{"id":1514,"date":"2018-11-05T18:41:27","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T16:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=1514"},"modified":"2018-11-05T18:41:27","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T16:41:27","slug":"slap-in-the-face-punch-in-the-guts-on-machiavelli-and-tolkien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2018\/11\/05\/slap-in-the-face-punch-in-the-guts-on-machiavelli-and-tolkien\/","title":{"rendered":"SLAP IN THE FACE, PUNCH IN THE GUTS (ON MACHIAVELLI AND TOLKIEN)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was\nrecently re-reading Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli\u2019s The\nPrince<\/em> (1532) in the elegant translation by Peter Bondanella (Oxford UP,\n2008), when I came across this passage in \u2018Chapter XXX: Of Fortune\u2019s Power in\nHuman Affairs and How She Can Be Resisted\u2019: \u2018I certainly believe this: that it\nis better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortune is a woman, and if you\nwant to keep her under it is necessary to beat her and force her down\u2019 (86-87).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m still\nreeling from the force of the slap, for this was possibly three weeks ago and I\ncan\u2019t stop thinking about these words. I didn\u2019t feel feminist indignation at\nMachiavelli\u2019s blatant misogyny, which should be any thinking woman\u2019s reaction, but\na very strong sense of exclusion: I felt as if he was telling me to my face\nfrom his grave \u2018you are a woman and the words you are reading are not for you\u2019.\nI also felt positively unwanted in the circles discussing The Prince<\/em>, perhaps, above all, because Bondanella added no\nexplanatory note to this rude remark (among the many, many devoted to much minor\ndetails). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He did\nexplain, as editor, that Fortune was habitually represented as a woman\u2013for, I\u2019ll\nadd, Fortune is fickle and so are women. Bondanella also noted that, as I could\ncheck in his bibliography, very few women scholars have done work on\nMachiavelli; this comes as no surprise because they possibly felt the same\nrotund punch in the guts that I felt. Incidentally, Bondanella neglected to\nmention that Machiavelli was married (to Marietta Corsini) and he had six\nchildren. It took me a few clicks to get her name and the number of children,\nnot out of idle curiosity but because I wanted to know whether Machiavelli\ncould possibly be gay. I feel even more downhearted than usual when gay men\nsupport patriarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, last\nweek I was reading Humphrey Carpenter\u2019s selection of Tolkien\u2019s letters\n(published in 1981) and enjoying it very much until I came to a letter sent to\none of his three sons, Michael, dated 6-8 March 1941. Tolkien was in the middle\nof writing The Lord of the Rings<\/em> and,\nso, the female Elf Galadriel already existed, also L\u00fathien in The Silmarillion<\/em>, both characters much\npraised by feminist critics. Incidentally, Tolkien also had a daughter,\nPriscilla, 13 at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tolkien\ntheorizes in this letter to his son about how \u2018The sexual impulse makes women\n(naturally when unspoiled more unselfish) very sympathetic and understanding,\nor specially desirous of being so (or seeming so), and very ready to enter into\nall interests, as far as they can, from ties to religion, of the young man they\nare attracted to\u2019 (49). Um, I\u2019ve always had my doubts about this fantasy of the\nElf woman (Arwen) who gives up her mortality to marry a mere mortal (Aragorn).\nTolkien continues in the same vein: women are not deceivers (what a relief!)\nbut moved by \u2018the servient, helpmeet instinct, generously warmed by desire and\nyoung blood\u2019 (49). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an Oxford professor, Tolkien had learned that women \u2018can in fact often achieve very remarkable insight and understanding, even of things outside their natural range: for it is their gift to be perceptive, stimulated, fertilized (in many other matters than the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that\u2019 (49). That possibly explains why so many male teachers see no difference between different types of fertilization in different rooms. Tolkien, not the kind to have affairs with his female students, explains himself further thus: \u2018How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point\u2013and how (with rare exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand, or when they cease to take a personal interest in him\u2019 (49). Learning for women, to sum up, is a love affair not with knowledge but with male teachers. I wonder what Tolkien made of female teachers and male students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, again\nthe slap in the face, the punch in the gut, though neither Machiavelli nor\nTolkien seem to understand, particularly Tolkien, that we women can read in\ntheir texts their candid revelations about masculinity. My message to all the\nfeminist critics wasting their time in endless discussions of how empowered\npoor E\u00f3wyn is that they should look, rather, into how the villain Sauron\u2019s\ndefeat matters less than Aragorn\u2019s \u2018legitimate\u2019 patriarchal entitlement to the\nthrone of his ancestors. By the way: Tolkien engraved on his wife\u2019s tomb the\nname of L\u00fathien, the brave Elf she had inspired. Here\u2019s something the two women\nhave in common: L\u00fathien, like Arwen, gave up immortality to marry a man; Edith,\na fervent  Anglican, became a Catholic to\nplease the ultra-conservative Tolkien before they married. L\u00fathien never\nregretted her choice but Edith, Humphrey Carpenter informs us, raged and raged (she\nhated compulsory confession) until her husband allowed her in 1940 (they had married\nin 1916) to attend church as she pleased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I am\ndescribing