scholarly journals From Whore to Heroine: Deconstructing the Myth of the Fallen Woman and Redefining Female Sexuality in Contemporary Popular Fiction

MANUSYA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-37
Author(s):  
Surapeepan Chatraporn
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Sexual Freedom ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
Sexually Aggressive ◽  
The Awakening ◽  
Cult Of True Womanhood ◽  
Female Bodies

The fallen woman, long existent in patriarchal discourse and intensified by Victorian sexual ethics, succumbs to seduction or sensual desires, suffers social condemnation and ostracism, and eventually dies, either repentantly or shamelessly. The questions of female sexuality and feminine virtues are dealt with in The Great Gatsby, Daisy Miller and The Awakening. Daisy Buchanan, Jordan, and Myrtle, all three sexually transgressive women, are punished, with Myrtle, the most sexually aggressive, being subjected to an outrageous death penalty. Daisy Miller, upon engaging in acts of self-presentation and female appropriation of male space, undergoes social disapprobation and dies an untimely death. Edna, though boldly adopting a single sexual standard for both men and women and awakening to life’s independence and sexual freedom, eventually realizes there is no space for her and submerges herself in the ocean. In contrast, the recent contemporary narrative pattern deconstructs the myth of the fallen woman and allows the fallen woman to live and prosper. The fallen woman, traditionally a secondary character who is considered a threat to the virtuous heroine, has emerged as a major or central character with a revolutionary power that both conquers and heals. Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café acknowledge female mobility and sexual freedom and appropriate a space hitherto denied to fallen women. Eva Bates and Gertrudis, satiating female sexual desires and representing eroticized female bodies, overturn the traditional narrative of falling and dying by becoming competent and worthy members of society. Tita and Vianne are central heroines who challenge the cult of true womanhood, embody the sexualized New Woman and display strength and personal power, making them pillars of their communities.

scholarly journals Deceived by orchids: sex, science, fiction and Darwin

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIM ENDERSBY
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
New Science ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
The Many

AbstractBetween 1916 and 1927, botanists in several countries independently resolved three problems that had mystified earlier naturalists – including Charles Darwin: how did the many species of orchid that did not produce nectar persuade insects to pollinate them? Why did some orchid flowers seem to mimic insects? And why should a native British orchid suffer ‘attacks’ from a bee? Half a century after Darwin's death, these three mysteries were shown to be aspects of a phenomenon now known as pseudocopulation, whereby male insects are deceived into attempting to mate with the orchid's flowers, which mimic female insects; the males then carry the flower's pollen with them when they move on to try the next deceptive orchid. Early twentieth-century botanists were able to see what their predecessors had not because orchids (along with other plants) had undergone an imaginative re-creation: Darwin's science was appropriated by popular interpreters of science, including the novelist Grant Allen; then H.G. Wells imagined orchids as killers (inspiring a number of imitators), to produce a genre of orchid stories that reflected significant cultural shifts, not least in the presentation of female sexuality. It was only after these changes that scientists were able to see plants as equipped with agency, actively able to pursue their own, cunning reproductive strategies – and to outwit animals in the process. This paper traces the movement of a set of ideas that were created in a context that was recognizably scientific; they then became popular non-fiction, then popular fiction, and then inspired a new science, which in turn inspired a new generation of fiction writers. Long after clear barriers between elite and popular science had supposedly been established in the early twentieth century, they remained porous because a variety of imaginative writers kept destabilizing them. The fluidity of the boundaries between makers, interpreters and publics of scientific knowledge was a highly productive one; it helped biology become a vital part of public culture in the twentieth century and beyond.

The Eloquent Blood

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manon Hedenborg White
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Sexual Freedom ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Positive Reinterpretation ◽  
Feminine Sexuality ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
Written Sources

The study analyzes constructions of femininity and feminine sexuality in interpretations of the goddess Babalon, a central deity in the British occultist Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947) religion Thelema. Babalon is based on Crowley’s positive reinterpretation of the biblical Whore of Babylon and symbolizes liberated female sexuality and the spiritual modality of passionate union with existence. Analyzing historical and contemporary written sources, qualitative interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork in the Anglo-American esoteric milieu, the study traces interpretations of Babalon from the works of Crowley and some of his key disciples—including the rocket scientist John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons and the enigmatic British occultist Kenneth Grant—from the fin-de-siècle to the present. From the 1990s onward, female and LGBTQ esotericists have challenged historical interpretations of Babalon, drawing on feminist and queer thought and conceptualizing femininity in new ways. Femininity has held a problematic position in feminist theory, often being associated with lack, artifice, and restriction. However, the present study—which assumes that femininities are neither exclusively heterosexual nor limited to women—indicates how interpretations of Babalon have both built on and challenged dominant gender logics. As the first academic monograph to analyze Crowley’s and his followers’ ideas from the perspective of gender, this book contributes to the underexplored study of gender in Western esotericism. By analyzing the development of a misogynistic biblical symbol into an image of feminine sexual freedom, the study also sheds light on interactions between Western esotericism and broader cultural and sociopolitical trends.

