Idols of perversity: fantasies of feminine evil in fin-de-siècle culture

Uittreksel

"In the years around 1900, an unprecedented attack on women erupted in virtually every aspect of culture: literary, artistic, scientific, and philosophic. Many of the anti-feminine platitudes that today still constrain women's potential were first formulated during this period, as intellectuals of every stripe throughout Europe and America banded together to picture women as static beings whose sole function was sexual and reproductive. This text explores the nature and development of turn-of-the-century misogyny in the works of hundreds of writers, artists, and scientists, including such figures as Zola, Strindberg, Wedekind, Henry James, Rossetti, Renoir, Maurois, Klimt, Darwin, and Spencer, not to mention a host of now-forgotten others."-- Provided by publisher.

Inhoud

Raptures of submission : the shopkeeper's soul keeper and the cult of the household nun -- The cult of invalidism; Ophelia and folly; Dead ladies and the fetish of sleep -- The collapsing woman : solitary vice and restful detumescence -- The weightless woman; The nymph with the broken back; The mythology of therapeutic rape -- Women of moonlight and wax; The mirror of Venus and the lesbian glass -- Evolution and the brain : extinguished eyes and the call of the child; Homosexuality and the dream of male transcendence -- Clinging vines and the dangers of degeneration -- Poison flowers; Maenads of the decadence; The torrid wail of the sirens -- Gynanders and genetics; Connoisseurs of bestiality and serpentine delights; Leda, Circe, and the cold caresses of the Sphinx -- Metamorphoses of the vampire; Dracula and his daughters -- Gold and the virgin whores of Babylon; Judith and Salome : the priestesses of man's severed head.