Æþelðryþe

Maybe the island is herself.

And the eels, everywhere.

Is it even an island?  Water?

Or maybe it’s not-water.

She longs for, she desires, the shore

Following the shipwreck.

God keeps wrecking the ship, though.

And he keeps asking her to get back on the ship.

And he keeps wrecking the ship.

Does he wreck the island, too?

The sea is too deep.

The stream is safe.

The stream is contained.

The stream has borders, and I can see the other side.

These marshes don’t even merit the name of a stream.

Can I trust you in the sea?

I don’t see the other side.

I’m scared of drowning, but here we are.

Jouissance.  Or maybe only partly.

Do you love me?

If you love me, you will keep my commandments:

Get back on the boat.

But the sea is so deep--

Isn’t it?  Don’t you know?

If we are the island, can we ever drown?

I’m scared

Seductive Seashores: St. Aethelthryth and the Transformative Promise of Seduction

Below is my abstract for the 2014 BABEL Working Group Conference "On the Beach: Precariousness, Risk, Forms of Life, Affinity, and Play at the Edge of the World":

            In the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis, Queen Aethelthryth’s flight away from her super-sexualized husband leads her to a marshy desert that is also a sea, a mountain/island/womb, an English countryside that looks uncannily like Egypt, Canaan, Nazareth, filtered through Bede’s eighth-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.  Standing within the protection of a cleft rock, Aethelthryth and her two maiden-companions watch as a raging sea encircles them, separating them from the maniacal lust of King Ecgfrith while transforming the desert of their hearts and wombs into flowing, life-giving fountains.  Aethelthryth flees from her husband, and she flees from earthly desire, not because she has no desire, but because she has too much.  Like the sea “pouring forth its water in many directions,” Aethelthryth’s desire is uncontainable, exceeding its boundaries, even (especially) as she “transferred all her yearnings towards the powers above.”

In her introduction to Towards a Theology of Eros, Virginia Burrus develops a metaphor introduced by Anders Nygren, by which agape compares to a well-defined stream and eros compares to an always-overflowing river.  According to Burrus (in opposition to Nygren), eros and agape must sometimes mix; the rivulet of agape must, at times, overflow its banks “in order to reopen its congested channels” (xv).  Aethelthryth’s agape surges like the sea of eros, rapt from its beach/marriage-bed, and transferred violently to a marshy wasteland, a damp landscape (not even meriting the name of a stream) in desperate need of the transformative waters of (erotic) passion.

Standing in the protective womb of the rock, surrounded by the waves of her own passion, Aethelthryth becomes a virgin mother who is also a figure of Moses, God’s vessel and mouthpiece, ready to lead God’s chosen people to the salvational shores of Paradise, an island very much like the cleft rock within the constant embrace of the passionate sea—the island of Ely

*       *       *

Are erotic discourses dangerous to the study of theology?  Should we assume that the author of the Liber Eliensis simply wrote in a traditional register, or hope that Aethelthryth’s desire for God is nothing more than a (safely) sublimated desire?  Or could we learn something by allowing ourselves to read the text for what it actually says, even allowing ourselves to be swept away by its overwhelming currents, where our embodied reading practices might feel the erotic presence of a just-beyond-reach, promissorily satiating Godhead?  Maybe we first need to surrender ourselves to a sea of passion in order to explore more fully the nuances of the Passion of Christ.

Sublime Bodies

Below is my abstract for the paper I am presenting in Reykjavik, Iceland, next July at the New Chaucer Society.  I have attached a digital composition inspired by my paper that I created for the freshman Seminar in Composition class that I am currently teaching.

