to seize a masculine authority perceived necessary to the achievement of her political goals.’ 14 Peterson, however, refers to the speech as ‘Lady Macbeth’s summoning up of hysterical indisposition…she sees menstrual blockage as effecting a change in her humoural composition, a means of making her more cruelly masculine and less subject to the determinism of the womb that makes her female.’ 15 Shakespeare’s verse invites both readings by invoking images of masculine power, hysterica passio, witchcraft, and motherhood by using the motifs of hoarseness, swelling, and thickening. La Belle points out his biological imagery. ‘Visitings of nature’ allude to menstruation; thickening of blood and stopping up of the passage allude to the cessation of menses and the prevention of compassion and remorse by blocking the blood vessels to the heart. 16 She adds that blocking the passage prevents childbearing, and the stoppage of menstruation causes

Esther Bendit Saltzman

27

__________________________________________________________________ ‘…corruption- in the body and in the state.’ 17 Finally, the nurturing breast milk with be ‘[replaced] with gall.’ 18 Shakespeare employs figurative and rhetorical devices. The repetition of ‘thick’ and the ‘th’ sound throughout the passage allude to the thickening of hysterica passio congestion. The hoarse raven, though, links Lady Macbeth to the hysteric and the supernatural, since the raven can be a Christian symbol for the Devil. Alliteration of the ‘s’ sound also supports the demonic, by mimicing the sound of a snake. In fact, in line 64 Lady Macbeth will soon tell Macbeth to act like a serpent. Demonic allusions continue with Shakespeare’s sight imagery, which occurs with the words ‘sightless,’ ‘see,’ ‘peep.’ If, in Christian symbolism, the eye represents the all-seeing G-d, omniscience, power, and light, then lack of sight would refer to the darkness of evil. 19 Since sight loss is a symptom of hysterica passio, sight imagery connects the supernatural and physical in evil motherhood. Graphic novels interpret using visual rhetoric. In the Manga version, the corresponding visuals are of Lady Macbeth’s face; her eyebrows are crinkled together, making her look devious and calculating. Sexton states that Lady Macbeth’s ‘name has become a universal (if sexist) synonym for distaff ambition,’ and the depiction supports this view (Image 1). 20

Image 1: Lady Macbeth summons the spirits. 21

28

Graphic, but not Comic

__________________________________________________________________ While only her hand appears witchlike, the speech bubbles link her to the witches through line placement. Each of three bubbles begins with ‘come,’ emphasising the incantation aspect of the speech, and close-ups of her mouth match those of the witches. The enlarged picture of her eye in the bottom frame visually amplifies the Shakespeare’s sight motif, and her open eye also foreshadows the irony that Lady Macbeth will not be able to see as she sleepwalks. Although Sexton, Grandt, and Chow make no direct visual references to snakes in this image, we are able to see them in connection with the weird sisters in the next one (Image 2).

Image 2: The weird sisters. 22 Word bubble tails are depicted in snake-like coils, and the sisters’ hair curves like tendrils. The last close-up on the lower right-hand corner of the page depicts an eye that looks reptilian, supporting the snake reference. Interestingly, after the murder both Macbeths’ speech bubbles become coiled periodically for the rest of the graphic novel. The Manga version also ties the witches to Lady Macbeth through character appearance; two of the witches appear human and beautiful, and one of them has dark hair like Lady Macbeth. The images of the Manga version

Esther Bendit Saltzman

29

__________________________________________________________________ allow, at this point, the alternative interpretations of Lady Macbeth as ambitious, and as demonic. The Classical Comics’ depiction of the passage is strikingly different (Image 3).

Image 3: Lady Macbeth invokes the spirits. 23 Though the creative team also highlights ‘come,’ resembling a supernatural summons, these text bubbles are thought bubbles rather than speech bubbles. Furthermore, Lady Macbeth’s eyes are closed, but fire and spirits are added to the background. While these elements would seem to support a demonic interpretation, John McDonald explains the artistic intention. He states, ‘The background of the witches is simply visual effect - the witches are neither good nor bad and Lady Macbeth is not appealing to them, she’s appealing to the “murdering ministers,” or the power(s) that will enable her to go through with her plan.’ 24 Lady Macbeth’s eyes, then, may be closed as she prays silently for strength to protect her child.

30

Graphic, but not Comic

__________________________________________________________________ The most significant difference in this version is the direct visual reference to female physiology. The placement of Lady Macbeth’s hands on her breasts visually connects her womanly body and mental strength. In the early modern period the effects of breast milk on the nursing child were thought to be dependent on mental, physical, and supernatural elements affecting the mother or wet-nurse. Explaining the depiction, McDonald states, ‘she’s asking to be “un-womaned”, she wants her female tenderness/conscience to be taken away from her. Her breasts are symbols of her femaleness and the original intent was to have her trying to rip them off.’ 25 According to McDonald, Lady Macbeth’s womanhood is important, but the gesture of her hands on the breasts is not intended to indicate the supernatural. The background does, though, provide us with another option for interpretation that links Lady Macbeth with the demonic. 5. Evidence from Scene 1.7 In scene 1.7, lines 47-59, Lady Macbeth claims that she would kill her nursing baby if she had promised to, as she admonishes Macbeth for his reservations about murdering Duncan: What beast was’t then That made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; And to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both. They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn As you have done to this. 26 The horrific imagery of a mother who would ‘dash’ out her baby’s brains expresses the early modern anxieties about motherhood. The passage also equates action with manhood, and womanhood with passivity since Lady Macbeth does not nurse her baby; the baby performs the action by milking her. Describing infanticide, she takes the action; she would ‘pluck,’ and dash the child’s head. Shakespeare’s image of a mother nursing a smiling baby, juxtaposed to her violently killing it, maintains ambiguity while blurring gender. The formal elements in the passage support action as masculine while maintaining ambiguity of gender boundaries. Chamberlain states that this ambiguity begins with the introduction of the witches, and goes ‘well beyond facial

Esther Bendit Saltzman

31

__________________________________________________________________ hair;’ they cross masculine boundaries by their use of ‘authority’ and by ‘manipulating Macbeth’s behavior.’ 27 In Scene 1.7.48-1.7.59, Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband by attacking his manhood. Shakespeare uses contracting forms of the verb ‘to do,’ to emphasise action, including ‘break,’ ‘make,’ ‘made,’ and ‘unmake,’ ‘do,’ ‘did,’ ‘does,’ and ‘done’ all in the same passage. These repetitions emphasise that Lady Macbeth equates the keeping of a bargain to the making of a man. The Manga Edition addresses gender and motherhood in the scene through character depiction. Pages 31 and 32 show evidence of gender blending and equalisation (Image 4).

Image 4: The Macbeths and gender. 28 In the top and bottom middle frames of page 31 Macbeth looks female. In the vertical frame on the right side of page 32, Lady Macbeth shows physical force associated with masculine power. In the bottom of the frame, both Macbeths’ mouths are equally straight, and their eyes are both shadowed by Macbeth’s glove.

32

Graphic, but not Comic

__________________________________________________________________ The visual similarities merge their genders as Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth’s manhood. On the next page, Lady Macbeth appears dominant (Image 6).

Image 5: Lady Macbeth: Wife or mother? 29 In this version, Macbeth looks like a wide-eyed teen as Lady Macbeth stands over him; she looks like his mother in bottom right frame of page 31 (Image 5). He seems the innocent and coerced victim of her cruelty or ambition, and looks more boy than man; Lady Macbeth has apparently succeeded in attacking his manhood. In this depiction, Sexton, Grandt, and Chow emphasise her motherhood. The top frame of page 31, however, portrays her as demonic nursing mother; she smiles while speaking of killing her baby. Her smile reappears as it did in scene 1.5, and her isolated smiling lips again link her to the witches. The Manga Edition provides

Esther Bendit Saltzman

33

__________________________________________________________________ simultaneous images of evil motherhood and physical power complicated by gender ambiguity, maintaining interpretive possibilities. The Classical Comics version of Scene 1.7 also depicts a strong Lady Macbeth, but a less demonic one (Image 6):

Image 6: Lady Macbeth speaks of infanticide. 30 In the middle frame her hand is, once again, on her breast, re-emphasising the importance of her physical womanhood. The Classical Comics creative team, though, depicts her speaking lines 1.7.45 to 1.7.59 solemnly, rather than smiling as in the Manga version. This choice makes her seem serious and less callous. Macbeth’s appearance is also important in this version. Macbeth’s image here is one of strength; his appearance and fist gesture make him appear stronger than his youthful counterpart in the Manga Edition. Nevertheless, he is sexually overpowered by Lady Macbeth. In the upper right-hand corner of Image 6, Lady Macbeth is seductively close to him; in the bottom frame, she is firm as she tells Macbeth to ‘screw [his] courage to the sticking-place…,’ as he worries about

34

Graphic, but not Comic

__________________________________________________________________ failure. In this version, also, she crosses gender boundaries to convince Macbeth to kill Duncan, since cunning and assertiveness are seen as male qualities. The gender swap between the Macbeths becomes more evident as the reader progresses. The physical dominance expressed by Macbeth as he shakes his fist in this image will be relinquished to Lady Macbeth. Prior to the murder, the Macbeths appear as equals walking together in the bottom frame of page 28. After the murder, we see Lady Macbeth become physically dominant as she strikes him and takes the daggers, and his manhood, with them (see Image 7):

Image 7: Lady Macbeth and ‘masculine force.’ 31 Classical Comics depiction of scene 1.7 focuses on Lady Macbeth’s motherhood; the images support John McDonald’s element of protective, though poisonous, mothering. This version, like the Manga version, addresses gender ambiguities that complicate her character.

Esther Bendit Saltzman

35

__________________________________________________________________ 6. Conclusion Both graphic novels allow alternative interpretations of Lady Macbeth’s character, and provide elements of the supernatural, gender and power, and motherhood. The Manga version clearly links Lady Macbeth to the witches through motifs of the single-frame smile, witch-like hands, coiled speech bubble tails, and physical appearance. The linking of Lady Macbeth with evil is, therefore, a strong image in this version. Lady Macbeth’s motherhood is also emphasised by contrasting her appearance with Macbeth’s. Connecting her to the weird sisters suggests evil motherhood as a possible interpretation. The Classical Comics version utilises strong visual references to Lady Macbeth’s physical motherhood while including imagery addressing gender and the supernatural. While most readers will observe allusions to gender and strength, the female physical imagery allows for sophisticated discussion of Renaissance physiology and the links between female physiologic disturbance and witchcraft. This version, therefore, also allows for multiple interpretations of Lady Macbeth’s character. Although visual images do make reference to specific aspects of Lady Macbeth’s character, they allow for multiple interpretations in various ways. They maintain ambiguity in single images, on one page through sequential images, and in various scenes offering different interpretations within the same text. Comparing more than one graphic novel provides further possibilities for interpretation. The reader may then compare any or all of these to come up with his or her own interpretations of the notorious Lady Macbeth.

Notes 1

Stephen Greenblatt, ed., The Norton Shakespeare (New York: Norton, 1997), 2560. 2 To avoid confusion in citing page numbers, I will use ‘Manga’ to refer to Sexton, Grandt, and Chow’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the Manga Edition. I will use ‘Sexton’ to refer to Adam Sexton’s introduction to the Manga Edition, ‘Suiting the Action to the Word: Shakespeare and Manga.’ 3 Stephanie Chamberlain, ‘Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England’, College Literature 17, No. 2 (2005): 73. 4 Jenijoy La Belle, ‘“A Strange Infirmity” Lady Macbeth’s Amenorrhea’, Shakespeare Quarterly 31, No. 3 (1980): 382. 5 Ibid., 382. 6 Mary Glover was a fourteen-year-old girl who exhibited symptoms thought to be the result of witchcraft by Elizabeth Jackson. The case was widely known in the early modern period.

36

Graphic, but not Comic

__________________________________________________________________ 7

Joanna Levin, ‘Lady Macbeth and the Daemonologie of Hysteria’, ELH 69, No. 1 (2002): 22. 8 Ibid., 22. 9 Kaara L. Peterson, ‘Performing Arts: Hysterical Disease, Exorcism, and Shakespeare’s Theater’, Disease, Diagnosis, and Cure on the Early Modern Stage (Alsershot, 2004), 6. 10 Christina Leon Alfar, Fantasies of Female Evil: The Dynamics of Gender and Power in Shakespearean Tragedy (Cranberry: Rosemont, 2003), 16. 11 Adam Sexton, Macbeth: The Manga Edition (Hoboken: Wiley, 2008), 4. 12 John McDonald email to author, 26 August 2008. 13 William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth. The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, 2564-2618 (New York: Norton, 1997), 2572. 14 Chamberlain, ‘Fantasizing Infanticide’, 79. 15 Peterson, ‘Performing Arts’, 13. 16 La Belle, ‘A Strange Infirmity’, 382. 17 Ibid., 385. 18 Ibid., 382. 19 J. C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols (London: Thames & Hudson 1978), 62. 20 Adam Sexton, Macbeth: The Manga Edition (Hoboken: Wiley, 2008), 4. 21 Source: Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the Manga Edition, Wiley Publishing. 22 Source: Ibid. 23 Source: Macbeth: the Graphic Novel, Classical Comics. 24 John McDonald email to author, 26 August 2008. 25 John McDonald email to author, 26 August 2008. McDonald explains that the image was ‘toned down’ to allow for younger readers to view it. 26 Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth, 2574. 27 Chamberlain, ‘Fantasizing Infanticide’, 80. 28 Source: Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Manga Edition, Wiley Publishing. 29 Source: Ibid.. 30 Source: Macbeth: The Graphic Novel, Classical Comics. 31 Source: Ibid.

Bibliography Chamberlain, Stephanie. ‘Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England’. College Literature 17, No. 2 (2005): 80.

Esther Bendit Saltzman

37

__________________________________________________________________ Cooper, J. C. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols. London: Thames & Hudson, 1978. Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: Norton, 1997. La Belle, Jenijoy. ‘“A Strange Infirmity”: Lady Macbeth’s Amenorrhea’. Shakespeare Quarterly 31 (1980): 381–386. Levin, Joanna. ‘Lady Macbeth and the Daemonologie of Hysteria’. ELH 69, No. 1 (2002): 21–55. McDonald, John, adapt. Macbeth: The Graphic Novel. By William Shakespeare. Artwork by Jon Haward. Colouring and lettering by Nigel Dobbyn. Inking assistant Gary Erskine. American English adaptation by Joe Sutliff Sanders. Design and layout by Jo Wheeler and Greg Powell. Publishing assistant Joanna Watts. Additional Information, Karen Wenborn. Editor in Chief, Clive Bryant. Litchborough: Classical Comics Ltd., 2008. Peterson, Kaara L. ‘Performing Arts: Hysterical Disease, Exorcism, and Shakespeare’s Theater’. Disease, Diagnosis, and Cure on the Early Modern Stage, edited by Stephanie Moss, and Kaara L. Peterson, 3–28. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004. Sexton, Adam, Eve Grandt, Candice Chow, and William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Manga Edition. Hoboken: Wiley, 2008. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 2564–2618. New York: Norton, 1997. Esther Bendit Saltzman is a PhD student in Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee in the United States. She completed her Master’s thesis on graphic novel adaptations of classic literature. Her dissertation will be on graphic novel adaptations of literary classics in relation to their adapted texts and corresponding book illustrations.

The Wicked Stepmother: Fairy Tales, Child Abuse and Historical Epidemiology Theresa Porter Abstract Multiple cultures have developed similar tropes in their fairy tales, including that of the Wicked Stepmother who abuses, starves or attempts to murder the innocent hero/heroine. Because of the seeming universality of themes in fairy tales, they have been interpreted from a number of perspectives. For example, Sigmund Freud used psychoanalytic theory to reveal the latent content of wish fulfilment and repressed sexual desire in fairy tales; his Stepmother was related to the Oedipal conflict. Carl Jung viewed fairy tales as capturing the archetypes of the collective unconscious via symbolic language, with a wicked Stepmother representing the destroying mother. Bruno Bettleheim viewed the Stepmother as arising from psychic splitting. Feminist theory discusses the Stepmother as a social construction meant to reinforce the status quo of the patriarchy. This chapter will present a novel interpretation of the Wicked Stepmother trope, using historical epidemiology and evolutionary psychology to establish the historical continuity between the Stepmother in tales such as Cinderella and Snow White and the actual dangers to real-world stepchildren from their Stepmothers. Evolutionary psychology theorises that the Stepmother would demonstrate less paternal investment in non-genetic children compared to her genetic children. Epidemiological data from the mid-19th century until the present demonstrates that stepchildren do have higher rates of neglect and abuse as well as higher likelihood of an early death than do children raised by genetic mothers, especially when raised with step-siblings. Taken together, these suggest that the Wicked Stepmother trope may represent a form of communication about real world experience. Key Words: Stepmother, epidemiology, evolutionary psychology, child abuse and neglect. ***** 1. Fairytales and the Stepmother Trope Fairy tales, folk tales and myths involving a Wicked Stepmother can be found in multiple languages and cultures. For example, the story of a young woman who functions as her stepmother’s servant but who, through magic, ends up with the prince, is not only seen in Cinderella but also in at least 20 other languages and countries, including the Danish story of Askepot, the Czech story of Popelka, the Arab tale of Roodoopis, and the Greek tale of Stachtopouta. Other tales involving the Wicked Stepmother trope include Vasilisa and the Baba Yaga, later versions of Hansel and Gretel, the Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh, Snow White and the

40

The Wicked Stepmother

__________________________________________________________________ Seven Dwarfs, the Maiden King and the Kind and Unkind Girls. It is also seen in ancient legends such as that of Phaedra, second wife of the Greek leader Theseus. Young Phaedra reportedly attempted to seduce her stepson and when he rejected her, she claimed that he had raped her, a lie that resulted in his death. The Wicked Stepmother trope is also found in non-western legends such as the Korean story of Janghwa and Hongryeon, sisters who are murdered by their greedy stepmother, and in the Chinese tale of Ye Xian, which involved a golden slipper. These Wicked Stepmothers all show similar characteristics; they are jealous of the stepdaughter’s youth or beauty or they harbor a secret lust for the handsome stepson and in either case, they are greedy for any inheritance that the stepchild would be entitled to. In most cases, the Wicked Stepmother is willing to endanger the stepchild’s life either directly, such as sending the Huntsman to kill Snow White, or indirectly, such as sending Vassilla to borrow fire from the Baba Yaga. 2. Past Analyses of Wicked Stepmother Trope There is something about the seeming universality of these stories that has called multiple authors to analyse the Wicked Stepmother trope from various perspectives. One of the earliest authors to do this was Sigmund Freud. From the psychoanalytic perspective, folk and fairy tales hold universal truths about human behavior. From this perspective, these tales demonstrate a type of wish fulfillment. Every child has a wish to punish or destroy the mean adults in his or her life and these tales allow it to happen. For example, Bruno Bettelheim claimed that the Wicked Stepmother represents the parts of the child’s real mother who sets limits or denies the child’s demands. In other words, the Wicked Stepmother is the reality behind the child’s idealised mother. Followers of Carl Jung, however, have a different view of these tales, seeing them as related to our universal or collective unconscious, as symbols that represent basic human experiences. Marie-Louise von Franz, for example, viewed the stepmother as representing the loss or death of the child’s mother, either in reality or symbolically as the child ages. Finally, feminist theory has also analysed fairy tales and the tales, including those involving the Wicked Stepmother, are seen as part of the way a patriarchal society trains women to be submissive by showing agency as dangerous or as owned by males. All these different interpretations of the Wicked Stepmother trope and of fairy tales generally have one thing in common; they all start with the idea that the tales are nothing more than symbolic. It is assumed that the stories do not describe some form of historical or social reality that was widely experienced by many people at some time in the past. However, there is another way of viewing this trope. 3. The Wicked Stepmother in Fairytales as Describing a Sociological Reality According to Webster’s dictionary, the root ‘step’ in Stepchild (an older term than Stepmother) comes from an Old English word ‘steop’ meaning bereaved, but

Theresa Porter

41

__________________________________________________________________ ‘steop’ itself dates from an Old High German root ‘stief’ which means ‘pushed out’ and ‘stief’ dates from a Proto-Indo-European base ‘steup’ which means ‘to strike or push.’ Therefore a stepchild is one who is bereft of a parent but also one who is pushed away, 1 which implies that the Stepparent is the one who rejects the grieving orphan. The etymology of the term helps highlight the cultural reality of children before the modern period. Children were orphaned at an alarmingly high rate. Records from Europe and Asia show that one third of all children lost at least one parent during childhood, until fairly recently. 2 The younger the child, the more likely it was that the child would suffer the death of a mother rather than a father due to high risks associated with childbirth. The loss of a parent was so common that medieval laws were instituted to protect orphan rights. 3 When a parent died, the family has to consider how to continue its survival. Records from the 1500’s show that remarriage by widowers was more frequent than remarriage by widows, making Stepmother households relatively common. 4 4. Predictions of Stepmother Behaviors Based on Evolutionary Psychology The field of Evolutionary Psychology attempts to explain human behavior using the adaptationist model. According to this theory, the main goal of the human animal is to reproduce and in order to do that, humans must find ways around the various obstacles in the world. In other words, during our species’ evolutionary history, we have made adaptations to our behaviours in order to ensure the continuation of our genetic lines. For example, heterosexuals unconsciously choose sexual partners who are young and healthy enough to breed or who have the ability to acquire the resources to care for offspring. Human parents tolerate the long-term dependency of their offspring as a way of ensuring the off-spring survives, therefore allowing the parent’s own genes to survive. Human children engage in behaviors such as proximity seeking in order to increase their chance of being fed and protected long enough to also breed. 5 Evolutionary Psychology also suggests that, in order to best ensure the survival of one’s offspring and therefore, of one’s own genes, one cannot waste energy or resources on someone else’s offspring. The offspring of other people are in competition with one’s own offspring for finite resources and, therefore, for survival. This is called ‘Discriminative Parental Solicitude.’ 6 Humans have developed the ability to identify others as ‘kin’ or ‘not-kin,’ even in newborns. For example, mothers of 1-hour-old newborns can discriminate between their own offspring and other offspring based solely on olfactory cues from the newborns. 7 Along with this ability to discriminate between ‘mine’ and ‘other’ is the unconscious set of behaviours of selectively caring for one’s genetic kin and even engaging in behaviors that decrease the risk from genetic competition. 8 In an environment with finite resources, a parent would be expected to selectively care

42

The Wicked Stepmother

__________________________________________________________________ for their own genetic offspring over any competition, and even engage in behaviours to decrease the risk from that competition. 9 5. 19th Century Epidemiological Data on Stepmothers While Evolutionary Psychology is a relatively new field, research to support the above theories has existed since the 19th century. The 19th century saw the growth in European epidemiological research, which is the study of health patterns. The existing epidemiological evidence indicates that the wicked stepmother trope may have been based upon fact. For example, medical and government officials began to study death rates in childbirth. Death due to complications of childbirth was one of the leading causes of death for women in the past. In one European study, 1 out of every 14 women died from childbirth, leaving a large population of motherless orphans. Other 19th century studies in Europe showed equally high rates of motherless status children. 10 Being a motherless infant (as opposed to an infant whose father had died), was the factor most associated with risk of death for that infant. 11 Older orphans did not fare much better, with 87% of motherless toddlers dying within 5 years of the mother’s death. 12 Why were the motherless children dying at such a high rate in the 19th century? Most 19th century widowers, faced with at least one infant to care for, dealt with the problem by finding a substitute, a Stepmother. 13 However, the introduction of a Stepmother into the life of a 19th century child could be very risky. Reviews of 19th century child survival data shows that orphaned daughters had a dramatic decrease in survival rates upon the introduction of a Stepmother in their lives. Their survival went down even more if the Stepmother gave birth to a male child. 14 6. 20th/21st Century Epidemiological Data on Stepmothers The decreased survival rate of children raised by stepmothers should not be viewed as a historical artifact. Both 20th and 21st century epidemiological data show multiple dangers for stepchildren. For example, although real Stepmothers do not resort to the ‘crust of bread’ diet favored by Stepmothers in fairy tales, they may withhold proper nutrition. An international study that looked at food purchases by Stepmothers found that Stepmother spend less money on milk, fruit and vegetables compared to nonstepmother homes with similar incomes, education, etc. 15 A similar study found that children who live with Stepmothers are less likely to visit a doctor or dentist compared to children who do not live with a stepmother, even when controlling for parental education and income. 16 The same study found that children living with Stepmothers are less likely to wear a seatbelt when riding in an automobile. Fairy tale Stepmothers would send their stepchildren into the Woods alone. It appears that Modern Stepchildren also may be sent into the world alone, because

Theresa Porter

43

__________________________________________________________________ research shows that stepchildren under the age of 5 years also have more accidental injuries, both non-fatal and fatal, than do genetic children. Stepchildren are far more likely to die by accidental drowning. Rates of accidental injuries in young children are associated with direct parental supervision, which appears to be decreased in Stepmother homes. 17 Although fairytales never tell us about the later lives of their characters, modern research indicates that the children of Stepmothers experience more hardships than genetic children when they become young adults. Three separate studies have shown that Stepchildren are less likely to attend secondary education compared to genetic offspring. Further, Stepchildren receive less economic aid for education than do genetic children. This is because Step-mother/genetic father couples save less money for education than do 2 genetic parent couples. 18 In fairytales, the stepchild is often the main character of the tale. In the Stepmother’s life however, the stepchild would be lucky to be listed as a character at all. One large scale study asked genetic parents and Stepparents to list their family members. This study found that 15% of the stepchildren were left off list of ‘family members,’ despite residing in the same household as the Stepparents. 19 Those Stepchildren were invisible, forgotten or irrelevant. Like their 19th century counterparts, modern stepchildren are not just at risk for neglect. Evolutionary theory predicts that the risk of child abuse to Stepchildren would be higher than the risk to genetic children and modern epidemiology studies uphold this prediction. 20 The rate of child abuse of Stepchildren far exceeds the rate of abuse of genetic children. The risk of child abuse for a child living with a Stepmother is nearly 7 times that of a child residing with 2 genetic parents. 21 This does not mean that the Stepmother is a consistently violent parent however; research shows that stepparents who abuse stepchildren typically spare their genetic children. 22 Whereas fairytales describe stepchildren as being escorted into the Woods and left there (a.k.a thrown away), modern stepchildren tend to runaway. Several studies asked runaways for their reasons for leaving home and found that high percentages of runaway youth cited violence by Stepmothers as a motivating factor. This was a particular problem for male stepchildren. 23 Further, those stepchildren who had stepsiblings experience worse abuse and neglect than those without stepsiblings. 24 Finally, as in the tales of Hansel and Gretel and Snow White, modern Stepchildren are at risk for death at the hands of Stepmothers. Stepmothers are substantially more likely to kill young stepchildren than are genetic mothers to kill young genetic children. 25 One study of nearly 200 cases of homicide by either the genetic mother or the Stepmother found homicide rate by Stepmothers was more than twice that of genetic mothers. 26 Perhaps this explains the use of the ‘tender years’ presumption during divorces in the 19th and 20th centuries, where very young children were placed with their genetic mothers rather than their genetic

44

The Wicked Stepmother

__________________________________________________________________ fathers and stepmother; it was an unconscious move to protect the most vulnerable children from the more dangerous caregivers. One of the most common causes of death of stepchildren is fatal assaults or beatings. Stepparents beat stepchildren to death at 100 times higher rate than do genetic parents. 27 One study of child homicide found that 93% of all Stepparentperpetrated homicides involved beating the child to death rather than using firearms, suffocation or other faster methods. 28 When comparing fatal child assault by both genetic parents and Stepparents, Stepparents are more likely to beat the child to death using bare hands rather than a club or other weapon. 29 Beating a person to death with one’s hands suggests a high level of hatred and resentment towards the victim; it is a particularly slow and painful method compared, for example, to shooting someone to death. 7. A Modern Cinderella In April, 2011, the police in Florida, USA were called to investigate a domestic disturbance and discovered a modern case of Cinderella. The police arrested Juan M. for alleged battery of his 2nd wife but when they did, 12 year old ‘Jane’ M. told the police that she was afraid to be left alone with her Stepmother. She disclosed that her Stepmother made her sleep on the floor without a mattress, wash her clothes in a bucket in the yard and to relieve herself in an outdoor latrine as she was forbidden from using the family bathroom. Besides being responsible for the household cleaning and laundry, she was given impossible tasks including picking up pine needles from the family’s yard. The Stepmother’s two genetic daughters were not subjected to this abuse. Florida authorities charged the Stepmother with multiple counts of abuse, battery and neglect. This modern Cinderella typifies the connection between the Wicked Stepmother trope of fairytales and the reality of our biological preference for our own genetic offspring over their competition. As in old tales, this modern Stepmother treated her own genetic offspring differently from the offspring of her predecessor. She abused and neglected Cinderella until Cinderella was rescued (by the local police rather than a fairy godmother). If the wicked stepmother trope were simply symbolic of other things, we would not expect to find more than two centuries worth of public health data demonstrating the dangers to stepchildren by some stepmothers. Epidemiological evidence and Evolutionary Psychology help us comprehend the Stepmother behavior without condoning it or ruling out multiple other factors in child abuse. Epidemiology records and Evolutionary Psychology also give us a new way of interpreting these old fairy tales.

Theresa Porter

45

__________________________________________________________________

Notes 1

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (London: G. & C. Merriam, 1913), 1411. 2 Paula S. Fass, Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society (New York: Gale, 2003). 3 Frances Gies and Joseph Gies, Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 197. 4 Cameron Campbell and James Lee, ‘When Husbands and Parents Die: Widowhood and Orphanhood in Late Imperial Liaoning, 1789-1909’, in When Dad Died: Individuals and Families Coping with Distress in Past Societies, eds. Renzo Deorsas and Michel Oris (New York: Peter Lang), 2002. 5 Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, ‘Is Parent-Offspring Conflict Sex-Linked? Freudian and Darwinian Models’, Journal of Personality 58 (1990): 163-118; Mark V. Flinn, David V. Leone and Robert J. Quinlan, ‘Growth and Fluctuating Asymmetry of Stepchildren’, Behavior & Human Evolution 20 (1999): 465-479. 6 Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, ‘Discriminative Parental Solicitude: A Biological Perspective’, Journal of Marriage and the Family 42 (1980): 277–288. 7 M. Kaitz, A. Good, A. M. Rokem and A. I. Eidelman, ‘Mothers’ Recognition of Their Newborns by Olfactory Cues’, Developmental Psychobiology 20 (1987): 587-591. 8 Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, ‘Evolutionary Psychology and Marital Conflict: The Relevance of Stepchildren’, in Sex, Power, Conflict: Feminist and Evolutionary Perspectives, eds. David M. Buss and Neil Malamuth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 9-28; Ann Case and Christina Paxson, ‘Mothers and Others: Who Invests in Children’s Health’, Journal of Health Economics 20 (2001): 301-328. 9 Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, ‘“The Cinderella Effect”: Elevated Mistreatment of Stepchildren in Comparison to Those Living with Genetic Parents’, accessed April 10, 2011, http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/buller/cinderella%20effect%20facts.pdf. 10 Frans Von Poppel, ‘Children in One-Parent Families: Survival as an Indicator of the Role of the Parents’, Journal of Family History 25 (2000): 269. 11 T. Andersson, U. Högberg and S. Akerman, ‘Survival of Orphans in 19th Century Sweden: The Importance of Remarriages’, Acta Paediatric 85 (1996): 981-985. 12 Ulf Högberg and Goren Broström, ‘The Demography of Maternal Mortality: Seven Swedish Parishes in the 19th Century’, International Journal Gynaecology & Obstetrics 23 (1985): 489-497. 13 Von Poppel, ‘Children in One-Parent Families’, 269.

46

The Wicked Stepmother

__________________________________________________________________ 14

Kai P. Willführ and Alain Gagnon, ‘Are Step-Parents Always Evil? Parental Death, Remarriage, and Child Survival in Demographically Saturated Krummhörn (1720-1859) and expanding Québec (1670-1750)’, accessed April 11, 2011, http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2011-007; Kai P. Willführ, ‘Shortand Long-Term Consequences of Early Parental Loss in the Historical Population of the Krummhörn (18th and 19th century)’, American Journal of Human Biology 21 (2009): 488-500. 15 Ann Case, I-Fen Lin and Sara McLanahan, ‘How Hungry is the Selfish Gene’, The Economic Journal 110 (2000): 781-804. 16 Ann Case and Christina Paxson, ‘Mothers and Others: Who Invests in Children’s Health’, Journal of Health Economics 20 (2001): 301-328. 17 Greg Tooley, Mari Karakis, Mark Stokes and Joan Ozanne-Smith, ‘Generalising the Cinderella Effect to Unintentional Childhood Fatalities’, Evolution and Human Behavior 27 (2006): 224-230; Jane Wadsworth, Ionna Burnell, Brent Taylor and Neville Butler, ‘Family Type and Accidents in Preschool Children’, Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 37 (1983): 100-104. 18 Case and Paxson, ‘Mothers and Others’, 301-328; Keith Zvoch, ‘Family Type and Investment in Education: A Comparison of Genetic and Stepfamilies’, Evolution & Human Behavior 20 (1999): 453-464. 19 Case and Paxson, ‘Mothers and Others’, 301-328. 20 Joy Lightcap, Jeff Kurland and Robert Burgess ‘Child Abuse: A Test of Some Predictions from Evolutionary Theory’, Ethology and Sociobiology 3 (1982): 6167. 21 Martin Daly and Margot Wilson, ‘Child Abuse and Other Risks of not Living with Both Parents’, Ethology and Sociobiology 6 (1985): 197-210. 22 Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, ‘Violence against Stepchildren’, Current Directions in Psychological Science 5 (1996): 77-78. 23 Shelley Mallet and Doreen Rosenthal, ‘Physically Violent Mothers are a Reason for Young People’s Leaving Home’, Journal of Interpersonal Violence 7 (2009): 1165-1174; Jane Powers, John Eckenrode and Barbara Jaklitsch, ‘Maltreatment among Runaway and Homeless Youth’, Child Abuse & Neglect 14 (1990): 87-98. 24 Grant T Harris, N. Zoe Hilton, Marnie E. Rice and Angela W. Eke, ‘Children Killed by Genetic Parents versus Stepparents’, Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (2007): 85-95. 25 Daly and Wilson, ‘“The Cinderella Effect”’, accessed April 10, 2011, http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/buller/cinderella%20effect%20facts.pdf. 26 Viviana A. Weeks-Shackelford and Todd K. Shackelford, ‘Methods of Filicide: Stepparents and Genetic Parents Kill Differently’, Violence and Victims 19 (2004): 75-81; Daly and Wilson, ‘Child Abuse and Other Risks of not Living with Both Parents’, 197-210.

Theresa Porter

47

__________________________________________________________________ 27

Daly and Wilson, ‘“The Cinderella Effect”’, accessed April 10, 2011. Weeks-Shackelford and Shackelford, ‘Methods of Filicide’, 75-81. 29 Harris, Hilton, Rice and Eke, ‘Children Killed by Genetic Parents versus Stepparents’, 85-95. 28

Bibliography Andersson, Tobias, Ulf Högberg, and Sune Akerman. ‘Survival of Orphans in 19th Century Sweden: The Importance of Remarriages’. Acta Paediatric 85, No. 8 (August 1996): 981–985. Campbell, Cameron, and James Lee. ‘When Husbands and Parents Die: Widowhood and Orphanhood in Late Imperial Liaoning, 1789-1909’. In When Dad Died: Individuals and Families Coping with Distress in Past Societies, edited by Renzo Deorsas, and Michel Oris. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. Case, Ann, I-fen Lin, and Sara McLanahan. ‘How Hungry is the Selfish Gene’. The Economic Journal 110 (2000): 781-804. Case, Ann, and Chrstina Paxson. ‘Mothers and Others: Who Invests in Children’s Health’. Journal of Health Economics 20 (2001): 301–328. Daly, Martin, and Margo Wilson. ‘Discriminative Parental Solicitude: A Biological Perspective’. Journal of Marriage and the Family 42, No. 2 (1980): 277–288. —––. ‘Child Abuse and Other Risks of Not Living with Both Parents’. Ethology and Sociobiology 6 (1985): 197–210. —––. ‘Is Parent-Offspring Conflict Sex-Linked? Freudian and Darwinian Models’. Journal of Personality 58, No. 1 (1990): 163–189. —––. ‘Some Differential Attributes of Lethal Assaults on Small Children by Stepfathers versus Genetic Fathers’. Ethology and Sociobiology 15 (1994): 207– 217. —––. ‘Violence Against Stepchildren’. Current Directions in Psychological Science 5 (1996): 77–87.

