Intellectual or Moral (But Never Both)
Intellectual or Moral (But Never Both)
William Alcott’s suggestions for young women to avoid nymphomania seemed to emphasize cooling – not surprising, since both sexual desire or passion and the Devil are associated with heat and fire. But he also quoted a writer who said “the reading of lascivious and impassioned works, viewing voluptuous painting, romantic conversations…frequent visits to balls or theaters…the too assiduous cultivation of the fine arts…” were apt to cause nymphomania (113). This suggested the idea that intellectual stimulation can have negative impacts on women, which reminded me of the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman. Gilman said she wrote the story after a psychologist prescribed less writing, painting and drawing and told her to “have but two hours’ intellectual life a day” as a remedy for her nervous breakdowns. Cott’s essay mentioned Judith Sargent Murray’s assertion that men were only considered to have a higher intellectual worth and therefore in power because of their increased education and experience. Pearl is often viewed as “demonic” by her mother and the other townspeople – is she perhaps simply too smart (her perceptiveness is mentioned multiple times) for her time considering the fact that she’s a girl? Combined with the moral inferiority surrounding the circumstances of her birth, she was exactly the opposite of what was expected of women by the 19th century – intellectual inferiority and moral superiority.
In Cott’s essay, I also saw a parallel between the 19th century women’s movement and the gay rights movement as discussed by Norton in his essay. Although leaders of this early women’s movement believed in the existence and legitimacy of women’s sexual desires, the moral superiority of women was one of the chief arguments used to advance their cause, just as the gay rights movement embraces the social constructionist argument when it is to their advantage.
Tags: morality, nymphomania, social constructivism
March 8th, 2010 at 9:32 am
Just a quick note on female bodily heat. According to historians of sexuality like Thomas Laqueur, the idea that female bodies carried heat emerged only in the 19th century–so Hawthorne is instrumental in this discursive shift. Prior to that, only male bodies were seen to have heat–and thus be vital for procreation, while female bodies were seen as inverted and inferior versions of male bodies and thought to lack this crucial feature. They were seen as cool receptors.
As Kaitlyn says, Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and her life are great examples of how medical experts diagnosed women’s intellectual stimulation as unhealthy to their well-being.