Erotic Edification: Henry Suso’s Life of the Servant

and its Seduction of the Spirit

In The Life of the Servant, Henry Suso excites the senses of his readers through the enticing descriptions of his relationship with an androgynous Christ, and through these descriptions he proposes a model for the edification of the senses based on material seduction.  In resistance to the traditional dualistic approach to medieval asceticism, I follow scholars such as Caroline Walker Bynum and Robert Mills, whose scholarship argues for the mutual implications between the material world and late medieval spirituality.  Henry Suso reveals such a reliance on the material world, and although he proposes that the senses need to be disciplined, this edification does not serve to stifle the senses, but instead to heighten them.  The disciplining of the body allows one to make use of one’s corporeal experiences, one’s pleasure and pain, as a means of discovering God in creation.  The Servant’s beloved, depicted as both Christ and Lady Wisdom, seduces the Servant through his/her sensual appeal.  From his initial encounter with Lady Wisdom through Scripture to his sexualized union with Christ through corporeal self-punishment, the Servant’s senses play a significant role in his discovery of the blessed life.  Suso describes Eternal Wisdom as both a seductive courtly lady and a handsome young knight, he presents both Christ and the Servant as exposed bodies dripping with blood, and he excites the senses with vivid descriptions of celestial music, flowering gardens, and intoxicating smells.  Through such sensual imagery, Suso inspires a bodily response in the readers, a response deeply imbedded in erotic desire.  Suso’s text becomes just as seductive to the readers as are the eroticized bodies he describes, and its seductive capabilities parallel the Servant’s own conversion, occurring in response to a carnal reaction to erotic texts—the scriptural Books of Wisdom.  Suso reveals the usefulness of the material world and its sensual appeal in his choice of material descriptions that appeal to the senses (capable of enticing both the Servant and the readers); however, he further edifies his readers’ senses by discouraging the (logical?) development of this eroticized faith to the antinomian ends of the Free Spirit heresy.  By explicitly arguing that his text does not serve this end goal, he leaves the readers, whose senses are highly excited, looking for another outlet for this desire, and Suso presents God as this outlet.  Like the eroticized faith proposed and developed by such scholars as Ruth Mazo Karras, Karmen MacKendrick, and Nancy Partner, I argue that the edification that Suso offers to his readers relies on an intentional reorientation of material eroticism towards an intimate relationship with God.  

The Saracens of the West: Honoré Bovet and the Decadence of a Schismatic Church

Honoré Bovet’s L’Apparicion Maistre Jehan de Meun presents a heated discussion between a prior, the ghost of Jean de Meun, and a group of outcasts, including a physician, a Jew, a Saracen, and a Jacobin.  The text, written in 1398, occurs during the Western Schism and looks toward the prophecies related to the apocalyptic year 1400, when the “Church is blackened” and the “Saracens are victorious.”  Through this conversation, each of the characters explains why he was excluded from the Christian community, and each defends himself by accusing the Christians of comparable crimes; each, that is, except the Saracen.  Unlike the other three marginalized figures, the Saracen never admits to any crime and never apologizes.  Instead, he articulates a lengthy description of the monstrous Christians with whom he has come into contact.

Following the organizational patterns of the preceding engagements with the physician and with the Jew, the Saracen’s reprimand against the social decadence of the fourteenth century must act as a parallel to the reasons why the Christians cast them out of France. Because these moral flaws relate to common social practices, like feasting and dressing fashionably, rather than explicit religious discrepancies, the Saracen, I believe, passes a fascinating judgment that both implicitly and damningly reveals to the Christians the implications of these apparently shallow judgments.  For centuries, Christians linked the luxury of the East with Ezekiel 16, where God reprimands Jerusalem for sharing in the decadence of Sodom. 

