SOAN 2290 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Class Discrimination, Syphilis, Utopia
9 Feb 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Restoration to Romanticism Oct. 07.14
Mary’s Observations
- Significant that she arrived cloaked in an incognito car because she gets to
observe other people without having people observe them back.
- Representation of women in that space (page 101-102); they have white skin-
talking about how beautiful they were. Aligning whiteness with beauty. Taking
down the wall between self and other. Producing a sense of familiarity.
- Whiteness is reference to the graces- the goddesses. Illusion to classical Greek
culture. It is a particular kind of ideal that she is talking about.
- Tension for the scene to improve western art. She is saying men are limited by
their masculine position. Idealization about female community, but then one of
the things that sets these elite Turkish women in a desirable position is their
presence of slaves. Their power is characterized by the presence of the beautiful
slaves.
- In Britain a coffeehouse is representing about male spirit debating politics.
Women are excluded from taking part in the discussions.
- Constructing the space as a feminine utopia- a female version of the coffeehouses.
Feminism and/or Antalism
- In presenting these women as occupying this free space. The representation that
she offers serves another purpose- a feminist project.
- Sometimes in the west people put the veiled women as a metaphor for the way
that British women are constrained in the British society, or a call to a global
feminism- as part of the western liberal humanist movement.
- This is one kind of feminism that says women in the west is set up to a counter
distinction to the perceived eastern women, or it is a metaphor for the way that
women in Britain are being constrained.
- This metaphor casts tyranny as being masculine and foreign.
- This call for liberation fueling call for colonial penetration. Sometimes it is about
western economic/cultural expansion. Saying life in the west is better and saying
everyone should live the way people in the west live.
- We don’t get the Greek display of athleticism.
- Western vision of oriental husband being strict.
- use of machine, industrialization mentality. It is a kind of unnatural thing in this
context- the technology of the west.
- “they attributed this to my husband” she is not of her own free will to take her
clothes off- her husband owns her. Her husband is controlling her sexuality.
- She is bound by decorum- she is still the object of scrutiny because of what she
has written about- because she is a woman.
- Liberty is so central to the concept of British identity.
- Her letter marked her presence in this world.
- Letter 30: about Muslim women’s freedom. 114-116- talks about the veil as
liberating. They are evading social modes of control.
- The rover- tension between mask
Document Summary
Significant that she arrived cloaked in an incognito car because she gets to observe other people without having people observe them back. Representation of women in that space (page 101-102); they have white skin- talking about how beautiful they were. Taking down the wall between self and other. Whiteness is reference to the graces- the goddesses. It is a particular kind of ideal that she is talking about. Tension for the scene to improve western art. She is saying men are limited by their masculine position. Idealization about female community, but then one of the things that sets these elite turkish women in a desirable position is their presence of slaves. Their power is characterized by the presence of the beautiful slaves. In britain a coffeehouse is representing about male spirit debating politics. Women are excluded from taking part in the discussions. Constructing the space as a feminine utopia- a female version of the coffeehouses.