48

The Wicked Stepmother

__________________________________________________________________ —––. ‘Evolutionary Psychology and Marital Conflict: The Relevance of Stepchildren’. In Sex, Power, Conflict: Feminist and Evolutionary Perspectives, edited by David M. Buss, and Neil Malamuth, 9–28. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. —––. ‘“The Cinderella Effect”: Elevated Mistreatment of Stepchildren in Comparison to Those Living with Genetic Parents’. Undated. Accessed April 10, 2011. http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/buller/cinderella%20effect%20facts.pdf. Fass, Paula S., ed. Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society. New York: Macmillan Reference/Thompson Gale, 2003. Flinn, Mark V., David V. Leone, and Robert J. Quinlan. ‘Growth and Fluctuating Asymmetry of Stepchildren’. Behavior & Human Evolution 20, No. 6 (1999): 465– 479. Gies, Francis, and Joseph Gies. Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Harris, Grant T., N. Zoe Hilton, Marnie E. Rice, and Angela W. Eke. ‘Children Killed by Genetic Parents versus Stepparents’. Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (2007): 85–95. Högberg Ulf, and Goren Broström. ‘The Demography of Maternal Mortality: Seven Swedish Parishes in the 19th Century’, International Journal Gynaecology & Obstetrics 23, No. 6 (1985): 489–497. Kaitz, Marsha, A. Good, Ariel Rokem, and Arthur Eidelman. ‘Mothers’ Recognition of Their Newborns by Olfactory Cues’. Developmental Psychobiology 20, No. 6 (1987): 587–591. Lightcap Joy L., Jeff A. Kurland, and Roger L. Burgess. ‘Child Abuse: A Test of Some Predictions from Evolutionary Theory’. Ethology and Sociobiology 3, No. 2 (1982): 61–67. Mallet, Shelley, and Doreen Rosenthal. ‘Physically Violent Mothers are a Reason for Young People’s Leaving Home’. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 7 (2009): 1165–1174.

Theresa Porter

49

__________________________________________________________________ Porter, Noah, and Noah Webster. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 1411. London: G. & C. Merriam, London, 1913. Powers, Jane L., John Eckenrode, and Barbara Jaklitsch. ‘Maltreatment among Runaway and Homeless Youth’. Child Abuse & Neglect 14, No. 1 (1990): 87–98. Tooley, Greg A., Mari Karakis, Mark Stokes, and Joan Ozanne-Smith. ‘Generalising the Cinderella Effect to Unintentional Childhood Fatalities’. Evolution and Human Behavior 27 (2006): 224–230. Von Poppel, Frans. ‘Children in One-Parent Families: Survival as an Indicator of the Role of the Parents’. Journal of Family History 25, No. 3 (2000): 269–290. Wadsworth, Jane, Ionna Burnell, Brent Taylor, and Neville Butler. ‘Family Type and Accidents in Preschool Children’. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 37, No. 2 (1983): 100–104. Weeks-Shackelford, Viviana A., and Todd K. Shackelford. ‘Methods of Filicide: Stepparents and Genetic Parents Kill Differently’. Violence and Victims 19 (2004): 75–81. Willführ, Kai P., and Alain Gagnon. ‘Are Step-Parents Always Evil? Parental Death, Remarriage, and Child Survival in Demographically Saturated Krummhörn (1720-1859) and Expanding Québec (1670-1750)’. 2011. http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2011-007.pdf. Willführ, Kai P. ‘Short- and Long-Term Consequences of Early Parental Loss in the Historical Population of the Krummhörn (18th and 19th Century)’. American Journal of Human Biology 21, No. 4 (2009): 488–500. Zvoch, Keith. ‘Family Type and Investment in Education: A Comparison of Genetic and Stepfamilies’. Evolution & Human Behavior 20, No. 6 (1999): 453– 464. Theresa Porter is a psychologist at Connecticut Valley Hospital in the U.S.A. Her training is in forensics and the majority of her writing is on violence by women.

Bats Flying off My Womb: Monstrous Maternity in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry Elisabete Lopes Abstract Sylvia Plath is well known for the fact that she was able to transpose her gothic imagery to the verses of her poems, namely those aspects which were concerned with specific feminine experience such as maternity, menstruation and abortion. In so doing, she has transformed maternity into a fertile ground where female anxieties could be confessed without constraints. In this light, she has managed to create a literary space where ethos surpasses pathos, where the real and sometimes paradoxical feelings that women sustain regarding motherhood, come to surface. At some point, Plath seems to fear that her ambivalent feelings towards motherhood, together with the nightmares that haunt her at night, may originate a monstrous offspring of blue and deformed babies. Indeed, in her poetry, babies appear as if they were strange creatures, since they are depicted as being ‘moonskulled/Gilled like fish’ or a ‘sprat[s] in a pickle jug.’ In conformity with this gothic atmosphere, Sylvia Plath’s portrayals of motherhood are mainly nocturnal and subterranean as we can see, for example, in ‘Poem for a Birthday,’ poem in which the womb becomes a dark house weaving its secret for nine months. In this way, Plath transports all the gothic and darkest signs she spots in her environment toward her poetic universe where she is free to deliver her version of the facts, despite the ‘evil’ that might lie within them. Key Words: Sylvia Plath, motherhood, maternity, gothic, monstrous, evil. ***** One of the recurrent topics in Sylvia Plath’s poetry is maternity and all the questions it entails, namely the ones which are related to pregnancy and the female body. Oftentimes, the female speakers that give voice to her poems can be seen wandering the corridors of haunted houses or lodged inside the earth’s entrails where they weave a web of sorrow while holding a baby in their arms. In this way, Sylvia Plath has successfully managed to transform maternity into an experience which becomes akin to the Gothic genre. In reality, babies erupt from Plath’s poems in a variety of forms: in ‘A Secret’ there is the big blue head of an illegitimate baby; in ‘Ariel’ there is a ‘child’s cry’ that ‘melts in the wall;’ 1 in ‘Stopped Dead’ we come across ‘a goddam violent baby screaming off somewhere,’ 2 in ‘Lesbos’ the baby resembles a ‘little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear.’ 3 Lisa Harper observes in this respect: ‘There is something else, something in bearing and birthing and rearing our babies that, like Sylvia Plath’s mythical “Ariel”, hauls us through the air until we emerge raw and transformed in

52

Bats Flying off My Womb

__________________________________________________________________ a place undreamt, to a self undone, a little bit frightening.’ 4 Surprisingly, after having decided to get pregnant, Sylvia Plath started having recurrent nightmares filled with monstrous babies, as the entry of 8th January 1959 of her journal shows: The baby formed just like a baby, only small as a hand, died in my stomach and fell forward: I looked down at my bare belly and saw the round bump of its head in my right side, bulging out like a burst appendix. It was delivered with little pain, dead. 5 In another entry dated 15th November 1959, the poetess recalls one more nightmare: …I lay in a morbid twit till the hollow dark of the morning, full of evil dreams of dying in childbirth in a strange hospital, unable to see Ted, or having a blue baby, or a deformed baby, which they wouldn’t let me see. 6 In a strange coincidence, her fears echo those fears felt by women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were told that they would have to moderate their imagination while they were pregnant. As James Thrilling highlights: during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was widely believed that a pregnant woman’s fantasies and desires, even the things she looked at, could cause her child to be born deformed. 7 Barbara Creed adds that: ‘The power of [woman’s] imagination influenced the facial characteristics of the developing embryo. Woman’s more ardent and susceptible imagination was similarly used to explain birth defects, birthmarks and other abnormalities.’ 8 Logically, these nightmares and these fears were transferred onto her poetry and became raw material for her poetic compositions. In ‘Thalidomide’ for example, the speaker is a young female who is horrified at the possibility of becoming the mother of malformed children, fearful of the ‘dark amputations / [that] Crawl and appall-/Spidery, unsafe.’ 9 The moon itself works here as a metaphor for these malformed children: ‘O half-moon- / Half-brain luminosity.’ 10 In a similar manner, in ‘Three Women’ one of the voices, the pregnant girl, is also tormented by visions that show deformed children with whom she refuses to identify herself. Later, in ‘Elm’ there is also a young woman who is convinced that she is carrying a monster inside: ‘I am terrified by this dark thing. / That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.’ 11 Indeed, Plath seems to have webbed a dark poetic universe, filled with morbid motifs that plunge both maternity and pregnancy into the fluid waters of the

Elisabete Lopes

53

__________________________________________________________________ literary Gothic. It is precisely this darkness that permeates many of Plath’s poems that this paper aims at investigating. In this context, it is then mandatory to inquire whether we are or not before a case of monstrous maternity, to the extent that Plath’s maternity poetry transgresses the usual female expectations with regard to this delicate subject. In reality, Sylvia Plath seems to have continually transposed to her poetry and to her prose the reminiscences of an episode whose images had been imprinted onto her mind forever: the images of dead babies inside glass bottles. In her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963) Esther Greenwood, the novel’s protagonist, describes her visit to the hospital and her first contact with these mute static babies: After that, Buddy took me out into a hall where they had some big glass bottles full of babies that had died before they were born. The baby in the first bottle had a large white head bent over a tiny curled-up body the size of a frog. The baby in the next bottle was bigger and the baby next to that one was bigger still and the baby in the last bottle was the size of a normal baby and he seemed to be looking at me and smiling a little piggy smile. 12 These newborn babies that seemed to watch Esther Greenwood from behind the glass haunt the feminine speaking subjects of Plath’s poetry in a pervasive manner. In ‘Two Views of a Cadaver Room’ these ‘snail-nosed babies moon and glow’ 13 in their jars; in ‘Stillborn’ they ‘sit…nicely in the pickling fluid!’ 14 and in ‘You’re’ the new born is depicted as ‘at home/ Like a sprat in a pickle jug.’ 15 In effect, these hauntings persist throughout Plath’s poetry. In ‘The Manor Garden’ the female body is envisioned as a haunted house. This is actually believed to be the first poem which the poetess wrote knowing that she was pregnant and it conveys this idea of a body-house dichotomy. The moment that precedes childbirth is staged in a gothic set where ‘an incense of death’ 16 can be sensed. In fact, in ‘The Manor Garden’ traditional gothic imagery is invoked and some traditional gothic elements compose a scene highly reminiscent of a horror film: outside, ‘the crow settles her garments,’ 17 the spider moves on its web, there are wolves in the woods and worms which ‘quit their usual habitations’ 18 and can be seen approaching the birthing scene. Meanwhile, ‘A blue mist is dragging the lake.’ 19 This nocturnal scene is attested by the unveiling of ‘some hard stars’ 20 in the sky. There is also a disturbing presence of some small birds that ‘converge, converge / With their gifts to a difficult borning.’ 21 Childbirth is perceived as a kind of sacrifice. In ‘Three Women’ the hospital room also undergoes a metamorphosis and it is suddenly transmuted into a torture chamber, a ‘white clean chamber with its instruments /…a place of shrieks.’ 22

54

Bats Flying off My Womb

__________________________________________________________________ In a similar way to ‘The Manor Garden,’ in the second poem that forms part of ‘Poem for a Birthday,’ the female pregnant body also assumes the shape of a house, more specifically, a ‘dark house:’ This is a dark house, very big. I made it myself, Cell by cell from a quiet corner, Chewing at the grey paper, Oozing the glue drops… 23 This subterranean labyrinthic house possesses ‘so many cellars … marrowing tunnels’ 24 that the young mother is forced to ‘make more maps’ 25 to avoid losing herself. In this scenario, the mother embodies a kind of Persephone, interned in a hell which is located ‘in the bowl of the root.’ 26 In this context, the womb is a ‘shed fusty as a mummy’s stomach.’ 27 Images of decay pervade the environment where the persona stands: flowers bloom upside down, and cabbage heads are ‘wormy purple.’ 28 In truth, the pregnant young woman appears to be dead. Actually, she claims to be ‘at home here among the dead heads.’ 29 In fact, her heart does not beat anymore and it is therefore depicted as a ‘stopped geranium.’ 30 In the fifth stanza, the girl confirms our suspicions that place her among a dead crowd when she confesses: ‘Moldering heads console me.’ 31 Morbidly, at the end of the poem, the female seems to have become depleted of her human nature, since she sees herself being reduced to ‘a root, a stone, an owl pellet.’ 32 The same imagery surfaces in ‘Wintering,’ a poem in which the young mother remains ‘Wintering in a dark without Windows.’ 33 The place where this mother appears is dilapidated and fretted with ‘bottles of empty glitters’ 34 and ‘rancid jam.’ 35 This is the room I have never been in This is the room I could never breathe in. The black bunched in there like a bat, No light But the torch and its faint Chinese yellow… In effect, a strong connection between motherhood and winter is established in this poem. Pregnancy is here envisioned as a state that resembles a kind of hibernation. In the last stanza, the female speaker declares: Winter is for womenThe woman, still at her knitting,

Elisabete Lopes

55

__________________________________________________________________ At the cradle of the Spanish walnut, Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think. 36 This dark and claustrophobic gothic atmosphere can also be felt in ‘By Candlelight,’ a poem in which a mother rocks her son, trying to protect him from the cold winter: This is winter, this is the night, small loveA sort of black horsehair, A rough dumb country stuff Steeled with sheen Of what green stars can make it to your gate. (…) This is the fluid in which we meet each other, This haloey radiance that seems to breathe And lets our shadows wither Only to blow Them huge again, violent giants on the wall. (…) The sack of black! It’s everywhere, tight, tight! 37 Mother and son are envisioned in an embryonic environment, suffused with amniotic fluid, a kind of a uterine cocoon. However, this haven also displays gothic undertones: on the wall, their shadows quiver and it is ultimately compared to a sack of black that evokes constriction and asphyxia, as the last verse discloses. Also featuring a subterranean environment, ‘Nick and the Candlestick’ showcases the future mother depicted as a kind of Persephone who tends to her baby in a cold, dark underworld. In effect, the whole atmosphere that permeates the poem conveys the image of a cold, dark and damp cave: ‘The light burns blue. / Waxy stalactites / Drip and thicken.’ 38 The stalactites symbolise the sadness and isolation felt by the mother, since they are compared to ‘tears / The earthen womb / Exudes from its dead boredom.’ 39 The portrayal of this lonely woman who stands alone with a child in her arms parallels the image of a female ghost, covered with ‘raggy shawls,’ 40 abandoned in an ‘old cave of calcium’ 41 where the fish are ‘pane of ice’ 42 and black bats abound. However, amidst this gothic environment, the baby is perceived as a kind of baby Jesus, because the mother refers to him as ‘the baby in the barn.’ 43 Bearing these dark and cavernous recesses in mind, Susan Van Dyne in Revising Life: Sylvia Plath’s Ariel Poems highlights: Many of Plath’s poems about maternity visit dark enclosures that feminist critics have explored as specifically female space, whether a mythic underworld or the female body itself. These

56

Bats Flying off My Womb

__________________________________________________________________ interiors are often unknowable by rational means; daring to descend with them means risking the loss of vision, speech, mobility, and self-control. In their most benign forms, these caverns are capable of causing mysterious transmutations, including seasonal or personal rebirth. Because they embody the realm of natural processes, they may promise gestation as well as death. 44 Actually, the womb appears as a ‘clean wood box’ 45 in the poem ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box,’ a place ‘where the dark still nurses its secrets,’ 46 a clear metaphor for a coffin: The box is locked, it is dangerous. I have to live with it overnight And I can keep away from it. There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there. (…) It is dark, dark… 47 In ‘Mary’s Song’ the representation of the womb is endowed with a paradoxical nature: on the one hand it appears as a comfortable niche where the gestation takes its course, but on the other hand, at the end of the poem, it is compared to a furnace similar to the one where Jews were sacrificed during World War II. As Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert remark: One may be renewed like a baby in the warm womb of the mythic oven, but the oven is also Auschwitz, Dachau, a place where one is baked like a gingerbread body back into the plaster cast of oneself. 48 In an eerie way, the poem “Mystic” is disturbingly assaulted by a wave of “fetid wombs of black air.” 49 Indeed, in Plath’s poetic universe death and childbirth appear interwoven. 50 In all likelihood, the young poetess, when looking back on her past, must have vividly recalled scenes of an autobiographic episode which is displayed in The Bell Jar. All at once, during her visit to the hospital, she came across the poor dead newborns, locked inside glass containers; she saw a woman giving birth; 51 paid a visit to the morgue, and witnessed an autopsy. The truth is that, most of the time, the young mothers that inhabit Plath’s poetic compositions feel disjointed or dismembered in the presence of a newborn. In ‘The Night Dances’ the female speaking subject dissolves herself: ‘my eyes, my lips, my hair / Touching and melting / Nowhere.’ 52 In the same vein, the woman in ‘Elm’ breaks up ‘in pieces that fly about like clubs’ 53 and in ‘Ariel,’ she unpeels and loses her hands, tights and hair as if they were ‘dead stringencies.’ 54

Elisabete Lopes

57

__________________________________________________________________ In the majority of Plath’s poems that deal with motherhood and maternity, there seems to occur a separateness between the mother and the fetus. In this movement towards detachment, the mother appears not only eager to preserve her individual identity, but keen on marking the boundaries of her body as well. For instance, in ‘You’re’ it seems that the face of the mother is nowhere to be seen; even at the end of the poem, the mirror image is presented in the form of a “clean slate” whose only reflection is the baby’s face: “a clean slate with your face on” 55 This exclusion also surfaces in the verse that forms part of the same poem, in which the mother portrays the fetus as something immersed in itself, “wrapped in [itself] like a spool” 56 Hence denying any symbiosis with the mother’s body. Moreover, the baby is compared to a phantasmagoric being, as it is ‘vague as fog.’ 57 In ‘Morning Song,’ the parents are represented as ‘blankly as walls’ 58 and the newborn is envisioned as a new statue’ 59 in a ‘drafty museum.’ 60 All these statements convey a strange neutrality, implicit in all these statuesque figures. In this context, it is then no wonder that sometimes the womb is referred to as a ‘womb of marble.’ 61 Mimicking the attitude of the mother in ‘You’re,’ the mother in ‘Morning Song’ declares: ‘I’m no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow/ Effacement at the wind’s hand.’ 62 According to Janine Dobs, for Plath …childbirth is a kind of martyrdom. A woman dies as a particular kind of woman when she bears a child and she continues to die as the child feeds literally and metaphorically on her. 63 Interestingly, we find in her poetry the threat of a sort of predatory child set on to drain all the energy from his mother. In ‘Tulips,’ the flowers are a metaphor for ‘an awful baby’ 64 that displays a giant mouth, similar to the one of a ‘Great African cat’ 65 and feeds upon his mother’s oxygen. In a similar fashion, in ‘Morning Song’ the child’s mouth ‘opens clean as a cat’s.’ 66 This figure of this vampire-child can also be noticed in ‘I Want, I Want,’ where the newborn is portrayed as kind of blood thirsty god, ‘Open-mouthed, the baby god / Immense, bald’ 67 who craves for the ‘mothers dug’ and the cries for ‘the father’s blood.’ 68 By inflaming her poetic universe with dystopian images of pregnancy and motherhood, Plath has subverted the deeply entrenched idea that being a mother represents the climax of a woman’s life. In so doing, the poetess can be said to

58

Bats Flying off My Womb

__________________________________________________________________ have broken a taboo, to the extent that she exposes the raw reality of maternity with all its fears and anxieties that tend to lodge themselves like bats, in the dark recesses of the minds of women who aspire to be mothers. Robert Philips believes that Plath might have been suffering from a post-partum depression, fact that would explain her compulsion to dwell upon maternity issues in a more grotesque fashion. In his view, this gothic vision of maternity means that the poetess is unable to conform to the world’s generalised expectations regarding motherhood: She would like to conform to the world’s expectations of her as a thoroughly modern mother, stated satirically as a “Mother of a white Nike and seven bald Apollos” to become part and parcel of the mechanized male-oriented world, even to contribute to it, but she cannot. 69 Indeed, Plath might have realised that it was really difficult to combine the demands of maternity with the demands of her craft. Moreover, she feared that her role as mother could ultimately overshadow her role as an artist, and this might have contributed to turn the ideal experience of motherhood into a kind of monstrous event. Eventually, we can say that Plath transformed both the figures of the pregnant woman and the mother into a kind of ‘gothic Madonnas’ who look after their children by candlelight, wrapped in ragged shawls, inside cold caves, forever wintering beneath a ‘dark ceiling without a star.’ 70

Notes 1

Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 239. Plath, The Collected Poems, 230. 3 Ibid., 228. 4 Lisa C. Harper, A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 208. 5 Karen Kukil, ed., The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (New York: Anchor Books: 2000), 458. 6 Ibid., 530. 7 James Trilling, Ornament: A Modern Perspective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 162. 8 Barbara Creed, Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), xi. 9 Plath, The Collected Poems, 252. 10 Ibid., 252. 11 Ibid., 193. 2

Elisabete Lopes

59

__________________________________________________________________ 12

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (London: Faber & Faber, 2005), 59. Plath, The Collected Poems, 114. 14 Ibid., 142. 15 Ibid., 141. 16 Ibid., 125. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 180. 23 Ibid., 132. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 133. 26 Ibid., 132. 27 Ibid., 131. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 218. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., 219. 37 Ibid., 237. 38 Ibid., 240. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid., 242. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Susan Van Dyne, Revising Life: Sylvia Plath’s Ariel Poems (Chappell Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 150. 45 Plath, The Collected Poems, 213. 46 Ibid., 158. 47 Ibid., 213. 48 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Shakespeare’s Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), 239. 49 Plath, The Collected Poems, 268. 13

60

Bats Flying off My Womb

__________________________________________________________________ 50

This particular motif has been identified by Elisabeth Lamotte, Pascale Sardin and Julie Sauvage, in their oeuvre Of Mothers and Death: From Procreation to Creation as an authentic ‘mortiferous relationship’ that unfolds in Plath’s poems when they concern maternity issues. See Elisabeth Lamotte, Pascale Sardin and Julie Sauvage, eds., Of Mothers and Death: From Procreation to Creation (Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2008), 174. 51 In an entry taken from Plath’s journal, that dates back to 9th April 1958, this episode is recalled by the poetess: ‘Then I think of my gross tears at having a baby which I suppose center around that crucial episode at the Boston Lying-in so many years ago when the anonymous groaning woman, shaved & painted all colors, got cut, blood ran, water broke, & the baby came out with bloody veins & urinated in the doctor’s face’. See Kukil, The Unabridged Journals, 374. 52 Plath, The Collected Poems, 250. 53 Ibid., 192. 54 Ibid., 239. 55 Nephie Christoudolides, Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking: Motherhood in Sylvia Plath’s Work (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2003), 74. 56 Plath, The Collected Poems, 141. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 157. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 202. 62 Ibid., 157. 63 Janine Dobbs, ‘Viciousness in the Kitchen: Sylvia Plath’s Domestic Poetry’, Modern Language Studies 7, No. 2 (1977): 9. 64 Plath, The Collected Poems, 161. 65 Ibid., 162. 66 Ibid., 157. 67 Ibid., 106. 68 Ibid. 69 Robert Philips, The Confessional Poets (London and Amsterdam: Ferfer and Simons Inc., 1973), 141. 70 Plath, The Collected Poems, 265.

Bibliography Creed, Barbara. Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny. Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005.

Elisabete Lopes

61

__________________________________________________________________ Christoudolides, Nephie. Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking: Motherhood in Sylvia Plath’s Work. New York: Rodopi, 2005. Dobbs, Janine. ‘Viciousness in the Kitchen: Sylvia Plath’s Domestic Poetry’. Modern Language Studies 7, No. 2 (1977): 11–25. Kukil, Karen V., ed. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. London: Faber & Faber, 2001. Gill, Jo. The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar, eds. Shakespeare’s Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979. Harper, Lisa C. A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. Lamotte, Elisabeth, Pascale Sardin, and Julie Sauvage, eds. Of Mothers and Death: From Procreation to Creation. Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2008. Mecke, Viola. Fatal Attachments: The Instigation to Suicide. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., 2004. Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. London: Faber & Faber, [ 1963] 2005. —––. The Collected Poems. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992. Phillips, Robert. The Confessional Poets. London and Amsterdam: Ferfer and Simons Inc., 1973. Trilling, James. Ornament: A Modern Perspective. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Van Dyne, Susan. Revising Life: Sylvia Plath’s Ariel Poems. Chappel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Elisabete Lopes is an English Language Lecturer at the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal. She completed her Master’s Degree in English Studies in 2003 with a dissertation entitled Women, Mothers and Monsters: The Feminine Shadow behind

62

Bats Flying off My Womb

__________________________________________________________________ Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. At present she is writing her PhD thesis, also in the field of Gothic studies (namely, the Female Gothic). Her current areas of research are related to the Gothic genre, namely literature, women’s studies and visual culture.

Abject Appeal and the Monstrous Feminine in Lady Gaga’s SelfFashioned Persona ‘Mother Monster’ Laini Burton Abstract Traditional carnival ritual enabled societies to temporarily reconnect with the abject in order to refute its relationship to their lives. A target of defilement in carnival activity was the grotesque, abject maternal figure whose fecund body, in Kristevian terms, ‘disturbs identity, system, order.’ I argue that through music artist Lady Gaga’s self-fashioned persona ‘Mother Monster’ and her accompanying manifesto, she embodies the concept of the monstrous feminine par excellence. However, in opposition to traditional carnival, Lady Gaga succeeds the temporality of its symbolic inversion due to sustained media interest and an ever-growing fan base of what she maternally calls her ‘Little Monsters.’ Hosting fleshy protuberances and sporting outré ensembles that display abject elements, Lady Gaga brings the grotesque, marginal ‘other’ of the monstrous feminine to centre stage of contemporary culture. From this position, she affects a carnivalesque resistance to the symbolic order through social activism and messages of tolerance that celebrate difference. While the complexities of appealing to the abject from a position of power are taken into account, I contend that the strategic use of corporeality in Lady Gaga’s fashion and performance encourage the forging of new subjectivities and works to destabilise the homogenising force of the body politic. Therefore, this chapter will present Lady Gaga as providing a productive model for situating notions of the monstrous feminine within feminist discourse today. Key Words: Abject; monstrous feminine; carnival; Julia Kristeva; symbolic inversion; Lady Gaga. ***** On G.O.A.T, a Government Owned Alien Territory in space, a birth of magnificent and magical proportions took place. But the birth was not finite; it was infinite. As the wombs numbered, and the mitosis of the future began, it was perceived that this infamous moment in life is not temporal; it is eternal. And thus began the beginning of the new race: a race within the race of humanity, a race which bears no prejudice, no judgment, but boundless freedom. But on that same day, as the eternal mother hovered in the multiverse, another more terrifying birth took place: the birth of evil. And as she herself split into two, rotating in agony between two ultimate forces, the pendulum of choice

64

Abject Appeal and the Monstrous Feminine

__________________________________________________________________ began its dance. It seems easy, you imagine, to gravitate instantly and unwaveringly towards good. But she wondered, “How can I protect something so perfect without evil?” 1 Working outside of the boundaries of what Mikhail Bakhtin described as ‘official’ culture, traditional carnival activity was played out in the non-official, low or popular stratum of society. 2 Carnival ritual enabled societies to temporarily reconnect with the abject in order to refute its relationship to their lives, providing a temporary reprieve from the conventions of the established order. This activity allowed participants to engage in licentious behaviour so that they might transform into something other than themselves. The authorised transgression within carnival was, however, a space bound by rules of law where access to power and freedom from abjection was fleeting, after which hegemony was restored. 3 Although the carnival privileges gained were temporary, the greatest beneficiaries of this ‘symbolic inversion’ 4 were those that occupied a position at the very margins of society - the abject. And while carnival proceedings encouraged the profanation and inversion of the ‘natural order’ of things, its primary function was to reinforce the power and authority of the cultural, social, political and economic institutions that constitute the body politic. While the optimism of Bakhtin’s carnival saw its forms as all-inclusive, it was women who were marginalised as the archetypal ‘other.’ A target of defilement in carnival activity was the grotesque, abject maternal figure. Registered as ruptured and scornfully mocked, her fecund body, in Kristevian terms, ‘disturbs identity, system, order’ and has been historically constructed through notions of abjection. 5 The cyclical mutability of the female body is conflated with the grotesque and the monstrous; concepts which possess an enduring relationship to the present day. 6 Indeed, writer Marsha Meskimmon asserts the ‘most striking evocation of the monstrous maternal function of woman comes through Mikhail Bakhtin’s trope for the grotesque as a pregnant, senile, laughing hag. In that figure coalesce all the boundary-breaking features of woman which make her the ultimate “monster” to man.’ 7 It is understandable, then, that in recent feminist discourse, the monstrous feminine has been adopted as a locus for the transgressive potential of the seemingly fixed categories of the symbolic order, to undermine its authority and exclusivity within cultural practice. I argue that through music and performance artist Lady Gaga’s self-fashioned persona ‘Mother Monster’ and her accompanying manifesto, she embodies the concept of the monstrous feminine par excellence. Hosting fleshy protuberances and sporting outré ensembles that display abject elements, Gaga brings the grotesque, marginal ‘other’ of the monstrous feminine to centre stage of contemporary culture. Through this persona, Gaga revitalises the etymological foundations of the term monster; that is, she shows, reveals, demonstrates all that is abjected or exiled to the margins as it relates to maternal subjectivity. At once, she

Laini Burton

65

__________________________________________________________________ employs that which is reviled and yet she is held aloft by the very public and institutions which seek to suppress the inevitable abjection of the fleshly, maternal form. Thus, Gaga provides a compelling example of the monstrous feminine at work today. Moreover, I contend that Lady Gaga demonstrates what Deborah Caslav Covino calls a ‘shared abjection;’ one that is ‘grounded in concern for the body of the Other’ in a bid to generate ‘a method for reenvisioning gendered social, political and sexual relations, as well as providing a critical approach to other forms of exclusion.’ 8 And while Gaga’s Mother Monster does not fundamentally challenge notions of the monstrous feminine, what is significant is that from her position of centrality and privilege, she affects a carnivalesque resistance to the symbolic order that celebrates difference. This stands in opposition to traditional carnival resistance which was understood as finite and was merely tolerated. Signifying forms that possess a lack of boundaries, monsters, with their inbetween-ness, ambiguity and multiplicity, threaten the order of the fully constituted subject. This perpetual state of ‘becoming’ is advocated through Gaga’s Mother Monster persona and where she herself refuses categorisation or fixed subjectivity. It is a position expressed throughout her performances, music and in her daily fashion transitions where tropes of the grotesque, the freak and the monstrous are reasserted and simultaneously destroyed, allowing new territories for subjects to find and be validated in their own forms of representation. This constant state of evolution carnivalises what Bakhtin spoke of as ‘all that was immortalized and completed’ in cultural practice - the symbolic order. And, as her manifesto proposes, Gaga seeks a new order free from cultural hierarchies. 9 In the construction of the Mother Monster persona, Gaga does not radically challenge the alterity of those conceptions that attend the monstrous, maternal body. The discussion here does not refute the abjection of Mother Monster, in fact, Gaga calls to it. Where many artists have introduced the abject into their works to discuss the crisis of subjectivity as a challenge to the body politic (Bob Flanagan, Mona Hatoum, Tracey Moffatt, Orlan and Kiki Smith are some appropriate examples), Gaga operates within, and is legitimised by, those cultural institutions that have been fundamental in reifying notions of the unified subject. This is a subject which defies abjection; an imaginary subject. Therefore, since Gaga’s message is a call to the abject, delivered by a character defined as historically abject itself, it is worth considering what social and cultural anxieties the figure of Mother Monster articulates for maternal subjectivities today, and additionally, for ‘Others’ exiled at the margins. Moreover, one might ask if such a figure is fated to mere entertainment or whether she holds the possibility of subject-forming identification in the ‘Other.’ The connection between the monstrous and the grotesque teased out in Noël Carroll’s article ‘The Grotesque Today’ presents a range of examples to prove its fascination within contemporary society. Citing ‘the combinatory or fusion

66

Abject Appeal and the Monstrous Feminine

__________________________________________________________________ figure’ 10 as one of its main tropes, Carroll could include in this repertoire of grotesquery the distensions of flesh worn by Gaga on her cheeks, forehead and shoulders, the claw like nails and shoes, costumes made from hair or the arrival at the 2011 Grammy Awards in an egg as examples. Important to note however is that Gaga’s abjection is a performed abjection, carefully self-controlled and where she appears fully recovered or transformed in the next display of fashion, celebrity appearance or performance. Covino summarises the grotesque performer as such: The grotesque performer, because ugly and aberrant according to conventional culture, refuses the imperative that she stay beautiful and domesticated, and seeks the heights of selffashioning with reference to a body that does not obey prescribed limits. 11 This category of performance echoes Christine Ross’ investigation into abject performances of the female body where she states ‘how much the abject as a grotesque process is more of an action than a thing.’ 12 Conversely, the performativity (and thus temporality) of Mother Monster’s abjection calls into question its authenticity and affective potential. Gaga purports to assume what Sara Ahmed refers to as the ‘knowability of the place of the other.’ 13 In this case, Gaga aims to move from the centre into the place of the marginal other. Her message may in this sense be difficult to interiorise for those who genuinely experience abjection through life or circumstance. That is, from Gaga’s position of centrality and privilege, she cannot convincingly invest in notions of otherness which may distance those with which she attempts to identify. To this point, she has met with controversy over some choices. In particular, in Sydney, July 2011, Gaga entered onto the stage in a wheelchair. Wearing a movement-inhibiting mermaid tail, her performance prompted feverish comment from disability organisations who seek to demystify the limitations perceived by life in a wheelchair. Nor is this the first time Gaga has made reference to the disabled body. In her music video ‘Paparazzi’ she employed the use of a wheelchair and crutches, the latter seeing Gaga move in an exaggerated, spasmodic way as she attempts to walk after suffering an injury. In yet another performance of abjection, Gaga appeared on stage as a bald woman and wearing a dress made entirely of hair. Facing a wig on a bust sitting atop her piano, she sang lyrics such as ‘I’ve had enough, I’m not a freak...’ 14 By uttering the word freak, Gaga evokes the abject body spectacularised in late nineteenth century sideshows, where the display of the grotesque or freakish body provided curious audiences with evidence of the ‘others’ existence. As woman, Gaga is historically registered as ‘other’ and in the case of her persona Mother Monster, must be abjected in order to construct the subject’s identity. In addition to the performance of abjection, then, Mother Monster can be discussed in terms of maternal power. While Kristeva emphasises the maternal

Laini Burton

67

__________________________________________________________________ figure as abject, with its fundamental tensions located in the incestual and autoerotic prohibition in the mother-child relationship, 15 Gaga destabilises the symbolic relationship through a metaphorical maternal role. Her ‘Little Monsters’ the affectionate name she gives her fan base - enter the relationship in an already established post-Oedipal state of subjectivity. In this way, they needn’t struggle with separation in their identification with Mother Monster and therefore, the relationship does not threaten subject formation or loss of identity. Also, because the mother-child relationship is a metaphorical one, the ‘child’ (Little Monster) is freed from the prohibitions that constitute the oedipal stage of psychosexual development such as the perversity in experiencing pleasure and desire. Mother Monster’s manifesto, which narrates the experience of multiple wombs and infinite birthing, keenly activates notions of the grotesque, maternal body as it exists in the within the lexicon of the monstrous. Gaga emphasises what it most abject about the maternal body in the accompanying music video. 16 Here, the boundary of the symbolic order is breached in a hyperbolic spillage of amniotic fluid from the womb as Mother Monster’s swollen, leaking body heaves with the force and pain of birthing. Gaga tempers the birthing scene with a mirroring effect, fantastical costumery and a distinct lack of identifiable bodily fluid or organ, such as blood or view of the vagina. Interestingly though, she does not separate Mother Monster from ‘the clean and proper subject,’ 17 but rather embraces a shocking abjection in a way that continues to generate an ever-growing fan base. 18 As with Kristeva’s discussion of the pregnant body, Gaga’s manifesto states how Mother Monster doubles or splits into an evil other. 19 In this category, one can draw the relationships between evil and the monstrous, maternal figure as a threat to our expectations of the natural order. The confluence of the mother figure, birthing and evil in Gaga’s manifesto recalls Barbara Creed’s accounts of the evil Mother, which she claims is the most dangerous and transgressive body. 20 Gaga’s Mother Monster gestates for a new order; a body politic that is transformed, inclusive, or at the very least, tolerant which is in contrast to the examples drawn throughout Creed’s filmic analyses. Further, Gaga’s utopian vision reflects Bakhtin’s potential for carnival which claims ‘the chance to have a new outlook on the world […] and to enter a completely new order of things.’ 21 Of course, problematising this is the space in which Mother Monster imagines a new and free race. In this Government Owned Alien Territory (G.O.A.T), any bid for a new order can only fail in that birth occurs within an already established symbolic order. Such public acceptance would prove a threatening force were it not to come from the perceived low or popular culture of the fashion, music and entertainment industries. The relationship between Bakhtin’s popular sphere of carnival and these contemporary culture industries then becomes clear. There is a growing discourse in fashion theory that recognises the increasing importance of fashion in the construction of identity. 22 Long criticised as superficial, fashions ties to class, race,

68

Abject Appeal and the Monstrous Feminine

__________________________________________________________________ and gender power relations are becoming crucial to understanding subject formation in a culture that places overwhelming emphasis on the body and its display. The cyclical nature of fashion is certainly something that has contributed to its reputation as mere surface. Gilles Lipovestsky has discussed this instability as a positive force in socialising individuals, where it ‘prepares them for perpetual recycling,’ 23 or as fashion theorist Caroline Evans summarises, it enables individuals ‘to take on new and mobile identities.’ 24 Gaga’s canny use of these aspects of mass culture is key to her appeal. The rapid turnover of her fashion styles mirrors the instability surrounding the illusion of a unified or fixed subject imagined by the body politic and thus permits a kind of invention and reinvention in her fan base. What is not so readily adopted are the abject qualities carried forward in her fashion costumes and performances. It is one thing to cheer a wheelchair-bound Gaga on in concert than it is to assume this as a form of mobility in daily life. Even so, any momentary repulsion of abjection evoked by Gaga is quickly surpassed into an accumulating fandom. Following Carroll’s lead, then, one might suggest the public’s taste for the abject or the grotesque is supported by the entertainment industries who constantly seek ways to inspire awe and emotion in an increasingly desensitised and alienated populous. 25 The fecund, maternal body of Mother Monster is an ambivalent sign to take on the body politic, particularly because of its symbolic over-determination of essentialist gender characteristics. The monstrous feminine is performed to affect a sense of identification in the fan - one that bears at the very foundations of identity; the maternal relationship. However, these performative reiterations may constitute a failure in their potential discursive power by naturalising the assumptions and stereotypes surrounding the abject, maternal figure. In this way, the intended transgression through excessive performance could be seen to counter any productive re-signification of the monstrous feminine. On the other hand, as Judith Butler claimed, ‘performance destabilizes the very distinctions between the natural and the artificial, depth and surface, inner and outer.’ 26 This statement challenges this prospective failure and, if we were to call upon Bakhtin’s optimistic view of carnival, does not discount the subversive capabilities in evoking the monstrous feminine. The danger, then, is a rearticulation of difference that recuperates the grotesque, maternal figure described by Bakhtin back into the realm of otherness, rendering any transgression impotent. In her conclusion to ‘Kristeva, Femininity, Abjection,’ Creed proposes that it may in fact be impossible to extract ‘the mother and her universe from the symbolic order.’ 27 Even if Gaga does not subvert time-honoured conceptions of the monstrous feminine, her resistance to the homogenising force of the body politic through this carnivalised character does appear a protracted one through sustained messages of tolerance, philanthropic activity and advocacy for equal rights. Examining the monstrous in this way can help us, as Rosi Braidotti suggests, ‘to understand the paradox of “difference” as a ubiquitous but perennially negative

Laini Burton

69

__________________________________________________________________ preoccupation.’ 28 And although Ken Gelder warns of romanticising the monster as ‘a means of deconstructing the “human” in order to think “beyond” it, standing “at the threshold … of becoming,”’ 29 Gaga’s persona Mother Monster provides a productive means through which to comprehend prevailing cultural anxieties relating not only to the abject, but to subject formation today.