Mad Women: Dance, Female Sexuality, and Surveillance in the Work of Virginia Woolf and Emily Holmes Coleman

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Engdahl Coates
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Maternal Body ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Gradual Shift ◽  
Revolutionary Praxis ◽  
Female Embodiment ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Waves

This chapter argues that Emily Holmes Coleman’s novel, The Shutter of Snow, and Virginia Woolf’s novel, The Waves, both politicize and mobilize the dancing female body so as to perform a critique of the nationalist rhetoric circulating between WWI and WWII, which was exploiting the maternal body and subjecting the female body in general to increased surveillance. Reading dance as signifying not only in reference to aesthetic freedom but also as instantiating a revolutionary praxis, the chapter contends that the dancing female bodies within the pages of Woolf and Coleman’s novels perform a feminist politics of refusal and a complex aesthetic unraveling of dualisms that have traditionally and historically contained and restrained women. Implicitly gendering Foucault’s assessment of the gradual shift from a society premised on spectacle to an increasingly modernized society dependent on surveillance, The Shutter of Snow and The Waves discursively choreograph lines of flight and moments of suspension which, though they may not offer easy escapes (liberation or freedom from), visually and rhetorically imagine an unforeseeable future (the freedom to), where previously sanctioned modes of female embodiment might be replaced with on going gestures of becoming.

Frozen in the Glassy, Bluestreaked Air

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alix Beeston
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Modern City ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Female Bodies

This chapter interprets the serialized narration and characterization of John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer (1925) in line with the figuring of female bodies through the photographic apparatus of advertisement and celebrity that was ancillary to popular Broadway entertainments in the early twentieth century. Unpacking the image of Ellen Thatcher, Dos Passos’s central character, as a photograph at the end of the multilinear novel, it accounts for Dos Passos’s critique of the patriarchal, white-centric specular economy of the modern city. The photographic freezing of the wealthy, white Ellen registers her imprisonment to the male gaze and her resistance to those who are ethnically and socially other to her. Yet by the additive construction of its female characters, Manhattan Transfer undercuts Ellen’s sense of her essentialized difference from the novel’s other women.

scholarly journals Transgressive Female Sexuality and Desire in Contemporary Colombian Cinema: Hermida’s La luciérnaga and Rodríguez’s Señoritas

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-122
Author(s):  
Karol Valderrama-Burgos
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Women Filmmakers ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
Visual Strategies ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Specific Sequences

The contemporary Colombian films made by women La luciérnaga (Hermida, 2016) and Señoritas (Rodríguez, 2013) subvert patriarchal gender norms of classic Colombian film narratology through their representation of lesbianism, female sexual self-exploration, and orgasms. The cinematic techniques of these filmmakers construct a specific view of female pleasure, emphasizing the plurality and visibility in cinema of female sexuality and desire. An interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of specific sequences suggests that the aesthetics and visual strategies of these women filmmakers evince pioneering female characters and subjectivities that challenge the traditional gaze on female bodies. Their films offer liberating representations that deconstruct the dominant basis of heteronormativity that has historically characterized Colombian narrative cinema. La luciérnaga (Hermida, 2016) y Señoritas (Rodríguez, 2013), dos películas colombianas contemporáneas realizadas por mujeres, subvierten las normas patriarcales de la narratología clásica del cine colombiano a través de su representación del lesbianismo, la autoexploración sexual femenina y los orgasmos. Las técnicas cinematográficas empleadas construyen una visión específica del placer femenino, haciendo hincapié en la pluralidad y visibilidad de la sexualidad y el deseo femenino. Un análisis de secuencias específicas con enfoque interdisciplinario sugiere que la estética y las estrategias visuales de estas cineastas evidencian personajes femeninos pioneros y subjetividades que desafían la mirada tradicional sobre los cuerpos femeninos. Las películas muestran representaciones liberadoras que deconstruyen la base heteronormativa dominante que históricamente ha caracterizado al cine narrativo colombiano.

scholarly journals CAN EROTIC CAPITAL SUBVERT MASCULINE ECONOMY? AESTHETIC WORK AND THE POST-FEMINIST APPROACH TO ECONOMICS

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Tsalits Fahman Mughni
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Women's Liberation ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Socio Economic Status ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
Women’S Liberation ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Erotic Capital

Capitalism is transforming the women’s liberation movement. Theories such as erotic capital are a clear example of how such a transformation takes place by undermining feminism and converting women’s liberation into a product through the aestheticization and fetishization of women. How does this transformation affect the way in which we think about women, female bodies and female sexuality? The erotic capital theory offers a new paradigm to feed the ever-growing need of capitalism for consumption by transforming human bodies and relationships into exchangeable commodities in order to improve women’s socio-economic status instead of questioning the reality behind gendered inequalities.

