著者

別府 恵子

出版者

神戸女学院大学

雑誌

女性学評論 (ISSN:09136630)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.7, pp.83-99, 1993-03

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Horatio abstains from felicity a while, entreated by his friend, to tell the story of Prince Hamlet. In the culture that loves its blond, blue-eyed children,who will tell the story of a black girl who dreams of having blue eyes so as to be loved? In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye(1970) Claudia MacTeers becomes to her friend Pecola what Horatio was to Prince Hamlet. The innocent blue-eyed baby doll given to little girls every Christmas becomes a potent cultural sysmbol in American society that loves its blue-eyed children; this image of beauty is then used against black girls and women who can never attain such image of beauty. They are told to be just like an innocent blue-eyed doll if they were to be loved. The world seems to be in conspiracy to control women within the narrow confines of their femininity, whispering to them: "It's best to be pretty-then you are assured of love and happiness. See the story of Cinderella?" Cinderella lived happily ever after with the Prince, we are told,because her foot fit into the glass shoe, in other words she is a blue-eyed beauty. The Bluest Eye is a tragedy of Pecola Breedlove who foolishly believed in the idea of physical beauty,"the most destructive idea in the history of human thought."Morrison's novel is also a story of Claudia Macteers,who sees through the destructive mechanism "the beauty myth"entails: how the images of beauty- the blue-eyed baby doll,the Shirley Temple milk cup, and many others-are employed to indoctrinate women,just as the idea of femininity used to,with "the myth of pretty woman"-woman's success story. A familiar story.

著者

別府 恵子 Keiko BEPPU

雑誌

女性学評論 = Women's studies forum

巻号頁・発行日

vol.10, pp.65-78, 1996-03

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The first ambience the infant experiences, in any culture, is the mother's body to which later configurations of space are necessarily related. Annette Kolodny's The Lay of the Land(1975) has unveiled a subtly programmed image system in American life and letters; the metaphorical experience of the "land-as-woman"persists along with the archetypal polarity of masculine and feminine, which results in the exploitation of the "land-as- woman" in patriarchal culture. Historically, as Kolodny's book testifies, the "land-as-woman"(land is woman) has been the object of man's desire of all kinds: geopolitical strategies, sexual gratifications, and artistic creations. In such socio-cultural construct woman has been deprived of her natural right as the subject of her own body. Woman's body has been codified, even more so than man's, within the patriarchal culture as something desirable, dispensable, and disposable. This somewhat freewheeling essay on "foot fetishism" examines the abuse of woman's body as observed in two defferent cultures: in the fairy tale "Cinderella,"and in two early short stories by the Japanese novelist, Tanizaki Junichiro:"The Tattoo"(1910) and "Fumiko's Foot"(1919). Anne Sexton's poem entitled "Cinderella"in Transformations(1971) is an ingenious rewriting of the fairy tale, narrated by "a middle-aged witch,"as the speaker of the poem calls herself. In this ironic rendering of a "pretty woman's"success story, the prince charming is transformed into a shoe salesman, who goes on the road, as it were, to find the shapely female foot that should fit the gold shoe. In capitalist culture the prince's effort is trivialized as that of a salesman who must promote the company's campaign to sell a certain kind of shoes. Tanizaki's "The Tattoo"dramatizes the tattooer's passionate adoration of beauty represented in "a feminine foot of absolute perfection."The ironic twist at the end is the tatooer's complete surrender to that beauty the artist creates; the creator himself has no contorol of his own creation. The art student in "Fumiko's Foot" makes a confession,to "the writer,"of a crazed old man's foot fetishism he likewise secretly shares. The fetish obsession with woman's bare foot, which leads to creation of beauty in Tanizaki's stories here examined, is no less than a perverted sexual gratification for woman. At the same time, in the light of Tanizaki's essay "In Praise of Shadows"(1933), the fetish interest in female beauty expressed by the characters in his stories is better appreciated as the artistobservers' manifesto of an aesthetics. Just the same, the foot fetishism here considered-both the craze for the gold shoe and the adoration of a shapely female foot-is nothing but the abuse of woman's body and of man's as well. Eros in its ideal form is possible only when man and woman regain his/her wholeness, in control of his/her own body.