Notes 1

Manifesto of Mother Monster, Lady Gaga. Mikhail Bahktin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 9. 3 For extended discussion on carnival ritual and activity, see for example: Umberto Eco, Carnival! (Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1984); Efrat Tseëlon, The Masque of Femininity: The Presentation of Woman in Everyday Life (London: Sage Publications, 1995); Efrat Tseëlon, Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality, and Marginality (London: Routledge, 2001); Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London: Methuen, 1986). 4 Barbara Babcock, The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society (London: Cornell University Press, 1978), 15. 5 Barbara Creed, ‘Kristeva, Femininity, Abjection’, in The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 65. 6 These relationships are discussed in: Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); Mary Russo, The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1995); and Patricia Yaeger ‘The “Language of Blood”: Toward a Maternal Sublime’, Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 25, No. 1 (1992). 7 Marsha Meskimmon, ‘The Monstrous and the Grotesque: On the Politics of Excess in Women’s Self-Portraiture’, accessed February 3, 2012, http://varoregistry.org/articles/monst.html. 8 Deborah Caslav Covino, ‘Abject Criticism’, Genders 32 (2000); accessed March 5, 2012, http://www.genders.org/g32/g32_covino.html. 9 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 10. 10 Noël Carroll, ‘The Grotesque Today: Preliminary Notes toward a Taxonomy’, in Modern Art and the Grotesque, ed. Frances S. Connelly (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 296. 11 Covino, ‘Abject Criticism’. 12 Christine Ross, ‘Redefinitions of Abjection in Contemporary Performances of the Female Body’, Modern Art and the Grotesque, ed. Frances S. Connelly (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 285. 2

70

Abject Appeal and the Monstrous Feminine

__________________________________________________________________ 13

Sarah Ahmed, ‘“She’’ll Wake up One of These Days and Find She’s Turned into a Nigger”: Passing through Hybridity’, Performativity and Belonging, ed. Vikki Bell (Nottingham: Sage Publications, 1999), 98. 14 This performance took part on The Paul O’Grady Show, June 2011. The recording can be viewed on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z2AxFPN63Cs#. 15 Kristeva’s theories of subject formation as it relates to maternal abjection is cited in Creed, ‘Kristeva, Femininity, Abjection’. 16 Lady Gaga’s full music video, Born This way, can be viewed on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1FrqwZyKw. 17 Kristeva, cited in Covino, Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetic Makeovers in Medicine and Culture (New York: SUNY, 2004), 21. 18 There are multiple media reports that claim as of 6 March 2012, Lady Gaga has reached 20 Million Twitter followers. 19 Kristeva, in Covino, Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetic Makeovers in Medicine and Culture. 20 See Barbara Creed’s article ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’, Screen 27 (1986): 44-71. Creed examines at length the monstrous feminine in Ridley Scott’s movie Alien, 1979, among other films. 21 Katherine Weese cites Bakhtin in her article ‘Normalising Freakery: Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and the Female Grotesque’, Critique 41, No. 4 (2000): 351. In her discussion, Weese discusses the failure of carnival inversion as it relates to traditional gender relations. 22 See for example Malcolm Barnard, Fashion Theory: A Reader (Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2007); Christopher Breward, Fashion (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); and Bonnie English, A Cultural History of Fashion in the Twentieth Century: From the Catwalk to the Sidewalk (Oxford, UK: Berg, 2007). 23 Lipovestsky cited in Caroline Evans, Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 149. 24 Evans, Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness, 208. 25 Carroll, ‘The Grotesque Today: Preliminary Notes toward a Taxonomy’, 291311. 26 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), iix. 27 Creed, ‘Kristeva, Femininity, Abjection’, 70. 28 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied Differences’, in Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine and Cyberspace, eds. Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1996), 141.

Laini Burton

71

__________________________________________________________________ 29

Ken Gelder, ed., The Horror Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 82.

Bibliography Ahmed, Sarah. ‘“She’ll Wake up One of These Days and Find She’s Turned into a Nigger”: Passing through Hybridity’. In Performativity and Belonging, edited by Vikki Bell, 87–106. Nottingham: Sage Publications, 1999. Babcock, Barbara A. The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society. London: Cornell University Press, 1978. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Betterton, Rosemary. An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists and the Body. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Braidotti, Rosi. ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied Differences’. In Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine and Cyberspace, edited by Nina Lykke, and Rosi Braidotti, 135–152. London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1996. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Carroll, Noël. ‘The Grotesque Today: Preliminary Notes toward a Taxonomy’. In Modern Art and the Grotesque, edited by Frances S. Connelly, 291–313. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Caslav Covino, Deborah. Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetic Makeovers in Medicine and Culture. New York: SUNY, 2004. —––. ‘Abject Criticism’. Genders 32 (2000). Accessed March 5, 2012. http://www.genders.org/g32/g32_covino.html. Creed, Barbara. ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’. Screen 27 (1986). Accessed February 22, 2012. http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/1/44.full.pdf.

72

Abject Appeal and the Monstrous Feminine

__________________________________________________________________ —––. ‘Kristeva, Femininity, Abjection’. In The Horror Reader, edited by Ken Gelder, 64–70. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Eco, Umberto, Ivanov, V. V., and Rector, Monica. Carnival!, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok. Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1984. Evans, Caroline. Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003. Gelder, Ken. The Horror Reader. New York and London: Routledge, 2000. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Meskimmon, Marsha. ‘The Monstrous and the Grotesque: On the Politics of Excess in Women’s Self-Portraiture’. Accessed February 3, 2012. http://varoregistry.org/articles/monst.html. Russo, Mary. The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity. New York: Routledge, 1995. Russo, Mary. ‘Freaks’. In The Horror Reader, edited by Ken Gelder, 90–96. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Ross, Christine. ‘Redefinitions of Abjection in Contemporary Performances of the Female Body’. In Modern Art and the Grotesque, edited by Frances S. Connelly, 281–290. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. London: Methuen, 1986. Tseëlon, Efrat. The Masque of Femininity: The Presentation of Woman in Everyday Life. London: Sage Publications, 1995. —––. Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality, and Marginality. London: Routledge, 2001. Yaeger, Patricia. ‘The “Language of Blood”: Toward a Maternal Sublime’. Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 25, No. 1 (1992): 5–24.

Laini Burton

73

__________________________________________________________________ Weese, Katherine. ‘Normalising Freakery: Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and the Female Grotesque’. Critique 41, No. 4 (2000), 349–364. Accessed January 23, 2012. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00111610009601597. Laini Burton is Lecturer, Art Theory at the Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, Australia. Her research interests centre on body politics, fashion theory, Spectacle theory, film and new media installation and body/spatial relations. Laini is Guest Editor of the 2012 volume for Intellect Journal Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty and has presented her research in Europe, the United States and New Zealand. Also a practicing artist, she has exhibited in numerous groups and solo shows and is included in a major survey of contemporary female Australian and Indian practitioners being held in India, November 2012.

Part 3 The Feminine Aspect within the Space and the Image

Abject(ion): The Feminine and the Masculine Zuzana Kovar Abstract Women have been associated with many negative terms in society, one of which is abject(ion), a term popularised by Julia Kristeva in her ‘Powers of Horror’ (1982). Abject(ion) has become Women’s historical condition - a name that is attributable to her and therefore changeable. This chapter proposes to take a different approach to this Feminine classified term, and to the notion that Woman is associated with all that is on the other side of the border, through revealing that abject(ion) is both Feminine and Masculine. It is precisely because abject(ion) is not only psychological but also physiological that it straddles both genders and is not solely reducible to the Feminine. The rethinking of such a term, which has been gendered, proves critical to understanding the full power of its workings, and to be able to approach it productively rather than negatively, where it is forever in relation to a positive counterpart. Hence what is at the core of the chapter, is a concern with the certain curtailing that occurs through the direct association between abject(ion) and the Feminine/Woman. These negative connotations have proliferated all manner of disciplines, instituting abject(ion) as Feminine. One such discipline is architecture, and we may employ architecture to not only provide a series of illustrative examples of the short comings of gendering abject(ion), but more importantly demonstrate, how abject(ion) may be rethought productively, and thus unlock critical attributes that are presently curtailed. It is only under such circumstances that we come to understand ‘the obscene’ as ‘something much more profound than the backwash of a sick society’s aversion to the body,’ 1 to employ the words of Susan Sontag. Key Words: Abject(ion), feminine, masculine, productive, architecture. ***** 1. Women’s Historical Condition If we begin by adopting Kristeva’s direct association of the Woman (and particularly the maternal) with abject(ion), a string of questions that Barbara Creed points to as having escaped discussion by Kristeva follow: Is it possible to intervene in the social construction of woman as abject? Or is the subject’s relationship to the processes of abjectivity, as they are constructed within subjectivity and language, completely unchangeable? Is the abjection of women a precondition for the continuation of sociality? 2

78

Abject(ion)

__________________________________________________________________ Creed makes explicit that the classification of Woman as abject, is by the subjective system. Hence she asks whether this name is merely attributed to her and therefore changeable, or is a precondition for the continuation of sociality. This results in a broader question: whether abject(ion) as attributed to the Feminine in fact prevents the female from redefining a new form of Feminine subjectivity? An identical question to that posed by Luce Irigaray regarding Deleuze and Guattari’s Body without Organs as Rosi Braidotti notes. She [Irigaray] points out that the emphasis on the machinelike, the inorganic, as well as the notions of loss of self, dispersion, and fluidity are all too familiar to women; is not the “body without organs” women’s own historical condition? 3 I would argue that abject(ion) is (as is the BwO) Women’s own historical condition, and that both are therefore changeable. Abject(ion) as associated with the Feminine, is changeable precisely as it can also be characterised as non-gender specific, if we take it as purely physiological, as much of that physiology is shared by both genders. For both genders equally urinate, defecate, vomit and perspire. Abjection is our bodily process for managing waste, it exists in order for the body to be, it is purely about the body expelling that which it has exhausted all possible nutrients from, in order that it may rejoin the field of material structure. It is only after its primal function, that it acquires meaning, and it is from this perspective, that Kristeva insists on its relation to the maternal, 4 as the maternal is a ‘prediscursive biological necessity.’ 5 It is at this point, that abject(ion) as maternal, becomes transferred to the architectural discipline, through spatial figures such as the cave. It is clear that the cave is a metaphor for the maternal womb. Through the processes of metaphorisation the attributes of the maternal womb are transferred over to this space, over to the figure of the cave. 6 To label this rejecta as Feminine and reduce it to the negative case, or as Masculine where it assumes a positive case, and to then translate this term into architecture as gendered, is to underestimate its complexity. Such approaches reaffirm the dualistic system, which leaves no room for the in-between. In this context it is impossible to approach abject(ion) productively, to fully understand its workings and functionings. Thus although one must acknowledge the long standing associations between abject(ion) and the Feminine, abject(ion) is not intrinsic to the Woman (or to any one body). Abject(ion) flows between bodies. It is sometimes Feminine (menstruation), sometimes Masculine (ejaculation), sometimes both, but it never solely concerns one body. Consider,

Zuzana Kovar

79

__________________________________________________________________ - A woman menstruating, the haemorrhage leaks on her male partner, onto the bed Abject(ion) stops being gendered the moment it leaves one body and becomes ingrained in others. To reduce abject(ion) to a single body, or a spatial figure, leaves no room for it as the in-between, as slippage. In fact, these conceptions defy its workings, situating it, rendering it static. Here, abject(ion) is not excess. It does not overflow. 2. Masculine Abject(ion) The problem with gendering abject(ion), is that it could be equally gendered as Masculine for a number of reason. One: Man enters/penetrates into other bodies. Woman accepts things into her body. ‘Women’s bodies are penetrable by design’ 7 as William Ian Miller writes. Diane Ackerman distinguishes between the two genders further, During intercourse, a man hides parts of himself in a woman, a bit of his body disappears from view, while a woman opens up the internal workings of her body and adds another organ to it, as if it were meant to be there all along. These, in a starched, stiff, dangerous world, are ultimate risks. 8 Given this, Man looses a part of himself, he temporarily expels a part of his body into another, whereas Woman accepts a new organ into her body. Women are not only leaky but possess the ability for containment. There is a subtraction that associates itself with the Man, and an addition with the Woman. Abjection is a form of subtraction, our body expels, leaks, overflows. Hence in this instance of metaphorical abjection, it is the Man who expels. This exchange between the bodies, this act of addition and subtraction that occurs, not only serves to illustrate that Man is associable with abject(ion) but is interesting on a further level. It is interesting to consider this act of addition and subtraction between not merely human bodies but in the case of architecture, human and spatial bodies. We may pose the following questions: Cannot space open its internal workings to the body and add a bodily organ to its composition? Or can the body not allow a part of space inside it, or further still, probe space with a part of itself and disappear? And all of this interchangeably? Would not such a violent union produce an intimacy between our body and space akin to orgasm? Is this not the violence architect Bernard Tschumi spoke so passionately of in the 1990s? 9 Would not all this result in a single body for which we require a single language? A body manifested by a crash, akin to the J. G. Ballard crash between mechanical and human bodies. Here it is important to understand that our body is a Klein bottle, that it freely turns in on itself.

80

Abject(ion)

__________________________________________________________________ The mouth and the anus bear an undeniable connection. They are literally connected, each being one end of a tube that runs through the body. No great feat of metaphorization or cultural imagination was needed to show that what went in at one end came out at the other. The anus is the end of a tube; the mouth is the beginning One is properly ingress; the other egress. 10 Two: Abject(ion) is Masculine because it inevitably leads to death - to the point where we no longer expel but we are expelled: Such wastes drop so that I might live, until from loss to loss nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit - cadare, cadaver…. It is no longer “I” who expel. “I” is expelled. 11 From the perspective of death it is particularly Man who comes to approach abject(ion), and who has been associated with death throughout history. One can see such a comment from French film director Catherine Breillat, ‘A man cannot give life. He takes it. He gives death. And thus, eternal life.’ 12 Three: Abject(ion) forms the work of Men, as much as Women. Whether abject(ion) merely appears in select passages: William S. Burroughs’s ‘Naked Lunch’ (1959), the Comte de Lautreamont’s ‘Maldoror’ (1868-9), or plays a more persistent role: Francis Bacon’s paintings, Matthew Barney’s films. This work is marked by not only male writers, painters, film makers, but importantly by the male figures in their work which are in the process of abjection, and which in the case of Barney’s films, is often himself. It is clear that abject(ion) exists within the Masculine realm on a number of levels, and one could even say that if need be, it could be woven into Men’s historical condition. 3. Abject(ion) in Architecture The association between abject(ion) and the Feminine, and their classification as that located on the ‘other side of the border’ is interesting architecturally, as it lends itself directly to the dualistic relationships still prevalent to a large degree in the discipline. On a fundamental level, architecture engages in various dualistic relationships whether in form, materiality, layout or other aspects (we need only to look to the architectural rhetoric) i.e., rough/raw versus smooth/rich; dark versus light; compression versus release; open versus enclosed; intimate versus public etc. This is ideal for discussing abject(ion) negatively, however if we understand

Zuzana Kovar

81

__________________________________________________________________ abject(ion) as the in-between, then there is no way of addressing it architecturally. It does not fit, as it is neither A nor B but rather that which binds them. Because of this framework, it is abject(ion) as negative (as associated with the Feminine) that is predominant in architectural writing and practice. There are two distinct approaches in architecture in dealing with abject(ion): a direct approach and an indirect approach. The direct approach often entails a construction of spaces with abject materials, 13 an approach that serves to establish a threatening proximity, however one which falls into the trap of prioritising the abject over the process of abjection, and as a result objectifying the abject. Within the second approach, the terms associated meanings and symbolic connotations take precedence over the actual abject or its process. Thus we often come across Georges Bataille’s dust and informe, Anthony Vidler’s the uncanny, Adolf Loos’s parallel between ornament and filth is also worthy of mention, the womb and/or the cave, the sublime and dichotomies such as inside-outside / Feminine-Masculine that implicate the abject through a direct translation to the Feminine, and where the Feminine in turn becomes translated to the inside. A certain complexity however arises from not dealing with the term directly, which must be unravelled with care, as simplistic readings of these associations lead to unproductive and uniformed categorisations, 14 and where abject(ion) may only be approached metaphorically. It is useful here to provide an example. In ‘Cinematic Space: Desiring and Deciphering’ (1996) Laura Mulvey on numerous occasions refers to ‘A home or homestead as signifier of stable space, the sphere of the family and the feminine,’ 15 rendering the Feminine stable passive (a generally accepted categorisation hailing back to the Greek syntax and semantics as Alice Jardine notes, where ‘“presence” or “being” is there ousia or parousia, signifying “homestead,” “being-at-home,” and “integral, unmediated presentness.”).’ 16 Mulvey further outlines the Masculine as outside (a point confirmed by architectural historian Beatriz Colomina), adventure, movement and cathartic action. 17 If we follow this translation of the Feminine to the home/interior through, we come to the abject being associated with the interior via its translation to the Feminine, as per Kristeva’s classification: At the limit, if someone personifies abjection without assurance of purification, it is a woman, “any woman,” the “woman as a whole”; as far as he is concerned, man exposes abjection by knowing it, and through that very act purifies it. 18 Thus via this string of translations we come to indirectly address the abject in architecture. Not only does this bring us back to a far too simplistic translation, but further, the Feminine which personifies abject(ion) and thus is volatile and illdefined on the one hand, is simultaneously passive and stable. Hence doesn’t this flow and unboundedness contradict passivity? And are not Women in fact active

82

Abject(ion)

__________________________________________________________________ and Men passive? It would seem that there is an inherent conflict which implicates the labelling of abject(ion). Paradoxes emerge, and certain qualities become consciously omitted. Alice Jardine writes that, ‘woman and her obligatory connotations are essential to the functioning of psychoanalytic theory.’ 19 In other words, Woman and all that is associated with her; the interior, home, cave, abject(ion), fluidity, slippage, the viscous, etc., are essential to psychoanalysis. If this is the case, architecture as an active participant in such connotations, is psychoanalytic. And here lies the problematic of accepting and working within the current notions of abject(ion) in architecture. For if we directly adopt the current architectural approach to abject(ion), without the consideration of the definition as a whole, we will ultimately be rehashing the established relationships between Woman-spaceabject(ion), we will be dealing with dated polemics. Architecture currently depends on this association between ‘Woman’ and ‘space’ and it is for this reason that one is unable to locate any reference to abject(ion) void of the Feminine. And it is because we deal with abject(ion) as the negative of the clean and proper, because we tend to discuss it indirectly, that we may maintain our distance from it and hence maintain a certain Puritanism in architecture as architect/theorist Bernard Tschumi wrote in 1996, Although society secretly delights in crime, excesses, and violated prohibitions of all sorts, there seems to be a certain Puritanism among architectural theorists… 20 What the survey of abject(ion) in architecture makes explicit, is a gap in investigations into the process of abjection, into the act, the verb, into the obscured boundary between human bodies and spatial bodies, in effect, into the in-between. Such an investigation is into the breaking boundaries of the human body not in isolation but in relation to the breaking boundaries of spatial bodies, which when ruptured, simultaneously rupture those of space and vice versa, interdependently. The question that therefore arises, is how does one discuss the true nature of abject(ion) directly, within the current dualistic framework of architecture? How does one rethink abject(ion) productively? 4. Bodies To begin with, we need to understand that abject(ion) is not reducible to a body, be it a human or spatial body. It is volatile. It excretes out of one body only to be ingrained in another, and in so doing, crosses and dilutes boundaries. Abject(ion) entails bodies. Because of this, it cannot be solely Feminine. It is a discussion of proximity, where objects (space) that are typically kept at a distance from our bodies and understood as outside of us, are brought within an overwhelming proximity to our body, to the extent that the object disappears both

Zuzana Kovar

83

__________________________________________________________________ physically and psychologically. This for Jean-Paul Sartre brings on a feeling of nausea. Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts. 21 His blue cotton shirt stands out joyfully against a chocolatecoloured wall. That too brings on the Nausea. The Nausea is not inside me: I feel it out there in the wall, in the suspenders, everywhere around me. It makes itself one with the café, I am the one who is within it. 22 These bodies engaged in the process of abjection are not discrete entities, they are not static. Rather they may be understood as a mass of perpetually shifting heterogeneous organs. Abject(ion) blurs boundaries and hence reorganises bodies, no body remaining cohesive - singular. Instead temporary heterogeneous bodies, or what Gilles Deleuze would term assemblages are formed, which eventually decompose, the organs having constituted these bodies descending to their respective structures. It is possible to contemplate such relationships as both human and spatial bodies are material objects, and may therefore be broken into parts, lose parts and acquire new parts thus altering the whole. In this way, human bodies and spatial bodies may displace each other, exchange parts and importantly affect one another. This is something as architect Greg Lynn notes, that architecture, privileging ‘a holistic model of the body - one that is essentially static’ has consistently ignored, ‘This whole architectural concept ignores the intricate local behaviors of matter and their contribution to the composition of bodies.’ 23 Despite the persistent distinction / duality between body and space in architecture, we may come to understand abject(ion) as a process that entails bodies and sets in motion the construction and deconstruction of assemblages through open philosophical models such as those of Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze allows for ‘a way of looking at all bodies as parts of the same construct, to be linked or decoupled in strategic or momentary ways.’ 24 In order for such a model to be implemented, one must accept that architecture is not a static entity, that it is merely space, but rather that it is constituted by the interaction between human and spatial bodies. In short, that experience or what Tschumi terms event, constitutes architecture. It is only such an approach that allows one to move beyond classifying abject(ion) as the other side of the border and associating it with the Feminine - an approach that admits that abject(ion) is about volatile bodies and the assemblages they form. Here abject(ion) has agency. Here, it is truly productive.

84

Abject(ion)

__________________________________________________________________

Notes 1

Susan Sontag, ‘The Pornographic Imagination’, in Styles of Radical Will (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 57. 2 Barbara Creed, ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’, Screen 27, No. 1 (1986): 54. 3 Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 116. Referring to Luce Irigaray’s comments in, This Sex Which Is Not One. 4 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 45. 5 Judith Butler writes on Kristeva, ‘She defends a maternal instinct as a prediscursive biological necessity, thereby naturalizing a specific cultural configuration of maternity’. Judith Butler, ‘The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva’, Hypatia 3, No. 3 (Winter 1989): 104. 6 Mirjana Lozanovska, ‘Excess: The Possibility of Disruption on the Side of Woman/Women’, Interstices 4 (1995): 2. 7 William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 101. 8 Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 307. 9 See Bernard Tschumi, who refers to metaphoric violence in architecture to describe the intensity of the interaction between bodies and spaces. Bernard Tschumi, Questions of Space: Lectures on Architecture (London: Architectural Association, 1995). And Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996). 10 Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, 96, 98 and 99. 11 Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 3-4. 12 Catherine Breillat, Pornocracy, trans. Paul Buck and Catherine Petit (Los Angeles: Semiotext, 2005), 98. 13 See David Adjaye ‘Dirty House’ (2002), R&Sie ‘Dusty Relief’ (2002) and Christine McCarthy, ‘Constructions of a Culinary Abject’, Space and Culture 1, No. 9 (1997): 9-23. 14 In a philosophical context for example, Denis Hollier writing ‘on’ the Bataillean labyrinth points to its far too direct and simplistic relation to caves, tunnels, wombs etc. ‘But it is not simply a product of nature either, despite the diverse organotelluric connotations that would connect it with Old Mole’s tunnels, with the underground networks of chambers and corridors of caves (like Lascaux), with the “world of the womb,” with the “infernal and maternal world of the depths of the

Zuzana Kovar

85

__________________________________________________________________ earth.” That would be too easy’. Denis Hollier, Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989), 57-58. 15 Laura Mulvey, ‘Cinematic Space: Desiring and Deciphering’, in Desiring Practices, eds. Katerina Rüedi, Sarah Wigglesworth and Duncan McCorquodale (London: Black Dog Publishing Limited, 1996), 210. See also Mulvey’s article ‘Pandora: Topographies of the Mask and Curiosity’, in Sexuality and Space, Vol. 1, ed. Beatriz Colomina, Princeton Papers on Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), 55-56. 16 Alice A. Jardine, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), 128. 17 Mulvey, ‘Pandora: Topographies of the Mask and Curiosity’, 55. 18 Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 85. 19 Jardine, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity, 159. 20 Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996), 66. 21 Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. Lloyd Alexander (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1959), 19. 22 Ibid., 31. 23 Greg Lynn, ‘Body Matters’, in Folds, Bodies & Blobs: Collected Essays (Bruxelles: La Lettre Volée, 1998), 135. 24 Kelly Pendergrast, ‘Flows of Power: Rethinking the Abject in Ousmane Sembène’’s Xala’, Octopus Journal 3 (Fall 2007): 81-82.

Bibliography Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Braidotti, Rosi. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Breillat, Catherine. Pornocracy. Translated by Paul Buck, and Catherine Petit. Los Angeles: Semiotext, 2005. Butler, Judith. ‘The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva’. Hypatia 3, No. 3 (Winter 1989): 104–118. Colomina, Beatriz, ed. Sexuality and Space. Vol. 1. Princeton Papers on Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992.

86

Abject(ion)

__________________________________________________________________ Creed, Barbara. ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection’. Screen 27, No. 1 (1986): 44–70. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty. Translated by Jean McNeil. New York: Zone Books, 1991. —––. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. London and New York: Continuum, 2003. —––. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane Robert Hurley. London: Penguin Books, 2009. Grosz, Elizabeth. Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989. —––. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. —––. Space, Time and Perversion. New York: Routledge, 1995. Hollier, Denis. Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989. Jardine, Alice A. Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity. New York: Cornell University Press, 1985. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Lozanovska, Mirjana. ‘Excess: The Possibility of Disruption on the Side of Woman/Women’. Interstices 4 (1995): 1–6. Lynn, Greg. ‘Multiplicitous and Inorganic Bodies’. Assemblage 19 (1992): 32–49. —––. ‘Body Matters’. In Folds, Bodies & Blobs: Collected Essays. Bruxelles: La Lettre Volée, 1998. McCarthy, Christine. ‘Constructions of a Culinary Abject’. Space and Culture 1, No. 9 (1997): 9–23.

Zuzana Kovar

87

__________________________________________________________________ Miller, William Ian. The Anatomy of Disgust. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Mulvey, Laura. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Screen 16, No. 3 (Autumn 1975): 6–18. Pendergrast, Kelly. ‘Flows of Power: Rethinking the Abject in Ousmane Sembène’s Xala’. Octopus Journal 3 (Fall 2007): 69–83. Tschumi, Bernard. Questions of Space: Lectures on Architecture. London: Architectural Association, 1995. —––. Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Translated by Lloyd Alexander. Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1959. Sontag, Susan. ‘The Pornographic Imagination’. In Styles of Radical Will, 35–73. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. Zuzana Kovar is a PhD candidate at RMIT, Melbourne, her doctoral project is titled ‘Productive Leakages: Architecture in Abject(ion).’ She teaches architectural design and theory at the University of Queensland and The Queensland University of Technology.

Dead Girl Walking: Feminine Death and the Self-Portrait Rebecca Louise Abstract Edgar Allan Poe once advised writers that, ‘the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.’ 1 Over a century later, Poe’s statement still holds relevance. In media spectacles surrounding female celebrity deaths (from Princess Diana to Anna Nicole Smith) and the ever-present sight of female corpses in horror cinema and television crime shows, we can see that the dead female still intrigues, providing a titillating body for investigation. Representations of the female corpse have been understood, in feminist film theory, as vehicles for fetishisation and spectacle, reflecting the desire to freeze the woman in a Pygmalion-like attempt to still her transgressive sexuality. 2 But what does it mean when a female artist represents herself as a corpse? In my analysis of Cindy Sherman’s self-portrait in which she performs as corpse for the camera, I ask: Can the self-portrait reposition the female corpse as an active agent? I argue that when the female artist performs as a corpse in the self-portrait, she is, in a sense, controlling the representation of her own death. Because self-portraits create a space in which the model is both dead and alive, female self-portrait artists are able to straddle the dichotomies of subject/object and active/passive and place them under scrutiny. Key Words: Death, female corpse, femininity, mortality, photography, representation, self-portrait. ***** It could be said that all photographs, in a sense, murder their subjects. The camera, which freezes the moment in a snapshot, could be understood as stealing the living model from the living moment by placing her in the static image. Visual representation, then, could be seen to murder the model with the ‘shot’ of the camera. 3 But what happens when a model represents herself as already dead in the self-portrait? Can this be seen as a resistant act? I argue that when a female artist performs as a corpse, she is, in a sense, controlling the representation of her own death. In the self-portrait, the object being photographed and the photographer behind the camera become one. This merging of photographer and object, complicates notions of the female as passive object in visual representation. Because in the photographic self-portrait representation is self-determined, the photographer is able to bring flesh and its mortality in to focus through their own undeniable presence. In this way, the photograph, rather than serving to arrest life (or ‘murder’ the model), brings the flesh, (its materiality and its mortality) in to the realm of life.

