Tag Archives: women’s studies

Book review: The Goddess Within: A Guide to the Eternal Myths that Shape Women’s Lives

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The Goddess Within: A Guide to the Eternal Myths that Shape Women’s Lives by Jennifer Barker Woolger and Roger J. Woolger. Not recommended.

The Goddess Within is an attempt to explore and explain contemporary psychological issues and social trends through the ancient Greek goddesses Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hera, Persephone, and Demeter. The premise is based on the idea that the whole goddess of more matriarchal times has been divided and wounded, that patriarchal society suffers due to the resulting imbalance, and that we need to restore the balance and the multiple roles and energies of the goddess (and women).

One problem with The Goddess Within is reflected in the subtitle. There are no goddesses that shape women’s lives; rather, humans shaped the goddesses — including their splintering. At times, the authors seem to forget that distinction, especially when they make such statements as: “. . . the two goddesses who are, so to speak, expressing their larger grievance through the two women.” Perhaps it is simply the two women expressing their own grievances, which they have in common with other women.

The most basic problem, however, is the division of everything into the masculine and feminine. Is the earth really female? The moon? Why is the sun male? The authors talk at length about the moon, but never acknowledge that, without the “male” sun, there would be no nurturing of life on earth. Why is intellect a male attribute? Emotion female? Are these the kind of labels that reveal human psychology or repress a deeper exploration? Since each goddess is held to represent certain traits, are they necessary at all? Can six goddesses represent the “feminine” in its entirety? Essentially, psychology can be made to fit into any system desired.

What is more troubling, however, is the authors’ claim that “balance” is missing in our patriarchal world and their insistence that a matriarchy should replace it. The amount of gratuitous male bashing leaves no doubt about how they truly feel about “balance.” For example: “Growing Athena soon learns to curb her frustration at male stupidity and ineptitude, however” and “All men have in them heroes, lovers, fathers, leaders, listeners, protectors of one kind or another and it is never too asking too much to make the long overdue sacrifice of the whining little boy that prevents their emergence.” The message throughout is that everything wrong with the world, from war to pollution, is due to masculine thinking.

The authors also bring a great deal of personal bias to their discussion. They believe that Demeter (motherhood) is undervalued and suggest that mothers be allowed to return to their jobs after being granted five-year leaves — a greater privilege than National Guardsmen have. They don’t point out that someone must fill Demeter’s shoes involuntarily — perhaps even a type who doesn’t want to work extra hours and who would like to experience life, too. (I’ve done my share of working late so mothers can get to day care and events on time — my own admitted bias.) They say that families with children are relegated to fast-food restaurants and blue-collar diners, another phenomenon that doesn’t fit in with my observations.

That leads to another problem — The Goddess Within seems dated. Writing in 1989, the authors discuss “movements” that the average American today has not heard of — suggesting they are not so much movements as the typical handful of people from each generation who deviate from societal norms. There has been no growing return to rural living; if anything, suburbs continue to expand. There is no growing sensitivity toward the “earth goddess” among the masses. What the authors label “patriarchal values” — war, conquest, corporate power, degradation of the earth — are even stronger today. If the question is one of balance of matriarchal and patriarchal values, as the Woolgers define them, the world is as or more out of balance than ever.

The Woolgers, however, do not seem to propose balance, but a return to the matriarchy, where patriarchal Christianity as practiced and rational science (which they tuck in together as odd bedfellows) are subject to the goddess — ignoring the benefits that Christianity and science have given western society and focusing only on the harm they have done. For example, science has brought us nuclear weapons, but it has also contributed cures, treatments, and surgeries for ailments that would have killed millions of us early in life.

Rarely do the Woolgers mention the gods — and then it is primarily as consorts to the goddesses (or, in Zeus’s case, as the ultimate patriarch). If balance of these values should be the goal of the individual and society, why not The Gods and Goddesses Within: A Guide to the Eternal Myths That Shape Men’s and Women’s Lives? In their slavish devotion to the feminine (and feminist), the Woolgers devalue the masculine. To them, “no matter how much a doting father adores and is adored by his daughter, he is still far from a mother’s love of her little girl. He did not bear her in his body; he cannot experience that great mystery.” Is this really true? Does every woman who bears children experience it as a “great mystery”? And what of the great mysteries that men can and do experience? It is this lack of balance and wholeness that undermines the Woolgers’ claims.

Some women (and men) may find the goddess portraits very useful in assessing themselves and the women in their lives (for example, the Hera mother is easily identifiable) as well as their relationships. The goddess portraits and sidebars are also somewhat useful in the study of Greek and Roman mythology. Beyond that, however, The Goddess Within is little more than trendy, empty, male-bashing feminism of the worst kind.

My goddess scores:

Athena (goddess of wisdom)
17
Artemis (goddess of the wilds)
29
Persephone (goddess of the underworld)
23
Aphrodite (goddess of love)
22
Hera (queen of heaven)
9
Demeter (goddess of life)
1

5 February 2005
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Collected Stories of Colette

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The Collected Stories of Colette by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, ed., and with an introduction by, Robert Phelps. Highly recommended.