According to the Jacobin who provides a gloss on the Saracen’s diatribe, Islam is not ontologically distinct from Christianity but arose as a result of the Great (East-West) Schism; Saracens, then, join the ranks of earlier schismatic races, including that of the Sodomites.  Although some Christians might be quacks like the physician, or usurers like the Jew, most are not; however, any Christian that enjoys dining or wears the latest fashion clearly reveals his relationship to the Saracens (and, thus, the Sodomites). The Saracen indirectly reveals how the late fourteenth century social practices of feasting and high fashion, Saracen-like practices, result from the contemporary Western Schism, and the people of the divided church are, in fact, Saracens themselves.  The victory of the Saracens, then, does not result from an external enemy, but develops from the interior degradation of the Western Church.

our lady of the whores

I have a confession to make, and I hope it does not make you immediately stop reading this blog--I love Lady Gaga. I like the way that she is always a performer wherever she goes, whether it is through her eccentric fashion, extremist views, or song. I do not intend for this blog to convince any anti-Gagas to suddenly transform into little monsters, but I would like to discuss one of Lady Gaga's newest personas (or "personae" to use the Latin correctly): Mary Magdalene.

On April 15, I opened my Gmail to discover an email from ladygaga.com titled, in all caps, “JUDAS OUT NOW.” I thought, “Wow, Gaga sure does know how to stir up drama” by releasing a single called Judas nine days before Easter. Somehow I forgot to join the millions of little monsters anxiously counting down the seconds to the release of the single. “Maybe I’m losing my interest in Gaga,” I considered. I opened YouTube to listen to the song, and I realized that “Judas” was very catchy. I listened to it a few more times, when I actually started to listen to the lyrics. These lyrics repeatedly say, “I’m in love with Judas,” which, on first impression, seems like an outright mockery of anything Christian—until I remembered that Christ loved Judas, even through his crucifixion. I’m not comparing Lady Gaga to Christ, but, in my opinion, the song is about loving someone (maybe foolishly) even with the foreknowledge that the person you love is likely going to stab you in the back (or plant the kiss on your cheek that seals your crucifixion). This song which at first appeared to be the antithesis of anything religious surprisingly revealed a note of spirituality that Gaga’s previous songs lacked.

When the “Judas” music video was revealed, so was Mary Magdalene. In a modern day Jerusalem, Mary Magdalene rides on the back of Jesus’s motorcycle, dances in the middle of the street with the disciples, and even bathes between Jesus and Judas (possibly alluding to Mary’s washing of Christ’s feet and being reprimanded by Judas in John 12?).

Six weeks later, Lady Gaga released the entire Born This Way album, featuring many songs concerning struggles related to social acceptance and forgiveness, whether spiritual or otherwise. On the album, these themes are tied very tightly with references to Christ and the Christian tradition, influenced by Gaga’s Catholic school days and her current spirituality. Again, Mary Magdalene shows up.

Although the title of the song “Bloody Mary” suggests a reference to the crazy Catholic daughter of Henry VIII and the popular ghost story of the twentieth century, the Mary to whom Gaga alludes is actually Mary Magdalene. In a recent interview with Popjustice, Lady Gaga describes why she continually models herself after this woman:

[W]hen I was young and I went to Catholic school - an all girls school - we were told to pray to God and pray to Jesus, but I always prayed to women. I guess I always worshipped a more feminine force in my life and I didn’t view God as having a particular gender. I always either prayed to Mother Mary or Mary Magdalene, or to my father’s sister Joanne who had died when he was a kid because I viewed her as an angel in the sky in the house of the Kingdom working alongside God. You know, watching over me. It must be so big up there. A lot of people. So I always prayed to women and that’s the thing that I look to now to make me strong in this very unique situation that is being a pop singer. I always pray to Mary and to Joanne. It’s very sad that in those [Biblical] times women were stoned for adultery or for doing inappropriate things. Women were always the target, so I guess I looked to my past and my faith to find bravery in myself. So on this record I thought a lot about my faith and tried to channel a lot of that into myself, and so make myself brave.