90

Dead Girl Walking

__________________________________________________________________ In Cindy Sherman’s photographic self-portrait, Untitled #153, mortality, castration and lack are confronted through the uncanny experience. Instead of the object of the photograph being sacrificed (or murdered) by representation (or the ‘shot’ of the photograph), Sherman is brought to life, bringing the death she represents with her. The self-portrait photograph allows for a more embodied experience of photography for the spectator, than the ‘mastering’ and ‘arresting’ gaze described by Roland Barthes, Christian Metz and Craig Owens, 4 because in the self-portrait, the object being photographed is able to become an active subject. In Sherman’s Untitled #153, it is precisely because she is representing herself as already dead, that she is able to gain power as a subject. 1. Playing Dead Flesh and the mortality it encompasses are often repressed in the safe image of woman who is still, frozen and objectified. The representation of the female corpse, in many instances, can be viewed as an attempt to place death at an acceptable distance through the conflation of femininity, beauty and death. In Freud’s 1913 essay, ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’ Freud suggests that death is substituted with beauty and love to serve a form of wish-fulfilment. Beauty (of the woman and of the image) gives the illusion of unity to cover the signs of lack and absence. The conflation of woman with beauty and death promises the spectator an annihilation of death’s castrative threat. In Jane O’Sullivan’s discussion of detective films, she suggests that the female corpse, as a reminder of the unknowable abyss of death, poses a riddle for the detective to solve. The aim of the detective, argues O’Sullivan, […] ‘is not to see the body move, but rather to see that it be re-moved from view.’ 5 When the female corpse is placed out of sight, mortality can, for a moment, be denied. As O’Sullivan suggests, the female corpse might be said to ‘speak louder, and exert a greater presence, in death than in life.’ 6 Sherman’s corpse displays power through silent resistance. When a woman poses as a corpse in the context of a selfportrait, her position as corpse can be read as a resistance to the probing investigation of the detective (or critic). The film noir style of Sherman’s mise-enscene brings to in to focus the genre’s pre-occupation with ‘knowing’ or unveiling the woman. The investigative function of the detective who attempts to decipher whether or not the femme fatale is innocent or duplicitous in the film noir genre can be likened to that of the critic who attempts to uncover the ‘real’ Sherman in reviews of her self-portraits. Sherman’s corpse poses a riddle but her body resists autopsy. Her silent and static presence is resistant to narrative closure and her corpse will not move or speak. Through the power of the uncanny, Sherman is able to point to the fetishistic practices which underpin the need to know the ‘real’ Sherman. Elizabeth Bronfen argues that often the uncanny can serve as an aid in the repression of death: ‘The “double” simultaneously helps deny and affirm mortality and points to the repression of death which is universally repressed.’ 7 I

Rebecca Louise

91

__________________________________________________________________ argue however that in the female self-portrait (and in particular in self-portraits in which feminine death is the thematic focus), the conflation of death, femininity and beauty is brought to the foreground and challenged through the uncanny effect. 2. The Power of the Uncanny Freud’s description of the ‘uncanny,’ a situation of ‘undecidability,’ can be helpful in discussions of the portrait, in which the real, mortal, fleshy subject of representation is doubled in the static image. 8 In the photographic self-portrait, the effect of the uncanny is even more powerful, because we are reminded that the inanimate ‘captured’ photographed object is an active subject as an artist. 9 In portraits of women, mortality is often repressed in the safe image of woman who is still and objectified. But in the case of Sherman’s portrait, the power of the uncanny is set in motion because, not only does the character portrayed in the photograph double Sherman herself, but it is a character’s corpse (and in a sense, Sherman’s corpse) which is on display. Sherman is strangely both animate and inanimate in her self-determined representation. As Freud tells us, the ‘returned dead’ and ‘doppelganger’ are figures of the uncanny. 10 The model being represented in the photographic portrait can be viewed as the double or doppelganger of the actual real life person. As Bronfen points out, often the uncanny serves to aid in the repression of death, but in Sherman’s self-portrait, the presence of the woman and the death that she represents disrupt death’s containment as distant and safe. In the framework of the self-portrait, the question of whether or not the ‘real’ self is being represented comes in to play for the viewer. In reviews of Sherman’s work, critics seem preoccupied with finding out exactly who Sherman is. The investigative work (of locating the ‘authentic’ self) which preoccupies critics could be likened to the investigative work of the detective and Sherman’s refusal to reveal her ‘self’ in her photographs could be read as resistant. 11 That the visual style of many of Sherman’s photographs are reminiscent of the film noir genre (the mise-en-scene of her photographs brings to mind B-grade thrillers of the 1950s and 60s, the characters she plays conjure images of the femme fatale and murder victim), encourages one to read her work in the narrative framework of the detective genre. The film noir narrative which centres on the interrogation of the woman through an investigation (of the murder case and of her character) creates a riddle which must be solved in narrative closure. I argue that Sherman, by conjuring such a riddle, resists revelation at the frustration of the detective/viewer/critic who longs to ‘make the corpse talk.’ The narrative closure sought in regards to the ‘corpse’ of Sherman which she conjures in her photographic self-portraits also applies more generally to the critical reception of her work. In reviews, critics seem preoccupied with whether or not Sherman’s work is getting closer to the ‘real’ Sherman. In a review of Sherman’s work, Els Barents says: ‘dressed in today’s clothes [...] [the] portraits

92

Dead Girl Walking

__________________________________________________________________ seem more refined, natural, and closer to Cindy Sherman herself.’ 12 Waldemar Janusczak in a review of Sherman’s retrospective in Bristol says: ‘You see her as she sees herself, a small, scrawny girl from Buffalo, a mousy blond who dreams of becoming a peroxide starlet.’[ ...]. ‘Several times she appears to be recoiling from the harsh stare of her own camera, like a scared animal trapped in a car’s headlights. This too, you sense is the real Cindy Sherman.’ 13 I suggest that the desire to uncover the ‘real’ Sherman beneath the masquerade, which comes through in the critical reception of her work, is embed with a fetishistic need to reveal the real woman. To admire the likeness of a portrait and to locate a ‘real’ Sherman could be read as fetishistic strategies, for as Louise Kaplan points out, even the desire for honesty, for authentication, involves fetishism: ‘Fetishism is imbued with falsehood. Therefore, even honesty can become a fetish- especially in times of deceit.’ 14 Because Sherman plays with the masquerade of femininity in her endless playing of feminine ‘types,’ she is able to bring the strategies of fetishism into the spotlight and challenge them. Although it is fairly obvious that Sherman is playing characters drawn from feminine stereotypes in popular culture, the films, characters and scenarios which she enacts are not named or located. The viewer is therefore encouraged to imagine an off-frame space in order to fill the gaps of the narrative at work within the image. The off-frame space of the photograph, Metz suggests, is crucial to the fetishisation of the photograph because, in the photograph, we have no knowledge of what is happening (or what happened) off-frame. But we cannot help but wonder about that off-frame space in which a narrative is taking place, and so we are ‘dreaming the shape of this emptiness.’ 15 For Metz, the feeling of lack is always present in the photograph, for the off-frame space, ‘marks the place of an irreversible absence, a place from which the look has been averted forever.’ 16 The photograph then, poses a riddle, a screen with gaps to be imagined and filled. Sherman is not, as Janusczak claims, ‘a scared animal trapped in a car’s headlights’ 17 but instead provokes a reciprocal relationship with her spectators, for it becomes apparent in viewing Sherman’s images, that we are not only recognising the feminine types, situations or characters which she stages, but are reminded of own judgements and assumptions which could be said to perpetuate feminine types. It is the self-portraits of Sherman’s which more explicitly deal with death (for it could be said that all photographs do in their relationship with lack and loss), 18 that the fetishistic strategy is most able to enact itself, for the female corpse sparks its own set of uncanny effects. 3. Cindy Sherman’s ‘Untitled #153 (1985) In Sherman’s Untitled #153, Sherman poses as a corpse for the camera. Sherman’s pose and the composition and mise-en-scene of the image are reminiscent of Hollywood B Grade thrillers of the 1950s and 60s. Her costume and hair style bring to mind Marion (played by Janet Leigh) in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960

Rebecca Louise

93

__________________________________________________________________ horror film Psycho. We can surmise that she is a victim of murder and the perpetrator (as is often the case in the narratives conventions which the image hails) is probably a man. Sherman’s Untitled #153 does not fully achieve what Jennifer and Lorraine Webb call the powerful effects of ‘unsanitised art’ 19 because the corpse is done up, newly dead, free from decomposition, and glamorised. But Sherman’s character does however bring to the foreground our participation in the creation of feminine ‘types.’ Because Sherman’s work relies so heavily on its ever changing figures of femininity, and our assumptions about them, our position as spectators cannot be ignored. If the camera is a gun, Sherman is in a sense ‘killing’ herself. And because, in our viewing of the work of Sherman- the ‘self-portrait artist’ we are aware of Sherman’s presence as artist in her images, the effect of the uncanny (she is gone and yet she is here, she is objectified and yet she is subject) and the abyss lurking beneath it, haunts. In Sherman’s portrait, she is dead, and yet she is posing. She is positioned so carefully and gracefully that although dead, she cannot help but encompass glamour, a woman dressed up for a night on the town perhaps, something went wrong and she was caught, strangled, raped it is not clear, but in the collision of erotica and violence that results, a violent, sexualised death is implied. In many ways, we know the story, it is a typical B-grade thriller narrative in which the morally ambiguous woman is murdered (or punished, it could be said, for her transgressive sexuality). Sherman at first glance, may be viewed as conjuring yet another dazzling fetish, for she emulates the glittering female stars of the classical Hollywood era, 20 but the difference is, she challenges this image with silence and resistance, so that in her images, the unknowable and uncontrollable, the abyss of death and lack, lingers. 4. Conclusion Drawing on O’Sullivan’s suggestion that the female corpse can provide a troubling and disruptive presence, I analyse the ways in which Sherman’s performance as a female corpse can bring to light fetishistic processes inherent in the image of woman-as-dead. Through the power of the uncanny, I argue, Sherman provides a confronting presence because Sherman is both alive and dead, both object and subject in the self-portrait. Fetishism, which serves to still or arrest the lack or the wound through objectification, is disrupted when its very processes are brought in to focus. Representation, which could be seen as an attempt by artists to display a mastery over death and the mortal flesh, in the photographic self-portrait I discuss, brings flesh and mortality in to focus. Although Sherman’s corpse does conflate beauty, femininity and death, Sherman is still able to point to fetishistic processes at work through the power of the uncanny. In this way, rather than the photograph serving to still life and to, in a sense, bring life into the realm of the past (death), Sherman brings death in to the realm of life. Sherman conjures a riddle but she resists

94

Dead Girl Walking

__________________________________________________________________ revelation. This frustrates the detective, the viewer and the critic who long to ‘make the corpse talk,’ to solve the mystery, and to contain the threat of death.

Notes 1

See Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, in Essays and Reviews, (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, [1846] 1984), 19. 2 See Laura Mulvey, ‘Pandora’s Box’, Fetishism and Curiosity (London: British Film Institute, 1996), 53-64. 3 See Christian Metz, ‘Photography and Fetish’, October 34 (1985): 83, in which Metz discusses photography’s relationship with death. In a discussion of Edgar Allan Poe’s story, ‘The Oval Portrait’ (1842), about an artist who kills his wife by painting her portrait, Elizabeth Bronfen suggests that the immortality that is given in the portrait through representation, equates to a death inflicted on the actual body. See Elizabeth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 114. 4 Jay Ruby provides a fascinating study of the history of post-mortem and funeral photography in America. See Jay Ruby, Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995). For Christian Metz, it is photography’s ‘immobility’ and ‘silence’ that associates it so closely with death because: ‘Immobility and silence are not only two objective aspects of death, they are also its main symbols, they figure it.’ For Roland Barthes, the model in the photograph is arrested and immobile like the corpse, held in the past and unable to be brought in to the present. Similarly, Craig Owens argues that what is involved in any photograph, ‘is the figuration of a gaze which objectifies and masters, of course only by immobilising its objects, turning them to stone’. See Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard (London: Vintage), 14; Christian Metz, Photography and Fetish, 83. and Craig Owens, ‘Posing’, in Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, eds. Scott Bryson, Barbara Kruger, Lynne Tillman and Jane Weinstock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 207. 5 Jane O’Sullivan, ‘Gals on the Slab: Fetishism, Re-Animation, and the Dead Female Body’, Social Semiotics 6, No. 2 (1996): 237. 6 Ibid., 240. 7 Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body, 114. 8 See Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, trans. David McLintock (London: Penguin, [1919] 2003). 9 Amelia Jones and Rebecca Schneider argue that photography claims a more fluid time, in which images can reach out to future spectators. Jones argues that the screen of the photograph has its own space and interiority and that the body has its own alive, pulsating presence in the photograph and in the viewing. Schneider

Rebecca Louise

95

__________________________________________________________________ argues that the conflation of the invention of the camera with the invention of the still must be rethought. See Amelia Jones, ‘The “Eternal Return”: Self Portrait Photography as a Technology of Embodiment’, Signs 27, No. 4 (2002): 947-978, and Rebecca Schneider, ‘Still Living’, in Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Re-Enactment (London: Routledge, 2011), 138-168. 10 Freud, The Uncanny. 11 My monograph, The Monkey’s Mask: Film, Poetry and the Female Voice, provides a study of Samantha Lang’s film adaptation of Dorothy Porter’s novel, The Monkey’s Mask. I argue that the female corpse of character - Mickey, has more power in death than in life. See The Monkey’s Mask: Film, Poetry and the Female Voice (Melbourne: The Moving Image Series, 2012, in press). 12 Els Barents, Introduction of Cindy Sherman (a catalogue) (Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 1982), 10. 13 Waldemar Janusczak, ‘Here’s Looking at You, Kid’, Review, Guardian, May 19, 1983. 14 Louise Kaplan, ‘Unravelling Freud on Fetishism’, Cultures of Fetishism, (Gordonsville, VA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 15-34. 15 Metz, ‘Photography and Fetish’, 87. 16 Ibid. 17 Janusczak, ‘Here’s Looking at You, Kid’. 18 Metz, ‘Photography and Fetish’, 83. 19 Jennifer and Lorraine Webb argue that in representation, death becomes framed, safe and distant. It is only, they argue, through what they call ‘unsanitised art,’ that the artist can confront the spectator with their own mortality. See Jennifer and Lorraine Webb, ‘Dead or Alive’, in Images of the Corpse: Form the Renaissance to Cyberspace, ed. Elizabeth Klaver (London: University of Wisconsin Press/Popular Press, 2004), 206-227. 20 Laura Mulvey suggests that Hollywood stars provide a dazzling surface on which the fetish can be placed. The fetish, which thrives in an ‘eye-catching surface’, distracts the gaze from the wound on the mother/woman’s body. See Laura Mulvey, ‘Pandora’s Box’, in Fetishism and Curiosity (London: British Film Institute, 1996), 53-64.

Bibliography Barents, Els. Introduction of Cindy Sherman (A Catalogue), 10. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1982. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Translated by Richard Howard, 14. London: Vintage, 2000.

96

Dead Girl Walking

__________________________________________________________________ Bronfen, Elizabeth. Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Freud, Sigmund. ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’. In Standard Edition 12, 89– 301. London: Vintage, [1913] 2001. —––. The Uncanny. Translated by David McLintock. London: Penguin, [1919] 2003. Janusczak, Waldemar. ‘Here’s Looking at You, Kid’. Review. In Guardian, May 19, 1983. Jones, Amelia. ‘The “Eternal Return”: Self Portrait Photography as a Technology of Embodiment’. Signs 27, No. 4 (2002): 947–978. Kaplan, Louise. ‘Unravelling Freud on Fetishism’. Cultures of Fetishism, 15–34. Gordonsville, VA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Louise, Rebecca. The Monkey’s Mask: Film, Poetry and the Female Voice. Melbourne: The Moving Image Series, 2012 (in press). Metz, Christian. ‘Photography and Fetish’. October 34 (Autumn 1985): 83. Mulvey, Laura. ‘Pandora’s Box’. In Fetishism and Curiosity, 53–64. London: British Film Institute, 1996. O’Sullivan, Jane. ‘Gals on the Slab: Fetishism, Re-Animation, and the Dead Female Body’. Social Semiotics 6, No. 2 (1996): 237. Owens, Craig. ‘Posing’. In Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, edited by Scott Bryson, Barbara Kruger, Lynne Tillman, and Jane Weinstock, 207. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Poe, Edgar Allan. ‘The Philosophy of Composition’. In Essays and Reviews, 19. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, [1846] 1984. Ruby, Jay. Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995.

Rebecca Louise

97

__________________________________________________________________ Schneider, Rebecca. ‘Still Living’. In Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Re-Enactment, 138–168. London: Routledge, 2011. Webb, Jennifer, and Lorraine Webb. ‘Dead or Alive’. In Images of the Corpse: form the Renaissance to Cyberspace, edited by Elizabeth Klaver, 206–227. London: University of Wisconsin Press/Popular Press, 2004. Rebecca Louise is a PhD candidate at Deakin University, Australia, where she is studying the representation of death and mortality in the photographic self-portrait.

Part 4 The Feminine Power in Literature

Women’s Impurity, Menstrual Blood and the Creation of Taboo: Perspectives from the Field of Christian Feminist Theology Nadja Furlan Štante Abstract This chapter is concerned both with early Christian discourse on menstrual practices, its implication for women as embodied subjects in early Christianity and the creation of taboos and negative stereotypical religion-determined pattern of femininity, women’s impurity and inferiority and stigmatisation of woman’s body. The chapter is organised in two parts. It opens with a conceptual outline of Christian menstrual politics in early church. It points out some of the crucial early Christian fathers and church writers statements on menstrual blood and inferiority of women as unfit for baptism or receiving the Eucharist. The chapter then moves on to consider the main implications of Leviticus 15 for gender religious policy and the position of women in the Christian religious sphere. The centrepiece here is an insight into the marginalisation of woman in the early church and to the source of that marginalisation and the analysis of the taboos and negative gender stereotypes connected to the question of menstrual purity/impurity inherent in contemporary gender religious policy. Key Words: Menstrual purity/impurity, menstrual prohibitions and the Bible, menstrual conflict and Christianity, traditional medical theories, negative gender stereotypes. ***** Early Christian male writers propagated and perpetuated an inherent androcentrism rooted in ancient Greco-Roman perceptions of the female somatic experience. Ancient medicine always equated the female somatic experience with inferiority. Hereforth, patriarchal culture demeans and denies the elemental power of the female body. So the taboo of impurity and inferiority of women’s body, dangerous and impure in ritual is stigmatised and pathologised. Menstruation is regarded, not only by physiologists and many doctors, but also by some feminists, as a sickness, a blank spot, a non-event that the women must endure and would be better without, an evil time. The body is thus of fundamental importance in the determination and formation of an individual’s identity. At the same time, he/she is blinded by many negative stereotypical gender-related images which hinder his/her freedom of expressivity. The weight of negative stereotypes and prejudices thus represents a burden for the modern man/woman, who is looking for and re-creating both his/her image and his/her attitude towards the other.

102

Women’s Impurity, Menstrual Blood and the Creation of Taboo

__________________________________________________________________ The important role here have the religions which, according to M. Franzmann, are the main key which in a individual social-political structures open the door to harmful gender stereotypes and prejudices and consecutively to a patriarchal mentality. 1 Stereotypical conceptions which are linked mostly to gender stereotypes have a very important role here. These stereotypes have a destroying influence on the comprehension and notion of oneself, of the other gender and consecutively of all relations. They are creating a distance between a man and a woman and the ideal of symbiosis of gender differences and respectful-harmonious relation between sexes. Negative gender stereotypes and prejudices encourage, preserve and tolerate patriarchal hierarchical marks of human relations and spread class hierarchy of power on every field of life. Innocent patriarchy’s parasites live and transfer through the language, images and thoughts. Negative gender stereotypes and prejudices paralyse and prevent healthy mutual relations. These are heart and health of a person, of partner and family relations and also of the whole net of relations and society. Healthy relations mean healthy society and vice versa. The question of parity and equality of women and men in a view of the impact of negative gender stereotypes is one of the basic and complex questions which our era has to think about. Because the more we non-critically accept the norms around us, the more we become limited: victims of our environment, less capable to doubt about the beliefs which were unconsciously taken from our environment. That is why it is important to find a liberation from life’s captivity in which the people live as passive products of this culture. 1. Purity and Impurity of Women The notion of woman’s ontological inferiority is related to the idea of woman’s impurity or ritual pollution in several traditions. This is particularly true in Hinduism, where the hierarchy of caste is linked to the hierarchy of purity and pollution. The lowest caste, the Sudras, and the outcastes or untouchables, are assigned the dirty work that is ritually polluting. Women, through their bodily activities of menstruation and childbirth and their work in food preparation and cleanup, are linked to ritual impurity, and thus equated to the Sudras, the ritually impure caste. Judaism also has a strong tradition of woman’s ritual impurity through her bodily functions of menstruation and childbirth. This deeply affects daily life. A woman must segregate herself from her husband and male relatives for part of each month. The dichotomy of purity and impurity is correlated with the sacred and the profane. In temple Judaism this meant that women were forbidden to approach the Holy or Holies and confined to the outer court. Women’s impurity is compared to the impurity of the profane gentile world. In the separations of the pure and the impure, woman falls on the impure side of the separations by which men keep themselves pure and holy to come into the presence of God. They are, as Jewish feminist, Judith Plaskow, has said, the gentile within. 2

Nadja Furlan Štante

103

__________________________________________________________________ In New Testament Christianity this tradition of purity and impurity, correlated with the separations of Jew-gentile and male-female, pure and impure foods, is explicit rejected. In the Quran the notion of women’s impurity is ignored. But in both Christianity and Islam ideas of woman’s impurity come back in through popular culture, particularly affecting women’s public religious participation. Women are told to exclude themselves from church or mosque when menstruating. Christianity developed a rite of purification for women after childbirth. Even in modern Protestantism such ideas sometime reenter through popular culture. Rosemary Radford Ruether remembers when she taught at Gurukul Lutheran Theological Seminary in Madras she was surprised to be told by a woman seminarian that her pastor told her, women may not enter the church while menstruating. Both the notions of women’s ritual impurity in Hindu-influenced culture, plus the presence of such ideas in Hebrew Scripture, apparently caused this pastor to appropriate these traditions into Christian practice in India. 3 2. Menstrual Prohibitions in the Bible: Lev 15:19-23 Leviticus 15 delineates menstruation, as well as male discharges, in terms of ritual uncleanness and detailed interdictions. A menstruating woman is designate unclean for a period of seven days, during which time she cannot take part in sexual relations. Any person in direct contact or indirect contact with a menstruant is also deemed unclean until the evening of their infraction and after ritual ablution: When a woman has a discharge of blood that is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. Everything upon which she lies during her impurity shell be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean. Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. 4 The passage indicates that the menstruant is to remain in a state of ritual impurity for seven days, a time period that constitutes the approximate duration of a woman’s natural menstruation. Leviticus 15 thus marks a distinction between regular and irregular menstrual bleeding. The passage describes the ritual segregation required during a normal menstruation, not as punitive measure for a sinful nature or behaviour, but rather as a code of conduct to ensure ‘cleanliness.’ The Leviticus passage defines menstrual blood in terms not of deviance or immorality, but of hygiene. A regular menstrual cycle requires neither sin nor burnt offering to mark a renewed period of purity. Nevertheless, many biblical commentators throughout history have viewed the Levitical menstrual prohibitions as divine punishment for the sinful nature of

104

Women’s Impurity, Menstrual Blood and the Creation of Taboo

__________________________________________________________________ woman, which, through the action of Eve, effected the fall of humankind. Menstruation becomes the divine ‘curse’ of women. 5 Although the notions of uncleanness and contamination are evident and inconvertible in the biblical passage, these critics do not engage them or dismiss them as misrepresentations of the ‘original’ meaning. In one sense, the current feminist analyses of menstrual prohibitions are flawed in exactly the same manner as those of early biblical commentators whom they claim to refute. Both demonstrate the incapacity of contemporary analytical structures to align conceptual polar opposites (holy-impure) in the same framework. Menstrual taboos, are defined not by moral distinctions (negative-positive; pure-impure), but by the logic of separation inherent in both. Kathleen O’Grady states that most common explanation for the Levitical passage is primitive association of menstrual blood with demonic powers, which thus puts the menstrual prohibitions with a kind of superstition. 6 3. Confusion of Taboo with Menstrual Prohibitions: Historical Assessments In its contemporary usage the world taboo signifies the prohibitions attached to a particular inviolable substance or action. Often the word is assimilated for its capacity to convey a negative (impure, immoral, or unholy) activity or object. But as Sigmund Freud observes in Totem and Taboo, and later Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger, there is an implicit polysemic capacity in the term itself. The semantics of the word taboo are dominated, not by a single polarity of negativity, but by a double, seemingly contradictory, valence. The term taboo is able at the same time to represent something sacred, consecrated, and at the same time, something uncanny, dangerous, forbidden, and unclean. 7 ‘Nothing is more filthy, unclean than a menstruant; whatever she will have touched, she makes it unclean, and still of whose filth is cleansed by the baptism of Christ, through the cleansing of sins.’ 8 When Jerome wrote these heavy-handed words in the late fourth century, he reflected the world in which he dwelt. In the late antique period, Christian male writers propagated and perpetuated an inherent androcentrism rooted in ancient Greco-Roman perceptions of the female somatic experience. Jerome’s words reflect the embedded cultural construction of menstruation as reprehensible fluidity; they exemplify the acceptance of a distinct Christian menstrual taboo, a taboo that Leskie Dean-Jones has claimed was almost nonexistent in ancient Greece. 9 And while no other early father of the church goes so far as to equate menstruation with sin nor writes with such venom, by the third century of the Comon Era questions regarding the status of the menstruant begin to enter texts, texts that arguably introduce this taboo. In his Apostolic Tradition (1969), Hippolytus of Rome, writing about 215, includes the menstruant in his canons as one person denied baptism, a denial he neither explains nor justifies. From the apostolic age to the writings of Gregory the Great, disputation on purity pervade

Nadja Furlan Štante

105

__________________________________________________________________ the writings of the Fathers. As Jennifer Schultz pointed out, ‘ancient medicine always equated the female somatic experience with inferiority.’ 10 The theory that menstrual blood derived from a pathological imperfection continued in the Hellenistic and Imperial eras and in the medical and philosophical views of Roman-Hellenic authors. The canons of Dionysius and Hippolytus led us insight into the marginalisation of woman in the early church and to the source of that marginalisation. But the source is not where most feminist researchers have assumed, states Jennnifer Schultz. Many feminists who have engaged Dionysius’s canon level the accusation that he simply continues from Judaic practice of Levitical law. Judaic praxis, that Jennifer Schultz has argued, had little if anything to do with the development of menstrual taboos; rather, the biological assumptions of classical medical theories form the foundation of Hippolytus’s and Dionysius’s positions on women. Traditional medical theories on woman as cold, spongy defective, and irrational are the cultural assumptions upon which these men formulated their canons. The Hippocratics and Aristotle pathologised menstruation, Pliny made it magical, and Soranus claimed the menses was unhealthy. Together these theories formed a composite picture of the female body as inferior to the male soma. Woman’s biology, issuing forth, cannot only influence her mind and affect the entire world within her reach, but it can potentially sully the sacred. 11 As the early church writers came to view all corporeality as negatively encoded, woman could not escape categorisation as the very embodiment of somatic expressions. Menstrual blood unquestionably informs the discourse. And, in the third century of Common Era, the menstruant finds herself outside of the body of the church even before she enters, unable to commune formally and publicly with her God. Inside and outside the ecclesial walls, she could not function in positions of power. The misconceptions and negative views of menstruation put forth by Aristotle and Pliny highly influenced early views of menstruation. Further, the process of menstruation became conflated with an aborted or miscarried fetus. Aristotle mistakenly understood menstrual blood to be the constitutive matter for growth of a fetus after conception and semen to be formative activity that shapes the physical and spiritual elements of a child. The view that the male sperm is the active component in procreation was accepted for centuries in Europe and was reiterated as late as Freud. Tomas Aquinas cited Aristotle’s negative account of menstruation in his Summa Theologica, where he also added that ‘the menstrual blood, the flow of which is subject to monthly periods, has a certain natural impurity … (it is) infected with corruption and repudiated by nature.’ 12 Aquinas’ writings on menstruation generally combine the view of menstrual blood as a representation of women’s natural impurity (as descendants of Eve) and as a perversion of nature (i.e., aborted life).

106

Women’s Impurity, Menstrual Blood and the Creation of Taboo

__________________________________________________________________ Hippolytus and Dionysius and their peers may have formulated the Christian menstrual taboo, but they did not perpetuate it. Like all taboos, it became embedded in the very paradigm of the culture that created it. So in this sense the female body is stigmatised. Menstruation, in all of its ambiguity, becomes the epitome of the ambivalent resonance (purity-impurity; sacred-unclean) imprinted in the linguistic container taboo. Many biblical commentaries, even up to the present day, continue to view menstruation as ‘symbolical of sin’ or as a ‘type of sinfulness’ that must be contained. 13 4. Female Blood as the Argument against Ordination of Women Why are women in some churches and religious communities still excluded from ordination? In the debate on the ordination of women, the argument of ‘impurity’ is sometimes used. The woman is said to be impure, and in order to be ordained she is to be purified. Anne Jensen has done an extensive research on these sorts of statements. She remarks that ‘from the third century onwards there was an intense debate on whether women could perform ministries that presupposed an ordination of highly clergy.’ 14 Why was there such a debate? In the Testament of Our Lord we read, ‘During their menstrual period women are to stay away from the altar.’ Do women have to stay away from the altar because of their menstruation? No, for the text continues: ‘the same rule applies to men after the involuntary ejaculation of semen. The individual is not unclean; it is the matter of showing reverence for the holiness of the altar.’ 15 However, women were banned from the altar because their menstruation was regarded as cultic impurity. According to Jensen the biblical concepts of impurity and uncleanness were reinterpreted in a Christian way, giving way to banning women from the altar. Haye Van der Meer offers some excellent examples: ‘Women in general should not approach the altar…for the women should be conscious of their own weakness and the weakness of their sex, and therefore they must scrupulously guard that they do not touch anything consecrated to the service of the church.’ Van der Meer concludes that ‘by the prohibition of the council of Laodicea women seem to be banished from the area of official cult… And many synods have repeated that.’ 16 Rosemary Radford Ruether adds, ‘until recent times it was believed to be more pious if women did not come to communion when they were menstruating.’ 17 The bishops really considered women as polluting and therefore unclean. The uncleanness of women was associated with their weakness and with their inferiority. Since Augustine, women were regarded as only good enough for procreation. Thomas Aquinas enforced this statement by saying that women were only created for procreation.

Nadja Furlan Štante

107

__________________________________________________________________ Further on Kristin De Troyer proposes that ‘female blood is one of the major reasons why women are not being ordained.’ 18 The argument that women are impure because of their menstrual blood is correct. But however, the holy books also render the hands unclean. Moreover, menstrual blood is not the only item on the list of things that render a person unclean. Male semen, once out the body, is on the list too. Menstrual blood can therefore not function as an argument against ordination, concludes De Troyer. 19 To conclude, according to Jensen, following Dorothea Wendebourg, the Christian reinterpretation of Lev 12:4, lead to considering menstruation as cultic impurity. In the Septuagint version of Lev 12:4 we read, for the very first time, the notion of ‘unclean blood’ as a translation for the Hebrew ‘purifying blood.’ The Septuagint, of course, became the Christian Bible, but only in so far that it became the Christian Bible can we call this reinterpretation Christian.

Notes 1

Majella Franzman, Women and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 12. 2 Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), 94. 3 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 55. 4 Lev 15:19-23, NRSV. 5 Kathleen O’Grady, ‘The Semaintics of Taboo’, in Wholly Woman Holy Blood, eds. Kristin De Troyer, Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson and Anne-Marie Korte (New York: Continuum, 2003), 3-6. 6 Ibid., 8. 7 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (London: Penguin, 1990), 71. 8 Hieronymus, Commentariorum in Zachariam Prophetam Libri Duo, MPL 25 1415-1542A, http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/04z/z_03470420__Hieronymus__Commentariorum_In_Zachariam_Prophetam_Libri_Duo__ MLT.pdf.html. 9 See Lesley Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 245-47. 10 Jennifer Schultz, ‘Doctors, Philosophers, and Christian Fathers on Menstrual Blood’, in Wholly Woman Holy Blood, eds. Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson and Anne-Marie Korte (New York: Continuum, 2003), 99. 11 Ibid., 98. 12 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2:2189. pt. 2, q. 31, art. 5. 13 O’Grady, ‘The Semaintics of Taboo’, 6.

108

Women’s Impurity, Menstrual Blood and the Creation of Taboo

__________________________________________________________________ 14

Anne Jensen, God’s Self-Confident Daughters: Early Christianity and the Liberation of Women (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 25. 15 Lev 15:19-30, NRSV. 16 Haye Van der Meer, Women Priests in the Catholic Church? A TheologicalHistorical Investigation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973), 96-99. 17 Rosemary Radford Ruether, ‘Male Clericalism and the Dread of Women’, in Women and Orders, ed. R. J. Heyer (New York: Paulist Press, 1974), 6. 18 Kristin De Troyer, ‘Blood a Threat to Holiness or toward (Another) Holiness?’, in Wholly Woman Holy Blood, eds. Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson and Anne-Marie Korte (New York: Continuum, 2003), 42. 19 Ibid., 43.

Bibliography Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica, 2:2189. Pt. 2, Q. 31, Art. 5. Dean-Jones, Lesley. Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. London: Penguin, 1990. Hieronymus. Commentariorum in Zachariam Prophetam Libri Duo. MPL 25 1415-1542A. http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/04z/z_03470420__Hieronymus__Commentariorum_In_Zachariam_Prophetam_Libri_Duo__ MLT.pdf.html. Jensen, Anne. God’s Self-Confident Daughters: Early Christianity and the Liberation of Women. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996. O’Grady, Kathleen. ‘The Semaintics of Taboo’. In Wholly Woman Holy Blood, edited by Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson, and Anne-Marie Korte, 1–29. New York: Continuum, 2003. Radford Ruether, Rosemary. ‘Male Clericalism and the Dread of Women’. In Women and Orders, edited by Robert J. Heyer, 4–14. New York: Paulist Press, 1974. —––. Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.

Nadja Furlan Štante

109

__________________________________________________________________ Schultz, Jennifer. ‘Doctors, Philosophers, and Christian Fathers on Menstrual Blood’. In Wholly Woman Holy Blood, edited by Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson, and Anne-Marie Korte, 97–117. New York: Continuum, 2003. Troyer, Kristin. ‘Blood a Threat to Holiness or toward (Another) Holiness?’. In Wholly Woman Holy Blood, edited by Judith A. Herbert, Judith Ann Johnson, and Anne-Marie Korte, 45–65. New York: Continuum, 2003. Van der Meer, Haye. Women Priests in the Catholic Church? A TheologicalHistorical Investigation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973. Nadja Furlan Štante is research associate at University of Primorska, Science and Research Centre of Koper and Faculty of Humanities, Koper, Slovenia. Her main research interests are: women’s religious studies, theological ecofeminism, ecotheology, and feminist theology.