"Depravity Dressed up in a Fascinating Garb": Sentimental Motifs and the Seduced Hero(ine) in The Scarlet Letter

1999 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-335
Author(s):  
Erika M. Kreger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
Moral Framework

When we place Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) in the context of the literary debates of the 1840s and 1850s, it becomes apparent that the novel inhabits a conventional moral position that affiliates it with, rather than distinguishes it from, the best-selling domestic novels of the era. The Scarlet Letter shares a common moral framework and pattern of imagery with many works by nineteenth-century female novelists. Like these writers, Hawthorne uses his characters to emphasize the destructive consequences of allowing personal desire to overrule community law. The portrayals of Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne critique the traits of the eighteenth-century seduced heroine and privilege the qualities of the nineteenth-century protagonist of domestic fiction. Hawthorne's hapless minister is depicted in the physically drooping, ethically weak image of the eighteenth-century heroine; while his "fallen woman" possesses the strength, selflessness, and positive influence attributed to the nineteenth-century protagonist. This powerful iconography allows Hawthorne to reinforce the social values most often advocated in the public discourse about fiction, while still avoiding the explicit didactic remarks that critics condemned. The Scarlet Letter's "moral" closely links it to the conservative worldview of antebellum middle-class culture and popular fiction.

Diva Seductions

Diva Nation ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Miller ◽  
Rebecca Copeland
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Special Problem ◽  
Culturally Informed ◽  
Patriarchal Culture ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Female Icon ◽  
The Way

The introduction describes how we define and think about the diva in this volume. We discuss the way divas systematically draw our attention to the performative nature of identity, to gender, and to battles over control of female bodies and female sexuality. We want our case studies to move beyond archival portraits to consider historically and culturally informed diva imagery and diva lore. From ancient goddesses and queens to modern singers and writers, we note that each chapter critically reconsiders the female icon, tracing how she has been offered up for emulation, debate, or censure. We ask how the diva disrupts or bolsters ideas about nationhood, morality, and aesthetics. She is ripe for expansion, fantasy, eroticization, and playful reinvention, yet her unavoidability also makes her a special problem for patriarchal culture.

scholarly journals The Personality of N.S. Gumilev as a Standard of the Main Character’s Behavior in V.V. Nabokov’s Novel The Eye

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-211
Author(s):  
Anton V. Filatov
Keyword(s):  
Double Bass ◽  
The Self ◽  
Central Character ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
The Real ◽  
Presentation Strategy ◽  
Creative Person

The article considers the intertextual level of V.V. Nabokov’s novel The Eye. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of reminiscences and citations from N.S. Gumilev’s literary works, which were known and appreciated by V.V. Nabokov. It is proved that the mythologized image of the poet and warrior, as well as Gumilev’s characters, are the basis of the self-presentation strategy of Smurov, the central character of the novel. Being a creative person, he invents a fictional biography for himself in order to impress the society of Russian emigrants, especially the girl Vanya, with whom he is in love. However, numerous reminiscences to the Acmeist poet’s texts demonstrate an increasing discrepancy between the courageous and selfless characters of Gumilev and Smurov, who wants to look like a hero to the others, and not to be one in reality. The irony of Nabokov is that the real Smurov turns out to be a double of the comic character of A.P. Chekhov’s story Romance with Double Bass, also mentioned in the story, which is decrypted due to reminiscences on Chekhov’s works.

scholarly journals Sex for Sale: Prostitution and Visual Culture 1850-1910

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaclyn Reid
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Institutional Discourse ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Fashion Magazines ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
Visual Pleasure ◽  
Commercial Imagery

"Sex for Sale: Prostitution and Visual Culture 1850-1910" is a Master's thesis that takes a historical approach to the visual in order to better understand the construction of the prostitute in Victorian culture. Recent scholars have noted ways in which the prostitute was routinely depicted as a threat and victim in nineteenth-century institutional discourse. This thesis complicates these readings by examining the construction of the fallen woman in commercial imagery. Far from depicting the streetwalker as a source of pity and disease, commercial culture redefined the image of the prostitute as a source of ambiguous visual pleasure. This allowed the signifiers of prostitution to extend through pornographic representation, entertainment advertisements, actress pin-ups and fashion magazines. Making illicit female sexuality a readily consumable pleasure, however, ultimately fostered greater efforts on the part of authorities to push prostitutes back into invisibility.

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