Peiss Chapters 6,7, and Essay by Gordon

I found this weeks reading to be greatly varied, and it was especially difficult for me to come down to one place where I knew where to begin… Forgive me in advance for a somewhat tangential post. Firstly I would like to comment on Chapter 7; I found the writings in it to be surprisingly contemporary in the writing style, and a lot of the ideas put forth by the respective authors were also quite progressive, ie. freedom from governance in terms of sexuality and sexual/ general independence for women.

On the other hand though, in Anthony Comstock’s condemnation of obscene literature and Dr. Ely Van De Warker’s discussion of abortifacient advertisements, the self-righteous moralism is overwhelming. The different facets of life in the Victorian era are elucidated to some degree throughout this chapter and the previous one, and it was clear to see the progression of Foucault’s arguments and analysis while reading through them, especially in terms of the Scientia Sexualis, which enjoyed (and enjoys) great prevalence. This was especially prominent in the piece on Alice Mitchell homicide of her friend and love (Chapter 6). There were also pronounced nods towards the idea between the hysterical woman and good mother (essay by Karen Lystra, Chapter 6).

I think perhaps the most complex arguments took place in the 6th chapter, surrounding the ideas of homosocial relationships as a result of emotional segregation. I found the first piece in the chapter to be somewhat confounding; I wondered if Julia Freeman was being sarcastic or not in some places. Her obvious intellectual faculty seemed to belittle the friendships and lives of women in general, regardless of her purported thesis. That aside though, the following documents, especially the poem by Walt Whitman and the letter to one Smith college student to another were evidences of love and real bonds between people of the same sex that were accepted to some degree, and certainly at least by the individuals who experienced them.

A lot of the writing in this section is not as overtly sexualized as the language used to analyze it, yet the sensuality and emotional bonds are clear. Friendships between men, as mentioned in one place or another in the reading, are historically acceptable, and female friendship is neglected in discussion. In Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s essay The Female World of Love and Ritual, she discusses the entire ethos of womanhood in the Victorian era. The overall acceptance of women commiserating, forming emotional and intellectual bonds, and engaging with one another in the physical sense, and likely in turn the same acceptance for men who were comrades, indicates a society in which the oppressive system had appropriate outlets. It seems paradoxical to some degree that such a repressive sexual system would encourage this homosocial lifestyle, but in practice the evidence makes a logical conclusion.

Smith-Rosenberg makes the distinction between the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the mid-twentieth century in terms of the flexibility afforded to women in their social arena; I think this is important in looking at the “swinging pendulum” (which I actually think the other pieces of writing, especially within the seventh chapter, indicate), and looking at the evolution of the society’s views on what relationships are encouraged in the family and the larger society. In the mid-twentieth century, a lot of elements in life were similar to those in the previous two centuries, yet the community of women seems to have diminished, and to look at the society we have today, the sense of a gendered community is somewhat foreign altogether. The emotional segregation between men and women, whether it was diminished or simply evolved, is also that seems to have fallen by the wayside in conversation.

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