According to the introduction, this collection represents 100 stories taken from a dozen volumes published during Colette’s lifetime. They are categorised as “Early Stories,” “Backstage at the Music Hall,” “Varieties of Human Nature,” and “Love.” Some, like the Clouk/Chéri stories, appear to be fiction, while many, like “The Rainy Moon” and “Bella-Vista,” seem to be taken straight from Colette’s varied life and acquaintances.

Whether writing fiction or chronicling fact, whether writing in the third-person omniscient or in the first person, Colette herself is always a character — rarely as an influencer, that is, one whose actions or choices drive the plot. Colette’s preferred role is as observer — and it is one for which she is well suited.

An inveterate sensualist and a former music-hall performer, Colette integrates her characters (real and fictional) with everything around them — their clothes (costumes); their abodes, dressing rooms, and haunts (sets); and their neighborhoods and towns (theatres). Much of Colette’s writing, no matter how mundane the surface subject, is about art — the art of living and, notably, the art of loving. In “My Goddaughter,” the subject tells her godmother how she injured herself with scissors and a curling iron and recounts her mother’s reaction. “She said that I had ruined her daughter for her! She said, ‘What have you done with my beautiful hair which I tended so patiently? . . . And that cheek, who gave you permission to spoil it! . . . I’ve taken years, I’ve spent my days and nights, trembling over this masterpiece. . . .'”

Colette is attuned to everything, every sense, every nuance. “A faint fragrance did indeed bring to my nostrils the memory of various scents which are at their strongest in autumn.” (“Gibriche”) “. . . set in a bracelet, which slithered between her fingers like a cold and supple snake.” (“The Bracelet”) ” . . . the supper of rare fruits, an orgy of ice water sparkling in the thin glasses, as intoxicating as champagne . . .” (“Florie”) “Peroxided hair, light-colored eyes, white teeth, something about her of an appetizing but slightly vulgar young washerwoman.” (“Gitanette”)

Colette does not pretend to be an objective observer of human behaviour; she does not hesitate to express to the reader her weariness with certain individuals or situations, and her stories of her vain, pretentious, overbearing friend Valentine reveal her jaded and waning affection. She knows this woman so well that she sees her almost as Valentine sees herself — a drama queen acting out stories, roles, and games without depth of feeling for them. “What Must We Look Like?” becomes Valentine’s driving philosophy, to which Colette responds with “a mild, a kindly pity.” In “The Hard Worker,” Colette says, “I can see she does not hate him, but I cannot see she loves him either.” What Colette sees — and does not see — is to be respected.

Some stories, such as “The Sick Child,” are vivid and imaginative and reveal Colette’s amazing ability to think and dream like a gifted child. “The Advice,” with its mundane beginning and premise and twisted, horrifying ending would enhance any collection of gothic or mystery tales. Other stories, like “Gibriche,” several of the other music-hall stories, and “Bella-Vista,” tackle topics that even today remain controversial. “Bella-Vista,” in which Colette’s moods seem to wane with every familiarity achieved with her hostesses, offers an ending that is heavily foreshadowed throughout but is surprising and gruesome nonetheless.

Most of the stories, whether fiction or nonfiction, seem to come from life in one way or another. The quantity of stories and the quality of the collection reveal the incredible scope of experience of Colette, the dry, often weary yet obsessive observer, interpreter, and chronicler of human nature. As Judith Thurman says in her introduction to Colette’s work, The Pure and the Impure, “This great ode to emptiness was written by a woman who felt full.” As well she should.

27 May 2003
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Pure and the Impure

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The Pure and the Impure by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette with introduction by Judith Thurman. Recommended.

Colette believed The Pure and the Impure was her best work. I can’t judge, not having read anything of hers but a few short stories, but this collection of her observations about human attitudes toward relationships and sexuality is insightful and timeless. It is also difficult and obscure at times, perhaps because of the translation and because there is no real structure to such a collection.

Thanks to her milieu, her position in it, and her willingness to seek the story, Colette could draw upon the most interesting people of her time — the givers and the takers. From the older woman who publicly fakes an orgasm while self-pleasuring in an opium house to gladden the heart of her young, sickly lover to the roué who exclaims of women, “They allow us to be their master in the sex act, but never their equal. That is what I cannot forgive them” to the circle of prominent women who learn the ways of sex from servants, dress as men, and love horses (she calls the most notable of these women “La Chevalière”) to the “happy,” alcoholic, lesbian poet Renée Vivien to the gay men with whom she seems most comfortable, Colette covers a spectrum of sexuality and combinations — including those men and women who play their heterosexual and homosexual relations against one another.

“I’m devoted to that boy, with all my heart,” the older woman tells Colette, a stranger to her. “But what is the heart, madame? It’s worth less than people think. It’s quite accommodating. It accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it’s not very particular. But the body . . . Ha! That’s something else, again.” Thurman believes this sums up Colette’s view precisely, the heart as a slave to the body.