So the lyrics are Mary sort of talking... If you listen to the lyrics and the way the cadence goes, the way I’m actually singing, I start quite sweetly then I go into these quite demonic tones, then I come back to sweetness, and then the chorus is me ultimately, publicly singing, ‘I won’t cry for you, I won’t crucify the things you do, I won’t cry for you when you’re gone I’ll still be Bloody Mary’. I’ll still bleed, is what I’m trying to say. I guess I’m fascinated by her - like I said, I worshipped women in my religion as a young girl - and in my belief Mary was in it all along. I think she knew what was going to happen. But I also believe that she loved him, and I believe there was a moment when she cried. So she says ‘I won’t cry for you’ but in the rest of the song, in the way that it feels, it’s sad and quite... Dirgic? Is that the right word? Like a death dirge... There’s that kind of quality to it. It’s about me having to be a superstar. (http://www.popjustice.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5456&Itemid=266#ixzz1RGwExnqd)

So who is this Biblical woman for whom a modern pop star would find such an affinity? Strictly speaking, the Bible only refers to a woman named Mary Magdalene (meaning “from Magdala”) in reference to three episodes. She was a woman out of whom Jesus drove seven demons (Luke 8:1-3); she was present at the crucifixion of Christ (Mark 15:40-41; Matt. 27:55-56; John 19:25; hinted at in Luke 23:49); and she was one of the women who went to Christ’s tomb to put spices on his corpse and to whom the resurrected Jesus reveals himself (Mark 16:1-11; Matthew 28; Luke 24; John 20:14-18). Through the repetition of these episodes in the four Gospels, she is mentioned a total of eight times, and is suggested at one other time. But the picture that these three episodes paint is lacking compared to the woman that tradition (and the Middle Ages) has brought to us. The “complete” woman of Mary Magdalene is much more fascinating—she is (possibly) a combination of four or more separate women.

First, there’s Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus—she sat at Christ’s feet and listened to him speak, leaving her sister to do all of the work in preparation for Christ’s visit. Upset that her sister does not help her, Martha complains to Christ, who responds that Mary has done what is right (Luke 10:38-42). In another account, while Jesus is at the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, Mary pours expensive perfume on Christ’s feet and dries them with her hair while Martha prepares the meal (John 12:1-3). This Mary often symbolizes a life of divine contemplation.

Next, there’s the harlot—the “sinner” with the alabaster jar who anointed Christ’s feet. After learning that he was at Simon the Pharisee’s house, this anonymous woman came and began bathing Christ’s feet with ointment and her own tears, and dried his feet with her hair. Simon the Pharisee was shocked and disgusted that Christ would allow a “sinner” to touch him, and to this, Jesus responds, “I say to thee: Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much. But to whom less is forgiven, he loveth less.” (Luke 7:36-50; Mark 14:3-9; Matthew 26:6-13). (According to Ruth Mazo Karras, in her article “Holy Harlots”, this nameless sin was automatically linked to sexuality in the eyes of medieval people: “Sexuality, for the Middle Ages, constituted a woman’s life; if she sinned it would be by abusing her most salient quality. The prostitute could stand for Everywoman. Sexuality defined the woman and it defined her sin.”). This nameless woman and the Magdalene are then compared to the woman in John 8 whom the Pharisees and scribes bring before Jesus to be stoned as a woman who committed adultery. In reference to her, Christ says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7).

Finally, there’s the bride. Now this one might seem bizarre and a bit much to wrap our modern heads around, but medieval minds worked in much different ways than our own. Mary Magdalene is often linked with the Bride in the Song of Songs, with Christ as her lover/Bridegroom. Now don’t go jumping to any Dan Brown conclusions—the people of the Middle Ages who made this connection did not believe that Christ was literally married to Mary Magdalene (in fact, many of the same theologians claimed that the Bride could also be Christ’s mother). Instead, medieval theologians saw many similarities between the language employed in the Song of Songs and the occurrences of the so-called Mary Magdalene’s life. Mary Magdalene, as a sinful woman whom Christ forgave, and to whom the resurrected Christ appeared, becomes a symbol for the Church, Christ’s true bride (Ephesians 5:21-33). Again, this sounds like a stretch, because it is a stretch, but it was completely acceptable in the Middle Ages to make these connections as long as one had some sense of validation. In the fourth chapter of the Song of Songs, the Bride is described as a “garden enclosed” (4:12) and is compared to “Spikenard” (4:13, 14): the ointment that Mary of Bethany used to anoint Christ’s feet was made of spikenard (John 12:3), and Mary Magdalene searched for Christ in a garden (John 20). In the third chapter, the Bride describes her desperation as she seeks her lost lover; after finding him, she desires to touch him (3:1-4). This passage parallels Mary Magdalene’s desperation at the site of the tomb following Christ’s resurrection, and her response when she discovers him alive (John 20).