From the Street to the Brothel: Following the Go-Between María Beatriz Hernández Pérez Abstract One of the most recurrent female figures found in ancient and medieval literature was that of the go-between. Associated to the practice of gossip, bartering, display and selling of her trinkets around neighbourhoods and streets, the old woman was allowed into the female domestic spaces of late medieval Europe. In the role of the visiting old acquaintance she could therefore act as an intermediary between young would-be lovers in clandestine relationships, thus becoming a fundamental asset in many fictional accounts, where her age and sterility underscore her evil deviant nature. Carrying out her own alternative freelance enterprise in the local sex market, her busy disposition turns her doings into an alternative evil counterpart to the ecclesiastical effort to lead women into the frames and strictures of either virginity or marriage. As a merchant and capitalist economy develops in late medieval Europe, a readjustment of the boundaries between public and private spheres is enacted and the wandering go-between finds her definitive location within the brothel. My current concern is to analyse this figure and her dealings from the perspectives of gender and space, two paradigms deeply intertwined. Key Words: Prostitution, medieval women, bawds, nuns, Trotaconventos, brothels, Celestina. ***** 1. Medieval Female Bodies In 1991 Henri Lefebvre described how every society creates its own spaces, built out of physical, mental and productive mainstays. 1 Following his model, this chapter will try to get an insight into the importance of space in the design of some symbolic domains existing in gender relationships in the Spanish Late Middle Ages. In order to do so, the figure of the go-between will be presented as the signifier through which the diverse levels of gender meaning circulated. 2 Although this figure is also found in classical culture, the attributes of the Hispanic go-between derive as well from ancient Oriental sources, and are related to the arts of the Hebraic match-maker and ultimately to those of the Indian bawd. 3 In Islamic societies, where female seclusion called for brief but intense encounters among women in the private domestic space, the go-between was one of the few channels through which they would contact the outer world. The Arabic conquest of Spain in the early 8th century allowed for the development of this figure in the country, where her literary trace can be followed till the 17th century. 4 In fact, two of the literary Spanish masterpieces in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, Juan Ruiz’s Libro de Buen Amor (LBA, The Book of Good Love, ca. 1340) and

112

From the Street to the Brothel

__________________________________________________________________ Fernando de Rojas’ La Celestina (1599), present this woman as a key character. In order to understand the resourcefulness of the go-between and her literary success, we should take into account the medieval perception of space related to the female body. At first sight a composite neutral space, the body was in the early medieval times perceived as the battlefield where flesh and spirit contended for the Christian soul. These represented ‘potential states that the body could actualize,’ 5 opposite principles that could be expressed in concrete bodily actions within a dual spatial system. In the first model, in which the spiritual principle prevailed, the body was conceived as an inclusive place, one filled with content in and of itself, separate from the outside, autarkic, attractive and desired by others, thus requiring protection. Its main metaphor was virginity and its main spatial patterns the cell or the cloister, symbolising the body itself as a closed unit. Peter Brown points out that virginity stood for the original state in which body and soul had been joined in paradise; this model emphasised the spiritual projection of the body, its power to produce spiritual life. 6 However, virginity was not taken for granted; it was a continuous disquieting process. 7 St Augustine argued that virginity was constituted not in the physical intactness of the body but in the intention to remain virgin. Therefore, it was inherently liminal because it was vulnerable, endangered even by thought. The Fathers associated the visibility of nuns with their participation in a lustful act that would disarm virginity, and therefore they strove to keep religious women away from the male gaze and in general, from society at large. 8 Against this model which epitomised the union between the virgin soul and its creator, a second one underscored, instead, separation, talking of the individuation operated by the body as the location not of the spirit but of flesh. Flesh conceived of as female is one of the most persistent topics of our interpretive tradition, and it could be translated into no other activity than prostitution. The prostitute personifies one of the most recurrent tenets of misogynistic thought: the belief in women being naturally endowed with a fleshly voracious appetite, out of their essentially carnal nature. In this sense, prostitutes take the place of, are substitutes for other women, not only literally, but also figuratively, by becoming the incarnation of that ‘universal female’ 9 not only literally, but also figuratively, by becoming the incarnation of that ‘universal female.’ They are therefore conceived as common natural spaces; their bodies places men visit; open, communal ones. Both cloistered nuns and prostitutes would remain outside the private sphere in the patriarchal economy by not participating in the economic exchange system of marriage, which keeps women and children as private items of family and estate property; they are, instead, women whose benefits are to be shared differently by the community. 10 Salisbury reminds that: [...] by renouncing private physical fertility, virgins were seen as symbols that could bring fertility or prosperity to the community

María Beatriz Hernández Pérez

113

__________________________________________________________________ at large. Sexual activity, conversely, was imagined as a process of fragmentation and alienation from one’s own body, which is given to another. 11 Prostitutes’ bodies, marked by the extreme lack of any spiritual principle, were to be unproductive and sterile. 12 2. Nunneries and Brothels However, the fact that they were regarded as spiritually degraded did not prevent Christianity from accepting their practice; rather some Fathers of the Church defended its existence not only as an example to beware of but as a useful counterpart to the institution of marriage seen as a sacred bond, the purity of which had to be defended from the fleshly human condition: the work of prostitutes in the public sphere would make it possible to maintain the relative chastity that marriage required from Christian wives. Similarly, the levels of internal violence to which the community would be subjected by some male youngsters could otherwise be reoriented towards the prostitutes. 13 Finally, the tax policies arbitrated during these centuries would contribute to the well being of the community, and prostitution activated the economic life of any town by attracting luxury products and trade in general. Most of the historians agree on the fact that, despite some key attempts to eradicate it, medieval Christian societies adjusted its spaces so as to include prostitution as a visible meaningful reality. 14 With the rise of urban life after the 12th century, these women would occupy the public space par excellence, the street, and would soon find ways to place themselves in rooms rented to neighbors, inn owners or other wealthier prostitutes. In an indiscriminate way, they would take to taverns, public baths, even churches and cemeteries. Facing the inevitable rise of private brothels then, local authorities tried to supervise the use of such areas as well as the regulation of brothels as a public enterprise. Monarchs, lay and ecclesiastical lords, would issue laws prohibiting independent prostitutes from working in other areas, while also presenting ‘protective legislation that guaranteed a prostitute’s right to work and live in peace.’ 15 Although the attempt to restrict their freedom of movement by ghettoing them in a municipal working district was successful in some countries and moments, in general authorities could or would not control completely these women, many of whom organised themselves in guilds, participated in public festivals on religious occasions, and would join in the running of official and private brothels and make important decisions at critical moments. Many bishoprics, abbeys and monasteries included brothels among their properties and saw their enterprises financed by this important source of wealth and favours; by the 12th century the reformist zeal of some of the popes and religious figures fostered the foundation of religious boarding houses that would host prostitutes and try to lead them into marriage or else into religious

114

From the Street to the Brothel

__________________________________________________________________ claustration. These attempts, though, would in the long run prove futile in the eradication of prostitution. Thus, ecclesiastical rulers would gladly join secular lords in their exploitation of brothels, not to mention that priests were a constant source of revenues in private whorehouses. As widely acknowledged, many religious men proved unable to remain celibate, and plenty of records show their resorting to prostitutes or to stable marriage-like relationships with independent women. However there are also cases in which they woo and conquer those closest to them in the Christian imaginary landscape: nuns, whose virginity was as fragile as their invisible thoughts. No wonder then, that, to the popular mind, the distance between the virgin and the prostitute was not so huge and their places could be interchanged. After all, their functions had been designed for the common profit, or rather, in this case, for the male ecclesiastical profit. It only took a distorting mirror and a mocking stance to turn the nun into a whore and the whore into a nun. Language and parodic literature echoed this displacement: brothels were run by religious houses, whores addressed one another as sisters and referred to their female bawds and procurers as mothers, 16 or talked of Christian charity as the virtue leading them and their priestly brothers there. 3. The Turning Point: Bawds The go-between reveals itself as a connecting figure between these lay and ecclesiastical, male and female spheres. In Spanish literature we find her mainly in Libro de Buen Amor as Trotaconventos, a ‘convent-trotter,’ that is, as an old woman who knew priests well and one who would be welcome in convents. Old age allowed her freedom from reproduction and sexual harassment, and so she was allowed to travel alone and to enter female private domains, such as convents and respectable family houses. Bringing news and little objects she would sell, she would also know some of the secrets of gynecology. But behind these, her real freelance enterprise was offering a bawd’s services, and thus, along with her trinkets, she would bring women clandestine petitions of love from young clerks or priests. Experienced in the arts of seduction, the convent-trotter is presented as the closest ally of the male lover, whom she charges for her services in convincing young maidens of the sincerity of the suitor’s love. In doing this, she would pose a threat to the institutional edifice based on the regulation of marriage and virginity and to society at large by urging women to come out of their seclusion and into the possibility of exclusion; in fact, many of those in the ranks of urban prostitution came from such an adventurous love fit through the contrivance of bawds. Whereas prostitutes were seen as necessary to maintain the proper social and ideological order, bawds were the agents who undermined such foundations and constituted, together with poverty, the easiest means of transference of women from one side of the social ladder to the other.

María Beatriz Hernández Pérez

115

__________________________________________________________________ 4. Trotaconventos and Celestina In LBA the go-between is presented from the point of view of the lusty priest, who cherishes her as a real mother and relishes in her multifarious experience of human nature and in her performative handling of language, associated to the cure of love sickness. This 14th century work displays the conception of the go-between as an undeniable popular type, one who celebrates the fleshly condition of mankind at large and embodies as well the prejudice of women as masters in deceit. It is this old wise woman the one who knows that nuns are the best lovers a man can have: She said to me: “My friend, listen to me a little: take some nun as a sweetheart, trust my advice; she won’t get married right away, or display herself in public; you will have a love affair of extraordinary duration. I worked for nuns once and stayed there a good ten years; they keep their lovers in comfort and free from embarrassments. Who could name all their fine dishes and their very generous presents, their endless sweet confections, rich and so rare? […] they are very discreet, generous, pleasing; their kitchen maids know more and are better for worldly love than ladies who have trappings on their saddles. Like painted statues, of great beauty, gentlewomen most bountiful and generous by nature, much given to speaking loving words, their love is everlasting; they are thoughtful, accomplished, and have every sort of courtesy.” 17 Almost two centuries later, at the end of the 16th century, the play La Celestina presents a darker profile of the bawd’s lot. As a merchant and capitalist economy developed in late medieval Europe, the fate of women at large and of prostitutes as an organized body of women would deteriorate. Devoid of their former rights and of some protective measures they had enjoyed in many cities so far, prostitutes would have to endure both the official pimping of national governments and their network of fines, as well as the intrusion of private economic interests, along with the attempts of eradication coming from contradictory moral standards in the same governments who profited from their work. Celestina is still the old woman who avails herself of the anonymity the city provides; however, she has been caught and punished several times and paraded along the city streets, covered in feathers for her actions. The idea of respectability of old age turns now into that of spiritual sterility and of an evil nature; her rhetorical powers into a kind of malignant conjuring energy through which she deceives everyone. In the work, even nature and its creatures can tell of this woman's evil doings: If she passes along the streets among a hundred women, and someone perhaps blurts out: “See, where's the old bawd”;

116

From the Street to the Brothel

__________________________________________________________________ without any impatiency or any the least distemper, she presently turns herself about, nods the head and answers them with a smiling countenance and cheerful look. […] And if she pass by where there be any dogs, they straightway bark out this name; if she come amongst birds, they have no other note but this; if she light upon a flock of sheep, their bleatings proclaim no less; if she meet with beasts, they bellow forth the same; the frogs that lie in ditches croak no other tune […]. Not one stone that strikes against another, but presently noiseth out, “Old whore.” 18 Although in danger, she keeps on procuring illicit love affairs, to which she adds the profits derived from having turned her house into a small private brothel where she can hardly host two young prostitutes. These wenches, echoing the religious nomenclature, address her as mother and deeply care and feel for her; no wonder, since the bawd herself has been a prostitute in earlier days. In fact, the primary bonds of affection in the story are those among these women, a sisterhood offered in parallel to the passionate relationship between the two young lovers Celestina brings together. But the feature of old age, though stressing her maternal profile, is precisely regarded now as a suspicious trait which reminds of her association to witchcraft. Old age as a sign of physical sterility is thus added to the symbolic sterility of prostitution. In LBA the bawd took the side of the male lover in his lust for adventuring into closed female spaces. Here, although she serves a young man in love, her concern for him is based mainly on his due payment. La Celestina is realistic enough not to allow us to keep the illusion of gender or social harmony: the bawd is a predator woman hunting women for men, just as much as she is the symbolic universal mother to those destitute women who will no more find a place in a society where women are forced to beware women. The play denounces the present estate of a merciless economic and gender system that will gradually turn private houses into cloisters for wives, and will demonise prostitution and move it into the symbolic space of the criminal underworld, while also forcing unprivileged adolescents to those very limits. Through the words of one of Celestina’s pupils, Areusa, we understand the role of city ladies in the relentless fall of maids out of marriage and into brothels, within the larger process of radicalisation of the distance between the public and the private: A wench may wait upon them, and spend in their service the better part of their time, and with an old cast gown, which hath scarce a whole piece in it, they make payment of ten years service. They will revile their maids, and call them all to naught; they will use them extreme hardly, and keep them in such awe and continual slavery, that they dare as well be hanged, as to

María Beatriz Hernández Pérez

117

__________________________________________________________________ speak but one word before them. And when they see the time draw on, that they be ready and ripe for marriage, and that they should both in reason and conscience do them some good that way, they take occasion to wrangle and fall out with them, and falsely to object unto them, that they have trod their shoe awry, either with someone of her ladyship’s servants, or with her son, or put jealousies betwixt her and her husband; or that they bring men privily into her house; or that they have stolen such a goblet, or lost such a ring […]. And where they expect to be well married, they are quite marred in their reputation. […] They are bound to give them husbands, and in lieu thereof they strip them of their clothes. […] They never hear their own name out of their lady’s mouth. But the best they can call them by, is “Come hither, you whore, get you gone, you drab, or I’ll set you going!” […] And this, mother, is the reason, why I have rather desired to live free from control, and to be mistress in a poor little house of mine own, than to live a slave and at command. 19 In a world in which both wives and prostitutes share a commodity quality, the resourceful bawd remains as the hidden link between these spheres; her steps must be cautious, since she is regarded almost as a witch now, one whose actions eventually cause the fall of the young lovers she worked for. She knows she has been called into existence and is needed in an economic, social and ideological structure curbing the movement of women in general, a kind of traffic in which she has become part and parcel. 20 Renaissance society would blame women for its own trespasses, the bawd receiving the weight of a structure she had to handle from her own female condition. Standing for the principles of male culture but situated in the outskirts of female experience, she continues to be an ambiguous character.

Notes 1

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). A dynamic conception of space has also been defined by Michael de Certau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 117, and by Barbara Hanawalt and M. Kobialka, Medieval Practice of Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), x. 3 Francisco Márquez Villanueva, Orígenes y Sociología del Tema Celestinesco (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1993), 20. 4 Emilio Temprano, Vidas Poco Ejemplares. Viaje al Mundo de las Rameras, los Rufianes y las Celestinas (Madrid: Ediciones del Prado, 1995). 2

118

From the Street to the Brothel

__________________________________________________________________ 5

Joyce Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins (London: Verso, 1991), 13. 6 Peter Brown, The Body and Society. Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 299. 7 Sarah Salih, Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), 39. 8 This would lead to extremes such as those explained by Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Romantic Love (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 99. 9 Ruth Mazo Karras, ‘Prostitution in Medieval Europe’, in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, eds. Vern L. Bullogh and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland, 2000), 249. 10 About the different kinds of benefits coming from the nuns’ devotion or the prostitutes’, see James Brundage, ‘Sex and Canon Law’, Ibid., 43. 11 Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins, 29. 12 Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 82. 13 María del Carmen García Herrero, ‘El Mundo de la Prostitución en las Ciudades Bajomedievales’, Cuadernos del Cemyr 4 (1996): 63-100. 14 Vern Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, Women and Prostitution. A Social History (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1987), 120. 15 See Jacques Rossiaud, ‘Prostitución, Sexualidad y Ssociedad en las Ciudades Francesas en el Siglo XV’, in Sexualidades Occidentales, eds. P. Áries, A. Béjin, M. Foucault, et al. (Barcelona: Paidós, 1987), 123-152, on brothel management. 16 Although female exploitation by other women cannot be denied, there are also cases in which female sisterhood was defended. See Nickie Roberts, Whores in History. Prostitution in Western Society (London: Grafton, 1992), 98. 17 Stanzas 1332-1342 from The Book of Good Love, in The New Pelican Guide to English Literature 1. Medieval Literature. Part II: The European Inheritance, trans. R. S. Willis., ed. Boris Ford (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), 527-528. 18 Act I, ed. H. Warner Allen, accessed March 14, 2012, http://www.archive.org/. stream / celestina00rojauoft / celestina00rojauoft. 19 Act IX, ed. H. Warner Allen, accessed March 14, 2012, http://www.archive.org. /…. 20 The degradation of the go-between coincides with that of the situation of prostitution and that of the significance of nuns.

María Beatriz Hernández Pérez

119

__________________________________________________________________

Bibliography Áries, Phillipe, André Béjin, Michel Foucault, et al. Sexualidades Occidentales. Barcelona: Paidós, 1987. Bowersock, G. W., Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar, eds. Interpreting Late Antiquity. Essays on the Postclassical World. Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001. Bloch, Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Romantic Love. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991. Brown, Peter. The Body and Society. Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Brundage, James. ‘Sex and Canon Law’. In Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, edited by Vern L. Bullogh, and James A. Brundage, 33–50. New York: Garland, 2000. Bullogh, Vern L., and Bonnie Bullogh. Women and Prostitution. A Social History. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1987. Bullogh, Vern L., and James A. Brundage, eds. Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. New York: Garland, 2000. Cloke, Gillian. This Female Man of God: Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age, AD 350-450. London: Routledge, 1995. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. De Rojas, Fernando. Celestina or the Tragi-Comedy of Calixto and Melibea. Translated from the Spanish by James Mabbe, anno 1631. March 14, 2012. http://www.archive.org/stream/celestina00rojauoft/celestina00rojauoft/. Ford, Boris, ed. The New Pelican Guide to English Literature. 1. Medieval Literature. Part II: The European Inheritance. Translated by R. S. Willis. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.

120

From the Street to the Brothel

__________________________________________________________________ García Herrero, María del Carmen. ‘El Mundo de la Prostitución en las Ciudades Bajomedievales’. Cuadernos del Cemyr 4 (1996): 63–100. Gilchrist, Roberta. Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women. London: Routledge, 1994. Hanawalt, Barbara, and Michal Kobialka, eds. Medieval Practices of Space. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Horner, Shari. The Discourse of Enclosure. New York: State University of New York Press, 2001. Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Sex, Money and Prostitution in Medieval English Culture’. In Desire and Discipline. Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West, 201–216. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. —––. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. —––. ‘Prostitution in Medieval Europe’. In A Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, edited by Vern L. Bullogh, and James A. Brundage, 243–260. New York: Garland, 2000. Kobialka, Michal. ‘Staging Place/Space in the Eleventh-Century Monastic Practices’. In Medieval Practices of Space, edited by Barbara A. Hanawalt, and Michal Kobialka, 128–148. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Márquez Villanueva, Francisco. Orígenes y Sociología del Tema Celestinesco. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1993. Murray, Jacqueline, and Konrad Eisenbichler, eds. Desire and Discipline. Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Newman, Barbara. From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Roberts, Nickie. Whores in History. Prostitution in Western Society. London: Grafton, 1992.

María Beatriz Hernández Pérez

121

__________________________________________________________________ Rossiaud, Jaques. ‘Prostitución, Sexualidad y Sociedad en las Ciudades Francesas en el Siglo XV’. In Sexualidades Occidentales, edited by Phillipe Áries, André Béjin, Michel Foucault, et al., 123–152. Barcelona: Paidós, 1987. Salih, Sarah. Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001. Salisbury, Joyce. Church Fathers, Independent Virgins. London: Verso, 1991. Smith, Julie Ann. Ordering Women’s Lives: Penitentials and Nunnery Rules in the Early Medieval West. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. Temprano, Emilio. Vidas Poco Ejemplares. Viaje al Mundo de las Rameras, los Rufianes y las Celestinas. Madrid: Ediciones del Prado, 1995. Venarde, Bruce L. Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society. Nunneries in France and England, 890-1215. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Ward, Benedicta. Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn. Saints’s Lives & Women’s Literary Culture. Virginity and Its Authorizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. María Beatriz Hernández Pérez teaches English Literature at the Universidad de La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands). Being an active member of the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies and of the Institute of Women’s Studies at this University, her research has focused on medieval literatures and gender.

The Abode of Evil: The Female Body as a Symbol in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks Fadwa Mahmoud Hassan Gad Abstract The female body in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks is space of cultural struggle between Native American and White connotations. Pauline and Fleur, the two leading female figures in Erdrich’s account of the desperate struggle of an Ojibwe tribe to survive, reflect the core of this cultural difference. Viewing sexuality as a mere destructive force, Pauline, the most complex embodiment of female evil in Erdrich’s fiction, fails to be reconciled with her biological instincts, forcing herself into a pathetic abnegation that only enhances her vindictive spite. On the contrary, Fleur, the mysteriously visionary and the enigmatically physical, possesses a body that symbolises both an incarnation of resilient survival, and an intelligible threat of irrational horror. The significance of the female body in the novel is therefore the central issue of this chapter. With a background of Foucault and feminist theories of the connotations of the female body, the chapter investigates Erdrich’s depiction of Pauline’s and Fleur’s bodies as perceived within the two conflicting cultures. Throwing light on the stages of awareness of the female body as evil, the paper proceeds to examine the aspects of the sexuality of both Pauline and Fleur, as representative of barrenness versus fertility, sorcery versus healing, domination versus co-existence, and resistance versus assimilation. The first part of the chapter deals with the female body as a site of bio-politics which includes demonisation, mechanisms of social exclusion or inclusion. In the light of Foucault’s concept of the duality of desire versus pleasure, the chapter proceeds to tackle the female body as a site of religious mortification, abject maternity, sexual violence and frustrated sexuality. Through exploring the female body as an evil spot, the chapter concludes, Erdrich transforms the Native American crisis to a symbolic embodiment of an eternal human dilemma. Key Words: Evil Native American, female body, sexuality, demoniation, abject, Foucault, religious mortification. ***** This chapter investigates how the connotations of the female body reflect, shape, and sometimes even modify the political, religious, and cultural norms of a given social group. Louise Erdrich’s Tracks explores the potential of the woman body as a site of biopolitics. On the other hand, the chapter traces how the power of state (represented by the white coloniser) and that of the local community (represented by the colonised native population) control, regulate and often suppress the female body as a resisting symbol. The Native American society is a

124

The Abode of Evil

__________________________________________________________________ stark example of how the joint effort of the state and the patriarch community could lead eventually to a catastrophic elimination of a whole race. Even more challenging perhaps is to detect phases of this struggle during which the Native American culture, characterised traditionally by a deep reverence of the female figures and female values, underwent a radical transformation into an aggressive patriarch system that demonises and abuses the female body. The chapter attempts to answer three questions: How do Foucault, Agamben, and feminist corporeal theories help to figure out the simultaneous domination and invisibility characterising White presence in Tracks? How does Catholic corporal ethos affect the colonised community stigmatisation and exclusion of rebellious female bodies? Finally, how does evil serve as a defense mechanism to protect the autonomy of female bodies and outlook? Seeking answers to these questions would help readers of Erdrich to appreciate more fully the central position the female body occupies in her fiction and vision. Tracks opens on the site of the lake, the residing place of ‘Misshepeshu’ and the habitat of the Pillagers, who possess the power of magic and healing being now threatened by the settlers, who walk ‘upon the fresh graves of the Pillagers, cross death roads to plot out the deepest water.’ 1 The reasons given to justify this assault are efforts against sorcery, immoral voyeurism, and paganism. The Catholic settlers regarded the pagan world as ‘sinful ‘other’ that Christianity transformed and converted.’ 2 In European travel accounts the Indians were portrayed as ‘sexually dangerous savages, brutal rapists [to justify] removing native communities from areas chosen by whites for settlement.’ 3 Agamben suggests that such classification is of enemy and friend but of a policy of inclusion and exclusion. Control of ‘bare life’ happens by ‘the inauguration of a space that is deprived of the protection of the law.’ 4 This exclusion is accompanied by a process of demonisation which guarantees that the ‘stigmatised entity’ remains within the reach and control of society, even as a category representing the abnormal, or the monstrous, which is deprived of human attributes. 5 In this context the land is justified by a demonising campaign transforming ‘‘Misshepeshu,’ the monster deity of the lake, from an underwater protector 6 to a source of sexual violence and evil revenge. The lake monster is portrayed as capable of seduction, leading to one brutal consequence, that of rape: Our mothers warn us that we’ll think he’s handsome, for he appears with green eyes, copper skin, a mouth tender as a child… you will be fascinated , cannot move. He casts a shell necklace at your feet, weeps gleaming chips that harden into mica on your breasts. He holds you under. He’s a thing of dry foam, a thing of death by drowning; the death a Chippewa cannot survive. 7

Fadwa Mahmoud Hassan Gad

125

__________________________________________________________________ The harmony between masculine and feminine that used to characterise native deities is replaced by patriarch sexuality saturated with a religious struggle between deity and devil: ‘He’s a devil, that one, love hungry with desire and maddened for the touch of young girls, the strong and daring especially, the ones like Fleur.’ 8 Being newly converted, the native are eager to give prove of their new faith, which also means being worthy of living side by side with the white settlers. One of the main features of a Catholic is her attitude towards corporal existence. A typical Catholic should be ‘hostile to erotic pleasure, stressing extreme self denial.’ 9 If a native woman brackets herself together with the lake monster, she will be demonised, turned, into a ‘sexually voracious monster’ which is ‘devouring, insatiable ... hungering, voracious, without restraint, always wanting.’ 10 Demonisation extends to include those monster-like people, shamans who insist on the old ways and resist the new ones. It is a classification that applies to Fleur Pillager who is not converted to Catholicism, and who is in possession of supernatural and magical powers, ‘the secret way to cure or kill.’ 11 Fleur is demonised as the devouring fame fetal, a mixture of witch and predator who posits a threat to the mixed blood and the colonised who worked as guides to the White mappers. Indeed, Fleur is excluded from her community. The first chapter opens with her body freezing and fatally ill; yet the society refuses to rescue her, and she is left in her cabin among dead corpses. Only Nanapush harries to save her while the tribe police refuses even to touch her. The natives associate Fleur with the water monster and with wild wolves and bears: Some say she kept the finger of a child in her pocket and … she laid the heart of an owl, on her tongue so she could see at night, and went out hunting, not even in her own body. We know for sure because the next morning, in the snow or dust, we followed the tracks of her bare feet and saw where they changed, where the claws sprang out, the pad broadened and pressed into the dirt. By night we heard her chuffing cough, the bear cough. 12 Discrepancy exists between the essence of Fleur’s corporeality and how this essence is interpreted by society, Erdrich chooses to provide only unreliable outer ‘impressions’ of the most prominent manifestations of her struggle to keep the land, and to be consistently the embodiment of resilience, always capable of healing and regeneration. To fully grasp Fleur’s reactions, we should not overlook the non-verbal dimension: Fleur’s actions are events rather than attitudes. Her body movement determines her reactions: She gains her magic powers through a ritualistic drowning in the lake, she communicates her rage at being raped through invoking a revengeful devastating storm, reminiscent of that of Lear, that befalls the whole white town. When Fleur realizes that her land is lost, she is utterly silent. Soon after, however, she attempts suicide attempt by drawing in the lake. Fleur’s

126

The Abode of Evil

__________________________________________________________________ body speaks its own unique language, which is consistent with what Foucault defines as the ‘experiential body.’ 13 Arnold Joseph Toynbee early illustrated that European settlers viewed the natives ‘as flora and fauna, something infra human … they did not possess ordinary human rights.’ 14 Fleur is no exception. Her being raped is not viewed as a crime. Decent sexual behavior, and moral obligations are preserved only to ‘members within the group while the same group could be very hostile to people outside the group;’ privileges of which Fleur is denied. 15 In fact, Fleur’s physicality challenges patriarch classification which limits the function of the female body to reproducing and subservience. 16 In this context rape becomes a symbol of ‘classified as mistakes and sins, such representing the abnormal, or the monstrous,’ and deprived of any protection of the law. 17 Fleur’s rape records the consequences of defying such expectations. In a confused hilarious scene, white workers attack not only Fleur’s a body but also her mind; they ‘could not believe … that a woman could be smart enough to play cards.’ 18 Under attack, Fleur is both fierce and vulnerable, invoking nature’s rage in the form of the hurricane, animal intervention, and the empathy of Pauline. The reaction of the reservation to Fluer’s rape never materialises; they never offer consolidation to Fleur in its aftermath, being only curious to know if she is with a child. This attitude raises the question of how far do the people of the reservation consider Fleur as belonging to their community group. Fleur is consequently subject to a double ‘border demarcation,’ as Kelly puts out, by both white and native communities. Both groups consider Fleur ‘outside the population …of different “race”, [or an] unhealthy element of the “race.”’ 19 The reservation realised that ‘to hang back was to perish.’ 20 Still this majority suffers a formidable fear of the possible revenge of the gods they deserted, the spirits they betrayed, and the monsters they angered. Fleur’s presence provokes all these negative associations. The Pillagers are thus transformed into a source of alarm and pain; they turn into evil. The more significant percussions of the rape of Fleur, however, are those befalling Pauline. The rape of Fleur is the first sexual experience to which Pauline is exposed. Pauline identifies with what happened to Fleur: ‘I was witness when the men slapped Fleur’s mouth, beat her, entered and rode her. I felt all. My shrieks poured from her mouth and my blood from her wounds 21 (My Italics). To her it is a traumatic experiences not only because of its violence which was unbearable a very young girl to watch, but also because it shatters fantasies about compatible assimilation within the white society. Physical assault would be the typical disciplinary punishment the White impose on female natives who dare aspire to equality. Subconsciously, however, Pauline starts to hate her vulnerability; i.e., her corporeality. Body hatred conflicts with survival, however, resulting in complicated thanatopolitics inflicted upon other female bodies who serve as surrogates. In a ritualistic incarnation into the body of the dying Mary Pepe was, a girl of Pauline’s age, Pauline terminates Mary’s life which echoes her own

Fadwa Mahmoud Hassan Gad

127

__________________________________________________________________ fragility. This is how Pauline severs her own physicality and sexual pleasure, away from her. ‘I [was] surprised at how light I felt, as though I’d been cut free as well.’ 22 Cast away and expelled, Pauline decides to respond to the advances of the drink addict Napoleon, but the whole episode is a disappointment, utterly devoid of pleasure: ‘I hadn’t liked the weight of Napoleon’s hands, their hardened palms. I hadn’t liked seeing myself naked, plucked and skinned.’ 23 This is when Pauline moves away from the category of the evil of Fleur Pillager. While Fleur resorts to violence only as a defence mechanism against evident physical assault, Pauline’s evil start to initiate as a revengeful settling of scores, for actual or imagined emotional and psychological grievances. While Nanapush acknowledges that what Pauline shares with Fleur is the evil potential, He admits that Pauline’s is far more enigmatic and dangerous: ‘She was different;’ ‘an unknown mixture of ingredients:’ ‘we never knew what to call her… or how to think when she was around.’ 24 The first incident of evil done on purpose is when Pauline uses love medicine to lure Sophie and Eli. Pauline’s advances towards Eli were frustrated, and hate increases: ‘I both turned from him and desired him, in hate.’ 25 She decides to use love medicine against him in revenge, a point which is considered a breaking of ‘a Chippewa moray that saw love medicine as a … sneak attack on human will. Furthermore, poorly executed love medicine’ was considered the ugliest sorcery and the explanation of rape. 26 The person who is more hurt, however, is Sophie. Pauline uses Sophie’s body in a fashion that is even more brutal than that of Fleur’s rapists, for in the case of Fleur, she was able to resist; the attack was against her body but could not control her free. Conversely, Sophie is the completely innocent victim, actually a child, who never gets to know how she ever got entangled in that mesh of hatred in the first place. Pauline never regrets, but only feels sorry for Pauline’s suffering the aftermath of seduction. She is able to forget her role in the matter, and holds Eli responsible for invading the body of a helpless virgin. For her it is a typical duplication of the predicament of virgin Mary, who, to Pauline, was not consulted before she received the grace of God: ‘[She] did not want him… [She was] frightened at the touch of his hand upon her mind…She wept, pinned full weight to the earth, known in the brain and known in the flesh, and planted like dirt.’ 27 Pauline’s acceptance of Catholicism is therefore conditioned. While she agrees to the Catholic rituals of bodily abnegation, she refuses to consider it as a mere preparation for another incident of patriarch dominance and female victimisation. In their perception of their bodies Pauline and Fleur more or less abide to ways identical with the inherited interpretations endorsed by native and Catholic cultures. Later on, however, they set themselves apart from these traditions and establish their own autonomy. Fleur’s body fulfills the traditional combination of a sinewy, manly physicality and the vigorously sexual female capable of both pleasure and reproduction. But when these qualities fail to preserve for Fleur her

128

The Abode of Evil

__________________________________________________________________ child, her land, and her magical visions, Fleur’s bodily harmony collapses, and she attempts suicide. The attempt fails, but the shattering of her corporeal autonomy continues. Fleur’s once very prominent body withers away and gradually dwells into invisibility. This is a stage of reverse bodily consciousness after which Fleur actually disappears. The final scene of her evil is conducted in her absence. By making the forest trees fall upon the colonised natives and the white settlers alike, Fleur conducts a suicidal attack that destroys both the aggressors, the land body. For the first time, Fleur initiates, and not only struggles, against, violence. Pauline starts by detesting her vulnerability, her physical impotence, her bodily temptation, and finally her maternity as a projection of abject sin. Becoming a nun is then Pauline’s chance to be rid of all those inferior connotations associated with her female body and embark on a severe bodily mortification. She repeatedly fails, nevertheless, a condition which increases her body hatred but never culminates in actual suicide. Pauline’s high instinctual survival transforms that hate into an energy to commit homicide. Pauline’s externalises evil, turning it into a demonised other that she holds responsible for her failures. She fails because ‘Christ’ is ‘weak, tame, new comer that has no foothold or sway in this land.’ 28 She fails because of the evil spell of Satan or because of the sway the monster of the lake. The next step then would be to defeat that objectified source of temptation. Pauline thus frees her body from being the battle ground for conflicting evils and desires, which is the traditional Catholic image, and moves towards setting herself free from female meekness; By peeling off old skin, Pauline addressees ‘God not as a penitent, with humility, but rather as a dangerous lion that had burst into a ring of pale and fainting believers.’ 29 Pauline’s body fattens as she prepares herself to a final fight with the lake monster. As Cornell suggests, ‘when she confronts him, she is not an object, a representation of the lack he desires, but an equal subject: they meet as god to god.’ 30 Pauline gives up her female status and assumes a new identity of ‘a young man.’ 31 Pauline used to cover her hair and body with layers of clothes. But now she strips herself naked in confrontation with her tempter: ‘I approached the low and rippling fire, on fire myself, naked in my own flesh, and finally with no shield or weapon to confront him but the rosary I gripped.’ 32 Pauline undergoes a transformation goes beyond the frailty of the female body and becomes ‘ready and strong as a young man.’ She is now the opposite of Fleur. Through depicting the female body as a symbol of evil, Erdich presents in Tracks elemental universal aspects within a colonized Native American context. To point out the complexity and multifaceted potential of such symbols, this interdisciplinary study attempted a reading that applies the premises of body theories, biopolitics and feminist corporeal studies combined. While critiques of Foucault and western feminism frequently highlighted the poor recognition of the different realities of women of color, or non-western, postcolonial cultures, they failed to observe an anonymous, universal, and common space shared by humanity that those same theories seem to open before dense, hybrid texts such as Tracks.

Fadwa Mahmoud Hassan Gad

129

__________________________________________________________________ Without imposing a monopoly of interpretation, these theories enhance an approach that better acknowledges the comprehensive vision of evil and the female body as portrayed in Tracks.

Notes 1

Louise Erdrich, Tracks (New York: Perennial, 1988), 9. Gillian Walker, ‘Fragments from a Journal Reflections on Celibacy and the Role of Women in the Church’, Studies in Gender and Sexuality 5 (2004): 90. 3 Joane Nagel, ‘Ethnicity and Sexuality’, Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 107-133, accessed January 1, 2012, http://www.jstor.org/stable/223439. 4 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 181. 5 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol 1. An Introduction (London: Allen Lane, 1979), 1659. 6 Selwyn Dewdney, The Sacred Scrolls of the Southern Ojibway (Calgary: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 128-129. 7 Erdrich, Tracks, 11. 8 Ibid., 12. 9 Michael S. Patton, ‘Suffering and Damage in Catholic Sexuality’, Journal of Religion and Health 27 (Summer 1988): 131. 10 Emma Domınguez Rue, ‘Sins of the Flesh: Anorexia, Eroticism and the Female Vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, Journal of Gender Studies 19 (September 2010): 297-308. 11 Erdrich, Tracks, 2. 12 Ibid., 12. 13 Quoted in Johanna Oksala, ‘Anarchic Bodies: Foucault and the Feminist Question of Experience’, Hypatia 19, No. 4 (Fall 2004): 112-113. 14 Arnold Joseph Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 37. 15 Larry Arnhart, ‘Biopolitical Science’, Politics and the Life Sciences 29 (March 2010): 27. 16 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 25-30. 17 Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1659. 18 Ibid., 21. 19 M. G. E. Kelly, ‘International Biopolitics’, Theoria (June 2010): 5. 20 Ibid., 14. 21 Erdrich, Tracks, 66. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 74. 24 Ibid., 39. 2

130

The Abode of Evil

__________________________________________________________________ 25

Ibid., 77. Ruth Landes, Ojibway Religion and the Midewiwin (Madison: The University of Wiscon Press, 1968), 65. 27 Erdrich, Tracks, 95. 28 Ibid., 195. 29 Ibid., 196. 30 Daniel Cornell, ‘Woman Looking: Revis(ion)ing Pauline’s Subject Position in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks’, Studies in American Indian Literatures 4 (Spring 1992): 59. 31 Erdrich, Tracks, 201. 32 Ibid. 26

Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Arnhart, Larry. ‘Biopolitical Science’. Politics and the Life Sciences 29 (March 2010): 24–47. Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso, 2004. Cavarero, Adriana. Horroism: Naming Contemporary Violence. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grovo Press, 2007. Cornell, Daniel. ‘Woman Looking: Revis(ion)ing Pauline’s Subject Position in Louise Erdrich’s Tracks’. Studies in American Indian Literatures 4 (Spring 1992): 59. Dewdney, Selwyn. The Sacred Scrolls of the Southern Ojibway. Calgary: University of Toronto Press, 1975. Erdrich, Louise. Tracks. New York: Perennial, 1988. Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality, Vol 1. An Introduction. London: Allen Lane, 1979. —––. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Fadwa Mahmoud Hassan Gad

131

__________________________________________________________________ Heywood, Leslie. Dedication to Hunger: The Anorexic Aesthetic in Modern Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996. Kelly, M. G. E. ‘International Biopolitics’. Theoria (June 2010): 1–26. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Landes, Ruth. Ojibway Religion and the Midewiwin. Madison: The University of Wiscon Press, 1968. Murphy, Ann V. ‘Corporeal Vulnerability and the New Humanism’. Hypatia 26 (Summer 2011): 575–590. Nagel, Joane. ‘Ethnicity and Sexuality’. Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000). Accessed January 1, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/223439. Oksala, Johanna. ‘Anarchic Bodies: Foucault and the Feminist Question of Experience’. Hypatia 19 (Fall 2004): 112–113. Patton, Michael S. ‘Suffering and Damage in Catholic Sexuality’. Journal of Religion and Health 27 (Summer 1988): 131. Rue, Emma Domınguez. ‘Sins of the Flesh: Anorexia, Eroticism and the Female Vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula’. Journal of Gender Studies 19 (September 2010): 297–308. Silver, Anna Krogovoy. Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Somit, Albert. ‘Biopolitics’. British Journal of Political Science 2 (April 1972): 209–238. Toynbee, Arnold Joseph. A Study of History. Vol. 1. London: Oxford University Press, 1934. Vidmar, Shawn. ‘The Bear &The Owl: Finding the Imagery in Louise Erdrick’s Novel Tracks’. 1997. Accessed November 5, 2010. http://www.wdog.com/svid/writing/essays/erdrich_1997.htm.

