Queen Guinevere and The Way Christians View Women

While reading a helpful book about constructing fiction, I came across a line that startled me. The author was using the King Arthur tale to illustrate the use of symbols in story. He commented that by placing women on a pedestal, chivalry made all women into symbols and divided them into the "Christian binary of madonna and whore."

It's an unusually succinct summary of a popular interpretation of how Christians view women.

And, alas, there are and have been some Christians about whom the comment is accurate--Christians who see sexual purity as the only really important virtue or who judge men and women according to different laws. Yet in the context of the history of the orthodox Christian faith and the stories it has produced, the comment displays a bit of willful blindness.

It is ridiculous to complain that a knight's love interest is a symbol without admitting that so is the knight. It seems obtuse to point out that the Arthurian women were either "good" or "bad" without noticing that the male characters are also divided between those who are brave and pure and those who are cowardly and evil. The point of the stories isn't to show us multiple facets of the character's personalities but to present listeners with inspiring types who are general enough to allow anyone to imagine himself in their place.

It also displays a peculiar modern bias to assume that characters who get their own fight scenes are automatically more well-rounded.

More importantly, though, the overall message of the Arthurian story is not that women are either madonnas or whores. Guinevere didn't fall alone.

Christians don't think women are sinners by virtue of being female. Christians think women are sinners by virtue of being human.

The point is that in a paradise constructed by humans, sin conquers even the most strong and the most fair. Sin destroys everyone. That is actually a rather democratic message.

We Shop Because We Yearn (at The Federalist)

My opinion on why we buy pink (or blue) baby tubs and crazily-expensive wedding dresses. Plus a Dorothy Sayers quotation, which always makes an article better.

We Shop Because We Yearn 

Bridal gowns, baby gear, and other stuff we shop for are part of the human quest for identity and quietly acknowledge the realities political correctness seeks to deny. 

In “Murder Must Advertise,” a Dorothy Sayers mystery novel from 1933, the aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey goes undercover in an advertising firm. The narrator tells us, “He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion.” 

The advertising of our decade is very similar: products are advertised not as shirts, cereal, or face lotion, but as “something to make you look thin,” “something to help your kids get good grades in school,” and “something to make you look like Jennifer Lawrence.” The items with which we fill our shopping carts are as much ideas, fantasies, and forlorn hopes as they are food and raiment. Advertising is manipulative, but in its own limited way, it also reveals the yearnings of the American heart.

Read the rest HERE.

Silk Stockings, Skinny Jeans, and Other Quick Takes

October 17th is the anniversary of the day that nylon stockings made their appearance in the world. Nylon stockings may no longer reside in the top dresser drawer of ever self-respecting woman in America, but I think you will agree that their historic importance is significant.

1.

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So, imagine that you live in the Twentieth Century, and fashion has changed:

You will notice that these new fashions demand a bit more of, er, your legs.

Yet this is not yet a resident of convenience store shelves:

You really do not want to display thick, saggy socks of cotton or wool. You are forced to expend all of your pin money on keeping yourself adequately clad in silk stockings. Like the character Tib in the Betsy-Tacy series, when you go swimming, you thriftily hang your precious stockings over the edge of the boat to protect them, while modestly putting them back on when you come out of the water.

Then, one day at the 1939 World Fair, a new invention is displayed.

Not Just the Pretty Babies

I'm in The Federalist today.

The Pro-life Movement is About Sacrifice, Not Sentimentality

Gentle lighting casts a glow across the perfect, healthy, Caucasian newborn who sleeps in a cocoon of white blanket. The photographer has captured the baby-ethos that tugs on the heartstrings of any member of the human race with half a heart, and it is hard to look at the picture without an inward, “Aww.” The text that is superimposed over the photo says, “Not a mistake. Not a problem. Not a burden. Not an inconvenience. Not a nuisance. Not an accident. Not a punishment.” Then, in larger font, “A miracle.” It is all very lovely. And yet when I see the meme in my facebook feed, it makes me, a pro-life advocate and an ardent fan of babies, a little uncomfortable. 

“Baby J” is one of the reasons. His picture has also been posted to my feed. In his photograph, he lays in a hospital bed, his little face partially obscured with tubes and tape. This six-week-old has already undergone heart surgery. He depends on a ventilator to keep his lungs open, is expected to spend life breathing through a tracheotomy tube, and has been rejected by his biological family. He currently has no relatives to visit him in the hospital. The adoption agency that has posted information about “Baby J” states he will do best with a family that can provide one-on-one, lifelong care. Unlike the baby in the pro-life meme, this little guy does not glow beneath the lens of a camera.

Read the article here.

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I've also written semi-recently about modesty. "If the Skirt Fits, Wear It?"

“Your dresses should be tight enough to show you're a woman and loose enough to show you're a lady.” Edith Head (legendary costume designer of old Hollywood)

Read the article here.

Kirsten Dunst, Gender, and Too Many Victorian Novels on My Kindle

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Apparently I am stingy, because I feel that intangible ebooks should be cheaper than tangible, second-hand paperbacks. This means that much of my Kindle reading involves free or cheap files filled with long-forgotten fiction of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Most of it was forgotten for a reason.