These multiple women in both the Old and New Testament of the Bible were very likely separate women; however, in the sixth century Pope Gregory the Great united them all under the name Mary Magdalene, creating one of the most intriguing personalities of the Bible. To combine all of the stories, Mary Magdalene was a demon-possessed harlot whom Christ saved from being stoned. While Christ was visiting a Pharisee, this forgiven harlot came to the house and gave her most costly ointment to Christ, anointing his feet with the ointment along with her tears, and drying his feet with her hair. Later, Christ visits her and her siblings, and while her sister Martha prepares for their meal together, the enraptured Mary cannot leave Christ’s presence. She, along with Christ’s mother and his beloved disciple (John), watches as he is crucified, and three days later visits his tomb to place spices on his body. When she arrives to the tomb, Mary Magdalene cannot find Jesus, and begins to cry, but Christ reveals himself to her, his spiritual bride, and instructs her to go and tell his disciples. She thus presents the perfect story of redemption, transforming from a harlot to the beloved of Christ, often referred to as the “apostle to the apostles.”

By the later Middle Ages, Mary Magdalene had become one of the most popular saints, second only to the Virgin Mary. These Biblical stories, along with other quite fantastic stories developed through later literature (depicting her as the jilted fiancée of John, or a later mystic who fasted for an extensive time, among other things) presented a woman who allowed a space in Christianity for mystical contemplation, women’s preaching rights, and, most complexly, sex.

Although this sexual space within Christianity is not a positive space (instead, it is something we are expected to turn from), it is still a significant characteristic of one of the most important of Christ’s followers, according to Christian tradition. Ruth Mazo Karras describes this negative emphasis on (female) sexuality:

The legends of the prostitute saints provided a place in Christianity for the erotic, but not a positive one. Christianity attempted to eliminate sexual pleasure from daily life and all sexuality from religion. Mary Magdalen fulfilled some of the functions that in other religions were embodied by a goddess of love or the wife of a male divinity. But the church only accepted her sanctity after the denial of the erotic side of her being.

But I feel that although this tradition describes the sexual space as bad, and although society has always divided women into two separate extremes (the Virgin and the Whore), the humanity presented in the figure of Mary Magdalene is both beautiful and accessible to average (non-perfect) people. I believe that the best description of Mary Magdalene’s appeal, both in the Middle Ages and in modern times, is said by Marina Warner in Alone of All Her Sex:

And in her myth, Mary Magdalene sins because she is not chaste, and not for any other reason that might be considered more grave…. This facet of human personality could not be represented by the Virgin Mary, however beautifully and youthfully and enticingly she is portrayed. Her unspotted goodness prevents the sinner from identifying with her, and keeps her in the position of the Platonic ideal; but Mary Magdalene holds up a comforting mirror to those who sin again and again, and promises joy to human frailty. Although the Virgin is both the bride of Christ and of mankind, Mary Magdalene when she mourns and lays out Christ’s body usurps that role, leaving the Virgin of Sorrows a more restricted maternal character.

Through the Mary Magdalene persona, Lady Gaga reminds her listeners of a harlot who had experienced the acceptance of a deity, of a woman whom the rest of society had dismissed as being “demon-possessed”. Her song “Bloody Mary” presents one who prepares herself for her own persecution that will most likely follow the crucifixion of Christ. Will the followers of Christ forgive her and accept her humanity the way that Christ did, or will they resume where they left off, one stone at a time?