132

The Abode of Evil

__________________________________________________________________ Walker, Gillian. ‘Fragments from a Journal Reflections on Celibacy and the Role of Women in the Church’. Studies in Gender and Sexuality 5 (2004): 81–101. Fadwa Mahmoud Hassan Gad is assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature in the Department of English Literature, Faculty of Arts, Helwan University, Egypt. She earned her Master’s degree on adolescent adventure fiction from Ein Shams University and her PhD with First Degree Honors on fiction of alienation.

Evil or Not? How Women Conventionally Deemed Evil are DeEviled: An Analysis Based on Selected Works by Ana Castillo and Cristina Garcia Aleksandra Holubowicz Abstract Reina, one of the main characters from The Aguero Sisters by Cristina Garcia could conventionally be deemed evil. She transgresses her femininity in a number of ways - has a typically ‘male’ occupation, lives independently and enjoys a sexuality that could be defined as selfish and promiscuous. On top of that, she is also a mother, which role according to the general view implies quite a different lifestyle. Yet, the way Garcia structures the character makes her escape any negative moral judgment that a woman of that kind would probably be exposed to. The goal of the chapter is to examine the strategies used in selected literary works by Ana Castillo and Cristina Garcia which help transform the perceptions of women conventionally regarded as evil. In order to investigate a variety of aspects determining a moral evaluation of a woman, that is her lifestyle, how successfully she manages to perform her role as a mother and a wife, whether she remains in the realm of values traditionally associated with the feminine and to what extent she internalises the axiology of the given society, I will base on the examples of characters from novels by the aforementioned writers. The chapter also discusses the significance of Latina-American hyphenated identity and bi-culturalism in debunking gender stereotypes referring to sexuality. Gayle Rubin in Thinking Sex claims that sex negativity treating sex as sinful and necessitating some justification such as marriage, reproduction or love is inherent in Western culture following St Paul. I attempt to research to what extent Latinas’ approach to sexuality as reflected by the literary characters of Castillo and Garcia differs from and what similarities it bears to the one delineated by Rubin. Key Words: Evil, sexuality, Latina-American, Ana Castillo, Cristina Garcia, transgression. ***** Defining good or evil is not a simple task. Should one pass such an ethical judgment a number of philosophical views might be quoted. But commonly in social relations ‘goodness is a trait, which we ascribe to those who are sensitive to others’ suffering, helpful, friendly and sympathetic’ 1 as Magdalena Środa, a Polish philosopher, delineates it. However, when we project an image of a ‘good’ woman, it seems that the characteristics above would be of secondary importance. The aspects taken into account when describing her as ‘moral’ would be primarily her views on sexuality as well as praxes. Secondly, other criteria would be considered

134

Evil or Not?

__________________________________________________________________ such as marital status and the approach to thereof, in addition to her attitudes to motherhood and whether she fulfils her role properly. Furthermore, since women are traditionally regarded as bearers of culture, a good woman should also observe the customs as required by the religion, tradition and culture in which she has been raised. Thus, they should champion the values of the given culture, which are often tightly connected to political views one is supposed to hold. Summing up, a good woman should internalise the axiological system of the community she belongs to and follow the rules obediently. From such a viewpoint the protagonists of Ana Castillo’s and Cristina Garcia’s novels fail to be ‘good.’ In The Mixquihuala Letters by Castillo the two main heroines are friends whose adventures that they experienced during their trip to Mexico are revealed to the reader in the form of Teresa’s letters to Alicia. The very act of writing prolifically to one person sheds light on the intensity of the bond between the two women. The experience they have shared makes the reader realise how ‘genuine’ their friendship is, an expression which is usually considered the male domain. Philia - friendship, or the love of the soul for the ancient Greeks was perceived as superior to the physical aspect of love and denoted the feeling of the man to boys, as Foucault quotes in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2. 2 The cardinal place that philia was granted must have remarkably contributed to the creation of the myth of male friendship presented as ‘true’ and profound, reinforced in the course of adventures experienced together. In contrast the female friendship is not associated with such a high status, but on the contrary the conviction that selfless lasting relations between women are impossible prevails. Such ‘friendship’ is stereotypically believed to rely on shaky grounds heavily-leaden with jealousy, and therefore it might easily dissociate, usually due to rivalry to lure a man. Adrienne Rich observes that it is not only female friendship but any ‘interaction with women [that] is seen as a lesser form of relating on every level.’ 3 Since the relationship between the two women in The Mixquihuala Letters is certainly based on profound emotional ties exemplified by the way Teresa addresses Alicia: ‘My sister, companion, my friend,’ 4 they encroach on the territory reserved for men - genuine same-sex bonding. Furthermore, their friendship might have an implicit erotic dimension, too. When Teresa characterises their relationship as ‘akin to that of an old wedded couple’ 5 or when she recalls how the two women ‘spent the night lying on the cement floor, close to each other to keep warm’ 6 in order to prevent a man from intrusion, but perhaps that served only as a pretext for physical proximity, it might be interpreted as reliving the erotic scenes in her memories or fantasy. Irrespective of the nature of their relationship whether it involves eroticism or not, the kind of connection between them is tight and it inscribes itself in what Adrienne Rich would term as lesbian continuum. This concept embraces:

Aleksandra Holubowicz

135

__________________________________________________________________ a range through each woman’s life and throughout her history of women identified experience, not simply the fact that woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman […] including the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male tyranny, the giving and receiving of particular and political support, […] marriage resistance. 7 The heroines seem to perform all these tasks, including the final. Teresa might be married, but she escapes from her husband and son and chooses a trip to Mexico with a woman over the family, therefore appearing to be a bad wife and an irresponsible mother. Alicia, though, equates marriage with slavery and expresses surprise that ‘any woman of [their] generation would willingly commit herself to [it].’ 8 Whereas Teresa escapes her role as a wife and mother, Alicia is guilty of a far greater sin. On undergoing an abortion she was subjected to sterilisation without her conscious consent as a result of a racist prejudice. The event becomes a punishment for her promiscuity, which is inscribed in her body, analogically to the sentence written by the Kafka’s punishment machine. It … executes a sentence by inscribing it on the body of the prisoner and the system of textualization, a system which brings “enlightenment”, meaning a statement of the crime, to the prisoner’s consciousness 9 as Elizabeth Grosz observes. Teresa is a bad woman, but Alicia is deprived of the status of woman in the light of the reproductive function that continues to be perceived as woman’s major duty and desire. Finally, both heroines defy the religious and political norm. Alicia was raised to be an atheist and Teresa left the church disappointed with its obsession about the sexual perversion. Politically both women seem to be disillusioned with the liberal democracy and capitalism practiced in the United States. Teresa is constantly aware of racism and her belonging to the category of the second-class citizens and is irritated by the cultural chauvinism as (subconsciously) performed by WASPs, who stereotype Latino/as as unskilled workers with a heavy accent and at the same time fail to notice that some of them, like Teresa’s cousin speak four languages flawlessly whereas they cannot even get the Spanish ‘thank you’ right. ‘(Is it grazie or grazia?).’ 10 The criticism of the injustice inherent in the system is not expressed as a coherent manifesto, but rather dispersed throughout the work and implied by references to poverty and the awareness that ‘the future (…) had been predetermined by societal mores.’ 11 Whereas in Ana Castillo’s novel the idea of sisterhood is not based on the biological ties, but is understood as affinity on spiritual and political grounds,

136

Evil or Not?

__________________________________________________________________ Garcia’s work concerns Aguero Sisters, who despite their genetic similarity turn out to differ significantly. Reina stands in a total opposition to Constancia, her older sister, and originally they are alienated from each other due to family history, strikingly different personalities emphasised by the geographical distance, exacerbated by the political gap between Cuba where Reina originally lives and the United States. The geographical distance might not be insurmountable as for its physical length, but rather due to political implications that determine a border between the First and Third World. Kathrine Payant characterises the sisters briefly by drawing attention to the mismatches: Reina, an electrician, is powerful, adventurous, and sensual, with many lovers. A materialist who believes only in her senses, she seems content with her job of providing electricity for the revolution. Her half-sister Constancia is feminine, careful, married to the same man for thirty years, and a successful entrepreneur, devising a line of cosmetics that stave off the ravages of age for Cuban matrons who are nostalgic for their youths in Cuba. 12 From such a description from the optics of the WASP culture the perception of Reina as ‘evil’ and Constancia as ‘good’ emerges. The former seems to either break or fail to acknowledge the rules and values championed by the American society, whereas the latter thrives on them. Reina, on the contrary, unlike other migrants from Cuba, does not seize the opportunity to concentrate on money making when it presents itself. Thus, she symbolically rejects the American axiological system with its underlying capitalism and economic productivity as well as conspicuous consumption as a status indicator. Instead, she enjoys life without excessive expenditure. Such a behaviour might be interpreted as suspicious, too, given her former allegiance to the Cuban revolution. Communist sympathies might be ascribed to her, enhanced by her act of addressing the shop assistant as compagnera incidentally. However, the fear of communism inherent in the American mainstream culture might perceive it as an outright declaration of supporting the ‘evil’ side, rather than solely blaming it on the sociolinguistic custom from her previous environment. Nonetheless, despite the fact that Teresa, Alicia and Reina superficially would be labelled as evil, Castillo and Garcia develop their characters and story in such a way, that no such moral judgment is passed. Both writers manage to ‘de-evil’ the supposedly corrupt protagonists, however, the strategies, of which they avail themselves are in stark contrast. Yet, both of them succeed in establishing a close link between the reader and each character thorough first-person narration, through poly-vocality as in Garcia’s novel or from Teresa’s perhaps one-sided but thus very personal perspective as expressed in letters. While perusing the epistolary novel,

Aleksandra Holubowicz

137

__________________________________________________________________ the reader is under the impression of voyeurism, when secretly browsing through someone else’s correspondence while they are not looking. Another similarity is the role of the travel in each novel. The journey functions not solely as an act of movement aiming at changing the geographical location, but also it involves a multi-layered transgression. They cross a border, which does not involve a mere trip from one country to another, but it is a fault line where the civilisations clash, 13 as Samuel Huntigton would put it, or in other words, the division separating the First World from the Third. For Alicia and Teresa the journey serves additionally as a quest to acquire a sense of belonging. Feeling ‘the Other’ in the United States, both ethnically, culturally and politically they hope to find their niche in Mixquihuala, Teresa’s natal village. However, they unintentionally perform another transgression - of the woman’s role as specified in the macho culture. They subvert the convention, according to which women are located within the domestic sphere in order to implement their reproductive and child-rearing function as well as managing the household as opposed to men, who as breadwinners should exist in the outside world. 14 Teresa bitterly observes that they ‘would have hoped for respect as human beings, but the only respect granted a woman is that which a gentleman bestows upon the lady. Clearly we were no ladies.’ 15 Due to their adventure-orientation, experiencing hardship instead of sleeping comfortably in hotel rooms guarded by their (male) partners they step beyond what is considered a ‘decent’ woman. Their subversive behaviour turns them into transgressive figures resembling the Bakhtin’s Jester, Trickster or Fool, who are granted the right to remain unintegrated. They seem to reject all the possible statuses because they realise the falsehood of every life position, and therefore, they are unsatisfied by any of these. 16 Since they do not belong anywhere they observe the reality more insightfully and are not afraid to expose the unpleasant or the taboo. Furthermore, the awareness that they escape any identity by going beyond, Anzaldua’s mestiza consciousness, enables them to develop an approach of Rorty’s ‘liberal ironist’ who challenges any final vocabulary in addition to realising one’s own limits of creating one of their own. 17 Symbolically, the trip seems to be a rite de passage, during which they are as if in a liminal state, according to Victor Turner’s theory. 18 As liminal beings without property, social status or attention to their appearance etc. they match Turner’s description of the attributes belonging to the condition. 19 It is dubious, though, whether the ritual they undertook, in the form of the journey helped them reintegrate to mainstream society, since this is the goal that Turner names. However, it performed its role in terms of raising the awareness and accepting the mestiza identity. For Reina, on the other hand, her life is a journey. First, in Cuba she is in a constant movement due to her work. Later she takes up a journey to the United

138

Evil or Not?

__________________________________________________________________ States, which similarly to Alicia and Teresa’s involves multiple transgressions except for the mere change of location. Nonetheless, Reina does not act as a liberal ironist or a jester. She is presented iconically like a complementation of the traditional depiction of women, and becomes a perfect role model. Despite the blemishes on her physicality, she is an epitome of perfect womanhood accepting of herself and avoiding the double consciousness, term coined by W. E. B. Dubois, due to which a woman constantly filters her image through the eyes of men. Reina’s travel also has a personal dimension as owing to it she reconcilliates with her sister as Payant remarks. Except for the forms of narration and the motif of journey, a substantial discrepancy between the strategies of both writers can be spotted. Castillo focuses on the complexities and circumstances leading to particular decisions, and characters manage to effectively defend themselves from the moral castigation. Yet, they have internalised the social rules and are fully aware of various dilemmas and the consequences of the choices they make. They constantly refer to the social conventions and explain themselves or rebel against the unjust rules and practices, yet the socially accepted oppressive standards function as a benchmark. Although they are regard themselves as ‘liberal’ women, they are aware of what such a concept denotes for the men they encounter ‘liberal-trash, whore, bitch.’ 20 When Teresa confesses that during their trip to Mexico they ‘licked [their] wounds with the underside of penises and applied semen to [their] tender bellies and breasts like Tiger’s balm’ 21 an avid reader might treat it not solely as a matter-of-fact statement admitting hedonism on women’s side, but also seeking an excuse for casual sex. Looking for a justification is compatible with Gayle Rubin’s claim concerning sex negativity as an inherent characteristic of the Western culture, according to which sex is perceived as sinful unless proven innocent, and unlike other pleasures there is a need for legitimising the experience. The most frequent excuses comprise marriage, reproduction and love. 22 Teresa and Alicia challenge the patriarchal culture, and therefore, they use another rationale, namely, misery and desperation. Reina, nicknamed Goddess, from The Aguero Sisters, however, is developed on entirely different premises. She does not need to challenge any norms, she, like the Nietzschean man generates her own hierarchy of values and does not even seem to acknowledge the existent social conventions. For instance, when she ponders upon monogamous behaviour of her sister, Constancia, she is genuinely surprised. ‘It’s a well-known fact that ninety-seven percent of mammals are polygamous … human beings are mammalian through and through. Why fight against nature?’ 23 From her royal-godly perspective as implied by the nickname, she cannot imagine depriving oneself from the simple pleasure of polygamous sexuality. When construing the character Garcia endows her with almost divine qualities. When she does her job, she masters the skills and is called for the most challenging tasks. She manages to survive a serious accident, as if she was invincible. She catches the day, drives a motorboat fast, enjoys sex with multiple partners who

Aleksandra Holubowicz

139

__________________________________________________________________ adore her, although she fails to fit in the conventional beauty canon. Although her body is like a patchwork after the skin transplant, she instils admiration in men and women alike. Thus, she resembles the Aztec Goddess, Coatlicue, who is the dualistic mother of Gods and devourer at the same time, simultaneously monstrous and beautiful as Gloria Anzaldua presented her in Borderlands/La Frontera 24 Perhaps Reina collects men’s hearts just like Coatlicue who wears a necklace studded with those and skulls? As far as the strategies to ‘de-evil’ their characters are concerned, Castillo creates rebellious protagonists who struggle against certain external circumstances which they deem oppressive. Furthermore, they gain a revolutionary awareness and understanding of various mechanisms referring to how society operates. The reader exposed to their experience comes to comprehend the difficult choices made by the heroines as a result of their multiple oppression - as the cultural, ethnic and racial Other and as women. Due to such knowledge and consciousness empathy replaces the tendency to jump at conclusions expressing criticism. On the other hand, Garcia creates an image of powerful womanhood in the same way as Anzaldua reinvents the Aztec mythology and reclaims it by recasting light on the pantheon of goddesses, where the creative force is emphasised rather than the destructive component. In such a way, divinity is shown on Reina’s example, as a joyous life, where duality is an actuality rather than a phenomenon subject to moral evaluation, and where appreciation of simple pleasures, such as inspiring sexuality, eating fruit and swimming in the ocean is valued superior to amassing fortunes or over-focus on one’s physical appearance. What is more, such a representation can encourage a female reader to construe her own hierarchy of values as long as she does not hurt anyone. Finally, what arouses interest is the significance of the hyphenated LatinaAmerican identity and the degree to which bi-culturalism results in characters’ choices and stances. Perhaps the women who suffer multiple oppression not only due to their sex/gender, but also on other grounds, such as ethnicity, religion and culture, challenge the existing norms more readily? Once they commence their quest for identity, they realise that the cultural standards they have internalised vary substantially from the practice in their surroundings. In a Fanonian manner the colonised realises that the optics is actually the one of the oppressor. 25 For Latina women it happens on a number of layers, sparked by the sense of atopia, that is as Barthes clarifies the response to being ascribed to a place, ‘stuck’ located in a particular (intellectual) spot, to the caste (if not class) settlement 26 but perhaps also sexual/gender perspective could be included. Therefore, gaining mestiza consciousness becomes a springboard for any revolutionary practice. However, the degree to which a hybrid identity, as well as experience of multiple oppression, contribute to subversive behaviour opens an opportunity for further research.

140

Evil or Not?

__________________________________________________________________

Notes 1

Magdalena Środa, Etyka dla Myślących (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca, 2010), 132. 2 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, trans. Banaszak (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 2000), 362. 3 Adrienne Cecil Rich, ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, eds. Vincent B. Leitch and George Lynn (New York and London: Norton & Company, 2001), 1601. 4 Ana Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters (New York and London: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1986), 24. 5 Ibid., 53. 6 Ibid., 58. 7 Rich, ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’, 1603. 8 Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters, 38. 9 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 135. 10 Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters, 24. 11 Ibid., 27. 12 Katherine B. Payant, ‘From Alienation to Reconciliation in the Novels of Cristina Garcia’, MELUS 26, No. 3 (2001). 13 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (New York and London: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1996). 14 Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, 291. 15 Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters, 65. 16 Mikhail Bakhtin, Questions of Literature and Aesthetics, translated to Polish by Wincenty Grajewski (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1982). 17 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 73. 18 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process, translated to Polish by Ewa Dzurak, (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2010). 19 Ibid., 124. 20 Castillo, The Mixquiahuala Letters, 79. 21 Ibid., 106. 22 Gayle Rubin, ‘Thinking Sex’, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism eds. Vincent B. Leitch and George Lynn (New York and London: Norton & Company, 2001). 23 Cristina Garcia, The Aguero Sisters (New York: One World The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1998), 197. 24 Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987).

Aleksandra Holubowicz

141

__________________________________________________________________ 25

Frantz Fanon, The Fanon Reader, ed. Azzedine Haddour (London: Pluto Press, 2006). 26 Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, translated to Polish by Tomasz Swoboda (Gdańsk: slowo/obraz terytoria, 2011), 59.

Bibliography Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza Consciousness: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Questions of Literature and Aesthetics, Questions of Literature and Aesthetics. Translated.to Polish by Wincenty Grajewski. Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1982. Barthes, Roland. Roland Barthes. Translated to Polish by Tomasz Swoboda. Gdańsk: Slowo/obraz terytoria, 2011. Castillo, Ana. The Mixquihuala Letters. New York and London: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1986. Fanon, Frantz, The Fanon Reader. Edited by Azzedine Haddour. London: Pluto Press, 2006. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2. Translated to Polish by Banaszak. Warszawa: Czytelnik, 2000. Garcia, Cristina. The Aguero Sisters. New York: One World The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1998. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civilizations. New York and London: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1996. Payant, Katherine B. ‘From Alienation to Reconciliation in the Novels of Cristina Garcia’. MELUS 26, No. 3 (2001).

142

Evil or Not?

__________________________________________________________________ Rich, Adrienne Cecil. ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Edited by Vincent B. Leitch, and George Lynn, 1591–1609. New York and London: Norton & Company, 2001. Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Rubin, Gayle. ‘Thinking Sex’. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Edited by Vincent B. Leitch, and George Lynn, 2377–2402. Norton & Company: New York and London, 2001. Środa, Magdalena. Etyka dla Myślących. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca, 2010. Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process. Translated to Polish by Ewa Dzurak. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2010. Aleksandra Holubowicz is a graduate of American Studies Center, Warsaw University, Poland and currently a PhD student in American literature in Gdańsk University. Her main research focuses on feminine sexuality in its different dimensions - sociological, philosophical as well as practical.

Part 5 The Rejected Women or Female Monsters/Nutcases?

Bathory, the Bloody Countess as an Inspiration for Fiction and Cinema Gabriela Mádlo Abstract As a child I would visit a ruin of the famous castle Čachtice, with my parents. This is the place where Elizabeth (in Hungarian Erzsébet) Bathory was imprisoned and few years later died. We followed most of the tourists, who visited this place. This ruined castle and legend of his bloody countess, is a very strong part of the history and culture of the region of Eastern Slovakia. The Slovakian film industry reflects this movement by the recent Juraj Jakubisko’s epic coproduction movie Bathory (2008). The Bathory legend has fascinated me since then. Therefore I would be obliged to look closely at the historical novel of Slovakian writer Jožo Nižnánsky. Listen to the story of Lady of Čachtice, published in 1932. What were his vision of this Hungarian countess and his explanation of her murders? How did he describe this countess? Was she evil or every word about the murders was a plot, which aimed to support power of other Hungarian families to destroy her power? Did the writer raise any gender issues around her personality or it was simply evil rich and powerful woman of that time? At this point I want to compare this novel with the view on Bathory with Andrei Codrescu’s novel The Blood Countess. This will raise the gender issue of the medieval patriarchal problem to cope with female power in Central Europe. I cannot forget the issue of virgin blood seen as a magical power. This controversial mystical power of virgin blood is distinctive in Quentin Tarantino’s movie Hostel: Part II (2007). The context of the two novels is visually featured in a few recent films such as Bathory (2008) and The Bloody Countess (2009) and marginally in one scene in Hostel: Part II (2007). I focus on these movies as a last part of this chapter. Key Words: Andrei Codrescu, Čachtice, Elizabeth Bathory, horror, Jožo Nižnánsky, sadism, vampirism. ***** 1. Introduction I have been drawn to the story of Erzsébet Báthory’s life 1 since my childhood. The cloud of fear and horror has governed over the story of this noble woman in my mind for years. I have kept in my mind the ruins of her castle Čachtice, where she was walled in one room for four years. By the time it has changed into a fascination because our history lessons have not helped to take this horrific stress of her; her name has never been mentioned and the family name of Báthory either during the school years.

146 Bathory, the Bloody Countess as an Inspiration for Fiction and Cinema __________________________________________________________________ I presume at this point there is no need for me to retell her life-story full of the disappearances and brutal deaths of virgin servants in and around her castles. The result of the investigation was to wall her in a tower of her castle. As we look back in our European culture, her figure still remains a living myth between us. The vampires are jumping out of the television screens from a few different series 2 while there are new creations of the blood suckling creatures coming up. The Twilight saga rules the world of teenagers and young people and it brings whole new culture into the life inspiring many people to act differently to their original values and expectations as we can read numbers of stories linked to this descend of Báthory family. People are claiming to be her descends in few instances, whilst others are killing young women because Erzsébet’s voice told them to, you can even buy online, blood bath shower gel. When I searched for a decent material for this research I remembered that I have never read the famous Slovakian novel about Erzsébet Báthory and there it was. In the front of me one novel, few more books were eyeballing me after a short internet search. There and then the decision has been made. Second choice was Andrei Codrescu’s The Blood Countess as a completely different novel but both have had the same person on their target. These two characteristics of the same persona are described in something what is in their style unmatchable. 2. Jožo Nižnánsky’s Gothical Lady of Čachtice Jožo Nižnánsky 3 is a master in the re-telling of a complicated story full of action and adventures of many characters. The reader is drawn into the battle between evil and good, between heroism and cowardice with a few strong love stories. His creation is written simply enough to bring a wide range of readers to his story which is full of historical figures. Jožo Nižnánsky’s The Lady of Čachtice 4 uses elements of a gothic novel and modern horror. In this story we meet many virginal maidens, who follow the order of Erzsebet and come to the chateau as her servants. The reader recognises few older vicious and foolish women, who love helping the noble countess torturing countless young girls. Our hero is a young peasant man who has been sent by Ferenc Nadaszdy to the Wittenberg’s University. With his death the privilege to study comes to its end due to Erzsebet’s reign of the whole Ferenc Nadaszdy’s estate. When this young man hears abroad, about the strange disappearances of many young girls especially his sister, around the Čachtice chateau, he returns to rescue her and his old mother. This young and educated man is forced to become a brigand and joins a band of them who decide to defend the young girls from being killed. Another character typical for a gothic novel is a priest. There is the Lutheran Church’s priest who firstly thinks that all the talk about the Lady of Čachtice is malicious gossip. The priest says to the young man:

Gabriela Mádlo

147

__________________________________________________________________ Dear son, I know her well. Those, who gossip about her, they do not know her at all. She is chivalrous lady, even though her education is lags. … But she excels in a bright intelligence. She scorns by earthly vanities. 5 But the forthcoming events will convert this priest to believe in the evil side of this noble woman. A young girl comes to his vicarage soon after this conversation. She escaped from the château and it is obvious that she was tortured and beaten. When she is asked who has done this to her, she replies that it was her lady Bathory and then not long after that she dies. There is a battle over her corpse, when Elizabeth’s malformed servant Ficko comes to take the body to the chateau. This close servant performs the most vicious plans of torture to his Lady’s enemies, such as a local band of brigands. Ficko is described with a unique farce like comicality. The reader can easily identify with the clown like figure in him. Bathory is represented as the personalised evil in female body, which runs ‘blue aristocratic blood.’ She represents the despotic and cruel tyrant which is a big part of Slovakian and Hungary history. 6 Lady Bathory is helped to act the horrific tortures by her three maidens, one of them well known; Anna Darvulia, and by one malformed servant Ficko. The famous Hammer production’s horror Countess Dracula 7 with Ingrid Pitt as Elizabeth brings to the life a romantic story full of beauty and death. Elizabeth finds out the power of pure virgin blood and becomes obsessed by the blood baths. Ingrid Pitt is one of the best faces for this character, in the cinema. The Belgian horror Daughters of Darkness 8 shows Delphine Seyrig as another successful choice for the face of countess Bathory - again a distinctive blond stunner. Within the lesbian vampire erotic horror film awakes a completely undiscovered storyline of the present-day times of 1970’s. In both films and in the novel the setting is of great importance. Nižnánsky trusts Čachtice château and castle, surrounded by villages and then Pressburg. 9 Sasdy sets his Countess Dracula into the lonely castle in the middle of woods, while the Belgian horror brings all protagonists to an extravagant seaside hotel near Ostende. Nižnánsky describes many examples of Elizabeth’s practices of mistreatments and tortures of her young servants. Such as poking a needle under the servant’s nail. When the servant pulled the nail and partly fainting with the pain and with the picture of welling out blood, she has been punished again. Undressed girl has been beaten by the old vicious servants and by the lady either with their bare hands or with the sticks. … They cut the girl’s skin between fingers or they jabbed sewing needles in the young breasts. The screams full of pain and fear were filling the walls of the Čachtice chateau. 10

148 Bathory, the Bloody Countess as an Inspiration for Fiction and Cinema __________________________________________________________________ Another story reveals the forgotten fate of ten young girls whom were buried secretly in the Čachtice church. The band of brigands brings out of the noble tomb, ten coffins in one night. That is the last straw that converts the priest. We are reminded of the legends of the magic power of the virgin blood and the story of Pope Sixtus V and his blood baths to extend his life. Lucrecia Borgia supposed to know the power of virgin blood too. 11 Nižnánsky adds the story’s power by adding the bipolar character to the mind of Bathory: ‘Erzsebet Bathory laughed to herself and her own cowardliness. She feared the human punishment and even more the eternal damnation.’ 12 But these doubts did not last long, the promise of youth won and she started to kill more white flesh virgin victims. The fear of aging was stronger than the fear of being caught as a murderer. A similar picture of sadistic persona of Bathory is seen in the horror movie The Hostel: Part II. 13 The first victim is Lorna, 14 who becomes the source of blood for Mrs. Bathory. The camera focuses on Lorna, who is hung upside down above a tiled little pool looking like a bath. Young girl does not realize until the last fatal slash by a long scythe, that this is her last minute and not just a nightmare. Mrs. Bathory plays with her victim repeatedly by cutting her back and torso for a little while, like a cat is playing with a mouse. Bathory enjoys every second of her killing; especially the last slash of her victim’s throat makes her happy and leaves her bathing in the girl’s blood. This scene is very dark but leaves the spectator astonished by the brutality of the scene is enhanced by the greenish dim lighting of the whole scene, where only the victim’s gag is reddish. 3. Andrei Codrescu’s Elizabeth and Her Persona Andrei Codrescu is the second novelist; whose story has been inspired by Elizabeth but not intentionally, as he stated in an email to me: I got the idea for the book on my way to cover the events in Romania in 1989, when my producer asked me about a gloomy building. I told him that it looked like one of Elizabeth’s houses. I realized that she was a perfect midpoint between the old imperial late modern ages and the modern scourge (romantic then) of nationalism. There was a clash of religions, magic, and breakdown in her and her time, perfect for explaining the collapse of communism in those years. 15 The novel is called The Blood Countess and has been published in 1996 as his first novel. This book is structured in a very interesting way. There are two storylines, where one uncovers the times of Erzsebet’s era and her life and the second story reveals her relative Dreake Bathory-Keresthur’s life before and during the times of the communist’s fall in 1989 in Hungary. Drake claims that one girl died because of him and of Erzsebet, who haunts him. He comes to the New

Gabriela Mádlo

149

__________________________________________________________________ Yourk’s court and explains the stories of Erzsebet and his own to demonstrate his insanity and to be charged for that murder. The descriptions of the childhood, youth and adulthood of the countess are pictured with amazing imagination, rich in colour and senses that the reader can feel the sensitive soul of Erzsebet, who turns slowly evil. Or was she possessed by evil from her birth? When she was nine years old, she saw a brutal killing of her sisters and maids by a group of Dozsa rebels 16 while she was hiding in the trees. When they left satisfied that they had killed the nobles and their servants, she escapes into the woods and is recapturing whole event, but trying to forget; Elizabeth dismounted and told Luna 17 to wait for her. The horse looked placidly into her eyes and she felt safe. … She stripped and dove into the clear water. It was wonderfully bracing. When she looked about her, she saw nothing but clear water. She dove all the way down to the sandy bottom and walked on it on her hands. She felt very much at home in the water. It was transparent and penetrable, and it embraced her completely. It was the only element she trusted. Water was utterly unlike people, those compact, dense, impenetrable, murderous creatures that belonged to the night. Elizabeth wanted to see through everything in the world the way she saw through this water. Of all the people she knew, her sisters had been most like water. The rest were like moss drenched in blood or gnarled like the roots of a tree. Dust to dust, Preacher Hebler had once said. There was no dust, no blood no moss, no rough wood in the clean bright green water. 18 The Slovakian coproduction periodic drama Bathory portrays the countess in a fairy tale light with a sad ending for the infamous countess Elisabeth. Anna Friel acts her role of the countess very convincingly with a few touching scenes as a kind mother or as a beautiful woman bathing in herbal water. When Elizabeth was found sound and alive, then Palatine Thurzo ordered her to watch the punishment of the rebels with him. The punishment was not as simple as head decapitation, but involved the eating of the leader’s flesh by other rebels before they were killed too. ‘Elizabeth watched the entire punishment and felt so much joy at the rebels’ suffering that she wet herself and the ground where she stood.’ 19 While reading this part I remembered the scene from movie The Countess. 20 The protestant priest has taught young Elizabeth about the soul and body and about the death and life. She still thinks about it, so she finds a recently hatched chick and makes a hole into the flowerpot with soil. She puts the chic in it

150 Bathory, the Bloody Countess as an Inspiration for Fiction and Cinema __________________________________________________________________ and buries the little bird alive, a few days later she checks the pot to find out that the bird is dead and worms are eating the remains. One explanation for her blood thirst could be this story. At the age of 14, just before her wedding, this young countess listens to a legend about seven beautiful sisters 21 , who were imprisoned by their father in a dark room so as not to be able to see their beauty. One day a man like bird visits them and makes them realise that they are beautiful and impregnates them. ‘The chieftain flew into a terrible rage and swore to kill the man-bird who had ruined his daughters.’ 22 Within this legend there is a sad ending for the seven sisters who are trapped in the black swans’ bodies. Their human skins are collected by an old witch. She makes one girl from the seven skins. When the young countess heard this story, her curiosity started to ask Darvulia and herself straight away, how is it possible that the witch made one girl from seven? She wondered about this legend and was unable to answer herself if Darvulia could do the same? And why the narrator said that the consorting with that man-bird ruined the girls? Codrescu describes many stories of her madness for blood later in her life. One of many is about a talented young singer, who performed in a church and unfortunately Bathory was there to be fascinated by her angelic voice. ‘The girl’s purity was like spring water to her thirst. That day the countess had buried her vanity, and freedom welled within her.’ 23 Bathory asked the girl named Ilona Harszy to come to her palace that night and was hoping to have a private concert. But the girl was unable to sing since she learnt about her visit of Bathory’s palace. 24 She feared her too much to make any sound while she stands in front of her. Of course, the girl did not survive this visit as her parents feared, when they looked behind the carriage. The girl fainted firstly and when she was coming to the senses, Erzsebet had enough of her. With the help of her servants she brought her to the yard, maids held her upright while Elizabeth poured icy water over the pale form. Within a few minutes all of them were staring at a frozen living statue. ‘Beauty,’ said Elizabeth coldly, ‘how easily you cling to the docile!’ 25 When Thurzo investigated her crimes many years later, he wrote: ‘he wished that Elizabeth had been the rebel’s prey instead her sisters.’ 26 In the material I have brought together I can highlight few of many repeating similarities such as fascination by blood and youth, curiosity, the pain threshold and sadism, fear of aging. Her relative Countess Klara Bathory was her close friend who is believed had a lesbian relationship with Elizabeth and was encouraging Elizabeth to organise these blood seeking orgies in her castles and manor houses. 4. Last Thought or What Has Not Been Said? The Slovakian art production has created two important and probably nearly forgotten creations under communism in the mid 70’s and in early 80’s. One of them is a theatrical play of Stanislav Štepka Elizabeth the Terrible or The Blood Story from 1975 and Viktor Kubal’s animated horror film called The Bloody Lady.

Gabriela Mádlo

151

__________________________________________________________________ There is not much known about the paly nor about the cartoon apart of the posters and flyers. Bathory (2008) can be seen as a testament of Slovakian director. In Jakubisko’s case, Bathory is shown as a victim of political spite and compulsive jealousy of wealthy and powerful nobility. This movie is shown pure misunderstanding of widowed woman who refused to remarry and who has decided to take control over her assets, which was not favoured nor by her children neither by Thurzo. Elizabeth Bathory died just seven years after Elizabeth I. This Hungarian countess could be as powerful as Elizabeth I if she had a chance to govern her parts of Hungary, Slovakia and Rumania. But this will remain only speculation.