著者

別府 恵子 Keiko BEPPU

雑誌

女性学評論 = Women's studies forum

巻号頁・発行日

vol.25, pp.1-23, 2011-03

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The two periods, which stand out in the literary history of the United States,are the "American Renaissance" of mid-nineteenth century,and the 1920s which began with the May Day riots in 1919, and died a spectacular death in October 1929. " The jazz age" is the name given to this special decade, " an age of miracles, an age of art , an age of excess, and an age of satire." After the end of the First World War, the United States suddenly found itself on its way to a world's superpower, to quote F.Scott Fitzgerald," it danced into the limelight" on the international political stage. The age gave women their suffrage, and liberated women dramatized themselves as flappers. They had got rid of the Victorian mores of genteel tradition, smoked and drank in public,enjyoying free sex. Their lifestyle and fashion became the cultural symbol of the decade, when " a whole race[went] hedonistic, deciding on pleasure." The same 1920s produced a rich variety of artists, novelists, and poets: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dreiser, Dos Passos, and such modernist poets as Ezra Pound, T.S.Eliot, W.C.Williams, and Wallace Stevens. Also, a group of gifted women poets- Amy Lowell, Mina Roy, Dorothy Parker, Elinor Wylie, and Edna St.Vincent Millay- gave the 1920s its distinct color and " a lovely light." However, later on they have either been critically ignored or simply forgotten in the literary history of the United States. This essay is a vindication of Edna St.Vincent Millay(1892-1950), the first woman poet who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver(1923), through an examination of her representative poems in their historical context then and now. She is the "savage beauty, " who dedicated her life to the creation of beauty, leaving significant poetical works including some 200 sonnets written on the ecstasy and the anguish of love.

著者

別府 恵子

出版者

神戸女学院大学

雑誌

女性学評論 = Women's studies forum (ISSN:09136630)

巻号頁・発行日

no.10, pp.65-78, 1996-03

---

The first ambience the infant experiences, in any culture, is the mother's body to which later configurations of space are necessarily related. Annette Kolodny's The Lay of the Land(1975) has unveiled a subtly programmed image system in American life and letters; the metaphorical experience of the "land-as-woman"persists along with the archetypal polarity of masculine and feminine, which results in the exploitation of the "land-as- woman" in patriarchal culture. Historically, as Kolodny's book testifies, the "land-as-woman"(land is woman) has been the object of man's desire of all kinds: geopolitical strategies, sexual gratifications, and artistic creations. In such socio-cultural construct woman has been deprived of her natural right as the subject of her own body. Woman's body has been codified, even more so than man's, within the patriarchal culture as something desirable, dispensable, and disposable. This somewhat freewheeling essay on "foot fetishism" examines the abuse of woman's body as observed in two defferent cultures: in the fairy tale "Cinderella,"and in two early short stories by the Japanese novelist, Tanizaki Junichiro:"The Tattoo"(1910) and "Fumiko's Foot"(1919). Anne Sexton's poem entitled "Cinderella"in Transformations(1971) is an ingenious rewriting of the fairy tale, narrated by "a middle-aged witch,"as the speaker of the poem calls herself. In this ironic rendering of a "pretty woman's"success story, the prince charming is transformed into a shoe salesman, who goes on the road, as it were, to find the shapely female foot that should fit the gold shoe. In capitalist culture the prince's effort is trivialized as that of a salesman who must promote the company's campaign to sell a certain kind of shoes. Tanizaki's "The Tattoo"dramatizes the tattooer's passionate adoration of beauty represented in "a feminine foot of absolute perfection."The ironic twist at the end is the tatooer's complete surrender to that beauty the artist creates; the creator himself has no contorol of his own creation. The art student in "Fumiko's Foot" makes a confession,to "the writer,"of a crazed old man's foot fetishism he likewise secretly shares. The fetish obsession with woman's bare foot, which leads to creation of beauty in Tanizaki's stories here examined, is no less than a perverted sexual gratification for woman. At the same time, in the light of Tanizaki's essay "In Praise of Shadows"(1933), the fetish interest in female beauty expressed by the characters in his stories is better appreciated as the artistobservers' manifesto of an aesthetics. Just the same, the foot fetishism here considered-both the craze for the gold shoe and the adoration of a shapely female foot-is nothing but the abuse of woman's body and of man's as well. Eros in its ideal form is possible only when man and woman regain his/her wholeness, in control of his/her own body.