Sources:

Ruth Mazo Karras. "Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend." Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jul., 1990), pp. 3-32.

Marina Warner. Alone of All Her Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1983.

Popjustice interview with Lady Gaga: http://www.popjustice.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5456&Itemid=266#ixzz1RGwExnqd

"Bloody Mary" lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/l/lady_gaga/bloody_mary.html

"Judas" Music Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wagn8Wrmzuc

are you good or are you gay?

The English language has a flexibility that is unheard of in many other languages, mostly because of its generation as the bastard step-child of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon language (Old English) and Norman French. Shakespeare took advantage of this flexibility as he created many new words for the young language that we refer to as modern English.

One word which has developed a lot of negative meanings from this flexibility is the word "gay." This word, which originally was positive, meant "having or showing a merry, lively mood" and which was later adopted to mean "homosexual," suddenly developed into an umbrella-like term that covers anything negative.

The word "gay" can be heard frequently in almost every Middle and High School as a term of derogation in reference to all things that are sub-par. Students (and, sadly, adults) use phrases like "That test was so gay," "Those rules are gay," "My pencil's being gay," so frequently that they do not recognize how ridiculous it sounds. These people who are throwing this adjective around generally are not intending to comment on the sexuality of inanimate objects; instead, they are following a tradition that links less-acceptable minority groups with wickedness or deficiency. The ease through which we are able to label something as "gay" without referencing its sexuality reveals how greatly our society links "normal" with "good" and "other" with "flawed."

This very same phenomenon occurred roughly one thousand years ago, leading to the development of one of the most common words in the English language--"bad."

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "bad" is defined as both "Not good" and "Of poor quality or little worth." Notably, if you look up the etymology of this common word, the OED (that's the Oxford English Dictionary, not the Old English Dictionary, for all of you like me who might actually confuse the two) says, "Perhaps related to Old English bæddel hermaphrodite, effeminate, or homosexual man."

Basically, "bad" is the Anglo-Saxon "gay."

Dr. Allen Frantzen at Loyola University in Chicago discusses the label in Anglo-Saxon society of bæddel (hermaphrodite) and bædling (a term that refers to men who prefer to have sexual intercourse with other men, Frantzen argues) in his Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from Beowulf to Angels in America. Dr. Frantzen notices a significant choice of words in an Anglo-Saxon translation of a seventh-century Latin penitential. The Latin states: "Qui sepe cum masculo aut cum pecude fornicat, X. annos ut peniteret judicavit" ("Whoever frequently fornicates with a man or with an animal must do penance for 10 years so that he should repent"). This is translated into Old English as follows: "Se ðe mid bædlinge hæme. oððe mid oðrum wæpnedmen. oððe mid nytene. fæste X. winter" (Whoever has intercourse with a bædling or with another man or with an animal should fast for ten winters).

The Anglo-Saxon translator felt the need to insert another category to the list of sexual sins--he added the category of bædling. By having both bædling and wæpnedmen listed in juxtaposition, the translator reveals that the Anglo-Saxons had an established label for categorizing a man that does not fall under the typical "manly man," as Dr. Frantzen loosely translates wæpnedmen. Frantzen uses this evidence to define the bædling as "a man who was known to have sex with other men." He continues as follows:

[The bædling] was not the only kind of man who had homosexual intercourse; other men, “wæpnedmen”…could also be sexual partners of “whomever” this canon was directed at. The “bædling” evidently could have sex with two kinds of men: ordinary men, who usually preferred women partners, or “bædlings,” men like himself who usually had sex with other men or with each other.

This specific linguistic categorization of bædling, compared to wæpnedmen, suggests that the Anglo-Saxons recognized differences between sexualities similar to the differences that we recognize today. If there were no strictly homosexual men in Anglo-Saxon England, the Anglo-Saxons would not have required such a specific category for them.

