Abstract
The paper will focus on the textual echoes of the Old Testament heroine Judith in mid-nineteenth-century American literature in the context of the era’s “masculinity crisis” discourse. The focus will be on the questions of female creativity, agency and (dis)loyalty and their textual appropriation as a discursive space for the negotiation of the gendered tensions of the mid-nineteenth century. The core of the text will be a close gendered reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, in particular its representations of art and violence. The broader question addressed is textual adultery inherent in the profane appropriation of sacred themes in literature, the paradox that reveals itself in the frequently immoralizing re-inscription of female agency in a quest of a firmer male power.
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Notes
She has been painted by Lucas Cranach, Sandro Botticelli, Giorgione, Titian, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, in different modalities (for analysis of the latter two, see Bal 1995).
The stereotype that has persisted in American political rhetoric (cf Põldsaar 2007).
Beatrice Cenci (1577–1599) was the daughter of a Roman nobleman who repeatedly abused his whole family, which eventually plotted to kill him. The plot was discovered and all four members of the Cenci family were sentenced to gruesome death. Beatrice Cenci, especially, became the symbol of resistance to tyrants. The motif has been widely used in literature (e.g., by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Stendhal and Alberto Moravia).
Perhaps not too much significance should be given to this particular name as Miriam was used as a stereotypical Jewish name by other authors like Henry James as well (Stern 1991, p. 112). The choice of a Jewish woman is more pertinent for my argument.
Donatello’s statue, commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici in 1460, used to stand in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and as a metaphor of the Medici rule as a defense of liberty.
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Acknowledgment
The research for the present article was partially supported by the Estonian Science Foundation grant no. 8875.
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Marling, R. Strong women and the masculinity crisis: adulterous appropriations of the Old Testament. Neohelicon 40, 157–167 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-013-0177-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-013-0177-x