Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of ManhoodAlfred A. Knopf, 1996 - 480 síður Bram Dijkstra's new book, ten years in work, is a stunning inquiry into the idea of woman as seductress: how, in many areas of twentieth-century high and popular culture, the female came to be portrayed as a regressive, primitive force whose sexuality could destroy the social order, undermining the supremacy of the white male - and shows the devastating historical effects of this portrayal. Dijkstra begins his analysis with the 1915 silent film A Fool There Was, in which Theda Bara first embodied our century's vision of the Vamp - kohl-eyed, predatory, seducing respectable men and destroying them with her voracious appetite. The part played by turn-of-the-century biologists, gynecologists, psychologists, geneticists, and sociologists in helping to develop distorted ideas of gender, sex, and race is examined. And Dijkstra shows how these distortions have been reflected in painting; in popular and literary fiction, from Bram Stoker's Dracula to the novels of Conrad, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner; and in cinema's femmes fatales, from Louise Brooks, Garbo, and Dietrich to the fatal women of the 1990s. Finally, the book makes shockingly clear how the parallel paths of the new style of misogyny and racism merged in the 1920s during the rise of nationalist politics - converging in Hitler's Mein Kampf and the politics of genocide. |
From inside the book
Niðurstöður 1 - 3 af 22
Síða 29
... looked out in cold , inscrutable hauteur upon the confusion about her . She wore a gown that clung to her perfectly - modelled figure - that seemed almost a part of her being . She carried , in her left arm , a great cluster of crimson ...
... looked out in cold , inscrutable hauteur upon the confusion about her . She wore a gown that clung to her perfectly - modelled figure - that seemed almost a part of her being . She carried , in her left arm , a great cluster of crimson ...
Síða 52
... looked on him with eyes that revealed only amuse- ment — amusement , and power . " Schuyler - that crawling , quivery in- sect that had once been a man - pleads with her to allow him his " little , pitiful " last chance at redemption ...
... looked on him with eyes that revealed only amuse- ment — amusement , and power . " Schuyler - that crawling , quivery in- sect that had once been a man - pleads with her to allow him his " little , pitiful " last chance at redemption ...
Síða 117
... looked at him with deep and hungry eyes . " Those eyes , of course , are the doorway into the feminine world of sight . The story's narrator , in fact , had introduced his tale with an ac- count of a " sighting " of Cristina on her ...
... looked at him with deep and hungry eyes . " Those eyes , of course , are the doorway into the feminine world of sight . The story's narrator , in fact , had introduced his tale with an ac- count of a " sighting " of Cristina on her ...
Efni
INTRODUCTION | 3 |
THE LORDS OF CREATION BATTLE | 9 |
The Biology of Racism and the Iron Law of the Jungle | 219 |
Höfundarréttur | |
2 aðrir hlutar ekki sýndir
Aðrar útgáfur - View all
Common terms and phrases
acculturated African womb American animal Aryan beast beauty became become bisexual blood body brain Browne's century century's civilization clearly Congo Song creature culture dark death degeneration depredations dominant Dora Dora's Dracula early twentieth early-twentieth-century economic effeminacy effeminate erotic evil evolutionary elite eyes fantasies female feminine feminism film Fool force Freud Fu Manchu genetic girl Gourmont Griffith heart of darkness Hitler human imagery inferior insect intellectual Kenealy kiss Kurtz Lucy Westenra Lulu lust male male's man's manhood Marlow masculine metaphors miscegenation moral movie narrative nature Nosferatu novel nymphomania Otto Weininger period's phallic physical Popeye popular predators predatory primal primitive principle race racial readers realm Remy de Gourmont reproductive Schuyler scientific semen seminal sexual vampire sexual woman social society species spermatophore Stoker's Sumner symbolic Theda Bara Theda Bara's theory tion turn turn-of-the-century twentieth-century vagina dentata Vampire's vital essence Weininger William Graham Sumner women young