Although this evidence is remarkable for the history of sexualities, it is heartbreaking when we return to my earlier discussion. In Anglo-Saxon society, the wæpnedmen were considered normal. They were the "real men" who followed social norms. They were nothing like the soft-spoken, passive bædlings, , the "others,"the despised men who, like hermaphrodites, possessed the traits of both men and women.

"Normal" equals "good" and "other" equals "flawed."

Are you normal or are you other? Are you a good guy or are you a bædling? Are you good or are you bad? Are you good or are you gay?

If we do nothing to stop the negative use of the word "gay," we continue to allow the oppressive powers of our society to shape the majority's opinion over what is acceptable and what is not. The term "gay" will continue to be linked with the term "bad," forever shading today's wæpnedmen's view of sexual minorities.

Sources:
Allen J. Frantzen. Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from Beowulf to Angels in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

cosmopolitan: the medieval issue

Medievalism and High Fashion--two terms you would never expect to see together, right?

Renaissance Faires are fun, of course, and Medieval themed weddings are one of the most popular “themed weddings,” but usually the people participating in these events are not your typical Coco Chanels or Miuccia Pradas. Medieval clothing is cute, costume-y, and sometimes a little naughty—but fashionable?

This following tidbit may come as a surprise to you fashionistas (and fashionistos)—the fourteenth century is considered the birth of High Fashion. The following excerpts from the Morgan Library’s description of their current exhibition Illuminating Fashion (which I am dying to see) describes exactly what made the fashion of the fourteenth century so different from that of any previous centuries:

The “Fashion Revolution” began around 1330 with the invention of the set-in sleeve. Earlier garments were T-shaped, with sleeves of a piece with the body or sewn on a flat seam. The new technique (still in use today) cut sleeves with rounded tops and gathered them along basted threads into armholes in the bodice. This new tailoring, combined with the use of multiple buttons, made possible a snugly fitted bodice and tight sleeves. While providing more freedom of movement, the new garment for men—the cote hardy—also revealed the shapes of the wearer's torso and arms. The “Fashion Revolution” gave birth to men's modern dress, creating an outfit that was sharply differentiated from the dress of women. Women's fashions, however, were also affected. Tighter bodices and sleeves became popular, as did exposed necks and shoulders. The sides of the outer garment, the surcot, now sometimes featured seductively large, peek-a-boo openings.

The nearly 200 years just prior to the Renaissance in Northern Europe constituted a fertile era for fashion, a period in which clothing styles changed rapidly, often from one decade to the next. (http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=45)

The clothes fit better, revealing the bodies underneath. As the years went on, men’s skirts became shorter and shorter, revealing their legs and codpieces, and women’s necklines plunged lower (even though women always covered their shoulders and bosom with some sort of lace veil, of course).

Although I will return to the “Fashionable Middle Ages” theme a lot in the future, I am only giving an introduction right now in order to describe a specific work of craftsmanship that came out of this period of High Fashion.

This fourteenth-century ivory mirror case from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was a gift that a man would have given his future wife as a courtship present. On the back of the mirror case (the side shown in the picture), two sets of knights joust in front of a castle, filled with maidens. Two of the knights wear flowers on their shields, while the others have birds on their helmets—both standards are symbols of love and fertility. Through this scene, the man who gave such a present to his future bride would be suggesting not only that he would be courageous and strong in honor of his lady, but also that he compared his future wife to the beautiful young maidens (with ivory-white skin) on the ramparts of the castle.