Although Colette apparently wanted to remain an impartial observer, she cannot mask her own feelings and biases. One senses that she could not quite see a woman-woman partnership as “whole,” as passionate, as capable of being the source of tragedy in the same way as other types of relationships. (Anaïs Nin will also hint at something similar in her diaries, at the “incompleteness” of female/female love.) “What woman would not blush to seek out her amie only for sensual pleasure? In no way is it passion that fosters the devotion of two women, but rather a feeling of kinship.”

She is fascinated by the story of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, the “Ladies of Llangollen,” who elope and spend several decades living together. During this time, Butler will keep an extensive journal about her life with “My Beloved,” while, to Colette’s consternation and fascination, Ponsonby remains a silent partner. Colette so romanticizes the Ladies that she says they run off together as “young girls,” when in fact Butler was 39 and Ponsonby in her 20s. While there is all kind of detail about their living arrangements, from gardening, sewing, hosting an array of distinguished visitors, and sharing a bedroom and bed, there is nothing known of their emotional or sexual intimacies other than their obvious devotion to one another. They remain a happy, content enigma to Colette and to the present day.

The book concludes on a more personal note — about jealousy, “the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it.” She maintains that “a man never belongs to us” and hints at the unique and not unfriendly relationship two female rivals may have — even rivals who wish to kill one another. When one rival tells Colette all the things that had prevented her from killing Colette in Rambouillet (missed train, stalled car, etc.), Colette says, “I was not in Rambouillet.” The relationship between her and her rival becomes more interesting, more revealing, more important, and more affectionate than with the man over whom they duel.

Colette suffered what many turn-of-the-century female intellectuals must have — a society’s fear of “masculine” women who are too intelligent, too outspoken, too knowing. When she offers to travel with the roué (apparently as a friend), he says in seriousness, “I only like to travel with women,” which, a moment later, is softened by, “You, a woman? Why, try as you will . . .” Even today, there are women who have experienced this.

“This is a sad book,” Colette said. “It doesn’t warm itself at the fire of love, because the flesh doesn’t cheer up its ardent servants.” Thurman adds, “This great ode to emptiness was written by a woman who felt full.”

The Pure and the Impure is a must read for anyone who enjoys Colette’s other writings; it is the most autobiographical of her works.

1 January 2002
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood

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Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood by Naomi Wolf. Not recommended.

Female coming of age. Female desire and sexuality. Feminism. Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood attempts to address these issues in the context of Naomi Wolf’s own coming of age in the 1970s. The problem with this approach is that it is too personal (a weakness Wolf admits early on) to offer either much insight or value. The best it can do is provoke clearer thinking in the reader than Wolf is capable of.

The stories are provided by Wolf and her circle of friends, who are for the most part middle-class, urban, and Caucasian. Much of Wolf’s discussion focuses on her childhood/adolescence in San Francisco and her exposure to that city’s counterculture ideas and sex industry — something that may resonate with women of similar backgrounds, but not with this lower middle-class, East Coast, small-town girl whose exposure to the sex industry came at the end of adolescence, not during childhood. (Unlike Wolf, I and my peers didn’t walk past strip clubs every day, see genital fetishes sold in local stores, or know about “sex workers” before hitting double digits.)

Wolf describes in detail such things as her procurement of birth control in preparation for the planned loss of her virginity to a “sweet guy.” She would have you believe she was thinking about when a girl becomes a woman, what makes a girl a woman, the ritual of becoming a woman, and the adult attitude toward teenage sex at this tender age while making this well-thought-out decision. According to her description of the event, which feels meaningless to her because of the way society disregards it, there is no teenage impulsiveness or passion involved — again, something that does not resonate.

Wolf’s primary point is that we were taught to believe, falsely, that females control sexual relations because males have uncontrollable desires, while we do not. Her exception to this teaching is, of course, valid. She hypothesizes that not only do females have tremendous desire, but that we are capable of a higher level of more prolonged desire and that we are nothing short of sexual deities. She illustrates this with a “history of the clitoris” (in which it is forgotten and rediscovered over the millennia) and of the extensiveness and sensitivity of the female sexual skin. She cites ancient wisdom that is no longer in practice or understood about male/female sexuality and relations; they understood sexual relations in a way we do not. Along the way, she occasionally makes valid points, for example, that all too often, parents of the 1960s and ’70s abdicated their adult roles to pursue their own pleasures and that there is no real transition from girlhood to womanhood.

In the end, however, her points rely too much on the personal anecdotes and on selected sources, that is, sources skewed toward her viewpoint. This is not an objective analysis of legitimate issues and theories, but an agenda that has little substance behind it. Wolf does manage to successfully illustrate the muddiness of sexual attitudes with the muddiness of her own thought. She is a barely adequate writer because she is neither a clear nor a deep thinker. Promiscuities is no more than pop feminism that adds little to what has already been written upon the subject other than Wolf’s own narrow perspective and need to be more sexually charged than men — a need that her passionless relationships and anecdotes belie.

If you really want insight into female desire and sexuality and what it means to become a woman, there are surely much more universal, fundamental, and emotionally and intellectually integral truths available than the weak mental ramblings offered here.

6 September 2001
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf