Xanthippe

[truepenny]

Over on Caveat Lector, Dorothea's been talking about shrewishness, an entry which I've been thinking about at odd moments over the past day or so. And I think that the perceived "problem" with Xanthippe isn't so much that she's a competent woman, managing a household and a woefully impractical spouse, as it is that she calls attention to her competency. She expects to be thanked for it. And she gets resentful when her miracles of organization are dismissed as unnecessary. I would argue that that is Xanthippe's sin. Patriarchy and its great minds are perfectly okay with women doing all the work; they just don't want it pointed out that that's what's going on. It's the Emperor's New Clothes again. Women's work is supposed to be invisible and it's supposed to be performed out of the goodness of our sweet little martyred hearts. The opposite of "bitch" is "doormat."

This is also, it's occurring to me, the idea behind the massive Victorian ideological apparatus of the Angel in the House. The Angel is supposed to rule over the private sphere; it's her toy, to keep her from trying to venture into the public sphere. And that private sphere is supposed to be perfect and beautiful and well-managed, but that descriptor of "angel" makes it completely impossible for any woman who desires to live up to this standard of womanhood ever to mention the effort that goes into this perfection. It's like the toxic version of sprezzetura, where you don't merely do something difficult as if it were easy, you and everyone around you are expressly forbidden from ever admitting that it was difficult in the first place.

Women become shrews when they refuse to be angels. Another neat double-bind brought to you by Western cultural patriarchy.

Comments

[cija.livejournal.com]

There is no shrewishness like that of the shrew who is by nature a 'highly intense' type, as Dorothea has it, but who has been shoehorned into a caretaking role for which she has no liking, no affinity, no vocation. While some sigh that woman's work is never done, never respected, never appreciated, others burn to know why women's work has to be their work.

And when you live in a culture that valorizes the absent-mindedness as actual proof of a higher order of mind, that says your choice to keep the cat fed and clothed and the house from catching on fire bespeaks a lower class of priorities, because if you were really brilliant like husband is, you wouldn't be able to concentrate on such lowly things - look at him, he can't be bothered to come in out of the rain, if you can remember to nag him about the little things you can't possibly be a genius yourself, genius is supremely selfish, but that's all right, dear, because brilliant men need stable, practical, unimaginative partners, it keeps them grounded.

I think that behind the shrill nagging of the 'shrew' is often the suppressed shriek of rage that says, "Just because I do this job well, better than you could or ever would, does not mean it is natural to me. I have better things to do with my life, too."

As well as everything else you say, of course.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Where I was talking about why women are PERCEIVED as shrews, you're talking about why they BECOME shrews, and I think you're right. I know that would be my reaction, if I were forced into that "genius-minding" role, especially if the genuine, soul-destroying, and difficult work involved in that role was then ignored and denigrated by everyone around me. Homicide would start looking like a very tempting option.

Certainly Shakespeare's Kate, the prototypical literary shrew, is motivated very much by apoplectic frustration at the limited roles available to her. I dislike most of that play a great deal, but Shakespeare doesn't play down the prison Kate is trapped in. Also, now that I think of it, Eowyn could very easily have been portrayed as a typical shrew, and it is greatly to Tolkien's credit that she is not, that we are allowed to sympathize with her frustration rather than either laughing at it or being repulsed by it.