Most importantly, the man suggests to the woman that she will possess a sense of power and autonomy in their relationship. In this image the relationship between the women and men, subject and objectified, appears flipped on its head. Typically in the art of patriarchal societies, men are the ones who gaze at women, the objects of their desire. This image, however, shows the men at the full mercy of the women’s gazes. Although similar themes were carved on the backs of numerous mirror cases, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' example stands out by suggesting a deeper penetration of the woman’s gaze into the man—the knight on the lower left has his helmet knocked off. Michael Camille describes the usual comparison between depictions of medieval males and females as objects of desire, in his Medieval Art of Love:

But by contrast to that of the female, which is always presented as naked…, as open to the gaze, the male body is all surface, a carapace or hard shell surrounded by and protected by armor and heraldry that announces its strength and impenetrability (Camille).

This mirror case, therefore, suggests a sense of agency for the recipient. Are we then to believe that with the fashion revolution came an act of women’s liberation? Well, maybe if the image on this mirror case actually reflected reality. We must first remember when looking at this image that it is not a work of art meant to hang on the wall. The image on the back was simply decoration for the more practical object on the front—a mirror. This might not seem too terribly important at first; however, when we stop to discover the relationship between the image on the back and the use of a mirror, we discover an entire tradition of men manipulating women, very similar to traditions today.

By presenting the woman with images of idealized ladies on the back of a mirror, the man would be telling his future wife that she now has the means of keeping herself as beautiful as the women on the mirror case. And if she stays beautiful like the women in the image, she will have agency in the relationship. Disgusting, right?

Well, sadly this same phenomenon happens today.

Millions of women subscribe to fashion magazines like Cosmopolitan each month, looking for advice in fashion, cosmetics, and luxury living. These female subscribers see page after page of flawless women, in a world made for women, in which men are their subordinates—simply bodies used for pleasure. By reading these magazines women are expected to feel a sense of empowerment. They can find everything in the magazine’s pages, from the cosmetics and clothing to the jewelry that could make them as perfect as the women depicted in the magazine. The readers subconsciously begin to correlate beauty and wealth with autonomy and success. The effects, however, are somewhat detrimental.

I just recently read my friend Annie Brown’s honors thesis, which provided a lot of the inspiration for this post. Her thesis, titled The Best that You Can Be: Conflicting Messages of Liberation and Oppression in Indian Cosmopolitan Magazine, focuses on the effects Indian Cosmo has on the women of India—effects like eating disorders, environmental degradation, and economic stratification. I quote a couple of passages from her thesis below:

Indian Cosmopolitan is an example of a discourse-disseminating product developed by professionals in both India and America to extract resources from middleclass women, and ensure the preservation of patriarchy and capitalism so that future generations will also have gender-specific problems that can be exploited for profit.

It is in their best interests to invoke discourses that will create a dependence on their magazine as well as the manufacturers that support the Hearst Corporation, and their personal lives, financially.

Cosmopolitan cannot offer any complete solutions to women’s oppression, hardships, and insecurities, because doing so would eliminate women’s need to turn to consumer magazines for advice and product recommendations.

Okay, so I am getting a little off-topic, but I highly encourage everyone who has free time and might be looking for something very informative to read to please read this thesis (I’ve provided a link at the bottom).

To get back to its relationship with the mirror case, I will provide one more quote from Annie’s thesis:

Cosmopolitan magazine, aimed at women 18-34, is the number one women’s magazine in the world, ranking first in circulation figures and advertisement pages. When asked why Cosmopolitan is so successful President of Hearst Magazine’s International, George Green, responded “it’s about empowerment.” Helen Gurley Brown believes that Cosmopolitan is facilitating a feminist consciousness among women worldwide. However, Cosmo’s feminism is tied to western-centric ideas of modernization and progress.

I now want to ask If you see this ivory mirror as something empowering, or something self-destructive. Every time the lady looks at her mirror, she is presented with the promise from her future husband that she will have power in the relationship if she remains beautiful, so she will most likely spend the rest of her life staring into the unforgiving lens of the mirror.

Sources:

• Annie Brown’s Thesis: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/2023
• The Morgan’s Illuminating Fashion exhibition: http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=45
• Michael Camille. The Medieval Art of Love. New York: Abrams, Inc., 1998.