Notes 1

Countess Erzsébet Bathory de Esced was born 7th August 1560 into a wealthy noble family in Hungary, as very young married to Ferenc Nadasdy. This countess is mainly known for her alleged killings of virgin maidens to retain her youth while using their blood for her baths. The investigation led by Palatine Gyorgy Thurzo started on 30th December 1610. Four of her collaborators were beheaded for the convictions of torturing and killing of 80 girls. But the rumours about the victims were as high as over 650. She has been never convicted but was imprisoned for life-long confinement in her castle Csejte, today Čachtice in Slovakia. She died walled there on the 21st August 1614. 2 The Vampire Diaries (The CW Television Network series, 2009-onwards), True Blood (HBO series, 2008-onwards), Castle, season 4, episode 22 includes an investigation of a murder with mysterious bite marks leading them to a theories of dead-undead-live murder zombie-vampire like. 3 Jožo Nižnánsky was a Slovakian writer who lived between years 1903 and 1976. He started his career as a poet. His novel debut was The Lady of Cachtice in 1932. 4 R, T. McNally, Dracula was a Woman, in Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983), xi. 5 Jožo Nižnánsky, Čachtická Paní (Praha: Naše vojsko Praha, 1970), 13. 6 In those days these countries were part of the Austro - Hungary Empire until 1918, when all the nations were separated from Austria and formed their new republics. 7 Countess Dracula (1971) was directed by Peter Sasdy and Ingrid Pitt’s role of Elizabeth Bathory brought her fame. It is her most known role. 8 Daughters of Darkness (1971) directed by Hans Kümel. It has different story line with beautiful Delphine Seyrig as the countess. This is erotic lesbian vampire horror. 9 Pressburg is now Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. 10 Nižnánsky, Čachtická Paní, 67.

152 Bathory, the Bloody Countess as an Inspiration for Fiction and Cinema __________________________________________________________________ 11

More about this in Nižnánsky, Čachtická Paní, 70. Ibid., 71. 13 The Hostel: Part II as an American horror film was directed by Eli Roth and executive produced by Quentin Tarantino. It was released 2007. 14 Lorna is a young student, who came to Slovakia with her friends to travel around, they stop in a small village’s hostel but they do not know that they became a target of wealthy businessmen who are bidding on them to hunt for them and kill them for fun and to release their anxieties of everyday life. 15 Emailed by A. Condrescu on the 21st April 2012. 16 Gyorgy Dozsa rebellion persisted in the 1514. By the time Elizabeth was 9, he was dead for few decades. But Codrescu brings into the live the way the rebels were tortured and it the period of Elizabeth’s life were other rebellions alive. 17 Luna is a horse that she found in the woods, when the brutal killing of her sisters ended. 18 Andrei Codrescu, The Blood Countess (London: Quartet Books Limited, 1996), 27-28. 19 Ibid., 35. 20 The Countess (2009) directed by Julie Delphy, who has written the story, played the main role of Elizabeth Bathory and wrote the music for the film. 21 ‘Not long before King Stephen saved our souls by committing them to Christ, the castle of a pagan chieftain stood where Castle Sarvar now stands. This Chieftain had seven daughters so beautiful they had to be kept in a seven-sided dark room, because if he let them out, they would eclipse the light of the sun. Because this room was dark, the girls never saw how beautiful they were’. More in Codrescu, The Blood Countess, 125-127. 22 Ibid., 125. 23 Ibid., 15. 24 Girl’s family was not wealthy enough to have a power in the society to decline Bathory’s request. 25 Ibid., 17. 26 Ibid., 45. 12

Bibliography Codrescu, Andrei. The Blood Countess. London: Quartet Books Limited, 1996. McNally, Raymond T. Dracula was a Woman, in Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983. Nižnánsky, Jožo. Čachtická Paní. Praha: Naše Vojsko, 1970.

Gabriela Mádlo

153

__________________________________________________________________

Filmography Delpy, Julie, dir. The Countess. 2009. Kümel, Harry, dir. Daughters of Darkness. 1971. Jakubisko, Juraj, dir. Bathory. 2008. Roth, Eli, dir. The Hostel: Part II. 2007. Sasdy, Peter, dir. Countess Dracula. 1971. Gabriela Mádlo is an independent scholar. She studied at the Charles University Prague and at the South Bohemian University České Budějovice. Her aspirations are to fulfil a PhD Qualification at the Worcester University with the main subject in folklore, film and cultural studies linked to Elizabeth Báthory figure.

On Tonight’s Menu: Corporeality, Food and Female Monstrosity in Two True Crime Texts Jay Daniel Thompson Abstract This chapter will address two Australian true crime texts, Peter Lalor’s Blood Stain (2002) and Ron Hicks’ The Vampire Killer (1992). These books detail the crimes of Katherine Knight and Tracey Wigginton, respectively. Both women became famous for executing men in a cannibalistic fashion. I argue that these texts are significant in that, while purporting to simply detail the ‘facts’ of crime cases, they actually endorse antiquated views about women, food and corporeality. In these texts, the ‘monstrosity’ of the female killers lies firstly in the fact that they subvert the stereotype of the woman as cook and nurturer. Men become food for Knight and Wigginton. I argue that the texts further attribute monstrosity to Knight and Wigginton through depicting their bodies as being unfeminine. Both women are tall; Wigginton is also overweight and ‘butch.’ This chapter will provide an original and provocative perspective on representations of the female killer in true crime writing. I ask whether true crime texts can reinforce stereotypes of feminine monstrosity to a greater extent than crime fiction. The chapter also contributes to existing studies of women’s historically complex relationship with food. Throughout the chapter, I engage with Maggie Kilgour’s study of cannibalism as a literary metaphor. I draw also from Rosalind Smith’s 2008 analysis of true crime writing, and Rosemary Pringle and Susan Collings’ 1993 study of female butchers. The image of woman as butcher appears in both Blood Stain and The Vampire Killer. Key Words: True crime writing, female killers, food, cannibalism, corporeality, butchers. ***** 1. Introduction This chapter addresses two true crime texts, Peter Lalor’s Blood Stain (2002) and Ron Hicks’ The Vampire Killer (1992). These books focus on the crimes of Katherine Knight and Tracey Wigginton, respectively. Both women became notorious (at least in Australia) for their cannibalistic executions of men. I argue that these texts are significant in that, while purporting to simply detail the ‘facts’ of these crimes, they actually endorse familiar and hostile views about women, food and corporeality. In both texts, the ‘monstrosity’ of Knight and Wigginton lies partly in the fact that they subvert stereotypes of the woman as cook and nurturer. These women’s monstrosity is also linked to their bodies, which (in the texts under discussion) are masculinised. I aim to provide a fresh and provocative contribution

156

On Tonight’s Menu

__________________________________________________________________ to studies of true crime writing, as well as studies of women’s complex and frequently tense relationship with food in the West. 2. (En)Gendering True Crime Writing In recent years, true crime writing has been the subject of a small but significant collection of scholarly studies. 1 True crime writing purports to simply convey the ‘facts’ of particular crime cases. The ‘truth claims’ made by true crime texts ostensibly distinguish these texts from crime fiction. 2 Yet, as literary scholar Rosalind Smith argues, the ‘self-proclaimed relationship to the real’ promised by true crime writing is questionable. 3 A true crime text constructs one of a number of competing versions of a set of events that can claim to be no closer to an objective or a material reality than any other. True crimes can only be retrieved through unreliable memory or a range of textual sources such as photographs, interviews, police reports … and the resulting narratives declare their dependency on unstable textual interpretation at the same time as they claim to present the facts. 4 Additionally, true crime writing can mobilise tropes and subtexts commonly associated with fiction. Smith provides the example of John Bryson’s book Evil Angels (1985). This text’s key figure is Lindy Chamberlain, who was famously convicted, then acquitted of killing her baby daughter, Azaria, during a family holiday to Ayers Rock/Uluru (in Australia’s Northern Territory) in 1980. Chamberlain alleged that her baby was taken by a dingo. In Bryson’s book, one woman is quoted as describing Chamberlain thus: ‘She just stares … I could feel her eyes burning holes through my back.’ 5 Smith argues that this ‘sentence calls up the powerful subtext associating women, infanticide and malevolent maternity with witchcraft …’ 6 According to Smith, this sentence is one example of how Evil Angels suggests that Chamberlain might be monstrous, and therefore likely to have slain her own child. Even more overt stereotypes of female monstrosity appear in Blood Stain and The Vampire Killer. I contend that these two texts (perhaps more so than works of crime fiction) are significant because of their underlying suggestion that these stereotypes are somehow grounded in fact. In these texts, Knight and Wigginton are portrayed as being almost innately homicidal. Blood Stain and The Vampire Killer describe the crimes of their protagonists with the ‘sensationalism’ 7 that is characteristic of the true crime genre. Both books were published, and detail events which took place in Australia. I argue, though, that they both intervene in broader feminist debates about female criminality, food, the female body and the sexual politics of representation.

Jay Daniel Thompson

157

__________________________________________________________________ 3. Women, Food and Cannibalism I will now look briefly at some aspects of women’s historical relationship with food in Western culture. This will involve making a number of generalisations. I argue, however, that these generalisations are useful because they help us to understand how and why Knight and Wigginton have been portrayed in so monstrous a form in the texts I address. These women are not horrifying simply because they are ‘female killers,’ but, first and foremost, because they do not have a very ‘feminine’ relationship with food. In her study of food in contemporary women’s fiction, Sarah Sceats observes: Women’s bodies have the capacity to manufacture food for their infants which categorise them as feeders, and in Western culture women have traditionally borne most of the burden of cooking for and nourishing others … 8 At the same time, women’s own eating has often been accompanied by a sense of shame. 9 Witness the prevalence of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. Underpinning this sense of shame is the idea that a healthy appetite cannot produce an idealised (read: slender) female body. According to the line of thought I have just described, the woman who enjoys eating is threatening to the extent that she appears uninterested in following socially-ascribed ideas about what constitutes a ‘feminine’ physical appearance. I want to take a step beyond this and argue that the cannibalistic woman is perhaps the most threatening woman - or, perhaps more accurately, the most threatening female stereotype of all. To explain this point, I turn to literary theorist Maggie Kilgour’s book From Communion to Cannibalism (1990). Kilgour argues that (metaphorically speaking) eating can be understood as a form of ‘incorporation’. When we eat, we incorporate ‘elements from outside’ ourselves (that is, food). 10 These elements literally become part of us. Kilgour points out that sexual intercourse can also be viewed as an act of ‘incorporation,’ as the bodies of two lovers ‘become one.’ 11 This relationship between feeding and fornication is invoked in phrases such as ‘eat you up.’ 12 Such phrases may be intended as humorous or affectionate, but they have violent connotations. Indeed, the seemingly innocuous act of eating a meal can be seen as somewhat violent: … one of the most important characteristics of eating is its ambivalence: It is the most material need yet is invested with a great deal of significance, an act that involves both desire and aggression, as it creates a total identity between eater and eaten while insisting on the total control - the literal consumption - of the latter by the former. 13

158

On Tonight’s Menu

__________________________________________________________________ Cannibalism is particularly disturbing because the categories ‘eater’ and ‘eaten’ become so blurred. In eating another human, the cannibal threatens ‘individual identity,’ as well as the lives of others. 14 So the female cannibal is threatening on several fronts. Her appetite (for food, as well as for sex) is unrestrained, and therefore marked as ‘unfeminine.’ The female cannibal does not cook for or nurture men; rather, and particularly in my chosen texts, men become her meals. The female cannibal’s body is not the site of life’s creation; it is a place where life ends, where the bodies of others are chewed up and digested. Sometimes, cannibalism has been associated with a ‘primitive’ past, and supposedly practised by indigenous groups. Unsurprisingly, this association has often had xenophobic undertones. In 1997, for example, the far-right Australian political party One Nation alleged that Aborigines in colonial Australia ate their babies. 15 In Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road and the 1993 based-on-atrue-story film Alive, cannibalism is portrayed as a means of survival in extreme conditions. The most famous pop culture cannibal is Hannibal Lecter, the suave and intellectual anti-hero of Thomas Harris’ 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs and its 1991 cinematic adaptation. 2010 saw the release of We are What We Are, a Mexican horror film about a cannibalistic family. What is distinctive about Knight and Wigginton is that (unlike many of the cannibals in the above-mentioned texts) they are women. 16 Their crimes were not a means of survival. These crimes did not take place in the colonial era or the postapocalyptic world of The Road. Nor did the killings happen in the kind of noirish, surrealistic landscapes depicted in The Silence of the Lambs or We are What We Are. Indeed, one aspect of the worlds inhabited by Knight and Wigginton would be depressingly quotidian and familiar to most readers. The aspect I am referring to is the hatred and devaluation of women. The authors of Blood Stain and The Vampire Killer both acknowledge that their subjects had experienced sexual and physical violence at the hands of men. This violence (it is suggested) contributed to both women’s mental instability and, ultimately, to their sadistic crimes. Despite this, though, there is still a sense in the texts under discussion that these crimes can be (quite literally) linked to Knight and Wigginton’s bodies. 4. What’s for Dinner?: Blood Stain The crime depicted in Blood Stain is the most overtly ‘cannibalistic’ of the two texts, and it goes the furthest towards portraying its female killer as being literally monstrous. The book opens on the evening of 29 February 2000. On this evening, or early the following morning, Knight killed her partner, John Price. She then skinned him and cooked his decapitated head. The meal was apparently intended for Price’ children (they appear not to have eaten it; it is unclear whether Knight herself sampled her culinary creation). 17 In the following pages, readers learn

Jay Daniel Thompson

159

__________________________________________________________________ about Knight’s childhood, which was filled with physical and sexual abuse. 18 There are descriptions of Knight’s relationships with men, all of which were characterised by adultery and brutality. Knight allegedly perpetrated some of this behaviour herself, while on other occasions it was perpetrated by her partners. The text concludes with Knight serving a life sentence in prison. 19 The most striking aspect of Blood Stain is that, even while describing at length the abuse that Knight was subject to by men (including - allegedly - John Price himself), Lalor still suggests that sadism is part of her psychic and physical makeup. In the opening pages, he reports that Knight killed Price because ‘it was her nature (sic) to go one step further.’ 20 Elsewhere, Knight is described as ‘plain bloody evil,’ 21 a woman who had been ‘working towards’ her crime ‘all her life.’ 22 Relatedly, and importantly for my argument, Lalor emphasises Knight’s supposed ability to emasculate her male partners. This penchant for emasculation is suggested in two ways. The first is through depictions of Knight’s body. Knight is described as ‘fearsomely strong’ 23 and ‘superhumanly strong.’ 24 Readers also learn that Knight was ‘a good foot taller’ 25 than her first husband, David Kellett, who is described as having been a ‘little groom’ 26 at their 1974 wedding. Secondly, Knight’s emasculatory potential is suggested through references to her appetite. This is not an appetite for food, but rather an appetite for sex and violence. On the night of her wedding to Kellett, for example, we discover that Knight physically assaulted her new husband and demanded sex. She allegedly told Kellett that her parents ‘did it five times’ in their conjugal bed. 27 Knight’s emasculatory nature and her lack of conventionally-defined femininity are further suggested by her employment in an abattoir. Jobs involving the production and distribution of meat products have traditionally been maledominated, as Rosemary Pringle and Susan Collings acknowledge in their study of female butchers. There are differences between working as a butcher and working in an abattoir. That being said, Pringle and Collings’ analysis still has much relevance to my own. I want to quote their description of butchers because it echoes my earlier remarks about cannibals: Butchers have not only a masculine but also a sinister presence: they work at the boundaries of life and death, of human and animal, of bodies and carcasses. Culturally these areas of ambiguity and transition evoke fascination and horror, signifying both desire and the dissolution of the subject. 28 Pringle and Collings suggest various reasons why women have not been given much incentive to seek employment as butchers. These include anxieties surrounding ‘female pollution,’ and a belief that this ‘pollution’ can be controlled ‘by excluding women from animal flesh which still resembles the dead animal from which it is taken.’ 29 Pringle and Collings also cite the cultural equation of

160

On Tonight’s Menu

__________________________________________________________________ women’s bodies with meat. 30 This equation - which some feminists have detected in certain pornographic and media texts 31 - is even more oppressive than that of the ‘woman as cook and nurturer’ stereotype. In the ‘woman as meat’ equation, women literally become food. Lalor informs readers that when she killed Price, Knight ‘went back to work.’ 32 I quote this section (which appears in the opening pages) because - perhaps more than any other part of Blood Stain - it most forcefully emphasises Knight’s transgression of gender norms. The ‘work’ that Lalor refers to is not housework (a traditionally ‘femininised’ mode of labour), but rather that of the abattoir employee. The house which Knight had shared with Price is transformed into a ‘slaughterhouse,’ 33 though this should not come as a surprise - their abode was never (according to Lalor) a place of warmth and care. Price winds up as a ‘meal.’ 34 The slogan ‘feed the man meat’ 35 has commonly been aimed at women, but not ‘make meat out of the man.’ 5. ‘From Butch to Butcher’s Knife’: The Vampire Killer The Vampire Killer focuses on Tracey Wigginton. On the evening of 20 October 1989, Wigginton picked up a male stranger (Edward Baldock) by the roadside in Brisbane and drove him to a park. Baldock was led to believe that they would have sex in this park. Instead, Wigginton stabbed the man repeatedly and drank his blood. She was assisted in this crime by three female accomplices. Wigginton was allegedly fascinated with the occult, and had often identified as a vampire. This identification (according to Hicks) stemmed from a Multiple Personality Disorder, which in turned stemmed largely from the sexual abuse that Wigginton experienced as a child. She was found guilty of Baldock’s murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1991. Wigginton was, however, released from jail in January 2012. The book’s subtitle is ‘A Journey into the Mind of Tracey Wigginton.’ Readers are thus alerted that Hicks aims to provide an insight into the psychological and emotional life of this woman. This insight initially seems to be sympathetic. In the Acknowledgments page, Hicks thanks Wigginton’s ‘closest relatives’ for speaking ‘so honestly about a subject that brought back such bitter memories’ and for their ‘help(ing) Tracey to get the treatment she needs.’ 36 This sympathy for Wigginton can be contrasted with the hostility that Peter Lalor displays towards Katherine Knight throughout Blood Stain. Hicks’ sympathy is also a departure from the sensationalism and hostility of much media coverage that has surrounded Wigginton’s crime. This sensationalism includes newspaper headlines such as ‘Interview with a vampire.’ 37 Nevertheless, and not unlike Blood Stain, there is considerable negative attention paid in Hicks’ text to Wigginton’s body. Wigginton is described as being a ‘big tough woman’ 38 with a ‘massive frame.’ 39 Wigginton’s personalities include

Jay Daniel Thompson

161

__________________________________________________________________ ‘Bobby,’ a ‘big, rough, tough, ‘butch’ female.’ 40 Shortly before the Baldock murder, readers are advised that Wigginton ‘cut her hair very short.’ 41 In these passages, Wigginton’s body is coded as unfeminine - and therefore unnatural and ominous - on two counts. Firstly, she is described as ‘big.’ This term connotes the fact that Wigginton (like Katherine Knight) was tall. The term ‘big’ is also a reference to the fact that Wigginton was overweight. Compare this with Knight, who (at least in the photos published in Blood Stain) appears to be slender. Secondly, Wigginton is described as ‘butch.’ This description is supported by (amongst other traits) her ‘short’ hairstyle. The term ‘butch’ has long been used to connote women with a masculine physical appearance, particularly those who (like Wigginton) identify as lesbian. Some lesbians have claimed the ‘butch’ moniker in a positive sense, 42 though the term has not always been glowing. Pringle and Collings suggest that ‘butch’ in fact derives from the term ‘butcher.’ 43 Similarly, Lindsay van Gelder writes: ‘In many minds the leap from the butch to the butcher’s knife is but a small one.’ 44 In The Vampire Killer, then, ‘butch’ is a code word for a dangerous (because performed by female bodies) masculinity. This is in keeping with the hostility that Hicks exhibits towards lesbianism and feminism throughout the text. For example, the author warns readers that ‘many women in the lesbian community’ of Brisbane circa the late 1980s ‘look(ed) on themselves as Pagans.’ 45 These lesbians followed the pro-witch sentiments that were apparently being endorsed by ‘radical elements of the feminist movement.’ 46 Considering the derogatory depiction of Wigginton’s masculinity, and the text’s overall heterosexism, I argue that the representation of Baldock’s execution in The Vampire Killer is double-edged. Hicks suggests that this crime represented a form of vengeance against those men who had mistreated Wigginton, particularly during her childhood. More than 15 times Tracey Wigginton stabbed and ripped at the body of her poor victim, even though he was long dead. There was no way she could control the unleashed anger of 23 years. It was a tornado of hate. 47 On another level, however, this crime can be read as a way for Wigginton to feed her ‘big,’ ‘butch’ body. In Hicks’ text, this is a body that absolutely signifies sadism. The fact that three other lesbian-identified women participated in Baldock’s murder is significant. There is the sense that the killing provides an opportunity for these women to satisfy their perverse sexual desires. 48 A hunger for food, a hunger for lesbian sex and a hunger for violence become thoroughly and bizarrely intertwined.

162

On Tonight’s Menu

__________________________________________________________________ 6. Conclusion I have argued that while - or perhaps because - true crime writing appears to be purely mimetic, it can endorse stereotypes of female monstrosity to a greater extent than crime fiction. This point has been demonstrated through my readings of Blood Stain and The Vampire Killer. As I have argued, both texts imply that their female killer protagonists are almost inherently unnatural and this unnaturalness is signified by - indeed, may be a by-product of - their unfeminine corporeality and relationship with food. Katherine Knight and Tracey Wigginton subvert the roles of cook and nurturer; men become their meals. Both women’s bodies are portrayed as being masculinised. These bodies hint at a sadistic streak from which no man is safe.

Notes 1

See Melissa Gregg and Jason Wilson, ‘Underbelly, True Crime and the Cultural Economy of Infamy’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 24, No. 3 (2010): 411-427; Peter Seltzer, True Crime: Observations on Violence and Modernity (New York and London: Routledge, 2007); Rosalind Smith, ‘Dark Places: True Crime Writing in Australia’, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 8 (2008): 17-30. 2 Smith, ‘Dark Places’, 20. 3 Ibid., 22. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Jenni Millbank, ‘From Butch to Butcher’s Knife: Film, Crime and Lesbian Sexuality’, Sydney Law Review 18 (1996): 457. 8 Sarah Sceats, Food, Consumption and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2. 9 See Elspeth Probyn, Carnal Appetites: FoodSexIdentities (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 125-147. 10 Maggie Kilgour, From Communion to Cannibalism: An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), 6. 11 Ibid., 7. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 11. 15 Katherine Biber, ‘Cannibals and Colonialism’, Sydney Law Review 27 (2005): 623-637.

Jay Daniel Thompson

163

__________________________________________________________________ 16

The cannibalistic family of We are What We Are is headed by a mother and daughter. Much of the narrative tension is derived from the resentment which a young male family member feels towards these powerful women. 17 Peter Lalor, Blood Stain: The True Story of Katherine Knight, the Mother and Abattoir Worker Who Became Australia’s Worst Female Killer (New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 2002), 262. Knight allegedly took a drug overdose after the meal was prepared. She regained consciousness in hospital. 18 Ibid., 39-63. 19 Ibid., 305. 20 Ibid., 4; emphasis mine. 21 Ibid., 116. 22 Ibid., 107. 23 Ibid, 75. 24 Ibid., 154. 25 Ibid., 40. 26 Ibid., 39. 27 Ibid., 41. 28 Rosemary Pringle and Susan Collings, ‘Women and Butchery: Some Cultural Taboos’, Australian Feminist Studies 8, No. 17 (1993): 30. In the near-twenty years since this article was published, more women have become butchers, though their vocation still seems to be male-dominated. See Helen Greenwood, ‘Everyone Wants a Butcher’s as Girls Get in for Their Cut’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 July 2011, accessed December 30, 2011, http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/everyone-wantsa-butchers-as-girls-get-in-for-their-cut-20110725-1hx08.html. 29 Ibid., 41. Pringle and Collings’ understanding of female pollution is indebted to Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1966). 30 Pringle and Collings, ‘Women and Butchery’, 36. 31 The equation of women’s bodies with meat has been explored by the US vegetarian feminist Carol Adams. See her books The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 1990); and The Pornography of Meat (New York: Continuum, 2003). 32 Lalor, Blood Stain, 6. Readers are informed that the abattoir at which Knight had resigned from the abattoir in 1986 after suffering a work-related injury. The abattoir itself closed a year before Price’ murder. 33 Ibid., 24. 34 Ibid., 28. 35 Pringle and Collings, ‘Women and Butchery’, 36. 36 Ron Hicks, The Vampire Killer: A Journey into the Mind of Tracey Wigginton (New South Wales: Bantam Books, 1992), v.

164

On Tonight’s Menu

__________________________________________________________________ 37

Anne-Louise Brown, ‘Interview with a Vampire: “I Felt Nothing”’, The Advertiser, 21 January 2012, 25. The headline is an obvious reference to Anne Rice’ novel Interview with the Vampire (1976). In the article itself, Wigginton is described as a ‘vampire’ and a ‘lesbian vampire,’ as though these are facts. The title ‘Interview with the Vampire’ had previously been used for a 1996 newspaper interview with Wigginton. See Belinda Morrissey, When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 103-133. Morrissey provides an astute critique of the media coverage surrounding Wigginton’s crime. 38 Hicks, The Vampire Killer, 273. 39 Ibid., 191. 40 Ibid., 228. 41 Ibid., 311. 42 For accounts of lesbian ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ role-playing, see the essays in Sally R. Munt’s edited collection Butch/Femme: Inside Lesbian Gender (London and Washington: Cassell, 1998). 43 Pringle and Collings, ‘Women and Butchery’, 32. 44 Legal scholar Jenni Millbank quotes this line in her analysis of female killers such as Wigginton. ‘From Butch to Butcher’s Knife’, 454. 45 Hicks, The Vampire Killer, 278. 46 Ibid. As ‘evidence’ of this witch-worshipping amongst feminists, Hicks cites only one text: the US writer Barbara Walker’s book The Skeptical Feminist (1987). Specifically, Hicks mentions Walker’s call for women to ‘overthrow the current patriarchy and ‘reclaim their own deity.’ 47 Ibid., 321. 48 Baldock’s killing is reminiscent of the film Vampyres (1974), in which two lesbian bloodsuckers seduce and kill unsuspecting male motorists. Hicks mentions that Wigginton ‘repeatedly’ watched the cult movie The Hunger (1983), the key protagonist of which is a sapphic female vampire. Ibid., 300. For an analysis of the lesbian vampire film sub-genre, see Ellis Hanson, ‘Lesbians Who Bite’, in Outtakes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film, ed. Ellis Hanson (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 183-222.

Bibliography Adams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity, 1990. Adams, Carol. The Pornography of Meat. New York: Continuum, 2003.

Jay Daniel Thompson

165

__________________________________________________________________ Biber, Katherine. ‘Cannibals and Colonialism’. Sydney Law Review 27 (2005): 623–637. Brown, Anne-Louise. ‘Interview with a Vampire: “I Felt Nothing”’. The Advertiser. 21 January 2012, 25. Bryson, John. Evil Angels. Melbourne: Viking, 1985. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1966. Greenwood, Greenwood. ‘Everyone Wants a Butcher’s as Girls Get in for Their Cut’. Sydney Morning Herald. 26 July 2011. Accessed December 30, 2011. http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/everyone-wants-a-butchers-as-girls-get-in-for-theircut-20110725-1hx08.html. Gregg, Melissa, and Jason Wilson. ‘Underbelly, True Crime and the Cultural Economy of Infamy’. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 24, No. 3 (2010): 411–427. Hanson, Ellis. ‘Lesbians Who Bite’. In Outtakes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film, edited by Ellis Hanson, 183–222. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Harris, Thomas. The Silence of the Lambs. London: Heinemann, 1988. Hicks, Ron. The Vampire Killer: A Journey into the Mind of Tracey Wigginton. New South Wales: Bantam Books, 1992. Kilgour, Maggie. From Communion to Cannibalism: An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990. Lalor, Peter. Blood Stain: The True Story of Katherine Knight, the Mother and Abattoir Worker Who Became Australia’s Worst Female Killer. New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 2002. McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. London: Picador, 2007. Millbank, Jenni. ‘From Butch to Butcher’s Knife: Film, Crime and Lesbian Sexuality’. Sydney Law Review 18 (1996): 451–473.

166

On Tonight’s Menu

__________________________________________________________________ Morrissey, Belinda. When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Munt, Sally R., ed. Butch/Femme: Inside Lesbian Gender. London and Washington: Cassell, 1998. Pringle, Rosemary, and Susan Collings. ‘Women and Butchery: Some Cultural Taboos’. Australian Feminist Studies 8, No. 17 (1993): 29–45. Probyn, Elspeth. Carnal Appetites: FoodSexIdentities. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. New York: Ballantine, 1989. Sceats, Sarah. Food, Consumption and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Seltzer, Peter. True Crime: Observations on Violence and Modernity. New York and London: Routledge, 2007. Smith, Rosalind. ‘Dark Places: True Crime Writing in Australia’. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 8 (2008): 17–30. Walker, Barbara. The Skeptical Feminist: Discovering the Virgin, Mother, and Crone. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987.

Filmography Demme, Jonathan, dir. The Silence of the Lambs. Orion Pictures, USA, 1991. Grau, Jorge Michel, dir. We Are What We Are. Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, Mexico, 2010. Larraz, Jose, dir. Vampyres. Essay Films, United Kingdom, 1974. Marshall, Frank, dir. Alive. Touchstone Pictures, USA/Canada, 1993. Scott, Tony, dir. The Hunger. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, USA, 1983.

Jay Daniel Thompson

167

__________________________________________________________________ Jay Daniel Thompson is Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (JASAL). He works in research administration at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

Acknowledgements I thank Sophie Gebhardt, Claire Knowles and the delegates at the 4th Global Conference: Evil, Women and the Feminine for their incisive commentary on various drafts of this chapter.

Mothers Who Kill: The Rhetoric of the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1970s Japan Alessandro Castellini Abstract In 1970s Japan the number of cases of maternal filicide saw a dramatic increase to the point of reaching the dimension of a social phenomenon. Within the framework of the dominant idealisation of maternal identity, formulated in terms of continuous love, self-sacrifice, and domesticity, filicidal mothers came to be labelled as either ‘bad’ (cruel, monstrous pleasure-seekers) or ‘mad’ (mentally unstable, neurotic individuals). The same decade witnessed the emergence in Japan of the Women’s Liberation Movement (Women’s Lib) whose political agenda included dismantling the institutional understanding of motherhood (the ‘myth of maternal love’), asserting female sexuality as separate from human reproduction, and promoting women’s right to self-determination. The sudden proliferation of maternal childkilling caught the attention of many a feminist group: feminist pamphlets and public interventions dealing with filicide grew exponentially throughout the ‘70s and proposed an interpretation of the phenomenon in line with the movement’s agenda. Women’s activism reached an apex on May 8, 1972, when a rally was held ‘in solidarity with women who kill their children.’ The premise of the rally was that, given the intense social pressures placed on Japanese mothers, any woman was capable of killing her own child. Through an analysis of the rhetoric of the Women’s Lib, this chapter looks at the way the movement contested widespread characterizations of mothers who kill as either devilish or mentally ill, and drew on the numerical increase of maternal filicide as evidence of a symptomatic malfunctioning of the dominant gender ideology in Japanese modern society. It will focus in particular on the articulation of the relationship between feminine identity, motherhood and violence in order to explore the movement’s belief that ‘between the holy mother and the mother who kills her own child there is a paperthin difference.’ Key Words: Japan, feminism, women’s liberation movement, Lib, motherhood, filicide, maternal identity, discourse, gender. ***** 1. Introduction During the first half of the 1970s the Japanese major newspapers reported a dramatic increase in the number of cases of maternal filicide. 1 The precise number identified by researchers varies according to the range of sources upon which they rely: Tama Yasuko shows that in 1973 alone, the Asahi shinbun reported 211 cases; the Mainichi shinbun 258. 2 Research on Japanese filicide published as early

170

Mothers Who Kill

__________________________________________________________________ as 1980 provides a different statistic, holding that in the first half of the 1970s the number of cases fluctuated between 180 and 220 a year. 3 Much more dramatic is the data reported in a feminist pamphlet distributed in 1971, according to which there had been nearly 400 cases in 1970 alone. 4 Despite the inconsistencies among these data, the high number of maternal filicides appears indisputable and it was indeed sufficient to attract a great deal of attention from the mass media. Within the framework of the dominant idealization of maternal identity, formulated in terms of continuous love, self-sacrifice, and domesticity, 5 filicidal mothers came to be labelled as either ‘bad’ (cruel, monstrous pleasure-seekers) or ‘mad’ (mentally unstable, neurotic individuals). 6 Media coverage described maternal filicide as an alarming social phenomenon, accompanied by newspaper headlines that recurrently lamented ‘the loss of motherhood’ or ‘the collapse of the maternal instinct.’ The years that span from the end of the 1960s to the first half of the 1970s also witnessed the birth and flourishing of a Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan, commonly referred to by media and activists alike as ‘Women’s Lib’ or, simply, ‘Lib.’ Among its many political goals were the promotion of women’s right to selfdetermination and control over their own bodies, the assertion of female sexuality as separate from human reproduction, and the dismantling of the so-called ‘myth of maternal love.’ The soaring phenomenon of maternal filicide and the specific fashion in which it was portrayed in mainstream media discourse sparked a heated reaction from Women’s Lib and in the first half of the 1970s many pamphlets, booklets and public interventions attempted to provide an interpretation of the phenomenon in line with the movement’s agenda. May 8, 1971 represented a landmark moment of this mobilisation when, on Mother’s Day, a rally was organised ‘in solidarity with women who kill their children.’ 7 On the same occasion the members of the Lib Shinjuku Centre (one of the major organising centres of the women’s movement which also worked as a collective of women) produced and distributed a booklet with the transcripts of a trial against a mother who had strangled her three-year old daughter and the results of research on 40 cases of maternal filicide. 8 Furthermore, in 1975 a ‘Meeting to Think about Filicide’ (kogoroshi wo kangaeru kai) was also held. These events are symptomatic of the movement’s degree of engagement with the problematic issue of mothers who killed their own children. 2. Women’s Lib and the Critique of Modern Society When we attempt to investigate the meaning that the women’s movement attributed to maternal filicide, we ought to remember that Lib 9 was not an organic and homogenous group with a hierarchy among its members, a headquarters or a recognized centre and its periphery. In fact, the movement was constituted by a few thousand small groups that came into being quite independently and developed context-specific forms of activism and struggle at their own pace. It follows that,

Alessandro Castellini

171

__________________________________________________________________ when we refer to ‘the meaning’ attributed to maternal filicide, we are actually talking of a cluster of meanings which, nonetheless, appear to be compatible with each other to a greater or lesser degree. There were voices who opposed the mainstream interpretation of mothers who kill as either bad or mad by stressing that a consideration of the external social conditions was essential to an understanding of the psychological and material tribulations faced by those women. There were also those who emphasized the subversive significance of maternal filicide and, making use of a metaphorically charged language, claimed that maternal filicide was a dramatic representation of the energy that animated the women’s movement itself and its struggle against the system. But there were also those who acknowledged that it simply constituted a human tragedy, one that was unable to provide a viable path toward social change. Diverse though these stances appear, they never constituted mutually exclusive positions. Rather, they can be found tangled together in highly specific constellations according to the rhetorical and political effects the authors aimed to obtain. Nonetheless, we may argue that, independently from whether filicide was understood to be a meaningless tragedy or the expression of an uncontainable feminine grudge, overall it came to be interpreted as a symptom of the malfunction of the system and of the unbalances that were thought to afflict modern Japanese society. Lib’s interpretation of the social phenomenon of maternal filicide is closely intertwined with the movement’s wider critique of society and, more specifically, of the institution of motherhood. Modern society was criticised for being imbued with man-made values that, on the one hand, favoured what the movement called a ‘masculine logic of productivity’ while, on the other, attributed the highest importance to human reproduction and gave primacy to the institution of monogamy and the family. Society was accused of producing two figures: ‘woman as mother’ (woman as the incarnation of nurturing and maternal love) and ‘woman as toilet’ (woman as an object of sexual desire and as the vessel for the evacuation of male lust). 10 It was also argued that in man’s split consciousness woman existing in her wholeness as a combination of both maternal tenderness and sexual desire ended up divided into these two aspects perceived as incommensurable. Woman was also said to be socialized in a way that she felt compelled to find ‘proof’ of her own existence in the eyes and in the arms of a single man (the institution of monogamy and the family were placed as the cornerstones of the system that Lib aimed to dismantle or change). Women’s Lib accused the system of creating a woman who could only live a vicarious existence as man’s shadow, a woman who could only shine in the light reflected from a (single) man. A ‘self that is not a self’ (jibun denai jibun) was said to be forced on to her in the form of her identities as wife and mother. As a result, woman was diagnosed as suffering from a condition of ‘starvation of not living’ from which she attempted to escape by betting everything she had on her child. But Lib incessantly warned that the