著者

別府 恵子

出版者

神戸女学院大学

雑誌

女性学評論 = Women's studies forum (ISSN:09136630)

巻号頁・発行日

no.5, pp.53-66, 1991-03

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Since the beginning of history the family has been recognized as a central element in the social structure in any culture. In his book, The family(1964), William J.Goode contends that the family performs important services for society "such as reproduction, care, maintenance, and socialization of the young." Likewise, Margaret Mead expounds its raison d'e^^^tre that one's humanity is nurtured in a family, which is "the toughest institution we have." The American family is a transplantation to the American soil of the European model with the father(=husband) as the head and provider of this social unit. Ichabod Crane, Irving's protagonist in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"(1820), pictures his vision of a family as follows: "...his busy fancy...presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a waggon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord knows where!" This was an ideal"American family" congenial to the American imagination since the beginning of the Republic. During the 19th century in particular such a vision of a family provided people an incentive to move westward and people the wild west with a whole family of thriving children. In Irving's story Ichabod's dream of his family, however, was not to be realized. This paper is an attempt to clarify the nature of "American family" through an examination of its pictures portrayed in the four novels written in the latter half of the 19th century:Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance(1852), Melville's Pierre(1852), Mrs. Stowe's The Minister's Wooing(1859), and Louise May Alcott's Little Women(1869). (The paper was originally presented at the symposium on "The Family in American Literature" for the 23rd Annual Meeting of the American Studies Society held on March 31, 1989.)

著者

別府 恵子

出版者

神戸女学院大学

雑誌

女性学評論 (ISSN:09136630)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, pp.17-35, 1990-03

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Carolyn Heilbrunはその著書Toward a Recognition of Androgyny(1973)において、「社会における様々な問題は性の二極分化に起因する。将来わたしたちは、それぞれ個人がその性的役割や行動様式を自由に選択出来るような社会をつくることが必要である」と提言した。それからほぼ20年後の90年代になって、やっとHeibrunが夢みた社会が到来したかに見える。「オジサンOL」とか「ギャル男」が増殖中で、周りの社会も彼らをことさら奇異なる現象とはみなさない。男らしさ、女らしさという既成概念から自由な彼らの生き方は新しいライフ・スタイルとして容認されているかのようである。The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter(1940),The Ballad of the Sad Cafe^^′(1951)などで知られるCarson McCullersは、生の不条理への問いかけを追求した作家である。彼女のグロテスクな作品世界は人間の孤独感、疎外意識を見事に描き出しており、McCullersは実存主義の作家、あるいは南部ゴシックの作家との評価が定着している。本論は、McCullersのいわゆるグロテスクな人間像を、生の不条理、人間の孤独感の顕在化として捉えるのでなく、西洋文明における性の二極分化による文化的奇形と読み解く。そしてMcCullersの創造した"Boy-girl Adolescents"-Mick Kelly,Frankie Addams-に性別、性役割に関する既成概念からの解放を提唱するMcCullersのアンドロジニ的世界、Heilbrunの夢みた未来社会のヴィジョンを見ようとするものである。