Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Enikő Bollobás: (De-) Gendering and (De-) Sexualizing Famale Subjectivities: Woman-Hating and Its Revisions in Literature and Painting

Heterosexual hegemony denies the woman a self outside the heterosexual context ("Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass"), yet the self constructed within this context is clearly hideous and ugly. Her place inside the male script is confining and repelling, yet she has no place outside. Eliot is not without predecessors in the literature of misogyny. The American tradition goes back as far as John Winthrop's portraying Anne Hutchinson's "woman-child" as the devil itself, with "a face, but no head," "over the eyes four horns, hard and sharp," "the nose hooked upward; over the breast and back full of sharp pricks and scales" (Winthrop 262). Or, one could cite Washington Irving and Mark Twain, whose agents of civilization, Dame Van Winkle and the Widow Douglas, so desperately try to curb Rip's and Huck's freesoaring manly spirit that their only ways out become a 20-year sleep or a "lighting out for the territories." English literature is also rich in misogynistic texts, with Jonathan Swift giving one of the more elaborate images of a constructed womanhood. In Swift's case this constructedness carries blatantly negative connotations, and is synonymous with being fake, masked, dishonest, and without substance. The poem I h'ave in mind is "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed" (1734), which describes the undressing ceremony of Corinna, "a batter'd, strolling Toast": Then, seated on a three-legg'd Chair, Takes off her artificial Hair: Now, picking out a Crystal Eye, She wipes it clean, and lays it by. Her Eye-Brows from a Mouse's Hyde, Stuck on with Art on either Side, Pulls off with Care, and first displays 'em, Then in a Play-Book smoothly lays 'em. Now dextrously her Plumpers draws, That serve to fill her hollow Jaws. Untwists a Wire: and from her Gums A Set of Teeth completely comes. Pulls out the Rags contriv'd to prop Her flabby Dugs and down they drop. Proceeding on, the lovely Goddess Unlaces next her Steel-Rib'd Bodice; Which by the Operator's Skill. Press down the Lumps, the Hollows fill, 109