172

Mothers Who Kill

__________________________________________________________________ modern nuclear family, far from being a place that enabled the creation of meaningful human relationships, was, rather, the locus for the reproduction of the labour force in name of the logic of productivity. The result of betting everything on her child, in the end, was nothing. 3. Contested Meanings The women’s movement claimed that woman’s existential frustration at being moulded and trapped in the selfless images of maternal abnegation and dutiful wifeliness spilled over on to the gestures of daily violence of a mother towards her child. This point is powerfully made in the following quote from a pamphlet written in the form of a fictional letter from a daughter to her mother: A woman with a strong self… […] what kind of living space will she be able to craft (for herself) within the established order? Your exasperation … In the words which you used to scold me, […] in the strength you impressed in your hand when you hit me there was the exasperation of a person who had found herself moulded into “a self which is not a self” […] exasperation for a self that is not living… 11 Expressions of verbal aggression and physical violence are read less as part of educational practices aimed at enforcing discipline and appropriate behaviour in a child, and more as symptomatic manifestations of a mother’s own existential discomfort. The passage continues by introducing the figure of the filicidal mother. But here the representation of such a woman as ‘evil’ or ‘mentally unstable’ so prevalent in the media discourse is replaced by a portrayal that places her in connection with the experience of all women: Recently, when I was talking about a woman who killed her own child, I was startled to hear a voice from a woman who did actually have a child saying “That was a misdirected blow!” But then I reconsider that in your violence, the feeling of starvation of your being compressed into “a self which is not as self” […] [your starvation] for not being able to live, caused the explosion of “something” that couldn’t be suppressed with the [simple] use of reason. And I find myself thinking that on the [ideal] prolongation of your line is the woman who killed her child and that, in my having a strong self and being similar to you, I myself have a place on that very line. 12 The passage seems to articulate a sort of continuum of women who suffer to different degrees from the social imposition of feminine and maternal ideals, and

Alessandro Castellini

173

__________________________________________________________________ who behave in a way that is more or less compliant with the cultural norms enforced upon them. At one extreme is the woman who has accepted ‘a self that is not a self,’ thereby developing a form of false consciousness and embracing those values which hold that ‘to be a wife and a mother is the proof of womanhood,’ ‘marriage is women’s happiness,’ ‘children are [a woman’s] life purpose.’ 13 At the other extreme the mother who, unable to cope with her own suffering and to channel the resentment that stems from a frustrating existence, lays her hands on her own child. When a woman kills her child it’s nothing but a misdirected blow. A violent emotion that hits you all of a sudden and for which you don’t understand the reason - it’s probably an impulse impossible to repress, induced by an existential sense of starvation for one’s own being. Such a woman converges and eventually flings this impulse onto the source of contradictions which is most within her reach. 14 Some handbills and pamphlets seem to portray filicidal mothers in terms that almost suggest a conscious and active (activist?) protest against the system. These mothers are referred to as ‘members of a support army’ for the movement 15 and they are depicted as a different incarnation of the energy that animates Lib, to the point that it was argued: ‘The Women’s Liberation Movement and the woman who kills her child are nothing but the two extremities of a branch which share one single root.’ 16 Furthermore, some passages seemed to interpret the killing of one’s own child as the expression of a woman’s faithfulness to her real self - that same self that society has attempted to deplete of content, and that the movement’s efforts aimed at restoring: those women who, while returning to their own self and while staining their hands with blood, have raised objection to “the myth of maternal love,” have perpetrated acts of filicide that, only this year, have reached almost 400 cases. 17 But although maternal filicide came to be portrayed, at times, as the expression of a woman’s desire to live despite (or against) the maternal role society prescribed for her, we ought to make clear that Lib never supported filicide as a positive or constructive action, nor did it suggested the identity of the mother who kills as a positive speaking position from which to promote social change. In fact, the movement always specified that filicide constituted a woman’s ‘desperate proof of existence.’ 18 Filicidal mothers were regularly described as not perpetrating the crime with a wilful intention to harm the child, but rather because they ‘had been cornered’ into

174

Mothers Who Kill

__________________________________________________________________ an unliveable situation. Consistently, the verb used to describe their act was emphatically changed from the active form (korosu, to kill) to the causativepassive form (korosaserareru, to be made to kill), so that the killing could be described as somehow perpetrated against the woman’s will. This rhetorical movement was made in order to stress the fact that such an urge to kill was fuelled by external social conditions rather than stemming from a woman’s evil nature or mental impairment. It aimed at displacing a great part of the responsibility for those immature deaths on to a society which was forcefully called to be accountable for the crimes these women perpetrated while facing unbearable living conditions. Instead of reading filicide as the only possible way out of those conditions and the only chance for these women to survive, the movement constantly stressed that there was no survival in that dramatic act. Filicide was described as tearing a woman’s very existence apart. 19 Although Lib recognised in a mother’s killing of her own child an inarticulate form of resistance to man-made ideals of female fulfilment and proper destiny, it was a resistance that had come into being in ‘twisted’ and ‘malformed’ shape. 20 The movement recognised that filicide, far from bringing relief and opening up a path to new hopes and to the possibility of realising woman’s human potential, represented a form of self-negation and selfannihilation: At the core of such an act, we see [a form of] self-denial in the face of a system that binds woman’s sexuality to reproduction and regulates it. But the act of killing the source of contradictions most at hand [i.e. one’s own child] while not being able to make it clear who the enemy is, even though it may express a spontaneous anti-establishment position, it is, beyond that, nothing but an act of self-denial which turns into a dead-end. 21 A filicidal mother’s ‘act of rebellion’ cannot, in the end, be named as such. She won’t be able to become a fully aware political subject in the struggle for women’s emancipation. Her crime will never acquire the status of a constructive political claim aiming at fostering social change; neither can it be part of a positive process of formation of a liberated self. Killing her own child, she loses social recognition and her state of cultural intelligibility qua mother (and, implicitly, qua woman). Transgressing the boundaries of her normative social role, she is no longer recognized. She is ‘no more.’ In fact, she has become a logical impossibility, a locus of disorder and incoherence that mainstream discourse and society’s mechanisms of social control must circumscribe at any cost. The charges of abnormality or cruel monstrosity that society attached (and still attaches) to mothers who kill their children may be considered symptomatic of an effort to

Alessandro Castellini

175

__________________________________________________________________ isolate and ‘particularise’ their experiences, making each of them (in their singularity) an exception to the norm. 4. Conclusions In overt contestation of the commonly held view, Women’s Lib diagnosed maternal filicide as a symptom of the malfunction of the system. The filicidal mother was said to ‘stamp in the blood of her own child’ 22 the failure of a social order that prescribed her to be a loving mother and a dutiful wife only and imposed upon her ‘a self that is not a self.’ Furthermore, maternal filicide was also understood to be a message, not only to society, but to every woman able to identify with the existential exasperation that had prompted that dramatic gesture. The silent question raised by women who killed their children was said to speak to all women: the truth that their act was said to bespeak was that, in the movement’s own words, ‘[b]etween the holy mother and the mother who kills her child there is a paper-thin difference.’ 23 This perspective was powerfully echoed by pamphlets’ titles such as ‘The mother who kills her child is you’ and ‘We might be next!’ 24 In conclusion, the women’s movement’s discursive construction of mothers who killed their own children was a complex rhetorical enterprise. Lib did not attempt to speak ‘on behalf of’ women who committed such a crime. In fact the voices of those real mothers are absent from the material I have discussed here. Indeed, in the movement’s pamphlets and leaflets there is a recurrent expression used to refer to these mothers’ voice that can be translated as ‘a voice that does not turn into a voice,’ ‘a voice that does not produce a sound.’ Lib’s rhetoric emerged, rather, as a reaction to the negative portrayals that dominated mainstream media discourse. It was an attempt to dismantle the myth of motherhood that plagued so many women’s lives. But it was also, I believe, the product of an effort to create an alternative discursive space that made legitimate a more human exploration of the maternal potential for violence. That space was meant to allow society to think of mothers as human beings rather than prefect vessels of inextinguishable maternal love.

Notes 1

The three major daily newspapers in Japan are the Yomiuri Shinbun, the Asahi Shinbun and the Mainichi Shinbun. 2 Tama Yasuko, Boseiai to iu Seido: Kogoroshi to Chūzetsu no Poritikusu, 3rd ed. (Tōkyō: Keisō shobō, 2008). 3 Sasaki Yasuyuki, ed., Nihon no Kogoroshi no Kenkyū (Tōkyō: Kōbundō shuppansha, 1980).

176

Mothers Who Kill

__________________________________________________________________ 4

Ondoro Ondoro Onna ga Kodomo wo Koroshiteku (May, 1971), reprinted in Tanaka Mitsu, Inochi no Onnatachi e. Torimidashi Ūman Ribu Ron (Tōkyō: Pandora, 2010), 314-319. 5 For an exploration of the idealisation of motherhood in contemporary Japan and of the ‘myth of maternal love’ in English, see: Ohinata Masami, ‘The Mystique of Motherhood: A Key to Understanding Social Change and Family Problems in Japan’, in Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future, eds. Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda (New York: The Feminist Press, 1995), 199-211. In Japanese, see: Ohinata Masami, Boseiai Shinwa no Wana (Tōkyō: Nihon Hyōronsha, 2000) and Boseiai Shinwa to no Tatakai (Tōkyō: Sōdo Bunka, 2002). 6 There is a considerable amount of feminist research from across the disciplines that explores the widespread tendency in Western societies to label filicidal mothers as either ‘bad’ or ‘mad.’ Speaking, more generally, of women who kill, Morrissey suggests that monsterification, mythification, victimisation or pathologisation are the common patterns by which women’s agency is denied, and the danger that female violence poses to society’s gender order neutralised. See Belinda Morrissey, When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity (London and New York: Routledge, 2003); Lizzie Seal, Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women Who Kill (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Ania Wilczynski, ‘Mad or Bad? Child Killers, Gender and the Courts’, British Journal of Criminology 37, No. 3 (Summer 1997): 419-436; Ania Wilczynski, Child Homicide (London: Greenwich Medical Media, 1997); Barbara Barnett, ‘Medea in the Media: Narrative and Myth in Newspaper Coverage of Women Who Kill Their Children’, Journalism 7, No. 4 (November, 2006): 411432. 7 In a description that a pamphlet provides of this event women and children are described as having crowded one of the major streets in Tōkyō with marguerites in their hands: a similar portrayal is a reminder that points at the important fact that such a march was not meant to signify a radical and drastic refusal of motherhood tout court. 8 Kogoroshi Shiryō Shū 1 (June, 1973). Reprinted in Ribu Shinjuku Sentā Shiryō Shūsei: Panfuretto Hen (Tōkyō: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2008), 190-222. 9 For an account in English of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan, see: Sandra Buckley ‘A Short History of the Feminist Movement in Japan’, in Women of Japan and Korea: Continuity and Change, eds. Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 150-186; Tanaka Kazuko ‘The New Feminist Movement in Japan, 1970-1990’, in Japanese Women, Fujimura-Fanselow and Kameda, 343-352; Muto Ichiyo ‘The Birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s’, in The Other Japan: Conflict,

Alessandro Castellini

177

__________________________________________________________________ Compromise, and Resistance Since 1945, ed. Joe Moore (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 147-171; Vera Mackie, Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Shigematsu Setsu, Scream from the Shadow: The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012, forthcoming). 10 Tanaka Mitsu, Benjo Kara no Kaihō (1970), reprinted in Tanaka Mitsu, Inochi no Onnatachi e, 333-347. 11 Haha e no Rabu Retā (May, 1971), reprinted in Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 1, eds. Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko and Miki Sōko (Tōkyō: Shōkadō, 1992), 241-246. 12 Ibid., 241. 13 Aete Teiki Suru = Chūzetsu wa Kitoku no Kenri Ka? (October, 1972), reprinted in Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, eds. Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko and Miki Sōko (Tōkyō: Shōkadō, 1994), 61-64. Partially translated in Masae Kato, The Politics of Eugenic Abortion in Modern Japan (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 263-267. 14 Shiryō: Onna no Kogoroshi wo Kangaeru Shūkai (May 1971), reprinted in Ribu Shinjuku Sentā Shiryō Shūsei: Bira Hen, ed. Ribu Shunjuku Sentā Shiryō Hozonkai (Tōkyō: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2008), 188. 15 10-21 Onna no Shūkai (April 1971), reprinted in Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 1, eds. Mizoguchi, Saeki and Miki, 250-251. 16 Mitsu, Inochi no Onnatachi e, 207. 17 Haha e no Rabu Retā, in Shiryō, Vol. 1, Mizoguchi, Saeki and Miki, 243. 18 Appīru (January, 1972), reprinted in Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, eds. Mizoguchi, Saeki and Miki, 185. The adjective ‘desperate’ that I use here to translate the Japanese girigiri has a stronger connotation than the original: girigiri conveys the idea of ‘extreme’ or of ‘being on the edge of something.’ Girigiri made could be rendered as ‘until something reaches the very limit,’ ‘until the very last minute’ or ‘up to the breaking point.’ I understand the expression ‘girigiri no sonzai shōmei’ to signify that the ‘proof of (one’s) existence’ (sonzai shōmei) that filicide is suggested here to be, is something that happens when the woman is on the brink of existential annihilation. In the ‘desperation’ of such an act there is less of a wilful attempt to solve the situation than the agony of a life on the verge of its collapse. 19 Ibid., 186. 20 ‘Ikigurushii Otoko no Atsumari’ Annai (1973), reprinted in Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, eds. Mizoguchi, Saeki and Miki, 381. 21 Ondoro Ondoro, in Mitsu, Inochi no Onnatachi e, 318. 22 Mitsu, Inochi no Onnatachi e, 28.

178

Mothers Who Kill

__________________________________________________________________ 23

Watashi no Shikyū Kinshu Shujutsu Taikengi (September, 1974), reprinted in Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, eds. Mizoguchi, Saeki and Miki, 313-316. 24 Kogoroshi no Onna wa Anata Da (April, 1973), reprinted in reprinted in Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, eds. Mizoguchi, Saeki and Miki, 68-69. Asu wa Wagami! “Kogoroshi Onna wa Seishin Shōgaisha” Naru Asahi Shinbun no Hōdō ni Kōgi Suru! (May, 1974), reprinted in reprinted in Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, eds. Mizoguchi, Saeki and Miki, 379.

Bibliography 10-21 Onna no Shūkai. Pamphlet, April 1971. In Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 1, edited by Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko, and Miki Sōko, 250–251. Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1994. Aete Teiki Suru = Chūzetsu wa Kitoku no Kenri Ka? Pamphlet, October 1972. In Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, edited by Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko, and Miki Sōko, 61–64. Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1994. Appīru. Pamphlet, January 1972. In Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, edited by Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko, and Miki Sōko, 185. Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1994. Asu wa Wagami! “Kogoroshi Onna wa Seishin Shōgaisha” Naru Asahi Shinbun no Hōdō ni Kōgi Suru! Pamphlet, May 1974. In Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, edited by Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko, and Miki Sōko, 379. Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1994. Barnett, Barbara. ‘Medea in the Media: Narrative and Myth in Newspaper Coverage of Women Who Kill Their Children’. Journalism 7, No. 4 (2006): 411– 432. Buckley, Sandra. ‘A Short History of the Feminist Movement in Japan’. In Women of Japan and Korea: Continuity and Change, edited by Joyce Gelb, and Marian Lief Palley, 150–186. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Haha e no Rabu Retā. Pamphlet, May 1971. In Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 1, edited by Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko, and Miki Sōko, 241–246. Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1992. Kato, Masae. The Politics of Eugenic Abortion in Modern Japan. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.

Alessandro Castellini

179

__________________________________________________________________ Kogoroshi no Onna wa Anata Da. Pamphlet, 1973. In Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, edited by Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko, and Miki Sōko, 68–69. Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1994. Kogoroshi Shiryō Shū 1. Pamphlet, June 1973. In Ribu Shinjuku Sentā Shiryō Shūsei: Panfuretto Hen, edited by Ribu Shinjuku Sentā Shiryō Hozonkai, 190–222. Tōkyō: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2008. Mackie, Vera. Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Mizoguchi, Akiyo, Saeki Yōko, and Miki Sōko, eds. Shiryō: Nihon Ūman RibuShi, 3 Vols. Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1992-95. Morrissey, Belinda. When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Muto, Ichiyo. ‘The Birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s’. In The Other Japan: Conflict, Compromise, and Resistance Since 1945, edited by Joe Moore, 147–171. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997. Ohinata, Masami. ‘The Mystique of Motherhood: A Key to Understanding Social Change and Family Problems in Japan’. In Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future, edited by Kumiko FujimuraFanselow, and Atsuko Kameda, 199–211. New York: The Feminist Press, 1995. —––. Boseiai Shinwa no Wana. Tokyo: Nihon Hyōronsha, 2000. —––. Boseiai Shinwa to no Tatakai. Tokyo: Sōdo Bunka, 2002. Ondoro Ondoro Onna ga Kodomo wo Koroshiteku. Pamphlet, May 1971. In Inochi no Onnatachi e. Torimidashi Ūman Ribu Ron, Tanaka Mitsu, 314–319. Tōkyō: Pandora, 2010. Ribu Shinjuku Sentā Shiryō Hozonkai, ed. Ribu Shinjuku Sentā Shiryō Shūsei: Panfuretto Hen. Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2008. —––. Ribu Shinjuku Sentā Shiryō Shūsei: Bira Hen. Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2008.

180

Mothers Who Kill

__________________________________________________________________ Sasaki, Yasuyuki, ed. Nihon no Kogoroshi no Kenkyū. Tokyo: Kobundō shuppansha, 1980. Seal, Lizzie. Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women Who Kill. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Shigematsu, Setsu, Scream From the Shadow. The Women’s Liberation Movement in Japan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012, forthcoming. Shiryō: Onna no Kogoroshi wo Kangaeru Shūkai. Pamphlet, 1971. In Ribu Shinjuku Sentā Shiryō Shūsei: Bira Hen, edited by Ribu Shunjuku Sentā Shiryō Hozonkai, 188. Tōkyō: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2008. Tama, Yasuko. Boseiai to iu seido. Kogoroshi to chūzetsu no poritikusu. 3rd ed. Tokyo: Keisō shōbo, 2008. Tanaka, Kazuko. ‘The New Feminist Movement in Japan, 1970-1990’. In Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future, edited by Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda, 343–352. New York: The Feminist Press, 1995. Tanaka Mitsu. Benjo Kara no Kaihō. Pamphlet, 1970. In Inochi no Onnatachi e. Torimidashi Ūman Ribu Ron, 333–347. Tōkyō: Pandora, 2010. —––. Inochi no Onnatachi e. Torimidashi Ūman Ribu Ron. Tōkyō: Pandora, 2010. Watashi no Shikyū Kinshu Shujutsu Taikengi. Pamphlet, September 1974. In Shiryō: Nihon Ūman Ribu Shi, Vol. 2, edited by Mizoguchi Akiyo, Saeki Yōko, and Miki Sōko, 313–316. Tokyo: Shōkadō, 1994. Wilczynski, Ania. ‘Mad or Bad? Child Killers, Gender and the Courts’. British Journal of Criminology 37, No. 3 (1997): 419–436. —––. Child Homicide. London: Greenwich Medical Media, 1997. Alessandro Castellini is research student at the London School of Economics and Political Science (London, UK). He is currently writing his PhD thesis on maternal ambivalence and the discursive constructions of maternal filicide in 1970s Japan.

Spurned Women Crying Rape in Philippine Jurisprudence Emmanuel Q. Fernando Abstract Evil manifests itself in many forms. One of its prevalent forms is that of revenge. In Philippine jurisprudence there have been a number of cases in which spurned women, after freely engaging in sexual intercourse with their boyfriends or suitors, then cry ‘rape’ after the boyfriend or suitor had married someone else. There is no better example of a woman’s revenge than this. Truly, ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ This chapter will attempt to answer the question: Is the nature of woman such that she cannot help but be jealous? In the process, the nature of jealousy and of femininity will be explored and analysed. Then Philippine femininity will also be researched upon. Finally, the Philippine cases as examples of jealousy and femininity, will be scrutinised. Hopefully, some general conclusions and insights regarding the nature of evil and femininity, or the relationship between jealousy and womanhood will be generated. Key Words: Revenge, jealousy, rape, femininity, spurned, marriage. ***** 1. Introduction Revenge and jealousy are said to be evils, and are said to be faults more particular to women than to men. This chapter will focus on these issues. First it will explore why jealousy and revenge are evils. Secondly, it will address whether women are more prone to them than men, that they are part of feminine nature. Thirdly, it will examine whether this holds true also of Filipino women. With these preliminaries out of the way, the central issue of this chapter will be directly tackled: Is it part of woman’s nature to be jealous, and then to exact revenge on her lover for his lack of fidelity or for his failure to marry her? This central issue will be addressed with respect to Philippine jurisprudence on rape, specifically in terms of each of nine cases involving a spurned women crying rape after her lover, having had sexual relations with her, either failed to marry her or married someone else. Hopefully, the insights generated from this limited study will aid in the understanding of women and her proneness to jealousy and romantic revenge. 2. Revenge and Jealousy Revenge has not been praised in literature. It is said to be the product of small minds. It has also been described as some sort of affliction of the spirit. Others have noted its harmful effects. Not all quotations on revenge, however, are negative; it has variously been described as natural, as a kind of duty, and as a form

182

Spurned Women Crying Rape in Philippine Jurisprudence

__________________________________________________________________ of justice. Although a form of justice, it is nonetheless an inferior one, whose dangers ought to be heeded. Moreover, it has been commented that the morally better alternative was for forgiveness to replace revenge. It is clear therefore why revenge is evil or wrong. First, it is something that a virtuous person will not do, being the reaction or response of a small or petty mind. Secondly, it is an affliction of the spirit as it is a poison that destroys it. Thirdly, there are the harmful consequential effects, not only on the avenger whose virtue, character or spirit is harmed. It also harms him physically as revenge takes on a spiral of events destructively damaging both to the avenger and the object of revenge. Clearly, the ideal response of someone wronged is forgiveness which has both beneficial effects to the forgiver and the forgiven, who may soon give up his ways which led to thoughts of revenge by the aggrieved. Although a form of justice, it must be made clearer why revenge is an inferior form of justice and why it cannot qualify as pure justice. In defining revenge, I adopt Stainton’s characterisation of revenge as involving four aspects, the avenger, the recipient of revenge, the harm which causes the avenger to seek revenge and the harm intended by the avenger on the recipient. 1 Stainton further notes that there revenge has six characteristics which distinguishes it from retribution: (i.) personal character; (ii.) possibility for it being derived from a mere hurt and not necessarily for a wrong; (iii.) yielding a feeling of enjoyment; (iv.) non-universalisability; (v.) non-proportionality; and (vi.) noncommunicativeness. It is now possible to show why revenge is an inferior form of justice. Revenge’s personal character may give rise to unfair punishment. Due to non-proportionality, the object of revenge may be punished far worse than he justly should be. Due to non-universalisability, it would communicate a message of bias or partiality. And finally because revenge might be resorted for a mere hurt, trivial reasons may occasion revenge, again sending a message of lack of fairness. Truly, when there are systems or institutions in place where instead of revenge, a fair and just process of seeking justice is available; it is preferable that the avenger resort to this fair process of impartial justice Next, what is wrong in jealousy? It has been depicted as a disease and as irrational. Before answering this question, it first must be defined. Roughly speaking, it is simply a reaction to the perceived threat of losing the affections of a loved one to a rival, imaginary or not. It now is possible to determine what is wrong about jealousy. It appears to me that jealousy is not necessarily irrational, that it depends on the nature of the response of the jealous person towards the perceived threat to their relationship. In other words, jealousy may be manifested in rational and irrational ways. It is natural and not necessarily wrong to want the exclusive romantic love of your beloved. Although it is possible to share love and that the sharing of love does

Emmanuel Q. Fernando

183

__________________________________________________________________ not necessarily result in the diminishing of love, as in a parent’s love for his children, it does not follow that to love another romantically may result in a lessening of the love towards the original beloved. Of course, this does not mean that the original beloved requires the loved one to devote all his attention toward her; the loved one must also be encouraged to have other interests and friends, but confine romance and sex to her. It is when one’s jealousy is manifested in forms of revenge, for example, where irrationality steps in that jealousy may be wrong. 3. Are Philippine Women More Prone to Revenge and Jealousy Literature, it seems, provides a positive answer to the question with respect to all women. It remains to determine whether this is philosophically sound and whether it applies to Philippine women. Feminism, particularly Cultural or Maternal Feminism, points out that because women undergo experiences of belonging and connectedness, such as in pregnancy and child-rearing, they adhere to values like caring and concern and do not place as much importance to male values such as independence, justice and autonomy. 2 In fact, it has built a theory of psychological and moral development to rival Kohlberg’s. Carol Gilligan maintained that girls develop in a different way from boys which emphasises caring relationships as central to ethical development. This emphasis on caring and concern as the primary moral virtues actually predisposes women to be more prone to revenge and jealousy. For they value personal relationships more and feel more incensed with infidelity. This proneness to jealousy leads to acts of revenge. Moreover, studies have shown that females are more inclined to emotional jealousy and to greater violence resulting from emotional jealousy, whereas men are more jealous about sexual infidelity. Philippine femininity developed in terms of centuries of Islamic culture, Chinese mores, 425 years of deep-rooted Spanish Catholic traditions and American influence. The traditional concept of femininity during Spanish times was Maria Clara, Rizal’s heroine in his novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. She represented a chaste woman, convent bred, coy, demure and pristinely proper. However, with the advent of the American occupation, and the transplantation of American values such as found in Hollywood, women gradually became more sexually liberated. In fact, there is a surfeit of premarital sex and it is no longer generally expected that a woman be a virgin on her wedding day. Be it the traditional Filipino women or her Westernised equivalent, caring and concern remain the primary values of a Filipino woman. Fidelity too is strongly valued. Consequently, it could be said that she is just as much prone to jealousy and revenge as her Western equivalent. This will be borne out by the following cases.

184

Spurned Women Crying Rape in Philippine Jurisprudence

__________________________________________________________________ 4. Philippine Jurisprudence There were nine cases in which the complainant was a spurned love interest who filed the case for various motives, including revenge, for defendant’s failure to marry her. They are: People v. Sia, 3 People v. Gabilan, 4 People v. de la Cruz, 5 People v. Velasquez, 6 People v. Bernat, 7 People vs. Bihasa, 8 People vs. Antonio, 9 People vs. Tagle, 10 People vs. Villarin, 11 These are the cases of revenge based on jealousy. In Sia, the complainant did not immediately report the alleged rape even if she became pregnant as a result until five months later, when she learned he married someone else. About a month later, she began to feel the signs of pregnancy. This notwithstanding, she did not report the matter to the authorities, expecting, as she did, that appellant would keep his promise. However, early in August, 1967, he married Leonor Antonio, in view of which, on August 21, complainant initiated the present action by filing the corresponding complaint. 12 In the Bihasa case, it was not only complainant, but also her father, who purposely sought out defendant to ask him to marry her. According to the Supreme Court: We find especially strange the behaviour of the victim, ..., who left for Cabanatuan City on June 19, 1981 to look for the appellant for the latter to answer for the wrong done to her. She had gone to Baler only to enroll in school but proceeded to Cabanatuan City alone in order to persuade her rapist to marry her. We find equally incredulous the reaction of ... the father of the victim, who instead of feeling outraged and betrayed, merely offered an amicable solution to the problem by asking appellant, thru Ernesto Bihasa and Mayor Cesario Pimentel to marry his daughter. Appellant opted to marry Teodora Teh Sun instead of the victim, thus leading to the filing of criminal charges. 13 The following are the cases on revenge based on failure to marry. The Gabilan case involved an instance of the filing of a case probably due to a perceived breach of promise to marry. The complainant took revenge when she surmised that he was not serious about their plans to elope.

Emmanuel Q. Fernando

185

__________________________________________________________________ As earlier indicated, the explanation for this serious accusation of rape could have been the result of her mistaken belief, arising from his delay in returning to the Fernandez residence, that he would not go through with the marriage. It is understandable, therefore, in view of her emotional state of a woman scorned after she had allowed him to have his way and by way of covering the shame and embarrassment she must have felt because of her engaging in pre-marital sex that she would put a different aspect on the matter by informing her parents that force was employed and for them to convince her to file the corresponding charges with the authorities. 14 The Court, in the de la Cruz case, went further than simply acquit the defendant; it proceeded to condemn the complainant for being a scheming seductress. Finally, that the complainant was merely using the criminal complaint as leverage to compel the accused to marry her is not a remote possibility. For while the accused had verbally declared his willingness to marry the complainant, his actuations revealed his hesitation to do so. On the very day that the accused and the complainant had their first sexual intercourse ..., the accused had already attempted to leave their place. And as the letter of the complainant reveals, the accused was again planning to leave at the time said letter was written ... and the complainant was thus pleading for him not to leave. The foregoing facts and circumstances do not only show the innocence of the accused; they show without doubt in Our mind that he was the victim of a scheming seductress who tried to destroy him rather than let him go. Indeed, life imitates fiction for “Play Misty for Me” with Clint Eastwood recently shown on Channel 7 has a scenario similar to the case at bar. 15 In the Velasquez case, there was probably sexual consent on complainant’s part without need of a promise from defendant to marry her. However, apparently she hoped that he do so particularly since she sired his child. Thus, part of the reason for the filing of the case against him was his refusal to marry her. The filing of the case against the (defendant) was apparently motivated by the refusal of the (defendant) to marry the complainant. Prosecution witness Tomas Villaroman, Municipal

186

Spurned Women Crying Rape in Philippine Jurisprudence

__________________________________________________________________ Mayor of Licab, declared that when the complainant went to his office accompanied by his brother-in-law to complain against the (defendant), he invited the latter to his office; that he tried to settle the matter by asking the (defendant) to marry the complainant, both the (defendant) and the complainant being single; that the (defendant) requested for a chance to talk with his family about such proposal; and that when the (defendant) ignored the suggestion of the mayor, the latter told the complainant to see the Chief of Police about her complaint. 16 In the Antonio case, defendant had a reason for not yet marrying the complainant, a 35-year-old widow of four children while he was a single man in his 20s. (Defendant) would not, however, marry the complainant until such time that he ha(d) regular employment. The defense claim(ed) that his unwillingness to marry her after she had given him everything prompted the institution of this criminal case. 17 The next vase involved the motive of protection of honor. In the Bernat case, defendant had promised to marry complainant and he used this as an excuse to have sex with her the first time. At about 6:00 in the evening, they came upon an uninhabited hut located in an isolated place. After having travelled a distance of about six kilometers, they decided to take a rest at the step-ladder thereof. There they embraced and kissed. He asked her to perform the sexual act. At first, she was reluctant to give in to his desire; but appellant persisted in his pleas and assured her again and again of his desire to marry her. Finally, “she was swept in a wave of passion.” Thus, they consummated their first sexual intercourse. 18 Unfortunately, when he asked her hand from her father, he refused. Since it was not his fault that they did not get married, her motivation for filing the case was probably no longer based on revenge because the marriage did not materialise, but because she had to protect her honour. She became a disgraced woman. Then there was revenge based on the failure of the accused to disclose his married status. In the Tagle case, there was no doubt that defendant deceived the complainant, a 19-year-old barrio lass. ‘Tagle clearly proclaimed himself a liar when he

Emmanuel Q. Fernando

187

__________________________________________________________________ confessed his deception in concealing from Arcelie the fact that he had a wife and children.’ 19 All the more reason for her to exact revenge upon him. It look(ed) to (the Supreme Court) that (the complainant) ha(d) acted out of spite over her discovery that she had been deceived by her married lover and she (wa)s now using this case to wreak her vengeance. (The Court’s) finding (wa)s that (the complainant) was not a violated virgin but a betrayed and resentful sweetheart bent on the revenge of a woman scorned. 20 Finally, there was the case of revenge, not of the spurned woman, but of her mother. The Villarin case was unusual because were in not for the mother of the complainant the rape case would not have been filed and defendant and complainant might have been living together in marital bliss. The Court ruled: On the other hand, the records are clear that (the mother) was adamant to the idea that her daughter, ... who was expecting a baby fathered by the accused would be married to the latter. The mother wanted to save face in the community where everybody knows everybody else. She protested the proposal first made by the father of the accused, then the accused himself ... 21 5. Conclusion Of the nine cases of rape, seven were filed out of revenge of the spurned woman, either out of jealousy in two cases he having married another or, in four cases, due to his failure to marry her or, in one instance, due to his failure to disclose his married state. Even if the defendant was eventually acquitted, these seven women got their revenge, as the defendants were incarcerated for several years before the Supreme Court overturned the decision to acquit them. In two cases, the motivation for the filing of the case was not due to revenge, as one case was due to the desire of the spurned woman to protect her honour and in the other, due to the motive of revenge of the mother of the spurned woman, rather than the spurned woman herself. There certainly are more cases of spurned women filing rape cases. Although I have analysed about 3,000 cases of rape and have only discovered nine, there exist about a few hundred more that I have not analysed. There would also have been rape cases filed by spurned women which resulted in acquittal at the trial stage, and so these would have not have been reported. And other spurned women might have sought revenge by means other than filing a rape case. The sample size in this analysis may simply be too small to make any definitive conclusions regarding whether Filipino women are more prone to jealousy and

188

Spurned Women Crying Rape in Philippine Jurisprudence

__________________________________________________________________ revenge. But I maintain that it provides some evidence to show that to be likely and that there would be a fair chance that a Filipina spurned woman, who has had sexual relations with a man who then does not marry her, would seek revenge for the perceived deception or wrong done her.

Notes 1

‘In sum, the basic form of seeking revenge is: Agent A seeks revenge on recipient B because of harm Ha by intending to cause harm Hb’. Robert J. Stainton, ‘Revenge’, CRITICA, Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofia 38, No 112 (April 2006), 4. 2 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 3 People v. Sia, G.R. No. L-28884, 25 July 1969. 4 People v. Gabilan, G.R. No. L-45245, 02 July 1982. 5 People v. de la Cruz, G.R. No. L-39919, 19 October 1982. 6 People v. Velasquez, G.R. No. L-35241, 28 February 1983. 7 People v. Bernat, G.R. No.L-45946, 05 July 1983. 8 People v. Bihasa, G.R. No. L-63452, 25 June 1984. 9 People v. Antonio, G.R. No. L-53974, 05 May 1988. 10 People v. Tagle, G.R. No. 73966, 28 August 1989. 11 People v. Villarin, G.R. No. 96950, 29 January 1993. 12 Sia. 13 Bihasa. 14 Gabilan. 15 De la Cruz. 16 Velasquez. 17 Antonio. 18 Bernat. 19 Tagle. 20 Ibid. 21 Villarin.

Bibliography Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Stainton, Robert J. ‘Revenge’. CRITICA, Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofia 38, No. 112 (April 2006), 3–20.

Emmanuel Q. Fernando

189

__________________________________________________________________ Emmanuel G. Fernando graduated in law studies at the Oxford University in 1986. He is a professor now at the University of Philippines Diliman and works in the private law office in Philippines.