is yet another case of noticing the idol\u2019s clay feet. I don\u2019t mean\nthat either Machiavelli or Tolkien are my personal idols but that most texts,\npast and present, which are extremely relevant to how we think and read in\nWestern culture exclude 50% of humankind. (Of course, you silly girl!). Those\nreluctant to changing any rules of grammar concerning genre usually claim that \u2018man\/men\u2019\nis often a generic way of referring to all human beings, and that we women exaggerate\nwhen we complain against this usage. What I find, however, is that actually \u2018man\/men\u2019\nrefers specifically to the male half of humankind and if you press me actually\nto its patriarchal top. Take the title of Damien Chazell\u2019s recent film on Neil\nArmstrong, First Man<\/em>: what is the\nword \u2018man\u2019 doing there? Does it actually mean \u2018person\u2019? Or is it, as I suspect,\nanother neglectful way of telling us women, \u2018none of you have travelled to the\nMoon\u2019 (because we men didn\u2019t allow you)? One more slap\u2026 (Now check what the\nMercury 13 programme was).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m trying\nto be fair here and think of how often women\u2019s writing excludes men, which is\noften, I\u2019m sure, particularly in radical feminist works. The difference, I\nthink, is that male readers (and please excuse my essentialism) are less likely\nto be caught unaware, as we are. If you read a feminist text you know where you\nstand. The problem with most patriarchal texts is that they tend to conceal\ntheir filiation not necessarily out of hypocrisy but because they assume that\nthe whole world is patriarchal. Only when some kind of explanation is offered\n(e.g. Tolkien\u2019s letter) are the true colours of the man in question displayed.\nIt is, I believe, far less likely for a feminist woman to avoid commenting on\nher own gender views. Even so, I just don\u2019t see a radical feminist making androphobic\ncomments such as \u2018Destiny is like a man and he needs to be grabbed by the testicles\nto be controlled\u2019 or \u2018male students only learn if they feel erotically bound to\ntheir female teachers but, even so, their ability to learn evaporates the\nmoment she shows disinterest\u2019. Amazing how things sound when you reverse gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading\nrecently Kameron Hurley\u2019s The Geek Feminist\nRevolution<\/em> (a collection of lucid blog posts) I had to agree with her that\nit is very difficult to relax at the end of the day without being slapped in\nthe face by patriarchy in any of the fictions and non-fictions we consume. I\nstarted watching a few days ago 1922<\/em>,\na Netflix movie based on Stephen King\u2019s eponymous novella, and I stopped about\n15 minutes into it when farmer Wilf James convinces his teen son Henry that\nthey should kill his mother Arlette (she insists on selling the land they live\noff and move elsewhere). I did grasp that King and Netflix intended this crime\nto be a horrendous example of patriarchal abuse, and I knew that Wilf\u2019s and Henry\u2019s\nlives would be destroyed by it\u2013but is this what I want to see? How does this\nhelp male viewers be interested in undermining patriarchy? How many enjoyed the\nvery graphic scene of Arlette\u2019s murder? The difference in relation to either The Prince<\/em> of The Lord of the Rings<\/em> is that I can ignore 1922<\/em> without feeling that my cultural capital is seriously\ndiminished\u2013but how can I ignore Machiavelli or Tolkien? I must read them, if\nonly to better understand my own marginal position in a patriarchal world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think\nsometimes of what the world was like for, say, Mary Wollstonecraft, who\nunderstood so well her own marginal position 200 years ago and I wonder what it\nwas like to know that, as a woman, you were not even a citizen with full\nrights. Some of us in a handful of Western countries have been told that we are\nequal to men but we get these constant reminders that we are not. You may be\nthinking that it is very na\u00efve of me to expect to connect with Machiavelli and\nTolkien, as they are instances of very different times and ways of thinking but\nhere\u2019s my question\u2013how do we go on reading what we should read to be cultured persons\nwithout being constantly insulted as women? For we need to read men, right? It\u2019s\nnot a matter of not reading The Prince<\/em>.\nAnd I certainly don\u2019t want to ignore The\nLord of the Rings<\/em> (as I don\u2019t want any man to ignore Frankenstein<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a\nriddle to finish: this is 2018 and no woman has travelled to the Moon yet\u2013can we,\nthen, say that the human species has reached our satellite? Will there ever be\na film called First Woman<\/em> about how\nthe first human to step on Mars will be\/was a woman?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deep sigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\npublish a new post every Tuesday (for updates follow @SaraMartinUAB). Comments\nare very welcome! Download the yearly volumes from: http:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116328<\/a>.\nMy web: http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was recently re-reading Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli\u2019s The Prince (1532) in the elegant translation by Peter Bondanella (Oxford UP, 2008), when I came across this passage in \u2018Chapter XXX: Of Fortune\u2019s Power in Human Affairs and How She Can Be Resisted\u2019: \u2018I certainly believe this: that it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortune […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[199,206,304,307,360,477,489],"class_list":["post-1514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-feminism","tag-first-man","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-machaivelli","tag-patriarchy","tag-the-prince","tag-tolkien"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}