Oh, my gosh. So… much… melodrama. The “Greatest Mystery Collection, Volume 2” contain gems like this: Imagine a mystery novel in which it turns out that the victim, a philanthropic and lovely older woman, actually stabbed herself in the heart. This was because she saw her adult son burst into her house (he didn’t know that she was his mother—all of her previous babies had died under what she felt was a curse, so she gave him to another woman to adopt in order to save his life, and herself took that other woman’s dead infant in exchange so that the other woman’s husband would think the babe was his). She is convinced, from the wild eyes of her unfortunately somewhat disreputable but handsome son, that he intends to rob her of the large sum of money which is concealed in her cupboard. In order to save him from committing such a vile deed and thereby descending along the path of wickedness, she stabs herself. Motherlove! When all is revealed and he is finally acquitted of having murdered her (apparently she forgot to think about the legal issues surrounding her noble deed), he honors her forever and goes every year to weep upon her grave. The text even tells us that she is the only woman whose memory is more dear to him than his love for his lovely young wife, and the wife is apparently totally OK with this. I could go on, but this gives you an idea of the style of Agatha Webb by Anna Katherine Green.

Even in the less sentimental, more humorous stories of the early Twentieth Century, such as Seven Keys To Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers, one finds beautiful blond girls who do things like tell random young men (I paraphrase), “You must trust me, and steal the money for me with no explanation. I will sit about helplessly and berate you as a traitor every time you fail. In the end, you can propose to me. I will point out that we just met, and you will say that doesn’t matter. I will finally surrender and go limp in your arms. The end.” I must mention that in his last and final proposal, the young man’s endearing argument against the girl’s hesitation over the fact that he doesn’t even know her last name is to tell her, “That’s women’s logic.” I rather like old-fashioned values, but this is too much for me.

Such books appear at first glance to be the antithesis of modern feelings about gender roles, romance, and correct behavior. It is easy to read this stuff and be glad that modernism brought us out of the age of swooning and sentimentality. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that we are not as different from the Victorians and their Edwardian children as we think we are.  

A New Project That Is Very Exciting

I haven't posted in over a week, for several quite defensible reasons:

1. I've been traveling
2. We are trying to convince our sweet little son that his sudden desire to party at night is most ill-advised
3. I've been working on a new project.

The new project is very exciting.

I would like to announce that "Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife" (a blog about vocational relationships from a Law and Gospel perspective) is now live! You'll be able to read articles by a variety of fantastic Lutheran women about topics like virtuous singlehood, mothering, and hospitality. Take a look at the first post and stick around the read the other articles that are already up.

Life, Death, and Mercy

Today, on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, is the March for Life.

When we stop and think about babies brutally killed; of mothers (and sometimes fathers) bearing the spiritual and emotional scars of such a horror; and of communities damaged and hardened, the stark wretchedness of death is made very painful. It is difficult to hold my baby and think of it. Perhaps that is why so many of us try not to think of it.

What kind of a world is this, where mothers face such fear and desperation that they make an appointment with death? What kind of a world is it, where babies die? Yet Christ tells us, "Take heart, for I have overcome the world."

Today, people are marching in D.C. to honor life. Pastor Esget, whose church I attended while living in Virginia, is preaching a sermon before they march.

For whether this is our last March or we have to come back 41 more years, we have something greater than an anti-abortion message. We have the good news that the glory of God is in the Living Man, Christ Jesus our Lord, risen from the grave. He has trampled down death by His death, and the devil’s defeat is secure. We march with confident serenity behind the crucified-yet-living One, with the message of His forgiveness and life.

You should read all of his sermon. It is found HERE.

The Body of a Woman: Seven Recommended Readings

Frederick, the former pirate, sees young ladies for the first time, and realizes 
that his elderly nurse, Ruth, is not nearly as lovely as he once assumed.
Image from here.

Fredrick: Oh false one! You have deceived me!

Ruth: I have deceived you?

Fredrick: Yes! Deceived me.....You told me you were fair as gold!

Ruth: And master am I not so?

Fredrick: And now I see you're plain and old!

Ruth: I'm sure I'm not a jot so!

Fredrick: Upon my innocence you play...

Ruth: I'm not the one to plot so!

Fredrick: Your face is lined your hair is grey!

Ruth: It gradually got so!

(From The Pirates of Penzance)

The issues of modesty, the objectification of women, and women’s body-image are hot topics right now. Here are some articles on the subject that I think are helpful.

On the Objectification of Women:

1. A Tangled Web: Don Jon Highlights Real-Life Effects of Internet Porn by Mary Rose Somarriba

Part movie-review, and part examination of the effects of porn on both men and women.

“Don Jon is a bold contribution to a recent trend in entertainment, giving audiences a real—and grim—snapshot of 21st-century relationships.... It’s as if sex is no longer sexy in pop culture. What was once a warm and alluring mystery is now a cold, anatomical display. If intimacy is dead, porn may have killed it.” READ THE ARTICLE.

2. People See Sexy Pictures of Women as Objects, Not People (Psychological Science, 2012)

This brief press release contains very interesting observations on how people respond to images of “sexy women.”

“One way that psychologists have found to test whether something is seen as an object is by turning it upside down. Pictures of people present a recognition problem when they’re turned upside down, but pictures of objects don’t have that problem. So Bernard and his colleagues used a test where they presented pictures of men and women in sexualized poses, wearing underwear....

“People recognized right-side-up men better than upside-down men, suggesting that they were seeing the sexualized men as people. But the women in underwear weren’t any harder to recognize when they were upside down—which is consistent with the idea that people see sexy women as objects. There was no difference between male and female participants.” READ THE PRESS RELEASE.